Ask the Dreadlocked Science Geek

[Linus]

Speaking of Life on Earth, is there life out there? Do you think it would be as aggressive as Hawking stated:

If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans," he said.

[The_Lady_Snow]

Dear dreadgeek,


Could you explain the phenomena of Déjà vu????


Thank you for your time,

Snow

P.S.

Can you also explain the phenomena canned cheese spread like it comes out of a can like silly string kinda canned cheese.

[Softhearted]

[QUOTE=The_Lady_Snow;269886]Dear dreadgeek,


Could you explain the phenomena of [B]Déjà vu????


The déjà vu illusion occurs when a person has an inappropriate feeling of familiarity in a situation that is objectively unfamiliar or new. The amorphous nature of this experience has made identifying its etiology challenging, but recent advances in neurology and understanding of implicit memory and attention are helping to clarify this cognitive illusion. More specifically, déjà vu may result from (a) a brief change in normal neural transmission speed causing a slightly longer separation between identical messages received from two separate pathways, (b) a brief split in a continuous perceptual experience that is caused by distractions (external or internal) and gives the impression of two separate perceptual events, and (c) the activation of implicit familiarity for some portion (or all) of the present experience without an accompanying conscious recollection of the prior encounter. Procedures that involve degraded or occluded stimulus presentation, divided attention, subliminal mere exposure, and hypnosis may prove especially useful in elucidating this enigmatic cognitive illusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brown, A.S (2004). The Déjà Vu illusion. American Psychological Society, 16: 256-259.

[Melissa]

[quote=Softhearted;269911]

Originally Posted by The_Lady_Snow

Dear dreadgeek,


Could you explain the phenomena of [B]Déjà vu????


The déjà vu illusion occurs when a person has an inappropriate feeling of familiarity in a situation that is objectively unfamiliar or new. The amorphous nature of this experience has made identifying its etiology challenging, but recent advances in neurology and understanding of implicit memory and attention are helping to clarify this cognitive illusion. More specifically, déjà vu may result from (a) a brief change in normal neural transmission speed causing a slightly longer separation between identical messages received from two separate pathways, (b) a brief split in a continuous perceptual experience that is caused by distractions (external or internal) and gives the impression of two separate perceptual events, and (c) the activation of implicit familiarity for some portion (or all) of the present experience without an accompanying conscious recollection of the prior encounter. Procedures that involve degraded or occluded stimulus presentation, divided attention, subliminal mere exposure, and hypnosis may prove especially useful in elucidating this enigmatic cognitive illusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brown, A.S (2004). The Déjà Vu illusion. American Psychological Society, 16: 256-259.

Rufus has a theory that deja vu is related to DNA. Since all our likes and dislikes and preferences are related to genetics then deja vu is a genetic memory. We think we have seen or done something before but we are just flashing to gentically passed likes and dislikes, almost like a genetic memory. Just theory of course but I like the idea. What do you think?

Melissa

[betenoire]

I refuse to say "Science Wood" because it makes me uncomfortable. Putting it in quotation marks does not count as saying it.

Dear Person Who Likes Science:

Since we know that Sundowning (the tendency toward increased abnormal behaviours from a person with Dementia in the late afternoon or night time) exists and is real, and since we think that the Lunar Effect (the tendency toward increased abnormal behaviours from a person with Dementia or mental health issues related to the full moon) MIGHT be a little bit real - Is it fair to say that there is a little bit of science behind astrology?

I mean, surely if moon phases and time of day can effect people...it's not completely unreasonable to say that the position of the planets and/at time of birth can lead to some predisposition of personality types?

[Softhearted]

Originally Posted by Linus

Speaking of Life on Earth, is there life out there? Do you think it would be as aggressive as Hawking stated:

Found on wikipedia:

In planetary astronomy and astrobiology, the Rare Earth hypothesis argues that the emergence of complex multicellular life (metazoa) on Earth required an improbable combination of astrophysical and geological events and circumstances. The term "Rare Earth" comes from Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe (2000), a book by Peter Ward, a geologist and paleontologist, and Donald E. Brownlee, an astronomer and astrobiologist. Their book is the source for much of this article.

The rare earth hypothesis is the contrary of the principle of mediocrity (also called the Copernican principle), advocated by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake, among others.[1] The principle of mediocrity concludes that the Earth is a typical rocky planet in a typical planetary system, located in an unexceptional region of a common barred-spiral galaxy. Hence it is probable that the universe teems with complex life. Ward and Brownlee argue to the contrary: planets, planetary systems, and galactic regions that are as friendly to complex life as are the Earth, the solar system, and our region of the Milky Way are very rare.

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

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Linus

Speaking of Life on Earth, is there life out there? Do you think it would be as aggressive as Hawking stated:

I have to say that I would be absolutely stunned if there were no life anywhere else in the universe. The sheer range of environments that life can cling to here on Earth actually suggests that life would have quite a bit of opportunity to get booted up. Consider:

Living things survive in environments as diverse as the bottom of the ocean, next to volcanic vents where superheated water containing high levels of sulfure provide a habitat for tube worms and bacteria to the inside of reactor cores (there is a species of bacteria, Deinococcus radiodurans) that thrive in high radiation environments. There are salt-loving bacteria, sulfur-loving bacteria (some of which are in symbiosis with the aforementioned tube worms). So I think that life probably exists elsewhere in the universe.

I'm even willing to venture so far as to say that intelligent life probably exists somewhere else. Our primary adaptation, the reason why we are such a spectacularly successful species (so far) is our adaptability. That adaptability we call intelligence. Intelligence is SUCH a neat trick that it would quite remarkable if some other species, living in who knows what kind of environment, hadn't hit upon intelligence in the course of their evolutionary history. So would another intelligent species be as aggressive as Hawking suggests? That depends.

There's a couple of schools of thought on what to look for in another intelligent species. For one, taking a naturalistic view any extraterrestrial species we might meet would *also* be a product of evolutionary forces. Evolution doesn't necessarily favor nice guys. It doesn't necessary reward complete bastards either. In most game-theory based models what seems most stable is tit-for-tat. If you cooperate with me, I'll cooperate with you. If you stab me in the back, I'm either going to get retribution OR I'm going to let others know you're not to be trusted. Grant, for the moment, that other species would probably hit on some kind of similar solution.

One school of thought says that intelligent species pass through stages of civilization. The stages were originally proposed by a Russian named Nikolai Kardaschev and the scale is called the Kardaschev scale. It measures total energy output used by a civilization. The scale is four stages (originally three) which are:

Type 0 civilization--this is where we are right now. We are actually at about .72. More on this in a bit.

Type 1--This civilization can use all of the energy available on their planet. This could be achieved through the use of fusion power, power generated from naturally collected anti-matter or space-based solar arrays which would allow us to use much higher proportions of the Sun's energy than we do now.

Type 2--This civilization can use all of the energy available in their solar system. The most common example of this is the Dyson sphere. The idea behind a Dyson sphere is that a civilization breaks down all the other planets in the solar system and uses those to construct a sphere around its primary star. That way ALL of the star's energy is trapped in the sphere and can be put to use. The civilization lives on the inside of the sphere.

Type 3--This civilization can use all of the energy available in their local galaxy.

Another proposed scale is from Robert Zubrin. It is still a three-stage scale but instead of looking at the energy consumption, looks at how far the civilization has spread.

Type 1--Has spread across its entire planet.

Type 2--Has spread across its entire solar system.

Type 3--Has spread across its galaxy.

So, using the two scales applied to science fiction civilizations (since they are familiar enough to most people)

Human civilization is type 0 according to Kardaschev scale and Type 1 according to the Zubrin scale.

The Federation of Star Trek is a type 2 civilization using the K-scale and type 3 using the Z-scale.

Both the Galactic Republic and the Galactic Empire of Star Wars are type 3 civilizations using either scale.

The Ancients in Stargate are most likely type 3.

Here's the challenge--getting from type 0 (where we are) to type 1 (or type 1 to type 2) depending upon the scale you prefer. IF we manage to neither blow ourselves to kingdom come or create our own little Venus here then in another hundred years we'll become a Type 1 civilization according to the K-scale. I think that any civilization that manages to get that far will probably persist indefinitely. So the optimistic view would be that if we were ever to encounter a type 2 or type 3 civilization, they would simply be too mellow and evolved to conquer us.

The less optimistic view, though, is that any type 2 or type 3 civilizations we might encounter here are going to be here for a reason. I can't imagine why any civilization would go to the trouble and expense to travel possibly hundreds of light-years JUST to see the sights. If an alien civilization comes to Earth it would likely be because Earth has something that they want/need and cannot synthesize themselves. If that is the case, the best we could hope for is that they would relocate us someplace and then take the planet for themselves.

Also keep in mind that a type 2 or type 3 civilization would have technology so far advanced from ours that we would all have full and complete appreciation of Clarke's Third Law, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". I think that if we were to encounter a type 3 civilization we might be very likely to fall upon our knees and worship them as gods as they would be able to do things to and with matter that we can hardly fathom. If we gave them any guff, however, sweeping us aside would be no more trouble than, say, any modern military would have sweeping aside the armies of Caesar or Hannibal. Imagine the modern US military transported back a few thousand years to the time of Caesar. They would appear as gods to them.

Hawking makes a really good point. As much as we may romanticize why the Europeans, Chinese, Persians and Ottomans set out on their voyages of exploration they were looking for resources, fortune and glory. They weren't just seeing the sights, that was an interesting by-product. Whenever or wherever those three groups found people who were inconveniently in the way they either destroyed them or conquered them. I suspect that any intelligent species that went to the trouble of traveling here would probably do the same.

One other option--and this was a point that Hawking made and other scientists also made after a couple of instances where NASA or some other group of scientists sent messages into deep space saying "here we are"--is that a civilization might detect us and decide that BEFORE we become a problem in the galaxy, they might want to just save themselves the trouble and wipe us out now while we are still not much more than monkeys with nuclear weapons, some satellites and digital-fiber optic technology. It would certainly be tempting particularly if the species were aggressive. Using the Star Trek universe as a guide, I could see the Vulcans wiping us out because it would be easier to do so now than AFTER we developed FTL travel. I could see the Romulans doing so for much the same reason. I could see the Klingons doing so because we would look like the competition and it would be a nice exercise for young Klingon warriors.

Cheers
Aj