"Is This the End of the World?"

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Passionaria

I was talking to a Native American Man in Fiesta this afternoon, and he was saying how he was raised in Arkansas. He said the bird deaths reminded him of a day when the sky turned green from the Nuclear reactors near there which have had nuclear accidents in the past...... Made me wonder.

When was this nuclear accident? I tried several different Google searches to see if I could find a nuclear accident occurring in Arkansas and I was unable to find any mention of one. I went back and looked up every single nuclear incident--civilian and military--going back to the 40's and could only find *one* in Arkansas and that wasn't a reactor problem that was the explosion of a rocket with a nuclear warhead on it (the warhead didn't explode for reasons I won't belabor at this point but will if asked). So I then searched for green skies in Arkansas and couldn't find anything.

Can you reference an incident because, as far as I can tell, there have *been* no nuclear power plant accidents in Arkansas in the last 70 years and even if there had been, the skies would not turn green (This idea that you would glow green if exposed is a creation of science fiction. Any 'glow' you would see from a nuclear power plant would be *IN* the reactor and that would be what's called Cherenkov radiation but in order for that to happen, certain circumstances would have to obtain and those circumstances wouldn't be possible in open atmosphere).

Cheers
Aj

[gaea]

aj,

that was some really great reading.

although I'm a believer of other life within the universe I'm. not so
schooled on the science factor of the "air"space and beyond.

thanks for a great lesson.

still listening,

[JustJo]

Aj....I respect the hell out of your knowledge and your brain.

But I still think it's Sarah...sorry.

[betenoire]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Interstellar travel may be possible but it would be prohibitively expensive for ANY civilization. Let's take a look at the history of manned spaceflight as a comparative. How far have we gone? The moon. Less than a million miles away. In fact, not even half a million miles from Earth. Everyplace else we have explored we have not sent humans, we've sent robots. Let's take about the three big problems with ANY explanation for events on Earth being because of aliens.

OMG it was ROBOTS sent here by aliens to kill the birds!!

[dreadgeek]

So, given all the concern expressed here I thought I would acquaint people with just *how* resilient life is.

Depending upon who you ask there have been five mass extinction events and there appears to be one happening now.

They are, in reverse chronological order (I'll discuss the current one separately):

K-T Extinction (aka End Cretaceous or Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction) --This is the one everyone knows about because it took down the dinosaurs. I've already touched on the specifics of the precipitating event so I won't review that here. However, the butcher's bill for that one was: 17% of existing families of animals. 50% of all genera and 75% of all species. Timeframe: 65.5 MYA.

Triassic-Jurassic extinction (aka End Triassic -- No one is quite sure why this happened although a rapid change in climate (runaway greenhouse effect) might be the cause. ~23% of all families and 48% of all genera went extinct. Timeframe: 205 MYA

Permian-Triassic extinction (aka End Permian or The Great Dying) -- This was as close as life has come to being wiped out on this planet. Again, we're not certain why but whatever it was it was huge. 57% of all families, 83% of all genera, as much as 96% of all marine species and about 70% of all land species. Timeframe: 251 MYA

Late Devonian extinction -- 19% of all families, 50% of all genera. Timeframe: 360 - 375 MYA

Ordivician-Silurian extinction -- 27% of all families and 57% of all genera. Timeframe: 440 - 450 MYA

Now, we appear to be in the middle of a sixth great extinction which is doing a lot of damage to the mammals. We are the cause of it. But I want folks to put this in perspective. We are not going to wipe life out on this planet. We could, at our worst, do it a VERY nasty blow but I doubt we could wipe it out. What we are doing now is not going to wipe out life on this planet.

What's more, extinctions--while not good things aren't bad things either. If it weren't for the K-T extinction you and I would not be here. Before that event, mammals were tiny shrew-like animals that were tasty for some of the smaller raptor-like dinosaurs. When they went away, mammals flourished. If we managed to wipe ourselves out then some OTHER species would, in the fullness of time, become dominant. It might even become dominant for the same reasons we did--in other words because they evolved high intelligence. (My bet would be on the cephalopods since they are already VERY smart)

The point I'm driving at here is that perhaps we should all take a few deep breaths. Are there reasons for concern? Yes. Are there reasons for fear? Probably not. Are there reasons to believe that nature is having some revenge or aliens are causing mischief? None what-so-ever. I'm not arguing for license to eat, drink, make merry and pollute because that would be foolish. I AM arguing that life is far more resilient than most people give it credit for and that life has seen FAR worse than anything we Homo sapiens have been able to come up with yet.

Cheers
Aj

[JustJo]

[IrishGrrl]

ok, it's pick AJ's brain time for me! LOL

In reading your posts (and this is way off topic..I wish you would start a tread of your own so I could ask all this crazy shit) you mentioned us going to the moon. Laugh if you will people, but I did alot of reading about the conspiricytheory saying we DIDNT go to the moon. Many reasons why. Including that we apparently did not have the technology THEN , and still dont NOW? And what about those rocks AJ? And the flag ?

curious,
Irish

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by IrishGrrl

ok, it's pick AJ's brain time for me! LOL

In reading your posts (and this is way off topic..I wish you would start a tread of your own so I could ask all this crazy shit) you mentioned us going to the moon. Laugh if you will people, but I did alot of reading about the conspiricytheory saying we DIDNT go to the moon. Many reasons why. Including that we apparently did not have the technology THEN , and still dont NOW? And what about those rocks AJ? And the flag ?

curious,
Irish

Okay, I'll take these one at a time:

1) Didn't have the technology.

All of the technology to go to the Moon had to be invented but once it was proven that rockets were technologically feasible (and that was already demonstrated by the end of WW II) it just became an engineering problem. What do you need to be able to get to the moon?

a) you need a vehicle capable of overcoming Earth's gravity. Certainly doable. That's just a physics problem.

b) you need to be able to seal an environment and keep it pressurized. We do that everyday with jets.

c) you need a computer capable of monitoring such a complex vehicle. Daunting at the time but certainly not beyond the realm of possibility. (If you have a smartphone you have more computing power in the palm of your hand than the computers on the Apollo spaceship. If you have a laptop you have more computing power in your backpack than ALL of the computers used for the Apollo program put together!)

Were all of those things available in 1969? Yes, absolutely. The Saturn V had more than enough lifting power.

As far as not having the technology today, that's bad comedy. We *probably* have the technology today to do a Mars shot, we just lack the political will to pull it off but even a trip to the Red Planet, which would be a non-trivial undertaking, is possible and largely an engineering problem.

As far as the flag, simple explanation.

The flag had a wire stuck through it so that it would stand up (otherwise, it would have just drooped on the flag pole). To get the flag pole into the lunar soil, they had to rotate it back and forth (if you've ever stuck in a tent-pole you've done something similar) the angular momentum of the flag pole caused the flag to wave. No wind or air required, all you need is for physics to work on the Moon the same way they work on Earth--and they do.

As far as the moon rocks.

They are *significantly* different than terrestrial rocks. For one, moon rocks have no water trapped in their structure--Earth rocks do. On Earth, volcanic glass is dissolved by water, moon rocks still have high proportions of volcanic glass in them because there's no liquid water to dissolve it. Also, terrestrial rocks have clay in them, moon rocks don't

Last one (although you didn't mention it) the photographs don't have stars in them.

The reason for this is quite simple was well. Remember that there is NO atmosphere on the moon so no means of filtering light. Sunlight on the moon is VERY bright and the spacesuits were white so that it reflected some portion of the light. So the astronauts were *literally* very bright. Any camera set for an exposure that would capture the very bright astronauts would not be able to capture the relatively dim stars. (Remember, where the astronauts were it was ALWAYS daylight.)

We landed on the moon. The idea that it was mocked up in a film studio is, in fact, actually far LESS feasible in 1969. You could probably pull off a film hoax of a moon landing now, but I doubt you could do it in 1969 and make it plausible. Even 2001: A Space Odyssey doesn't look particularly realistic in its moon shots and at the time it was made (1969-1970) it was the technological state-of-the-art moviemaking.

Cheers
Aj

[scootebaby]

[QUOTE=Daywalker;260167]

I'd like to share this article,
and then hopefully hear some input.
The title of this thread is soley based upon the title of this Article

The delivery tone of the article is half amusing...the
Topic more intriquet than all of us put together.

We've all heard about most of these headlines.

I'd like to hear what's been going on in your minds
when these images and words are thrown before you.

In the spirit of welcoming all voices to table,
I'd like that this Topic to be allowed to flow
many directions, if at all possible.

This means Conspiracy Theories, Religious
views, Skeptism, Paranormals, etc...are all welcome.

As absurd as some things sound, to not give an ear to all possiblities
is to miss the opportunity to discuss things we may never
have given thought to in the past.

perhaps i read this wrong,but my take on it was that Day wanted to hear peoples thoughts,speculations,and views on recent events....even if there arent facts to back them up,and without being told that my ideas,thoughts,views,and/or beliefs are wrong.

[IrishGrrl]

Thanks AJ!!!

guess I have to go tell the kids..

[dreadgeek]

perhaps i read this wrong,but my take on it was that Day wanted to hear peoples thoughts,speculations,and views on recent events....even if there arent facts to back them up,and without being told that my ideas,thoughts,views,and/or beliefs are wrong. [/QUOTE]

I haven't said anyone can't post anything here. But if someone posts something suggesting that birds dying MUST be the result of aliens, I'm going to point out that birds use the Earth's magnetic field to navigate and that this navigational sense can be thrown off by, for instance, power lines. I'm also going to point out that interstellar travel is non-trivial. That's not saying you can't put every significant event ever to happen on this planet on the plate of E.T., but it is going to give a counter to non-evidentiary explanations. If, in fact, the alien explanation is the best one then, eventually, it will have the most evidence for it.

In science there is this heuristic that is used called Occam's Razor. The basic thrust of the idea is this: given two or more possible explanations, the one that is the simplest (not the easiest to understand but the one that requires the *Fewest* number of conjectures) is most likely the one that is true. So ask yourself, which is more likely to be true?

A) An alien species has worked out ALL of the basic science problems to be able to build a ship capable of interstellar travel, actually built it and then voyaged here to a little ordinary nickel-iron planet orbiting a star of no consequence, in order to kill some birds so that the dominant chimpanzee-like species would become more environmentally minded

or

B) Birds magnetic navigational sense is being thrown off by a sudden (too rapid to evolve a defense) increase in *strong* electromagnetic fields causing them to either fly into buildings, fly into power lines or towers, or fly so high that they freeze to death.

Why should we treat A and B as being equally likely when one is far MORE likely to be true.

Cheers
Aj

[gaea]

So then it is a possibility that firewroks all over the world frightened the little birds to death...

then what about the fishies?

[gaea]

This is a great thread for me because of the brilliance being shared the theories as well as the all inclusive what do you think happened or is happening...

Great place for great minds alike..

AJ, Day and whomever else please don't hesitate to continue voicing opinions because I am enjoying the hell out of this even though Day initially frightened me, my mind is open enough to pay attention.

I really kinda of feel for the younger generations those that believe a tomato comes from the "store" in reference to heading back to the dark ages...i wouldn't be able to hunt however i can fish and i know my veggies and survival mode would surely kick in...isn't that ultimately what happens?

[Daywalker]

It's Alive!


Ok, I will read back...and I have thoughts to share.
But first I gotta go to the store n get kitty food n stuff.
Perhaps I should stock up on Tuna...just in case?

[Ebon]

Originally Posted by Jackhammer

I'm getting a little concerned.
What the Hell.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0...?ref=fb&src=sp

Wow I didn't even know about the birds in Italy. First the animals then the humans.

[gaea]

Originally Posted by Jackhammer

I'm getting a little concerned.
What the Hell.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0...?ref=fb&src=sp

This is explained via harsh weather.

[DamselFly]

i'm not a scientist or even science geek, but i like practical explantions when i get them.
*a curtsey to Aj*
since, however, there are more things than those explainable by humans, i'm keeping an open, ahem, dare i say, even skeptical, mind towards all explanations. i am trained as a Pyrrhonic Skeptic by trade (nomadic retired librarian who wants to read EVERYTHING) and am a Taoist/Buddhist by inclination and study. though i might not add anything pertinent to this thread (yet), i am reading, enjoying, and pondering what is here/not here.
*shuddering at the thought of Sarah Palin as ANYTHING in power, though wishing her enlightenment as a sentient (?) being*
Damselfy, lurking and drinking cha