Alien Planet

[Hemi-Cuda]

anyone watch this show on the Discovery channel? i caught it sunday on the HD channel and man was it ever facinating. the way they managed to mix fact in with fiction was awesome, and i loved how completely different they made the planet from Earth, compared to most sci-fi where alien planets look like your backyard. the only thing i didn't like was the realization that while the show is based on actual plans to visit a planet like Darwin 4 (maybe Gliese 581), i probably won't be alive to see it happen

[McG]

allright! my halo and halo 2 mad skillz will finally have practical use!

[Azure]

I can't wait for the Transformers movie to come out...

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

anyone watch this show on the Discovery channel? i caught it sunday on the HD channel and man was it ever facinating. the way they managed to mix fact in with fiction was awesome, and i loved how completely different they made the planet from Earth, compared to most sci-fi where alien planets look like your backyard. the only thing i didn't like was the realization that while the show is based on actual plans to visit a planet like Darwin 4 (maybe Gliese 581), i probably won't be alive to see it happen

I watched it last night, it was well done, but the creatures were a little extreme, the one bird with jet engines and a 8 foot pike was a little silly, and I couldn't see anything evolving like that.

[FlamesPuck12]

Originally Posted by McG

allright! my halo and halo 2 mad skillz will finally have practical use!

Haha my starcraft skillz too!

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Azure

I can't wait for the Transformers movie to come out...

They tried to make the Transformers look more alien but in my opinion, they just made robots with nasty faces. I mean, Bumblebee is supposed to be cute, but in any other movie he could be some evil torturing S.S. robot of doom.

[TheyCallMeBruce]

Is this the one about 2 planets? The blue moon and aurilia? The show is called Alien Worlds.

They never actually explained what the hysterias are or how they evolved to be. I find it crazy that such an organism can theoretically exist. If it does, I think that's the end of the planet Aurilia.

[worth]

No, the one hes talking about is Alien Planet. It came out a year or two ago and I saw it then and rewatched it in HD a few months ago. I agree, it is a pretty good show, with some scientific fact mixed in with hypothesis.

If NASA ever gets off their collective butts and gets over to europa and can somehow get below the ice, i'd bet $100 that you'd find micro organisms thus proving that life exists outside our own planet. But I think they've scrapped this mission.

[Neeper]

Sweet its on again tonight at 7pm. I'll be watching it.

[TheyCallMeBruce]

Originally Posted by worth

No, the one hes talking about is Alien Planet. It came out a year or two ago and I saw it then and rewatched it in HD a few months ago. I agree, it is a pretty good show, with some scientific fact mixed in with hypothesis.

If NASA ever gets off their collective butts and gets over to europa and can somehow get below the ice, i'd bet $100 that you'd find micro organisms thus proving that life exists outside our own planet. But I think they've scrapped this mission.

Ok, I was getting it confused with the other show, which also has a huge backing from well known people in the scientific community.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Planet

Alien Worlds is commissioned by National Geographic. Similar to Alien planet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurelia_and_Blue_Moon

[worth]

I think i've seen that one your describing also.

Hysterias...the little organisms that came together to form one large one that went on the land and ate things in a matter of seconds, right?

I didn't think it was as good as Alien Planet. It seemed really hypothetical to me. Alien planet seemed based more on fact, but that's just my opinion.

[ken0042]

Originally Posted by worth

Hysterias...the little organisms that came together to form one large one that went on the land and ate things in a matter of seconds, right?

That's the one that had the tree like animals too, right. I think that was yet a different one all together.

It's too bad that we likely won't find out in our lifetime. As the one video said, @ .20c it would take 40 years. So assuming we could launch tomorrow, I would be in the old folks home when it reaches the planet, and likely dead by the time the report comes back via radio waves.

[worth]

yeah, space travel is just not realistic at all with our current technology.

Even at the speed of light, space travel isn't all that realistic. I guess it's good for a few stars around us, but much further than that you're looking into lifetimes to get anywhere.

Only truley efficient way to travel in space is how they do it in the movies. Warp drive/FTL/wormholes etc. Distances are just too vast.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by worth

yeah, space travel is just not realistic at all with our current technology.

Even at the speed of light, space travel isn't all that realistic. I guess it's good for a few stars around us, but much further than that you're looking into lifetimes to get anywhere.

Only truley efficient way to travel in space is how they do it in the movies. Warp drive/FTL/wormholes etc. Distances are just too vast.

i refuse to believe the whole notion that nothing can go faster than the speed of light. top scientists decades ago said the same thing about the speed of sound, and then centuries ago you had scientists claiming that the Earth was flat and was the center of the universe

just because we can't fathom how anything could go faster than light right now, doesn't mean future generations won't figure it out. and i firmly believe that with people as smart as Stephen Hawkings who are convinced that the only way to ensure humanity's survival is to spread into space, we'll get there eventually

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

i refuse to believe the whole notion that nothing can go faster than the speed of light. top scientists decades ago said the same thing about the speed of sound, and then centuries ago you had scientists claiming that the Earth was flat and was the center of the universe

just because we can't fathom how anything could go faster than light right now, doesn't mean future generations won't figure it out. and i firmly believe that with people as smart as Stephen Hawkings who are convinced that the only way to ensure humanity's survival is to spread into space, we'll get there eventually

You are confusing a lot of things and misunderstanding many concepts of history and science.

Going faster than the speed of light is very different than going faster than the speed of sound. No scientists EVER said passing the sound barrier was impossible, most likely they were referring to humans surviving at supersonic speeds. Everyday items were already passing the sound barrier hundreds of years ago. A cracking whip, a musket bullet, etc. The whole notion of people thinking the world was flat is also a myth invented in the 18th or 19th century to spice up an American textbook for young students. Ancient greeks knew the world was round and classical knowledge was historically revered. Sailors who saw ships passing over the horizon knew the world could not be flat.

E=mc^2 means that accelerating a sub-light something to the speed of light and beyond would take most of the energy in the universe. It just is impossible. If you could do that, you would disprove the theory of relativity. Stephen Hawking knows that much That's why any talk of rapid long-distance space travel always involves either "99.9% of, or near-light speed" or travelling through something that goes around the laws of physics in the normal universe, ie: a wormhole or sub-space.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Accelerating a sub-light something to the speed of light and beyond would take most of the energy in the universe. It just is impossible.

that same thing was said about even getting humans into space in the first place, we couldn't survive the radiation or lack of gravity. humans are insignificant in the grand scheme of things and we haven't even explored a fraction of the universe, so i find it quite ignorant to claim that we know the absolute speed limit of that universe. just because we haven't seen it broken doesn't mean it can't be

[worth]

Well, technically speaking some things do travel faster than light.

The universe is 14 billion years old.

But the universe is also 126 billion light years across.

Therefore, if we started from a single point in space, aka the big bang, and 14 billion years later we are 126 billion light years across, how did it get to be that big?

The universe is ever expanding. It's like a loaf of rising bread, and the galaxies in it are the rasins in the bread. As the universe expands, the galaxies are pulled apart from each other.

I was actually quite shocked when I found out the universe was over 100 billion light years across. Boggled my mind because I knew the universe was only 14 billion years old.

Now that example is a little different than matter. Physics as we know it is based on the principal of the speed of light being a constant in a vaccuum, and matter can only infinitley approach the speed. I believe experiments have been done to try to go over the speed of light, but in doing so, we would probably have to rewrite some textbooks.

Time dialation and other forces when traveling near the speed of light are enormous. I couldn't imagine the difficulties if your traveling faster than the speed of light. It doesn't seem realistic to me either.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

that same thing was said about even getting humans into space in the first place, we couldn't survive the radiation or lack of gravity. humans are insignificant in the grand scheme of things and we haven't even explored a fraction of the universe, so i find it quite ignorant to claim that we know the absolute speed limit of that universe. just because we haven't seen it broken doesn't mean it can't be

You are misunderstanding that particles already travelling at the speed of light do exist. The thing is that you cannot accelerate something like a spaceship from sub-light to the speed of light. You could get to 99.9% but anymore is impossible.

Because of E=MC^2, as your space ships' velocity increases so does its mass. As its mass increases so does the amount of energy needed to accelerate it further. As its speed approaches the speed of light the amount of energy required to accelerate further approaches infinity, which is of course an impossible situation. Infinite energy is more energy than in the damn universe. Therefore you can never accelerate that ship to the speed of light. It's not arrogant, it's the law of spacial relativity regarding the speed of light in a vacuum. It has nothing to do with human survivability which is another issue entirely.

When people said in one era that things like men in space were impossible, it was likely not the scientific majority or simply the voice of skeptics with small imaginations (whereas the entire scientific community agrees on special relativity). It's not arrogance to think that faster than light travel is impossible, in fact, it takes a great deal of imagination to think up solutions to go around this problem.

Originally Posted by worth

Well, technically speaking some things do travel faster than light.

The universe is 14 billion years old.

But the universe is also 126 billion light years across.

Therefore, if we started from a single point in space, aka the big bang, and 14 billion years later we are 126 billion light years across, how did it get to be that big?

The universe is ever expanding. It's like a loaf of rising bread, and the galaxies in it are the rasins in the bread. As the universe expands, the galaxies are pulled apart from each other.

I was actually quite shocked when I found out the universe was over 100 billion light years across. Boggled my mind because I knew the universe was only 14 billion years old.

Now that example is a little different than matter. Physics as we know it is based on the principal of the speed of light being a constant in a vaccuum, and matter can only infinitley approach the speed. I believe experiments have been done to try to go over the speed of light, but in doing so, we would probably have to rewrite some textbooks.

Time dialation and other forces when traveling near the speed of light are enormous. I couldn't imagine the difficulties if your traveling faster than the speed of light. It doesn't seem realistic to me either.

You are oversimplying the idea of the universe's size being limited by it's age.

For the issue of the universe being approx 14 billion years old yet approx 158 billion (yes, 158 is now the closest estimate) lightyears across...this is another matter that has more to do with general relativity and is more complicated to explain. Physicists say that what is happening is that the masses that comprise galaxies are not moving apart at superluminal speeds, but rather the space between them is expanding at faster than light speed. This is an issue of cosmic expansion (see Hubble Radius) and not accelerating something to superluminal speeds. Your raisin bread analogy is actually totally accurate, you are just misunderstanding how it's intended to be used. It's hard to imagine but the raisins in the loaf are not moving very much at all but the actual loaf is expanding. The raisins are staying in the same place (not moving faster than light) in the loaf but the loaf itself is growing and expanding between and around the raisins.

This goes back to why any theories about effective space travel for humans cannot take place within the confines of special relativity and so most likely needs take advantage of theorized phenonmenon like wormholes, subspace, etc.

[worth]

I didn't say galaxies were moving at speeds exceeding light. I was actually trying to explain that the space around galaxies are moving the galaxies apart, what you explained, which is why I included the rasin bread example.

The galaxies are moving, but no where near the speed of light, but the main factor is the space around teh galaxies expanding.

[LockedOut]

This Alien Planet show you talk about sounds a lot similar to what this movie/documentary was like.
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0417415/