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What part of "unidentified" don't you understand?












In special relativity, motion through space plus motion through time always equals the speed of light. Thus the faster you travel through space, the slower you travel through time. Once you reach the speed of light, there is no time. So from the perspective of the space traveller, if you can go fast enough, time isn't a factor. Once you reach the speed of light the trip is instantaneous (absent the time to accelerate and decelerate) so in that sense time is not a factor. The technology to pull that off is beyond anything we're capable of doing, but after a million years of technological progress: who knows?

Also, what if advanced technology someday grants us the ability to control how we experience the passage of time? Imagine we can construct machine-like bodies and an enhanced human consciousness that has limitless patience, or that can shut down conscious thought for thousands or even millions of years at a time?

I don't see any evidence that extraterrestrials have visited the earth. But I don't think that means it's completely impossible. It's just highly unlikely.




Actually the dinosaurs died off because they were oversexed used too much petroleum jelly and became oil deposits...at least that what I heard last sunday in church. :)

I guess it would depend upon your definition of "would look nothing like". Dinosaurs are bilaterally symmetrical, they have binocular vision, their eyes and ears are on their head - at the top. By "look nothing like" I pictured, for instance, an amorphous blob - creatures that, perhaps, wouldn't see a lot of difference between a dinosaur and a person. All I'm saying is that evolutionary changes are not "random" nor dependant purely upon competition with others. There are immutable physical forces which also played a role in shaping life on earth and because these forces are the same all over the universe, some similarities in life forms would be bound to occur.

Evolution sometimes creates bilaterally asymmetrical animals. Flounders are one example. They essentially spend their adult lives laying on their sides. One of their eyes migrates to the top side. Another example is the blowholes on sperm whales, which are located off center. Depending on how one defines bilateral symmetry, people aren't exactly symmetrical. Most of us have one eye ever so slightly higher than the other, which aids in depth perception. And for any person who's right- or left-handed, this handedness also results in some physical asymmetry. 

Not all aspects of animal anatomy and/or behavior have survival value. Some of them make a creature more attractive to a mate, which helps that individual propagate its genes into the future. However, that individuals genes may be quite average otherwise. There's no reason to suppose that a peacock with a particularly spectacular tail has anything but better tail genes, and the larger the tail, the harder it is for the bird to get airborne in case of a predator attack, so the tail would seem to be actively dysfunctional, because of the cock with the smaller tail can't get laid, his genes are going nowhere, even if his genes are otherwise superior and he can get away from predators more handily.


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Torture Works

Started by Unseen in Ethics & Morals. Last reply by Unseen 4 minutes ago. 14 Replies


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