I think that with nanotechnology we will be able to synthesize pretty much anything we want from raw materials in the future. Assuming that any alien race capable of traveling the trillions of miles to get here would have at least the same level of technology my guess is that they wouldn't need anything we'd have to offer.
On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 8:48 PM, Ash <[email protected]> wrote: > There is another good reason to develop our technologies as a species, > think how we are looking at the planets and celestial bodies as vast > resources. Imagine if something else came through and strip mined the > resources we would need to develop into a spacefaring species, that would > suck big time. Like a tribe of humans moving through and picking all the > nuts we squirrels need, or worse, deciding we were in the way of those > resources, think what we have done in those situations.. I know it's > unlikely considering the vast resources out there, but something might have > it's eye on our pale blue dot too, working faster than us at making the > leap. > > > On 5/18/2011 8:37 PM, Chuck Bowling wrote: > > I think right now the technology will only allow us to tell if a planet is > rocky or a gas giant. And even then only if it is a relatively massive > planet. The last time I read anything on the subject the smallest planet > found was something like 3 times the size of the Earth. > > IMO, the analogy with Columbus doesn't hold. 17th century technology > allowed humans to travel anywhere on the Earth - albeit slow and wrought > with hazard. If the analogy is that a neighboring star is like a new > continent then we are more like cavemen discovering that a log can float. At > the rate we're going it might be a thousand years before we can actually > mount an expedition to another star. > > I think the primary reason we are so far from actually exploring other > stars is mainly political rather than technological. But, I think you are > right. It is a project worth attaching too. Now if we could just make the > damn politicians see it that way... ;) > > On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 4:58 PM, archytas <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I'm not sure how accurate they can be in revealing planets enough like >> ours to offer possibilities of a new promised land. They claim there >> is one 20 light years away, or 300,000 years at current space travel >> speeds. One can feel that this at least puts us somewhere near the >> position of 'Columbus'. Our current 'tin-foil' technology won't do, >> but at this kind of distance we are talking about something other than >> worm-holes, 'relativity flight' or the kind of physics in which >> distance is an illusion. >> >> For someone like me who can't take god-stories seriously and quite >> likes the idea of a human future (or at least the idea of evolution >> not just ending through catastrophe), there is an opportunity to >> believe in something distant in time and a need for us to direct >> ourselves towards it. A time, perhaps in which a form of conscious >> life can live very differently from now, and a project worth attaching >> to - perhaps a reason for spirituality. Comments on this or the >> technology welcome. > > > >
