Alien Life?

[woodchip]

I answered that there is intelligent life and that they are watching us, but allow me to clarify. Considering multiple universe theory and the greatness of our own universe, there is a high probability that in that vastness, there is greater intelligence than our own that could find our location and find us. But while they may be aware of us, we are probably so inferior that they don't think much of us, like how we treat bugs or dirt.

I don't think that you can ignore speed of light limitations. I think that the biggest factor in whether other life is aware of our existence is whether the speed of light limitation is technologically circumventable.

Umm Jeff, I think I have read where the speed of light may not be a limitation. One thing is Entanglement and the other is where photons of light have been slowed down (conversely if we can slow down light, can we not speed it up?)

[Top Gun]

Entanglement, the concept of "spooky action at a distance," does seem to be instantaneous, but the issue is that, by its very nature, it's incapable of conveying any sort of meaningful information instantaneously. To observers on both ends of an entangled system, it's impossible to tell if what they're observing is the result of the other particle having collapsed into a single state, or if they're performing the initial observation that collapses the system. The quantum world is weird like that.

And no, slowing light down doesn't mean that we can speed it up. The idea of "slow light" involves manipulating the material that light is passing through, which enables its group velocity to be slowed dramatically. In a vacuum, light always moves at c.

[Tunnelcat]

The problem with that theory tunnelcat, is it would simply cause another split pair of universes. One where they destroyed us, and one where they didn't. It wouldn't actually change anything.

Depends on which universe you came from and which one you ended up in after the alterations. Oh crap! Too many permutations! My head's going to explode!

[snoopy]

Entanglement, the concept of "spooky action at a distance," does seem to be instantaneous, but the issue is that, by its very nature, it's incapable of conveying any sort of meaningful information instantaneously. To observers on both ends of an entangled system, it's impossible to tell if what they're observing is the result of the other particle having collapsed into a single state, or if they're performing the initial observation that collapses the system. The quantum world is weird like that.

And no, slowing light down doesn't mean that we can speed it up. The idea of "slow light" involves manipulating the material that light is passing through, which enables its group velocity to be slowed dramatically. In a vacuum, light always moves at c.

Yeah... slowing of EM waves is related to relative permitivity... and vacuum is the standard from which everything degrades, theoretically. (Every once in a while you will see about "faster than vacuum" materials - I don't know that any of them has actually been proven at this point.)

I believe that the most popular "faster than light" travel theories depend on actually traveling slow than light, and bending space to bring two distant points together.

[Top Gun]

Yeah, even most of the pop-culture sci-fi treatments rely on some sort of warping of space or travel to an alternate dimension in order to get around the hard limit of c.

[Burlyman]

a lie ns would never be able to make it here; let's just say there's "intelligent life" "out there", they're just not organic people that fly in spaceships that were manufactured like cars in Detroit.