For those who keep up with such things, astronomers have discovered a planet around Epsilon Eridani. Its 0.86 Jupiter Masses and is approximately 3.2 parsecs from Earth. Its called Epsilon Eridani b, which might mean its the second planet from the star. Babylon 5 orbits Epsilon Eridani III. So maybe there is a Babylon 5. /forums/images/icons/grin.gif
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Epsilon Eridani
- Thread starter anlashok1
- Start date
Joseph DeMartino
Moderator
</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
So maybe there is a Babylon 5.
[/quote]
Well, not for another 250 years or so. /forums/images/icons/smile.gif Of course, if we can get to sector 14, we might have a chance of finding B5. /forums/images/icons/grin.gif
</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
I wonder how they can "see" them. Or are they just measuring a star's "wobble" and predicting that something of such-and-such a mass is there?
[/quote]
That's a big part of it. There are also other techniques that are giving clear evidence of Earth-sized planets, even if not direct views of them. (Those that can be seen are just pin pricks of light in any case.) Some of the newer high resolution telescopes are being built with adjustable discs that can block out the glare from the star itself, making dimmer objects like planets visible.
Regards,
Joe
So maybe there is a Babylon 5.
[/quote]
Well, not for another 250 years or so. /forums/images/icons/smile.gif Of course, if we can get to sector 14, we might have a chance of finding B5. /forums/images/icons/grin.gif
</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
I wonder how they can "see" them. Or are they just measuring a star's "wobble" and predicting that something of such-and-such a mass is there?
[/quote]
That's a big part of it. There are also other techniques that are giving clear evidence of Earth-sized planets, even if not direct views of them. (Those that can be seen are just pin pricks of light in any case.) Some of the newer high resolution telescopes are being built with adjustable discs that can block out the glare from the star itself, making dimmer objects like planets visible.
Regards,
Joe
hypatia
Regular
This is pretty incredible stuff! /forums/images/icons/grin.gif Science never ceases to amaze me. We can't predict when it is going to rain in the desert, but we think we have a pretty good grasp of the universe, galaxies, how it all started, etc.
So soon they might be able to block out the glare from a star and see the planets around it? /forums/images/icons/cool.gif Color me very VERY impressed! /forums/images/icons/grin.gif
So soon they might be able to block out the glare from a star and see the planets around it? /forums/images/icons/cool.gif Color me very VERY impressed! /forums/images/icons/grin.gif
Actually there are considerably more than 20. If you go to www.obspm.fr/encycl/catalog.html you will find about four pages of planets that have been discovered. You can click on each one to find out what type of star it orbits and its size. For instance, Epsilon Eridani is a spectral type K2V (an orange star). Our Sun is spectral type G5V.
Shaal Mayan
Regular
Well if there is a Babylon 5 will have to wait oh 200 years to see it but by then none of us will be alive to see it happen
Joseph DeMartino
Moderator
</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
Well if there is a Babylon 5 will have to wait oh 200 years to see it but by then none of us will be alive to see it happen
[/quote]
Sez you! At the rate medical science is progressing I think at least some of us have a fairly decent chance of living to see the 2260s, and I plan to be among them. /forums/images/icons/wink.gif
Regards,
Joe
"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to acheive immortality through not dying." - Woody Allen
Well if there is a Babylon 5 will have to wait oh 200 years to see it but by then none of us will be alive to see it happen
[/quote]
Sez you! At the rate medical science is progressing I think at least some of us have a fairly decent chance of living to see the 2260s, and I plan to be among them. /forums/images/icons/wink.gif
Regards,
Joe
"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to acheive immortality through not dying." - Woody Allen
Joseph DeMartino wrote: "Sez you! At the rate medical science is progressing I think at least some of us have a fairly decent chance of living to see the 2260s, and I plan to be among them."
Sorry to rain on your parade but in 200 years mankind on this dirt ball will likely be living hand-to-mouth because the current, unchecked population explosion worldwide is going to outpace the ability to produce food. When this happens, past wars will seem like a walk-in-the-park as political pressure from the masses force countries to use any and everything they have to obtain food or to protect what they have.
Dwindlying recources will also fuel this problem as more and more people require more and more goods. This creates more and more pollution which, in turn, reduces food output.
Bottom line is: I don't think anyone of this era wants to be around in 200 years.
Sorry to rain on your parade but in 200 years mankind on this dirt ball will likely be living hand-to-mouth because the current, unchecked population explosion worldwide is going to outpace the ability to produce food. When this happens, past wars will seem like a walk-in-the-park as political pressure from the masses force countries to use any and everything they have to obtain food or to protect what they have.
Dwindlying recources will also fuel this problem as more and more people require more and more goods. This creates more and more pollution which, in turn, reduces food output.
Bottom line is: I don't think anyone of this era wants to be around in 200 years.
D
**DONOTDELETE**
Guest
I do, to ensure things will not go that way. But then again, I want terribly many things, several of which I am unlikely to get.
Joseph DeMartino
Moderator
</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
Sorry to rain on your parade but in 200 years mankind on this dirt ball will likely be living hand-to-mouth because the current, unchecked population explosion worldwide is going to outpace the ability to produce food.
[/quote]
Of course, that comment was made tongue-in-cheek, but if you want to be mind-numbingly literal, be my guest. But your rebuttal is nonsense. I've been hearing those same predictions probably for longer than you've been alive.
Kid, they've been pedaling this same doomsday scenario for the past 30 years. On the very first Earth Day in 1970 a local TV station in New York ran a mock version of their 10 PM news show set in the distant year of 1990. It depicted an Earth barren of resources, horribly polluted and over populated to the point of food rationing in the United States. Scared the hell out of me.
At the time the population was something around three and a half billion and all the predictions were that the Earth could not physically support a population in excess of 5 billion. Well, we're way past that and people aren't starving because there is a lack of food. People are starving, sad to say - but not because there isn't enough food. They are starving because there isn't enough food where they are - and that is almost entirely the result of wars (civil and otherwise) and other deliberate political decisions. Food production has kept up just fine, thank you very much. Hell, in this country we're still subsidizing farmers not to grow food. And if agriculture in India were operating at the efficiency acheived by Japan in the fifteenth century, the subcontinent would be self-sufficient in foodstuffs. Again, the problem is bad politics, and bad incentives, not limits to resources.
So, did the assholes responsible for that show run a retraction when 1990 came along and none of their predictions came true? Of course not, they were too busy selling the next round of "anti-science" fueled scare stories being prommulgated by the Safety Nazis.
I don't understand what the environmental movement is so pissed off about anyway. According to them, Humans are a kind of infectious disease, screwing up our lovely pristine planet. They should be delighted if we wipe ourselves out. And make no mistake - wiping ourselves out would be about the limit of our ability. We might take a few more species with us if we got really stupid, but not all that many in the grand scheme of things. Wipe out the planet? Not a chance. We couldn't do that if we wanted to, and if we spent the next hundred years devoting all our energies to acheiving that goal. Life is damned tough. If we lit off every nuke in the world tomorrow, the Earth would hardly notice. Life would continue, evolve, produce new forms.
But I don't think we're going to do anything like that. Of course we only have one planet, and of course a rational plan for protecting habits, maximizing resources and the like is important. And countries (like the U.S., which has led the world in the reduction of polution and in the technologies that make that possible) will do so. They just won't throw the baby out with the bathwater in pursuit of idiotic, emotional, knee-jerk schemes based on cooked statistics and dishonest studies produced by "scientists" with preconceived notions and an ax to grind. And because of this, we'll increase food production and help reduce population pressure, and avoid the kind of end-of-the-world scenario that the doomsayers, in various guises, have been foisting off on the general public for the past several thousand years.
(BTW, do you know the best, most effective population reduction program ever invented? It's called "capitalism" Wealthy societies with free markets, better educated populations and more working women were reducing their birthrates even before the introduction of artificial birth control. Political and economic freedom for women - as opposed to massive government programs or child rationing - is the best, most painless and most benign way to achieve this worthy goal. The answer isn't to make the rich nations poorer, but to make the poor nations richer. The key to that is technology.)
Regards,
Joe
Sorry to rain on your parade but in 200 years mankind on this dirt ball will likely be living hand-to-mouth because the current, unchecked population explosion worldwide is going to outpace the ability to produce food.
[/quote]
Of course, that comment was made tongue-in-cheek, but if you want to be mind-numbingly literal, be my guest. But your rebuttal is nonsense. I've been hearing those same predictions probably for longer than you've been alive.
Kid, they've been pedaling this same doomsday scenario for the past 30 years. On the very first Earth Day in 1970 a local TV station in New York ran a mock version of their 10 PM news show set in the distant year of 1990. It depicted an Earth barren of resources, horribly polluted and over populated to the point of food rationing in the United States. Scared the hell out of me.
At the time the population was something around three and a half billion and all the predictions were that the Earth could not physically support a population in excess of 5 billion. Well, we're way past that and people aren't starving because there is a lack of food. People are starving, sad to say - but not because there isn't enough food. They are starving because there isn't enough food where they are - and that is almost entirely the result of wars (civil and otherwise) and other deliberate political decisions. Food production has kept up just fine, thank you very much. Hell, in this country we're still subsidizing farmers not to grow food. And if agriculture in India were operating at the efficiency acheived by Japan in the fifteenth century, the subcontinent would be self-sufficient in foodstuffs. Again, the problem is bad politics, and bad incentives, not limits to resources.
So, did the assholes responsible for that show run a retraction when 1990 came along and none of their predictions came true? Of course not, they were too busy selling the next round of "anti-science" fueled scare stories being prommulgated by the Safety Nazis.
I don't understand what the environmental movement is so pissed off about anyway. According to them, Humans are a kind of infectious disease, screwing up our lovely pristine planet. They should be delighted if we wipe ourselves out. And make no mistake - wiping ourselves out would be about the limit of our ability. We might take a few more species with us if we got really stupid, but not all that many in the grand scheme of things. Wipe out the planet? Not a chance. We couldn't do that if we wanted to, and if we spent the next hundred years devoting all our energies to acheiving that goal. Life is damned tough. If we lit off every nuke in the world tomorrow, the Earth would hardly notice. Life would continue, evolve, produce new forms.
But I don't think we're going to do anything like that. Of course we only have one planet, and of course a rational plan for protecting habits, maximizing resources and the like is important. And countries (like the U.S., which has led the world in the reduction of polution and in the technologies that make that possible) will do so. They just won't throw the baby out with the bathwater in pursuit of idiotic, emotional, knee-jerk schemes based on cooked statistics and dishonest studies produced by "scientists" with preconceived notions and an ax to grind. And because of this, we'll increase food production and help reduce population pressure, and avoid the kind of end-of-the-world scenario that the doomsayers, in various guises, have been foisting off on the general public for the past several thousand years.
(BTW, do you know the best, most effective population reduction program ever invented? It's called "capitalism" Wealthy societies with free markets, better educated populations and more working women were reducing their birthrates even before the introduction of artificial birth control. Political and economic freedom for women - as opposed to massive government programs or child rationing - is the best, most painless and most benign way to achieve this worthy goal. The answer isn't to make the rich nations poorer, but to make the poor nations richer. The key to that is technology.)
Regards,
Joe
The Juche Warrior
Regular
</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
I don't understand what the environmental movement is so pissed off about anyway. According to them, Humans are a kind of infectious disease, screwing up our lovely pristine planet.
[/quote]
I dunno, maybe they are agents? /forums/images/icons/grin.gif I'm sorry. My dorkitude just slips out sometimes.....
I don't understand what the environmental movement is so pissed off about anyway. According to them, Humans are a kind of infectious disease, screwing up our lovely pristine planet.
[/quote]
I dunno, maybe they are agents? /forums/images/icons/grin.gif I'm sorry. My dorkitude just slips out sometimes.....
D
**DONOTDELETE**
Guest
While I concur with Joe that the most human suffering heavily involves political decisions and violence, I must disagree with him on another issue. The environmental movement has clear reasons to consider humanity in its current state worthy of being called a disease.
Unless you already know, I would like to remind that by stepping up our industry during the past 200 years, we have accelerated the rate of extinctions by several tens of times. The rate at which new species appear... remains fairly constant.
Unless you consider it wise to burn fossilized carbon (along with traces of fossilized sulphur, while also incorporating atmospheric nitrogen into oxides) while we could strive to use fresh hydrogen (from ethanol, which is based on renewable carbon).
Unless you say that wasting our small reserves of enrichable uranium is wiser than developing fuel cells, solar cells, wind generators, heat pumps and other technologies far more promising than fission power (among them also the promising technology of fusion power).
Unless you say that we should make oil-based rubbers and plastics, when with sufficient devotion of resources into adequate branches of biotechnology, we could make that from grain, and again pay farmers to actually grow something. Because currently, oil-based non-decomposable plastics are only growing garbage mounds, a very odd deposit of fossilized carbon. /forums/images/icons/blush.gif
Now looking at the way human societies behave, I must say that even developed countries with relatively balanced social conditions (perhaps with the exception of aging population, and increasing medical costs) are paying very insufficient attention to environmental issues. To criticise people who notice that flaw for pointing it out is hardly productive.
-------
Regarding our capability to destroy... if we dedicated ourselves to destroying all life on Earth, we could probably achieve it much sooner than in 200 years. Remember that the first nanotechnical weapons are probably already in experiemental stage. Those are far more potent weapons than fusion bombs.
I would assume that global nuclear war would "only" resemble a serious asteroid hit. Great rearrangements would take place as new species would compete for the position of dead species. After a few million years, Earth would seem fairly normal.
However, either by releasing a few well-designed strains of nanomachines, or removing sunlight by contructing an artificial barrier, humanity could kill life on Earth quite easily with technology well available within the next two centuries.
Unless you already know, I would like to remind that by stepping up our industry during the past 200 years, we have accelerated the rate of extinctions by several tens of times. The rate at which new species appear... remains fairly constant.
Unless you consider it wise to burn fossilized carbon (along with traces of fossilized sulphur, while also incorporating atmospheric nitrogen into oxides) while we could strive to use fresh hydrogen (from ethanol, which is based on renewable carbon).
Unless you say that wasting our small reserves of enrichable uranium is wiser than developing fuel cells, solar cells, wind generators, heat pumps and other technologies far more promising than fission power (among them also the promising technology of fusion power).
Unless you say that we should make oil-based rubbers and plastics, when with sufficient devotion of resources into adequate branches of biotechnology, we could make that from grain, and again pay farmers to actually grow something. Because currently, oil-based non-decomposable plastics are only growing garbage mounds, a very odd deposit of fossilized carbon. /forums/images/icons/blush.gif
Now looking at the way human societies behave, I must say that even developed countries with relatively balanced social conditions (perhaps with the exception of aging population, and increasing medical costs) are paying very insufficient attention to environmental issues. To criticise people who notice that flaw for pointing it out is hardly productive.
-------
Regarding our capability to destroy... if we dedicated ourselves to destroying all life on Earth, we could probably achieve it much sooner than in 200 years. Remember that the first nanotechnical weapons are probably already in experiemental stage. Those are far more potent weapons than fusion bombs.
I would assume that global nuclear war would "only" resemble a serious asteroid hit. Great rearrangements would take place as new species would compete for the position of dead species. After a few million years, Earth would seem fairly normal.
However, either by releasing a few well-designed strains of nanomachines, or removing sunlight by contructing an artificial barrier, humanity could kill life on Earth quite easily with technology well available within the next two centuries.
hypatia
Regular
I am a total addict of the show "Meet the Press". There is an ad for a company that shows up regularly there, especially towards the end of "Meet the Press". It is a female actor's voice (she was in a Rodney Dangerfield movie once, and she also was IIRC the original Margaret Hulihan of the movie MASH (not the tv show, the movie).)
Anyhow, she talks about ethanol, IIRC. How it can keep our planet cleaner and IF WE NEED MORE WE CAN JUST GROW IT.
I am terrified that this might be a good idea that could work, but will be surpressed by those with enough money to lobby against it.
Sound inplausible? There are MANY people who could live outside a nursing home if the nursing home didn't have such a powerful lobby.
This is the damned stinking truth here. Nursing homes want the money. They don't necessarily like these independent living plans. And they have the money to crush a lot of them.
I think once again I'm going to "borrow" Psion Ten's favorite phrase:
sometimes I just HATE PEOPLE. /forums/images/icons/mad.gif
Anyhow, she talks about ethanol, IIRC. How it can keep our planet cleaner and IF WE NEED MORE WE CAN JUST GROW IT.
I am terrified that this might be a good idea that could work, but will be surpressed by those with enough money to lobby against it.
Sound inplausible? There are MANY people who could live outside a nursing home if the nursing home didn't have such a powerful lobby.
This is the damned stinking truth here. Nursing homes want the money. They don't necessarily like these independent living plans. And they have the money to crush a lot of them.
I think once again I'm going to "borrow" Psion Ten's favorite phrase:
sometimes I just HATE PEOPLE. /forums/images/icons/mad.gif
D
**DONOTDELETE**
Guest
The energy, automotive and biotech industries have well noticed that fuel cells combined with renewable fuels can produce perfectly good profit, both in heating houses and driving cars. It is only that those technologies could have become feasible decades earlier, had people thought enough about environmental and economic efficiency.
The fuel cell was discovered in 1839, nearly a hundred years before combustion engines. However, we needed the cold war... to push enough money into developing fuel cells. Not out of concern for environment.
Just to build better submarines to deliver those fusion bombs (naturally also to power spaceships and space stations, where fuel cells produce drinking water and electricity by combining hydrogen/oxygen, basically ordinary rocket fuel).
The fuel cell was discovered in 1839, nearly a hundred years before combustion engines. However, we needed the cold war... to push enough money into developing fuel cells. Not out of concern for environment.
Just to build better submarines to deliver those fusion bombs (naturally also to power spaceships and space stations, where fuel cells produce drinking water and electricity by combining hydrogen/oxygen, basically ordinary rocket fuel).
Joe D wrote: "Of course, that comment was made tongue-in-cheek, but if you want to be mind-numbingly literal, be my guest. But your rebuttal is nonsense. I've been hearing those same predictions probably for longer than you've been alive."
You're jumping to conclusions you can't support. I'm a 70+year old red-neck conservative, Special Forces type and fought and bled in two wars plus the intelligence wars in between. I am also a published author and historian. And also a damned good intelligence analyst who looks at things as the are, not as how I would like them to be so what I posted are my conclusions, based on population trends and plus a large number of other factors. The beginning is plain to see, not from a tree-hugger standpoint but the reality standpoint.
The bottom line is: There is big trouble down the line and it probably too late to do anything about it.
You're jumping to conclusions you can't support. I'm a 70+year old red-neck conservative, Special Forces type and fought and bled in two wars plus the intelligence wars in between. I am also a published author and historian. And also a damned good intelligence analyst who looks at things as the are, not as how I would like them to be so what I posted are my conclusions, based on population trends and plus a large number of other factors. The beginning is plain to see, not from a tree-hugger standpoint but the reality standpoint.
The bottom line is: There is big trouble down the line and it probably too late to do anything about it.
Galahad
Regular
Just a couple of points, despite the Us's previous efforts on cleaning up our planet, I was under the impression that the current Government is putting power needs above the environment and is attracting much international scorn for it's blanking of the most recent environmental world conferences.
Love of money is a disgusting thing, the biblical addage is very true. In Europe, we have food mountains in huge warehouses, yet the EU's attitude to reducing these, is not to distribute the excess to places of intense poverty, rather they pressurize countries to reduce their agricultural output (i.e. close down farms) particularly in Britain. This causes twice the pain, starving communities on one side, and jobless communities on the other. Furthermore, there is something like 140 billion galllons of drinkable water per head per annum for everybody here (number may be wildly innacurate but the implication certainly isn't).
The largest greenhouse gas, or one of them is methane, this is caused by an imbalance in the number of plant life against animal life, no prizes for guessing where the methane is being emitted. Nature will balance itself out on this front, x amount of animals = y amount of plants, obviously some species will fare better than others and that is something that needs addressing.
It just strikes me as stupid that our attempts at solving our inconveniences seem to result in bigger problems.
Well I'm talking twaddle now so I'll shut up /forums/images/icons/rolleyes.gif
Love of money is a disgusting thing, the biblical addage is very true. In Europe, we have food mountains in huge warehouses, yet the EU's attitude to reducing these, is not to distribute the excess to places of intense poverty, rather they pressurize countries to reduce their agricultural output (i.e. close down farms) particularly in Britain. This causes twice the pain, starving communities on one side, and jobless communities on the other. Furthermore, there is something like 140 billion galllons of drinkable water per head per annum for everybody here (number may be wildly innacurate but the implication certainly isn't).
The largest greenhouse gas, or one of them is methane, this is caused by an imbalance in the number of plant life against animal life, no prizes for guessing where the methane is being emitted. Nature will balance itself out on this front, x amount of animals = y amount of plants, obviously some species will fare better than others and that is something that needs addressing.
It just strikes me as stupid that our attempts at solving our inconveniences seem to result in bigger problems.
Well I'm talking twaddle now so I'll shut up /forums/images/icons/rolleyes.gif
