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Other intelligent life in the universe?
Hotly debated topic on what other life in the universe looks like and whether it could be intelligent have lately struck my brain hard. From sci-fi movies and tv
shows it appears like intelligent humanoid life is likely occurence, but is it? When some scientists like to imagine various strange blueprints for life
they are well justified. But when it comes to intelligent life, this question is becoming much harder. What IS intelligent? How do we define it? We may say, that
intelligent life uses tools... But then even some birds would be considered intelligent life form. We may try to look at the size of the brain and the elephants,
whales, dolphins and other large mammals win the lottery. But okay, we can also say that intelligent species should be organised, build settlements, use tools etc. etc.
until we finally define something that behaves like human. But that still doesn't give us very good idea on how extraterrestrials look like. Neil deGrasse Tyson likes
to imagine life on other planets in quite creative way. For him great sci-fi alien was the Blob. A thing that moves, jumps on to its prey, sucks its preys blood and
moves on to another target. That is life, but one would hardly imagine it ever becoming intelligent. The problem here is with the body. Dolphin would sure be just
as creative as human, but has no hands to be creative with. Elephant is just as bad on it with just one hand and only two fingers. Unlike elephant though, dolphin is
in double trouble. Underwater environment hardly allows for metallurgy. Dolphin like civilization then, would be likely to end up in permanent stone age. Elephants on
the other hand, are too big. Most of their brains is working hard only to keep that system of nerves and muscles running smoothly. In both cases there is also a
problem with their vision, their eyes are on the sides of their head and I'm not certain whether they can even focus very close. From there, we can start getting ideas
on how alien intelligent life may look like. Stereoscopy is a plus, not mandatory, but definitely a good thing. Eyes need to be able to focus in "mid" range to allow
for creativity. Size of the body should be decent to carry large brain, but not too big for that would only complicate everything. At least pair of flexible front
facing manipulators is a good idea too. What would the face look like? I would guess that it would be sadly very human like - rather flat. This guess of mine is based
upon an experiment I have done on myself. You see I'm rather creative type, very skilled with my hands. So I have made me decently sized beak and tried to work with
it. The second I put it on, everything becomes a problem. Clothing, writing, manipulating things, pretty much everything that is spinning around our ability to see
the world around us is way harder. The funniest thing is that at the beginning i couldn't figure out why! I didn't see the beak pretty much the second i put it on!
My brain have just immediatelly gone and deleted that thing from my field of vision as it found this thing is here to stay. What followed was, probably hillarious to
look at, episode of me tilting my head and re-adjusting my hands to see better and not understanding why I can't do the do. All that even though I was pretty good at
all of those things to begin with. Only when I have finally struck my beak in to the thing I was doing, and effectively destroyed the item i was making, I understood.
It's not me, it's the beak! As my brain have deleted the part of my vision where the beak was, I was missing good thirty percent of my field of vision. That might not
seem as important, but when it's the bottom thirty percent that lets me see my hands, it's a problem. For this you'd need a hack of some sort. Hack like third eye,
or both of the eyes set higher, maybe shallow eye sockets and naturally forward tilting head. One thing is for certain - you can't just slap a pretrusion on to a
human-like face and expect it to work. There is another thing about the body of potential extraterrestrial species that needs to be in place. That thing of coarse is
decent strength. Strength and one more thing - your "manipulators" should be long enough to actually reach for stuff and bring it up close to whatever visual organ
you have, to examine. For that, your manipulators have to be free, you can't really use them for walking. So, to summarize: Decent size, decent body build, free set
of at least two manipulators, good vision of some sort and of coarse good stability. With those, you can let your imagination run free.
I like to imagine creatures somewhat like our centaurs. Not neccesarily a human torso on top of a horse though. Something more fluid. I like to imagine this
creature starting with six legs, later on lifting front part of its body off the ground, gaining access to its manipulators. With that it would than tilt its head
downwards and its sense of smell will start deteriorating as it's not necessary any more, in fact, it stands in the way of good sight. Size of the animal would grow
with the size of its brain, and its heavy body would provide the requirement for solid hoofs on four of its legs. Its fingers and arms would get longer as its ribs
will get tougher and larger, widening the chest like structure on top. All this would allow for more stability and larger strength, better vision, more smarts. On the
end there might be something horse-like. An interesting creature to meet with and to study. My imagination of coarse does not stop there, imagine something based on
our octopus, using its flexibility to form whatever means of travel or manipulator it needs. Maybe something with an exoskeleton? Not necessarily the one we know to
find on insects. Sharks are using form of an exoskeleton as well. They are in fact so well on it, they didn't need to evolve in many milions of years. Or... Is that
too good? Of coarse! The creature we speak of needs to be imperfect! Just like us! Only then we felt the need to be creative! We were too weak, and too slow to survive.
And so it was up to our brains to create the difference. And that gives us the last requirement: An intelligent extraterrestrial needs to start as something that is
inferiror to other creatures in its environment and is not reproducing fast enough to cover the difference in other means than using its brain. Only than this creature
will start evolving its brains faster than other parts of its body and would become the leading species on its planet. Effectively murdering everything else whenever
it pleases to do so. After all human is now the only creature on this planet that can survive and currently lives in almost literally any environment at hand.
201711151952 (Portugal) Paegaskiller
Dawkins & Tyson: No same DNA elswhere in the universe?
"You can just about imagine DNA evolving twice, but not the same DNA." is a statement that have left quite an impression on me. Is there no possibility of the same
DNA evolving twice? Personally, I wouldn't think so. This is just one line from much larger debate between Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson. A debate where many
deep questions were asked and answered by one or the other scientist. The reason for why I don't think it's improbable for the same DNA evolving twice is simple;
It works! And because it works, it's pretty likely to me, that it would appear twice. The proof of that is easy to find, once you start understanding how common
stuff we are. Human, and with him all life on earth that we find to be life, is made of the most common stuff in the universe. Hydrogen, Oxygen, Carbon, those are
three elements most common in the universe and therefore easy to find on any planet. And those react with other elements in certain way to create molecules from which
life may emerge. And those molecules have only certain ways on how to combine with one another in order to create self-driving reaction aka life. Sure, one would say
that there is many combinations with which to make life, but with reaction so complex, the band of possibilities is narrowing awfully. Base code for life must contain
information telling it to get food, to maintain itself, to expell waste, to multiply and most importantly - survive. Remove only one of these
requirements and your new creation is in trouble. These informations must be contained in the very first code to ever appear to then rise its numbers so the code can
further mutate and provide enough combinations. Because only with many available combinations there always will be one that can survive new conditions. Unfortunatelly,
listed requirements are not the only ones necessary. There still is many combinations of code that can do just the same, but here comes chemistry! All of the settings
given to the program are useless if the program itself cannot exist long enough for them to be used. That means the DNA molecule or whatever other molecule you'd like
to do it with, must be stable enough to be usable. And as seen on earth, only DNA molecule in last 4.5 billion years have made it far enough to be seen today.
So far scientists have no other sample of life but the one we know, the DNA based life. So the "life code" has to be hardy enough to survive chemical punishment,
radiation, mechanical stress and still be readable no matter what. That means it not only has to be really good construction but also it has to be rather simple.
Make it too complicated and again, you'll have trouble. Very complicated things are prone to break easily and therefore not to survive very long.
So for me it's quite simple - DNA is cool and I can easily imagine it evolving twice. Actually, I have hard time imagining something else to be so succesfull.
201711151612 (Portugal) Paegaskiller
Hyperloop or Hyperfail?
Quite well known bilionaire Elon Musk have tackled more than one engineering problem in his life. Will it be enough though to solve a magnetic train?
Magnetic trains, first concepted I think some time in 1930's aren't anything new in the world, but are they any use? From all the hundreds, thousands, milions
and bilions of other vehicles used in the world every day as main modes of transportation, magnetic trains are not really the major ones. Hell, there are just four of those on
the entire planet! Some of the top issues around magnetic trains are safety, fuel consumption and maintenance. All of those are hard problems for all modes of
transport, but here's the thing. When classical high speed electric train runs out of electricity, it's hardly a great problem. Automatic brakes will stop the train
and passengers will get out safely. With magnetic train though, train that is practically levitating above steel rail you have to have one fact in mind:
No electricity - no levitation! In low speeds that is not a problem - backup wheels will catch the train and everyone is fine. Situation dramatically changes though
once you'd like to break the sound barrier with it. At this speed, there is practically nothing you can do to safely catch the train and prevent it from
exploding to milion pieces on impact. Then there is the fact Hyperloop is to be run in a vacuum tube - a very hard to maintain environment with it's pros and cons.
Pros of coarse include low friction.... and that is pretty much it. Cons though are numerous! How do you evacuate people from a sealed vaccum tube? How many emergency
exit ports you need? What if the tube collapses? How fast can you represurize? How and when would you deal repairs? How much energy does it take to keep that vacuum? What about heat expansion?
What about vandals? All those questions should lead you to conclusion that vacuum chamber + trains = not easy. In fact, for price advertised ($20 per ride) impossible.
There are simply things you don't tackle. Not because reasons, but because physics. Humans are living on the bottom of the ocean called an atmosphere. This atmosphere
is pressing on everything with a force based on it's density and height of the column. Long story short, force with which the air wants to get inside the tube is great.
And so it takes great effort to get it out.
Still, let's not call Musks effort futile. As humanity advances, eventually there will be a need for such train. Not here on earth, but as a mode of transport for
moon, mars and maybe other bodies in our solar system. You see for safety and technical reasons it's not a great idea to land your rocket right next to the base. You
don't want to crash your only home, as well as you don't want it to be grinded by highly abrasive moon dust. In this case, a vacuum train will be needed and for the
moon it would be an ideal mode of transport. Classical train is simply no good for the moon. Low moons gravity won't help you out and insanely abrasive moon dust
doesn't help either. For a magnetic train though it's an ideal environment. With good network of solar panels you can maintain high levels of power nonstop, since there
is no weather on the moon and magnetic trains are contactless, therefore immune to abrasives. Only one thing is missing! The train needs to be sealed against vacuum
and once Musk is done solving the actual movement problems (Seriously, that technology is old! You should have had it solved already!), the vacuum sealing will sure
be on it's way to succes! Best thing of them all? No air = no tube which sweeps most of the previously named problems off of the table! Such train will require years
of safe testing, since you don't want it to fail while travelling on the moon. And such testing will have to be
done on earth. And the only way on how to test it properly is to run long enough vacuum track in hard enough terrain from place A to place B with hard enough traffic.
And before you can actually build such track, you need to have money for it. And the only way on how to squeeze money from investors these days, is to convince a
lot of stupid people about that they will ride your tube at supersonic speed for $20 per ride, and you'll somehow stay in black numbers.
So not really a Hyperfail, more like Hyper-misunderstanding. Or maybe Hyper-coverage? Time will show!
201711052112 (England) Paegaskiller
The religious truth
As I'm Sitting here in Britain, parked near Birmingham, I can't help but wonder: Why so many religious people think they know the ultimate truth?
You see, it came to me like this, when you browse through scientific videos on Youtube, you are bound to end up seeing the videos where atheists just burn
religious beliefs like pieces of paper. Cold hard evidence just slams right on to the heads of believers and... Quite surprisingly in most cases, does
next to nothing. Believers are often so stuck in their religious beliefs they can't accept evidence even if you break it open right over their heads! Denial, true,
served humans well for many millenia. And I can understand that it could be hard to accept that the ones we once loved will never come back, that we will never see
them again. What I do not understand is why religious people deny the facts that we CAN show them. The facts that we CAN measure and the ones that we CAN demonstrate.
Alright, alright. I know, it sounds weird that the universe began existing with an explosion, and it sounds weird that there is no driving intelligence over all of
that. OK! Those ARE theories and scientific community, as well as this world, don't really need religious people to understand or believe those. What we need
religious people to understand, is things that are now directly threatening us. Things like global warming, fact that Donald Trump really is an idiot, or plain and
simply the fact that even if global warming observation eventually turns out to be wrong, it's much better to breathe clean air. Much better than to breathe the one
that smells like burned electrics. That is a small frie though! It is possible to become a bioengineer while you don't believe the theory of evolution. Theory of
evolution in nutshell being: "Organisms change over time.". Why is that a problem? Well if you can bioengineer a virus that can cure HIV or AIDS and don't believe in
evolution, a small fact may slip through your fingers. The fact that your bio-ingeneered virus will be changing over time. And something that worked and saved milions
of lives is now taking all of it's favors back as it mutated in to something crazy and deadly. We don't really need religious people to go, throw away their religion
and live the rest of their lives in depression. We only need them to understand that the taller pile of ingnorance they build, the deeper the following fall will be.
And it's a fall that can take the the whole human civilization down with them. What we need is those people who can't get around without religion to ascend above the
limitations of their outdated religious books to a plane where their god and miracles keep their souls in piece on a spiritual level. While in life they pursue the
answers and truth through the tools of innovation and science.
201711051942 (England) Paegaskiller
First Entry 201711051828
Hi, I'm Pae Paegaskiller, an otherkin from CZ/SK dragon community. An Electrician, Driver, Artist, Author, Critic and a Theorist.
On this page I will be telling you what goes inside my head, and maybe I'll share even some of my own self composed literature.
It has been quite a while since I have actually done something with my expensive web space. Well, here comes! Unlike most others, I have decided not to go for
very modern new cool desings with lots of pages and dothats. Instead, I have decided to stick with what I know and what I can do best. Well designed one-pagers
with very little hard-to-compute stuff whatsoever. Reason? It works! I just can't stand it when I'm waiting for a page to load for five million years, wasting
megabytes of data per page. All that just to find that the pages compatibility with my browser is poor, as well as it's content. So here goes, My very first entry
on an almost new page.
© 2011 - 2017 Paegaskiller