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Kristopher

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Posts posted by Kristopher

  1. Solar Systems Like Ours in the Minority

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Solar Systems Like Ours in the Minority

     

    Pattern:

    1. New topic appears in Hero Forum's Star Hero section, discussing application of something scientific to a Star Hero campaign
    2. Some discussion occurs
    3. Kristopher appears, stating that he has read all about the scientific principle in question, it does not make sense to him, so therefore thousands of scientists must be wrong.
    4. Others patiently try to explain the scientific principle to Kristopher
    5. Kristopher states that the explanation is just a re-hash of what he read before, therefore the others are wrong as well.
    6. A few pages of this ensues
    7. and the original point of the thread, applying the scientific principle to a campaign, has been utterly derailed

     

    I would have added you to my Ignore list a long time ago, but you cannot do that to moderators.

     

    You have exactly one actual example of that, regarding the FTL / relativity discussions, mainly as it relates to "time travel". And the big go-around on that topic was because I wasn't using the right terminology or something to ask the question I wanted answered.

     

    The Fermi "Paradox" isn't a scientific principle. It's just two assumptions that seem to be in conflict. Big whoop.

     

    EDIT: And you know, it gets really old when you say you don't agree with something, and almost instantly someone says "then read this very basic summary, you're wrong". If I hadn't read about the topic, I wouldn't have posted about it! I mean really, no one can ever disagree if they've read the basics? Come on...

  2. Solar Systems Like Ours in the Minority

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Solar Systems Like Ours in the Minority

     

    Heh. You really think I'm the one true defender of the Fermi Pardox?

     

    No.

     

    In fact, I'm quite aware that I'm in the minority in thinking that it's much ado about nothing.

     

    Or that one can do an Ad hominem by using quotations?

     

    Perhaps "ad personam", then -- making it about the person instead of the subject.

     

    No' date=' there just seems to be a pattern emerging from your posts.[/quote']

     

    What, that I think a lot of speculation is pointless because we don't have sufficient information, and that a lot of "that is impossible" talk puts the cart before the horse?

  3. Solar Systems Like Ours in the Minority

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Solar Systems Like Ours in the Minority

     

    Alright. I'll bite. If you NEVER' date=' have a speculative thought, and then of course, never have to prove your thought versus someone else's speculative thoughts, How do you ever advance to the point, of proving or disproving?[/quote']

     

    Speculative thoughts, questioning thoughts, sure, those are needed.

     

    There wasn't a rigorous philosophical process of any sort in prehistory, really, and the rigorous scientific process you allude to is only a few centuries old at most. The invention of tools, and the discovery of fire, did not involve years of debate, or getting your paper past the publishing committee.

  4. Solar Systems Like Ours in the Minority

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Solar Systems Like Ours in the Minority

     

    If you didn't have speculative thought and the arguments between opposing speculative thoughts' date=' you'd never even GET, to the science part. Folks would still be sitting in the cave picking fleas and lice off each other.[/quote']

     

    Well... no. Not really.

  5. Solar Systems Like Ours in the Minority

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Solar Systems Like Ours in the Minority

     

    It means that either the set of assumptions that go into initial part of the paradox (that the galaxy gets colonized quickly) is flawed' date=' OR that the second part of the paradox is wrong (i.e., that we are mistaken in asserting that the full colonization of the Galaxy has not occurred). There''s a lot more that goes into the first part than the second, of course. Also, that's a logical or, not an exclusive or. Could be both.[/quote']

     

    The key word there is "assumptions". There are so many assumptions that go into it, that calling it a paradox is very presumptive -- there's no paradox there, just conflicting assumptions. It's an utterly speculative throught experiment, nothing more.

  7. Star Wars licence news...

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Star Wars licence news...

     

    It's still just a few hundred to a few thousand dollars' date=' in a franchise that totals in the tens of millions. I agree that they'd be better off overall with the license out there, but the negative effect just isn't big enough to be that big of a deal to them.[/quote']

     

    I think what Peregrine is saying is that having an ongoing Star Wars RPG on the market, that someone is paying you a fee for, amounts to someone paying LucasFilm to market LF's brand for them -- that even if they sold the license for $10, it would be a win for LucasFilm.

  9. Solar Systems Like Ours in the Minority

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Solar Systems Like Ours in the Minority

     

    Yes, I've read all sorts of detailed discussions and explorations of the Fermi "Paradox".

     

    It doesn't tell us anything.

     

    All we know is that we haven't seen signs of anyone else yet. That's it. All that tells us, is exactly that, and only that. Nothing more.

  11. Solar Systems Like Ours in the Minority

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Solar Systems Like Ours in the Minority

     

    Well' date=' unfortunately there is something else to consider. The scenarios you outline only explain the lack of observable aliens if [b']every single one of them[/b] acts as you say. It only takes one 'bad apple' to ruin the argument.

     

    In the history of our galaxy, there might have been ten thousand alien civilizations confined to their home planets. But if there was a single one that was expansionist, they could have colonized the entire galaxy in as little as 50 million years, sub-light. Much less time if they had FTL.

     

    Given the age of the Galaxy, this means it could have been entirely colonized 240 times. So where are they? Earth should currently be an alien colony.

     

    That it is not, however, does not mean anything definitive, except that it is not.

     

    It doesn't mean with any certainty that we are alone, or the first, or that interstellar colonization is impossible, or...

  16. Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

    in Fantasy Hero

    Posted

    Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

     

    OK, getting back to this, in the fantasy setting I'm writing up off and on, I have various "People", each with a name denoting their origin or the god that most favored them.

     

    The Sun People were lost in the great war that ended the first age, for example. (Using generic terms for brevity.) The Twilight People don't share a common origin, or gods, with the other Peoples, having instead been created by the myriad "children" of The Dark (an... entity best decribed as the incarnation of the primordial dark void, something like the Greek Khaos). The Moon People would be the closest thing to "elves". The Fire People live in the deep places of the world, nearer to their goddess of the underworld and fire. Etc.

  18. Extraterrestrial Organisms Already Here ?

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Extraterrestrial Organisms Already Here ?

     

    Interesting news story:

     

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100126/ap_on_sc/eu_britain_alien_life

     

    I especially find the following quote worthwhile (emphasis added by me):

     

    "...Frank Drake, who conducted the first organized search for alien radio signals in 1960, said that the Earth — which used to pump out a loud mess of radio waves, television signals and other radiation — has been steadily getting quieter as its communications technology improves.

     

    Drake cited the switch from analogue to digital television — which uses a far weaker signal — and the fact that much more communications traffic is now relayed by satellites and fiber optic cables, limiting its leakage into outer space.

     

    "Very soon we will become very undetectable," he said. If similar processes were taking place in other technologically advanced societies, then the search for them "will be much more difficult than we imagined."...."

     

    Wouldn't the foreign-origin DNA left over in such microbes probably stand out like a sore thumb? Assuming that they even used DNA?

  19. Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible?

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible?

     

    What isn't beyond our comprehension? For the 3 trillion number you posited it would require nearly the population of the US living inside of Connecticut copy and pasted across the entire world? So I could have said it better' date=' but I think you got the gist, numerically it is feasible, it is however that population density sustained across and entire planet is at the edge of comprehension.[/quote']

     

    How so?

  24. Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible?

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible?

     

    Your figures are slightly low, Trantor has a land area of 194,000,000 square kilometers, about 130% of Earth's land area.

     

    Trantor as per the novel has a population density of 232 people per square kilometer. New York City has 842, Tokyo has 5,847, and the nation of Singapore is up there with 6,852 (not 7,027 as you stated, "18200 per square mile" ).

    Assuming a 2 day transit time:

    Trantor: 207 ships daily, 828 total

    Trantor with New York City density: 751 daily, 3,006 total

    with Tokyo density: 5,218 daily, 20,871 total

    with Singapore density: 6,116 daily, 24,459 total.

    (for comparison purposes, the number of daily commercial air liner flight in the US is about 37,000)

     

    Now you delegate. For each daily ship, have one landing pad evenly spaced over the available land area. Each pad will have the infrastructure to unload the ship, and deliver the food to the distribution network.

    Land surface area per ship (square kilometers)

    Std Trantor: 937,031

    New York Trantor: 258,184

    Tokyo Trantor: 37,180

    Singapore Trantor: 31,727

     

    The surface area of Connecticut is about 14,356 square kilometers, so even at Singapore Trantor population densities each landing pad will be in a area more than twice the size of Connecticut.

     

    I was bouncing around Wiki for rough numbers, here's the page I started out on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_density. I had no idea how big Trantor was supposed to be, or how much land area to base the figures on, so I fudged with the numbers for Earth. I started out with Singapore to be conservative.

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