TED Community » Tomm Lorenzin

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Lifelong Learning, Astronomy, Cosmology, Earth Sciences, Planetology, Cartography, Music, Photography, Cinema, Books, Culinary Arts, Aviation, Birds & Biology, Natural Sciences, Technology, Fine Arts

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• A comment on Conversation: Lets reconsider the basics of several sciences. Step 1. The crust of our Earth is floating on...... On what?

  May 31 2012: The continents do not float on liquid magma. They move about on the surface of the asthenosphere. At the temperatures and pressures below the continents the mineral material (rock) of the asthenosphere is "plastic," not liquid. It flows very slowly like the "solid" ice of a glacier. The word asthenosphere's roots mean "without strength."

• A comment on Talk: Jill Tarter's call to join the SETI search

  May 31 2012: SETI has always been a conundrum to me; close on a delusional religious meme, if not an outright boondoggle. From scientists who should know better, yet...
  
  In order to understand the impossibility (or improbability – NOTHING is absolutely 100% certain) of contact with alien life forms or civilizations, one must have a good grasp of the immensity of both time and space.
   
  Space: In the vast universe, there is a statistical probability that there will be planets circling stars that – like Earth – may have given birth to life forms nurtured for a long enough period of time for self-awareness, consciousness, and high technology to have evolved. If not here in our own galaxy, then surely in one or more of the hundred billion or so other galaxies – each with its own complement of hundreds of billions of stars that we know to exist – such life must have developed and evolved to conscious fruition.
   
  The problem comes in contemplating the means with which communication – let alone space travel – can occur across such vast distances. Since nothing can travel faster that the speed of light – 300k km/sec – not even other forms of electromagnetic radiation (radio, x-rays, et al.), it would take years, to centuries, to millennia, to thousands of millennia for a one-way radio communication with beings on another planet, in another star system, or in another galaxy. And space travel would take orders of magnitude (powers of 10) longer. Thus is the near-impossibility of personal or radio communication with life forms not of this world.
   
  Time: To complicate the communication issue, we have to consider the breadth of time that must be spanned. Since the universe is thought to be ~14 billion (14,000,000,000) years old, we must ask ourselves how many life-forms and their technological civilizations could be comtemporaneous – that is, existing in the same state of development/evolution to be able to recognize contact with a similar life form. Yes, undoubtedly many such life forms and