Sci - Goldilocks planet is no fairytale

[annielaurie]

Why relegate consciousness to an afterthought?

Because essentially that is what it is.

Our physical bodies and brains evolved over billions of years here because of the DNA molecule that put itself together little by little starting with amino acids, creating simple living forms, gradually becoming more complex in the form of plant and animal species.

Cause and effect.

We are our brains. The particles from which we are constructed come from a rich brew of heavy elements thrown out by the supernovae of hot short-lived first-generation stars. Now we have longer-living cooler second-generation stars, and many with solar systems, like our own.

We are a chemical by-product of the processes of matter in spacetime, coming from essentially nothing but gravitational forces and gradually changing over a period of some thirteen-to-fifteen billion years.

The human brain is probably the most complex physical structure the universe has ever "created."

In the human brain (on this world only) all things are possible. The imagination of creatures like us can extend even beyond the reality of the physical universe. The imagination is where all all the ideas and fancies and wonderment reside.

Human Imagination is the ultimate achievement of the universe, I suspect. Imagination can go farther than the physical universe.

But in matters of particle physics, I was talking about the physical construct of the known universe only.

[AiA in Atlanta]

There are some great thinkers that would strongly disagree with you annie. When I have a moment I will see what I can find.

[annielaurie]

Yes I know they will disagree. But note that you have said "great thinkers."

That is exactly what I mean by the human brain and the human mind. Thinking. Imagining. Going farther than the physical universe in the mind.

My own belief from all the science I have studied is that the mind and imagination projected from it is merely perceiving what it wants to see.

That is where the ideas of God and miracles and mystical places and magical events come from, the imagination.

The state of imagining is real enough, yes. But the things we imagine are not necessarily real. We would like to think they are real. This is where religions and philosophies come from.

So the imagination is real, but the things we imagine are not necessarily real. We are perceiving what we want to see.

I've come to this way of thinking about existence after reading and studying a huge amount of material about it over many years, considering ideas from all sides. But I trust only science and mathematics to be able to define actual reality.

However I am definitely interested to read what you have to show me when you get around to it.

[AiA in Atlanta]

You have confused brain and mind. English has no clear distinction.

[annielaurie]

Brain is the physical organ. Mind comes from brain - from the electrical signals that flash through the brain.

Electricity is also physical, as in pulses or waves of charged particles. A constant interchange of these pulses creates mind.

Mind is an electrochemical manifestation of the function of the physical brain. The English (or other language) used by scientists can make the distinction.

Scientific language isn't the same as ordinary layman's language. I'm talking about science and scientific method only, not philospophy.

[boxy]

In just a short span man has gone from beating on a drum to Mozart. It isn't hard to imagine the evolution out of violence into something better.

And in all that time, our improvements in the art of killing has made the improvement in music look 3rd rate.

Humans have come a long way in a short time. Give yourself a pat on the back boxy. 14 billion years ago something came from nothing. What we forget it that "nothing" is still with us. It is what the Buddhists call "the deathless" or "eternity consciousness." The big bang was a big YES that is still continuing. It wasn't a big "bang" but an ongoing bannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn ... that is only speeding up. It isn't all a meaningless accident.

Oh, indeed, humans have come a long way, even in the past few thousand years, we have made huge leaps. But it has nothing to do with genetic evolution. We still have the same basic drives as a caveman. Philosophical progress and the technology to secure our basic needs in the western world, lead to an illusion of a more civilised species, than we really are.

Take away our food and clean water for a few days, and see if it doesn't turn all "lord of the flies" on your arse.

[Super Nova]

Brain is the physical organ. Mind comes from brain - from the electrical signals that flash through the brain.

Electricity is also physical, as in pulses or waves of charged particles. A constant interchange of these pulses creates mind.

Mind is an electrochemical manifestation of the function of the physical brain. The English (or other language) used by scientists can make the distinction.

Scientific language isn't the same as ordinary layman's language. I'm talking about science and scientific method only, not philospophy.

Annie I think we have similar views on this.

I subscribe the the "we are really nothing more than an electochemical reaction that has become self aware" view. That we have not special place in the universe except in our own minds.

The universe will truck along whether we are here or not. Maybe in 10s of thousands of years and we can do big things like move suns and jump aroun the universe, we may become important. Very unlikely.

The core language of science is maths. The universe can only be expressed in maths and understood via maths. Numbers and equations is the only universal language....

[annielaurie]

Brain is the physical organ. Mind comes from brain - from the electrical signals that flash through the brain.

Electricity is also physical, as in pulses or waves of charged particles. A constant interchange of these pulses creates mind.

Mind is an electrochemical manifestation of the function of the physical brain. The English (or other language) used by scientists can make the distinction.

Scientific language isn't the same as ordinary layman's language. I'm talking about science and scientific method only, not philospophy.

Annie I think we have similar views on this.

I subscribe the the "we are really nothing more than an electochemical reaction that has become self aware" view. That we have not special place in the universe except in our own minds.

The universe will truck along whether we are here or not. Maybe in 10s of thousands of years and we can do big things like move suns and jump aroun the universe, we may become important. Very unlikely.

The core language of science is maths. The universe can only be expressed in maths and understood via maths. Numbers and equations is the only universal language ....

That's it exactly, Nova! Now we're getting somewhere!

[Super Nova]

We will only be able to reach the stars by sending genetically engineers forms (build on human DNA).

Space is so hostile and the worlds we will need to live on need a tougher form of life than the weak form we are. We are so sensitive to our environment that we evolved in. We need to send a tough, smart organism out there.

[annielaurie]

Yes this is true. I see a distant future (hundreds to thousands of years from now) colonizing a roughly earthlike world with androids (robots) who will get the terraforming started, and then followed by genetically engineered humans suited for that environment.

I say "roughly earthlike" because most of the planets they will discover orbiting other suns will be larger than earth. They could not be much smaller and still be earthlike, since planets with a lower mass could not hold their atmospheres, and would end up like Mars.

Suppose they were to find a world "just like" earth, but up to twice the size and mass of earth? We humans of today could not live there, no matter how beautiful the planet was, since our bones would be crushed under our own weight on a planet with too much mass.

The other problem would be to "get there" by a propulsion system much more advanced than what we have now. An interstellar ship would need to be able to reach speeds up to .50 or more of the speed of light - .98 would be ideal.

The ship must be able to accelerate gradually at 1 gee (gravity) to .98/c, and then turn around backward at the halfway point, so that the thrust will decelerate slowly, reaching normal interplanetary speeds again just as it reaches the boundry of that solar system.

Traveling at speeds approaching c, ship time would be much shorter than port time: hundreds or even thousands of years would go by on earth, but time passing aboard the ship would seem like only months.

There would be no coming home. So many years or even centuries will have passed on earth, that the colonists would not recognize anything, and no one would know who they are.

The speed of light in vacuum, usually denoted by c, is a physical constant important in many areas of physics.

Its value is 299,792,458 metres per second, a figure that is exact since the length of the metre is defined from this constant and the international standard for time.

In imperial units this speed is approximately 186,282 miles per second.

According to special relativity, c is the maximum speed at which all energy, matter, and information in the universe can travel.

It is the speed of all massless particles and associated fields—including electromagnetic radiation such as light—in vacuum, and it is predicted by the current theory to be the speed of gravity (that is, gravitational waves).

Such particles and waves travel at c regardless of the motion of the source or the inertial frame of reference of the observer.

In the theory of relativity, c interrelates space and time, and appears in the famous equation of mass–energy equivalence E = mc2.

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