Yeah, I was fear mongering Chuck, a political device. ;-) This is a
favorite topic of mine, it is at the axis of many fields. To accelerate
nanotech development I think we should implement rapid prototyping,
experimentation and analysis systems. When I envision man at the
beginning of this revolution I look for tools that would allow an
explosion (figuratively) of development, being able to catalog and
operate a multitude of experiments in parallel, while building a massive
library of modeled behavior for materials and systems interoperating in
the real world to improve the robustness and diversity of this
technology is apparently the way to go. To think that the behavior of
biological systems can be abstracted and used to formulate dynamic
systems guided by expert algorithms to solve material challenges in real
time guided by people over vast distances, it goes beyond genetics, I am
in awe at the potential universe we are venturing toward. We will also
be able to make changes to ourselves and our experience of this world at
a similar rate..
On 5/19/2011 1:41 AM, Chuck Bowling wrote:
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]
<mailto:[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]
<mailto:[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.
