Thought this may be a little light relief to the antics of May , JC and the Brexiteers .( available on itunes ).

Saw a report today that the eminent physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawkins has concluded that Man needs to prepare plans to leave this planet in the not to distant future . ( Sorry to all you geeks out there but I have not the foggiest how to post a link on here ).
Anyway he has proposed building a small spacecraft called a starchip , ( just a few inches in length ) , which will travel along laser beams at a fifth the speed of light , ( roughly 100,000,000 mph ) , reaching it's proposed destination , Alpha Centauri , in a mind blowing 25 years .
Though it would not be able to land it would send back images in the hope that it would show a habitable world that we could exploit , ( my words not his ) , though getting there may be a little problematic .

The debatable question is...........should we even consider it ? It is assumed that the reason we have not been "visited "by intelligent life forms is 1 . The distances involved , and 2 . Intelligent life is probably extremely rare as they have undoubtedly destroyed themselves by war or disease before attaining the ability to transverse the cosmos .

We may have been visited. Not necessarily in the last 4000 years though. Who knows?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/...t-a7800991.html

Linky thing.

"In space, no-one can hear you dream!"

To post a link thingy (also known as a URL), just copy all the text in the web browser's address field and paste it in the post along with your warblings.

Reaching for space is the next frontier, so I guess interstellar travel is inevitable. I see no reason why we shouldn't try it.

I hope they don't. Man has comprehensively screwed this planet to a point where it's bio diversity is a pale shadow of what it was, the concept of travelling through interstellar space leaving a trail of blackened and dead world's in our wake horrifies me.
Technically it would be an immense challenge to travel the distances required, we would need to either come up with a propulsion system that would allow us to travel at the speed of light and even then you would be putting young people in at one end and getting geriatrics out at the other. So, then we have a choice, either advanced cryo stasis or a multi generational craft with its attendant problems.
Then, who would go? I can imagine the international and inter faith bickering that would generate 😣 Perhaps the answer lies in the arcane mystery of string theory, linking the various theoretical 'branes' in order to travel into adjacent dimensions via the fabled 'wormhole' effect. Nice challenge though.

This was my initial response . A ravaging homo sapien going from planet to planet until the end of time is a frightening thought but survival is an intrinsic trait in all of us and I can see us at least trying .

The one redeeming aspect is that those that who are the most likely to go forth would be at the top of the intelligentsia tree and therefore may be a little more respectful than the general hoi polloi .

I think it highly likely that we shall meet armageddon before we have the technical ability to undertake such a venture .

But it is something better to contemplate than what is currently on offer .

You would probably make the selection on different criteria, strength, fitness, purity of DNA, fertility, ability to improvise, teaching skills, intelligence would not be so important as most of the voyage would be spent doing basic housekeeping tasks aided by robotic systems.

It's a piece of piddle. All you need to do is change all the dials on existing spacecraft to show 'Warp Speed' and Bob's your uncle.


We will all have been space dust for millennia before any of this fantasy could ever have been a reality. If Einstein says it can't be done then it can't be done.

You might be right, still I heard the other day that there are a couple of brothers in America who have been doing some amazing things with machines that can get a man up in the air! Don't believe it personally, I mean, what practical use would a flying machine have? It's humbug.

The idea that we are wrecking the planet is a sentimental and subjective view. It is true that we are adversely impacting on a number of things, but we are only doing what nature intends and permits. I see this as a race to see if we can safely evacuate this planet before it becomes uninhabitable. If we fail, so what. It is what nature would have us do.

Sentimental huh? Poisonous air, poisonous seas, overpopulation, cutting down all the forests, desertification, Google the Ural sea, extinction of species, nothing sentimental or natural about what this species has done to its homeworld. If nature intended and permitted it why isn't it healing itself. No wonder we are in the state we are in when idiots like you are allowed to steal our oxygen 😎

I'm not sure with what authority you can justify that last statement. It is disappointing that people are quick to the insults before seeking clarification; a product of the Facebook generation perhaps. My point is that to the best of our thinking, we are simply bags of transitional energy and anything we do is because nature made it so. Pollution = evil or bad is a man-made idea. It doesn't stop pollution being bad, but even being bad is man-made, hence my use of sentimental in my comments.

BTW, nature has been the cause of the vast majority of instinctions, before man even existed. Indeed, man is a natural product. Blame her, you old hysterical rightie you!

Subjective?? Anyway, instinctions? That's not even a word. If you mean extinctions then it's true that nature has contrived at least two major extinction events but everything else was either natural selection or a natural extinction. Nature didn't contrive to cause extinction of species for fun or by stupidity. Only man does that. Nature good, man bad.

As the man said "humanity is like a virus, infecting the planet". A virus is an apt description and if nature was to contrive a 'cure' for the infection that currently despoils it's host body than I for one would not be happier. As a species we are a dead end, destined to die out, a failure that couldn't live in balance with its natural habitat, apt to think that even cockroaches will outlive us as a species 🤔

Worry bout that later, when everything's used up. We can always go and get someone else's stuff, always worked in the past. Dig, drill, feed. Excess is good. Someone can't keep up? Tough! Them or us baby.

I always thought it was an experiment being run by the mice - and the answer is 42

So, there's the problem, we've been looking for wormholes in space when we should have been looking for mouseholes! A pan dimensional being working out the thermal coefficient of cheese! And the answer is, squeak!!. 🐀

A typo. I was using a small smart phone and these things happen. It should read extinction.


Man is natural, therefore nature caused the issue. Man behaves in the way nature designed. To say otherwise is to suggest Man is above nature. That is the same logic of people who believe in a sky daddy.

That is what nature permits. Man works best when the shoite hits the fan. Until then, it is a case of: we'll do it tomorrow.

But even those will die in the furnace of the Sun. Anyway, we were living in natural balance of its habitat, but then the Brits invented the Industrial Revolution and scientists took over from religious leaders and now our population has exploded, possibly out of control.

Yep. Lets blame the British and the scientists.👍

In truth the wobble started about 3,000 years ago.

It's a big old place to find your way around in though... which direction would an intrepid inter-galactic explorer head?

https://youtu.be/JWVshkVF0SY

"...and pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space
because there's bugger all down here on earth"

As far as I can see there's nothing in what's being proposed that contradicts anything Einstein said.

Well it would need the 'Starchip' to be powered by dilithium crystals. Thought Einstein boiled down to anything with mass couldn't travel faster than the speed of light...

Einstein's Special Relativity prohibits anything passing the light-barrier because of how the apparent mass increases as you get to relativistic speeds, but travelling faster than the speed of light is actually fine - it's just getting there that's the problem. That might sound like a quibbling distinction but quantum effects can allow just that kind of trick, though not for anything as big as a spaceship, even a tiny one.

The problem with faster-than-light travel is more fundamental that Einstein because of how it violates causality, though that's not necessarily a barrier, it would just make faster-than-light travel really really weird.

Anyhoo, the plan is to accelerate the micro-spaceship to a quarter of the speed of light so not through the light barrier. There'd be a relativistic inrease in mass, but I guess it could be done. I've no idea if anything like it has been tried - accelerating a microchip to a quarter of the speed of light and sending it six light years away on a trip taking 25 years powered only by photon pressure from an earth-born laser all sounds pretty bleeding-edge to me, but if you can keep the beam from diverging and keep the chip in the beam and heading in the right direction then I guess it would work if the beam doesn't just evaporate the chip! Whether the camera and transmitter would work after 25 years exposure to cosmic rays and such, and whether it would have the power to send its images all the way home again is anyone's guess.

Rather than sending a spaceship we could just shine a laser on neighbouring stars and any orbiting planets and see if anyone shines back - we might not be able to get there but we could at least make contact.

Contact with what though? Bl00dy aliens coming here and taking our jobs....

You just don't get it do you. They've already been here! Advanced civilisations have developed quantum leap technology, travelling vast distances through the inky blackness of the interstellar void, tracked us down to our tiny spec orbiting a small star tucked away in an arm of an insignificant galaxy. Just so they could do pictures in wheatfields and scare some redneck teenagers in a pick up truck on a back road somewhere in Iowa. Makes perfect sense. Or, they could have saved the effort and stood on a hill and flashed a torch at the sky, 'cos that would work.

Fixed that one!

This is turning into a MORI poll as to whether;-

1. If it is feasible we should go ahead and to **** with the consequences.

2. We should avoid at all costs.

3.I have an ambivalent view but as long as they have lager beer on tap then let's give it a whirl.


I just have this idea that in a few hundred years time a teenage history student will be searching through the forum archives and come across one of the posts and exclaim " this chap/chapess got it right all those years ago ".

The reality is we can not predict future events or developments. Had someone told Henry V111 that an engine driven by steam could make decapitation a lot easier he would have thought you mad but he would see the benefit. Likewise traveling at or close to the speed of light may be outside our capability but not beyond perception.

On a slight tangent, I have often considered man as a species a bit of a freak of nature. No other species on the planet has developed at such a pace and very doubtful one ever will again. The dinosaurs plodded around for 150 million years and to the best of my knowledge never made a damned thing. Along comes this ape-like thing and within a couple of hundred thousand years is discussing topics that must be at the zenith of potential knowledge. If that wretched asteroid had not hit Mexico it is doubtful we would even be here.
Based on that premise the chance of "intelligent" life being out there is even slimmer than we may imagine. Life yes, but as the chap said: "not as we know it".
Interesting topic though.

At least the power from the laser might keep the chip warm, nothing worse than cold chips!

As various probes have now discovered water on other bodies in the solar system it seems inevitable that it exists in a free state elsewhere in the universe. This being so it leads to the conclusion that where there's water there could be life, it may not be intelligent life as we count it but that doesn't matter, it can always join the Labour party.

How dare you blaspheme the messiah JC. Off with your head. JC is the greatest man that has ever lived. He ia a living god.... Oohhhhhhh Jerermy Cobyn, Oh Jeremy Corrrrbyn. 😂

I wonder if a corduroy spacesuit would be viable?

Don't diss de man Je Suis. You are cruisin. Sign up to the Corbyn revolution. Diane Abbott for Chancellor!!!!

Come on Je Suise, something to be welcomed, an enormous base of customers for you to exploit! As usual, you want your cake and eat it?

Another good idea, have to start paying you a commission soon. Maybe I should set it up as a franchise? Where there's mugs there's money. And there's always more mugs, eh Tantalus old boy. 😂

One for the scientists out there. Is water the given constant for life or is it possible to thrive in an environment that is based on an element that is yet to be discovered ? I appreciate we could not survive without it but if there are "intelligent" life forms out there one of the reasons they don't pop around for tea is our planet is completely hostile to them.

There again it's a bloody long way to go for a cup of earl grey.

Its all academic anyway, planet X is due to bring an end to civilization in October this year anyway! That's right folks, Nibiru is inbound. The end of times, the Rapture, humanity has left the planet.
Jeremy Corbyn speaking from a bar at Glastonbury said "This is a direct result of Theresa May's Tory government, they know I'll be President of the British Soviet in six months and this is a deliberate act on her part to defeat me again!"
John McDonnell is furious apparently, he's quoted as saying "Tory murderers won't get away with this! I'm organising bus loads of activities with badly printed signs in to protest this obscenity! A day of phage with ten million on the streets will force this so called 'planet x' to think again"
And Diane speaking from a pie shop on Tower Hamlets said "I personally know of lots of other planets we could go to, there two (or three) just to the left of earth with much nicer skies" "pass the sauce would you?"
Elon Musk is apparently preparing to blast of into space and Bill Gates has been sending out coded warnings for months to warn us.

David Meade (author of planet X, the 2017 arrival) said the public is being kept in the dark deliberately to avoid panic.Earthquakes have dramatically increased both in number and intensity.
‘Storm systems are multiplying both in type, intensity and size. Sinkholes and cracks are appearing in the earth’s crust. Heat waves are getting stronger and are lasting longer.’
‘During this time frame on September 23, 2017, the moon appears under the feet of the Constellation Virgo. The Sun appears to precisely clothe Virgo. Only the one that occurs in 2017 constitutes a ‘birthing.’ This is when planets traverse within the legs of Virgo. Jupiter is birthed on 9-9-17.

‘The next event that follows is that Planet X will fully eclipse the Sun and cover the whole earth and full moon in shadow on the next full moon date. This is Thursday, October 5, 2017 (the following full moon date).’
That's me convinced then ! 🚀💥😂

Wow !!!!!

Theresa May promised "a strong and stable planet" 😘

Diane Abbott, pie shop. 😂😂😂

Would it be deemed inappropriate if one enquire as to whether she stocked black puddings?

Making fun of someone's race is usually deemed a red line.

What's wrong with black pudding? Lovely stuff.

I didn't say there was anything wrong with black pudding, but it depends on how you use it.

I use it fried, with bacon and eggs, or in a sandwich, yummy. How would you use it Andy?

Eat as a constituent of a tinned or TV dinner, usually, but rarely as a metaphor on a public form.

You seem to be insinuating some form of racism on Sir Williams part? Explain.