20150811 - Seth Shostak, SETI - Live Chat Thread

[zeebo]

...However, this doesn’t appear to be how ufos travel.  Instead, they appear to warp spacetime around their craft, so the craft is motionless within the field, and the field acts like a conveyer belt moving the craft around.  The nice thing about this propulsion concept (first theoretically described by a young Miguel Alcubierre back in 1994) is that there’s no time dilation for the travelers, no feeling of acceleration at all, and no known upper limit to how quickly you can arrive at your destination.  ...  It appears that this requires energy levels very far beyond human capabilities...

Interesting post Chronaut!  Another problem I'd read about the Alcubierre is the insane tidal forces involved would generate temperatures as hot as the surface of the sun, so it'd get a bit toasty inside that warp bubble.

[Chronaut]

@ zeebo

Interesting post Chronaut!  Another problem I'd read about the Alcubierre is the insane tidal forces involved would generate temperatures as hot as the surface of the sun, so it'd get a bit toasty inside that warp bubble.

Thanks â€" I’m glad you enjoyed it

It’s possible that an extreme curvature of spacetime within the warp field region could generate Hawking radiation, but it’s important to step back and see the big picture here.

The warp field isn’t an independent object that’s either “off” or “on” â€" calling it a “warp bubble” tends to give that impression.  It’s a field effect, and like any other field effect, first we’ll learn how to create weak versions and then move up to stronger ones.  So long before we can even attempt fast-than-light travel through metric engineering, we’ll start small…probably with weak devices for satellite attitude adjustments and such.  Then we’ll create vehicles that hover, and begin to fly spacecraft to planets within the solar system.  At this level, the field gradient isn’t steep enough to create Hawking radiation because there’s no event horizon.

Perhaps we will run into issues when we want to warp across the galaxy and beyond.  But maybe not â€" there are a Lot of open questions about artificially-generated gravity fields that we won’t really know the answers to until we unify general relativity and quantum mechanics with a single mathematical theory.  But even now there are big questions regarding the characteristics of the field:  NASA’s Dr. White has apparently found that we may be able to save vast magnitudes of energy by greatly increasing the thickness of the warp shell and creating it with a toroidal generator, and Dr. Eric Davis seems to think the effect can be amplified by oscillating the field intensity at high frequencies, which he describes as “softening” spacetime to make it more pliable (I’ve never seen his mathematical argument for this so I can’t comment on its validity, but it’s an original and intriguing notion).

So I think we’ll have plenty of time to work out the bugs if we find that the idea is feasible in the weak field regime.  Personally I marvel at the scientific ingenuity of the human race nearly every day, so I place my bets on it.

Also, there are at least thousands of witnesses to aerial phenomena that demonstrate all of the distinctive performance characteristics of gravitational field propulsion technology, so there’s little doubt in my mind that it’s quite technologically achievable.  And if “they” can do it, then so can we, with time and our unflagging ingenuity.  In fact I feel that many of these sighting reports are exactly that:  intentional demonstrations of “their” technology, leading us by our noses, so to speak, to inquire how it’s done.  Because just knowing that something is possible is the first crucial step toward achieving it.  We seem to completely miss the value of this point.  But I don’t think it’s lost on the extremely advanced intelligences providing awesome flight demonstrations in our skies, completely free of charge ;

[QuantumMystics]

As Georgie For President 2216 explained, that’s not actually true:  if you traveled close to the speed of light, you could arrive at your destination in an arbitrarily short time (dependent on how close to the speed of light you traveled) from your own point of view.  Theoretically, you could get to the nearest star (roughly 4 light-years away to keep it simple) in an hour, due to time dilation (if you found a way to counter the crushing acceleration forces involved).  If you came back to the Earth at the same average speed (very near the speed of light), two hours would’ve passed for you, and eight years plus two hours would have passed on Earth.

However, this doesn’t appear to be how ufos travel.  Instead, they appear to warp spacetime around their craft, so the craft is motionless within the field, and the field acts like a conveyer belt moving the craft around.  The nice thing about this propulsion concept (first theoretically described by a young Miguel Alcubierre back in 1994) is that there’s no time dilation for the travelers, no feeling of acceleration at all, and no known upper limit to how quickly you can arrive at your destination.  With this kind of polarized gravitational field propulsion, you could theoretically wink over to the Andromeda galaxy in an instant, come back in another instant, and you’d be back in two instants from everyone’s point of view.  The only limit is the extent to which you can warp the spacetime.  It appears that this requires energy levels very far beyond human capabilities, but for a civilization a million years ahead of us it may be child’s play.  NASA's testing an experimental device to detect a minute warp field right now at the Johnson Space Center, but their concept depends on a wildly speculative higher-dimensional theory of spacetime.
Nope.  The EM Drive is >99.9999999% more likely to be some kind of thermal effect rather than anything useful.  But even if it could violate the conservation of momentum, which it almost certainly doesn’t, it could never exceed the speed of light, because it’s an electromagnetic device.  And electromagnetic forces can never propel anything faster than the speed with which an electromagnetic field propagates, i.e., the speed of light.
An astronomical unit (AU) is actually the distance from the Earth to the Sun, roughly 8 light-minutes.

It’s a shame that Seth isn’t more imaginative.  He knows his textbook science, but seems to suffer from the same boring conceit that most scientists suffer from:  the silly idea that just because â€"we- can’t travel to distant stars yet, that â€"nobody else- can do it either.  Gimme a break.  There are planets in the habitable zones around their stars millions, even a billion or more years, ahead of us in terms of planetary age.  What do you think we humans will be capable of if we survive another 100 million years?  Applying our concepts of “physically impossible” to a race that far ahead of us is just absurd.  They're probably skipping around the Earth all the time, keeping a sensible distance from our observers because we're a stupid and violent race of savages, for the most part.

Thanks for the corrections, I was suffering from sleep deprivation as usual and just rambling off the top of my head and not double checking my thoughts.

[Chronaut]

Thanks for the corrections, I was suffering from sleep deprivation as usual and just rambling off the top of my head and not double checking my thoughts.

My pleasure QuantumMystics - thank you for raising a slew of interesting points ;  I'm a total science junkie so I'm always happy to share my favorite vice with a fellow inquirer.

[QuantumMystics]

My pleasure QuantumMystics - thank you for raising a slew of interesting points ;  I'm a total science junkie so I'm always happy to share my favorite vice with a fellow inquirer.

I wonder if Art would even have a guy like this on, since he seemed to clam up when the guy mentioned the secret work he did for ITT? I don't know maybe the accent maybe hard to follow though on a radio show?

https://youtu.be/YRkvCLMzdhE

[Chronaut]

I wonder if Art would even have a guy like this on, since he seemed to clam up when the guy mentioned the secret work he did for ITT? I don't know maybe the accent maybe hard to follow though on a radio show?

I would love to see Art go after the scoop on gravitational propulsion research.  Andrew Johnson has done a nice job collecting sources on the subject, and I think he'd make for a fine interview.  The difficulty with the audio here is almost entirely attributable to the lack of a direct mic feed - for some insane reason they recorded the room audio instead, muffling his presentation terribly.

What we really need though are research scientists talking on the subject - it's Really hard to find someone like that though.  I wish to god that Art had been able to interview Boyd Bushman before he died last year - he was the one and only insider who knew what he was talking about, and maverick enough to drop some crucial clues on the subject.  Andrew isn't much of a physicist so he's having some trouble sifting the wheat from the chaff, but it would still be a nice overview kind of interview.  It was compelling enough to keep me up watching last night at 5am, despite my drooping eyelids, so I'm sure Art would have a good time with him.

[henge0stone]

Has anyone tried to supply the STS-48 footage of the object changing direction, when seemingly fired upon from earth, to Seth Shostak?

I find it incredibly hard to believe in this day and age of media sharing for someone in the business of searching for life in the universe, to have not seen this footage as he claims.  It's a major red flag in my opinion. 

If by some chance this is the truth, I would love to hear what his response would be when he does finally see it.  My money would be on an "ice particle at a trick distance perception to the viewer" type of response - it does seem to be the pre-programed answer, coupled with that condescending laugh thrown in, just in case anyone was mistaken who the intellect is supposed to be in the conversation.

I totally respect Seth, despite my dig at him above, but it's very hard to continue to do so, when he puts in appearances such as this. 

He's either one of two things, a un-informed employee not read in to policy, who therefore believes in himself as genuine..... or he is the public face of dis-info to anyone questioning how S.E.T.I can justify their lack of success and continued budget allocation which if I'm not mistaken takes us to 2025....ish.

Has K.P.I performance ever snuck it's way into a government job contract in the U.S..... I'm just wondering out loud?

I think this entire interview was sort of hostile to be honest with you, not Art's finest moment. The beginning was filled with hitting Seth with allegations, asking him almost nothing about SETI, space or anything in his field of expertise.

Since Art didn't ask that many questions about SETI it led most of the audience, who probably don't know much about SETI, suspicious of Seth. Also I think its clear that Seth isn't comfortable dealing with confrontation. My proof of this is that Seth declined to debate Stanton Friedman or anyone else. I don't think he is a good debater so he simply avoids it. Also Art's comments about SETI were pretty negative so this could have also shaped the audiences negative view towards Seth.

[GeorgieForPresident2216]

Seth is professionally qualified to say one of two things.  Either SETI has received an artificial signal that couldn't be verified as terrestrial, or it hasn't.  He can't really make a professional analysis of something like STS-48 because it's not what he studies.  He studies radio telescopes.  He does know there is currently no established scientific evidence for UFOs, however, so he can still make some general comments to that effect.  He also does obviously understand the burden of the scientific method and can tell when something doesn't meet it.  Nevertheless his expertise as a scientist lies specifically with SETI, as the last poster mentioned.  He might have some insight into STS-48 or similar claims and can probably make informed comments; he may even be able to completely debunk them, but his professional opinions on those subjects are probably going to be somewhat irrelevant anyway.

[Gumby, Dammit]

I think this entire interview was sort of hostile to be honest with you, not Art's finest moment. The beginning was filled with hitting Seth with allegations, asking him almost nothing about SETI, space or anything in his field of expertise.

Since Art didn't ask that many questions about SETI it led most of the audience, who probably don't know much about SETI, suspicious of Seth. Also I think its clear that Seth isn't comfortable dealing with confrontation. My proof of this is that Seth declined to debate Stanton Friedman or anyone else. I don't think he is a good debater so he simply avoids it. Also Art's comments about SETI were pretty negative so this could have also shaped the audiences negative view towards Seth.

Holy Crap.
ART AINT GEORGE.
Get it?

[henge0stone]

Holy Crap.
ART AINT GEORGE.
Get it?

George wouldn't have asked any tough questions or interacted with Seth in any way, too busy browsing the internet while his guests talk.

I have no problem with Art asking the Greer question or other questions that are hard for Seth to answer, that's what Art does best. I was stating that by starting the interview with suspicions that Seth was lying led the open line calls to be less than favorable towards SETI and Seth. Hostile perhaps isn't the right word because neither were hostile towards each other. It was a good show, a classic scientist sitting in on an Art Bell audience, but all this 'seth is lying' and 'seth is a government agent' is basically from an audience who all they heard as a set up for open lines was a flustered Seth being put on the spot.

That's all I'm saying.