Green Baron

This leaves Fermi aside now: Women. First fights in europe where between late mesolithic groups and first farmers. The latter ran out of women, probably due to infections and bad nutrition and loss during birth. Isotopes show where people were born and were they died. And the collections of skeletons show men, not born near the dwellings but in the surrounding hills, their skulls penetrated by typical axes (shoelast celt). They fit like the blocks in a child's hammer-and-block game. As to sexual selection ... ok, if you say so.

I agree with the oxygen, though that is an extrapolation from earth No, Slartibartfast was not involved. I'm sure :-)

Hi, well, i must admit it's hard to imagine the diversity without sex. It's helpful :-) I doubt whether sexual selection prefers the intelligent. It rather prefers the strong males and pretty female, things that today are highly influenced by cultural criteria. In times when population was thinner and people wandered in tribes it's more probabel that mixture between other groups was favored. The guys and gals of the other tribe must have been sexier than the ones they saw every day. It is assumed that in interglacials in the european ice age tribes met from to time to exchange their members and thus genome. In high glacial times they went through genetic bottlenecks. (Africa was different) There is a misunderstanding: assuming that peace came with diversion and domestication came out of pressure. The contrary is the case: there are no (maybe one) hint of intraspecies violence in the lower stone age (until ~15.000 before now), but with the emergence of settlement there comes battle and killing. Pressure was not the reason of domestocation, it was the outcome. There was no reason for the start of plant growing and 1000yrs later domestication. It could as well have happened 110.000yrs earlier, in the OIS 5e, when climate was even better. Edit: before someone else points out: i was very fuzzy with "lower stone age" and 15.000yrs. Don't nail me to the cross, there is no lower stone age in europe (let's say Palaeolithic) and the 15.000yrs are arbitrary, in fact the first known remains of battle are much younger. Will come up with sources if asked to.

Hm, but that would imply that there is a dataset ? I'm not sure whether this is the case. I am of course aware that earth's principles might not be valid elsewhere, but we have to start somewhere. Otherwise we only had questions, no answers. Could a civilization form in a short period of time, like 500my from solidification of a planets crust to rockets into space ?

Your correct, K^2. I was just trying to explain why i see no paradox in the Fermi paradox and the connected assumption/implication that there might be "others", possibly similar to us, able to say "gimmy that towel i can't see the misery anymore" :-) I too hope we find something in the future, but i doubt it will be intelligent and i highly doubt it has formed a communicative civilization.

I see it in a similar way as @PB666. Moreover, as convenient as it might be, that sexual reproduction thing is only one step in a long row and maybe not even necessary (though ... well convenient). The geological processes that formed the biosphere over the last 700my (before is somewhat grey, only understood in principle, see "principle of uniformitarianism"), the evolutionary processes that brought species and discarded them (the ones we see in the fossil record are just the tip of an iceberg, the prosperous models that lived long enough and were buried under favorable conditions that their remains came upon us), the galactic environment, that all went hand in hand over a long period of time. Some processes are understood, but not enough to deduct any clue as to whether this can be repeated elsewhere. And preliminary finally, about 7my ago, primates startet to develop a brain, something that costs A LOT of energy and is grossly oversized (for most i know, hehe). About 2,5my years ago we speak of humans (gender homo), and for 2.49my they lived out in the wild. Just with a period of favorable climate they startet to develop plant growing, animal domestication and domi to live in. And that independently in at least 3 regions of the world. Noone really knows "why" (it's probably not desirable for a hunter & gatherer to give up his lifestyle and start to ... work (uuuaaah !)). But that "snip" in time, these ~12.000yr or 500 generations are the reason why we have, after all, a civilization. And we do not know how the story continues. Will the brain degenrate ? Will we (we're doing good from what i hear) ? How long will it take until the species becomes extinct ? Or resets itself in war and patchwork states ? Will the window for communication be open long enough to make a contact ? Probably not ... since there must be a similar window on the other side. To me all that seems very improbable, so improbably that the whole alien thing is a nice game (while hoping for a stable release). So, if something like this or with comparable output has happened somewhere else then it's probably far away, in space and time. Happy to discuss further

I played ~2 hours and had 4 ctds during scene changes due to memory corruption. Mods: KER, KJR (verions of 1.1.2), Scansat, Waypointmanager (1.1.3 versions). The last 2 crashes were unmodded, stock game. Rovers still break dance, wheels get "blocked" for no apparent reason (that new one ?). I recall squad blamed unity for all this and that they said in 1.2 everything will be fine again. Right now it's unstable, no improvement from 1.1.2 that i could see in the short time.

Hi, well, not particularly asking for support, just to let you know: "Double free/corruption" on scene change from vab to flight. No specific errors on log file. Linux, 20min. into gameplay. ERR's in log during loading: - "Scanmechjeb" missing dependencies during loading of KER - convex hull (potatoroid ?) has more than 255 polygons - wheel collider requires attached rigid body Mods: ScanSat, WaypointManager and KER, that last one not yet updated to 1.1.3 Ok, back to work.

My hopes for solving the Fermi paradox in the future: The discovery of some sort of basic metabolism (microbes or whatever) on one of the bodies in our solar system, i think mars is the only realistic chance in the near future (10-20 years). Or are there any plans for a rover or lander on one of the joolian errrr jupiterian moons ? The discovery of earth-like planets (i mean *really* earth-like planets) with a new generation of instruments in 10-15 years. New telescopes are planned or work has begun, La Palma is still in the race for a new 30m-Telescope in the near future ;-) I don't believe in a signal from elsewhere, the distances are too huge, even if other civs exist. For me mars is not completely out of the race yet. Traces of biology are probably buried below the surface and maybe very old (i mean long gone ...), if they didn't form geological structures (like the banded iron formations in earth for example) than maybe only sophisticated instruments will be able to detect them. Maybe we'll see, 20 years is not that long.

Yep. Sexual reproduction is one of the steps in the chain. Though it's not necessary, it just helps the evolutionary process to overcome challenges by adaptation more quickly. From an energetic viewpoint it's a disadvantage to feed more than one gender, hadn't there been times of abundance it might have never been developed and hadn't there been evolutionary challenges thereafter it might have been sorted out like so many other features :-). This is part of the process i mean .... ready to be corrected by a biologist.

In this context ? Species capable to communicate over stellar distances. Or else it wasn't recognizable from the outside. So humankind is just starting to open the window. And i'm of different opinion: the step from microbes to to a civilisation is a big one, bigger than the forming of microbes out of chemistry. On earth the latter happened in a few hundred million years but it took 2,8 billions of years for higher animals, another 300 my for plants and another 400my for us(tm). Under a sequence of events/incidents/conditions/changes that is probably not easy to replicate. Though this is just an opinion and there are probably other sequences that can produce a similiar outcome, i do not know, can of course speculate. Edit: sorry, i correct myself and change "capable to communicate" in "can be recognized as such" from the outside. Like em-emissions or ... well em-emissions. :-) Editedit: i meant plant evolution on the landmasses. Sorry for being so fuzzy ....

Don't mix up life and civilizations. As has been stated elsewhere, there may be an abundance of (microbial) life, photosynthesis, whatever, even forms of plants or animals as has been on earth for 100s of my, but no civilizations.

I did a (very brief) search and couldn't find one ... if you know more i'd be glad to read it :-)

Most, yes. But some, a minority, think different. They form groups and cut themselves off from the mass. I'm no psychologist. Like sects they define clear limits between "themselves" and "the world around". The pattern of such a sect is similar in many cases: the world around is vaguely/diffusely described as wrong or mislead, their ways must be declined or even opposed. The members are not perceptive to logic or to observe and draw their own independent conclusions like the educated majority does(*). Maybe these people draw some sort of strength out of the fact that they feel like "insiders", somewhat superior to the rest of the world. The message of the video goes a bit in that direction, doesn't it ? Such groups form every now and then and may last for a long time, even generations. They can be as harmless as the flat earthers or as manipulative and subversive as the creationists. Sometimes a charismatic leader rises and spreads a mission, something like "we must make the rest of the world see !". In some cases the story then ends in a catastrophe. (*) "Bad things" might happan if they did, like in the magic thinking of 5 or 6 year old children ...

Meep meep

Well, from milk :-) I don't know how they come to the conclusion (belief?) that this is 2000yr old. If there is no clear stratigraphy (difficult in a bog) and no chemical/physical dating. That is very difficult, there are plant-remnants of all time periods since the forming of the bog which could be as old as the end of the ice age. If there is a roman coin inside or some typical fabric around it then i'll agree. But it could as well have been dug in in medieval times. Depending on the soil it can be difficult to recognize an artificial pit. But organic things like tissue (or butter) in wet soil can last a looong time. But no bones ... too sour much acidity in that environment for them ... poor jelly bog bodies. :-) Edit: it *might* be that old, but since i'm not that much into believing i need a proper date to be convinced.

All i can find is that the Soyus TMA usually does a 4 min to 4.5 min deorbit burns. And that it takes around 45min. from end of burn to landing, g-loads in between are 4-5g. Should be enough data to calculate the dV (if only we had a nice atmospheric model). But 30m/s dV are not enough for a direct reentry from about 400km altitude. But, yep, TWR of the Soyuz may well be in that regime ... :-)

I waited until it was over and then replayed the crucial parts, so i didn't even realize. The girl said she had something to do with the development of the gridfins ? They are probably no professional "talkers", can happen 'cause excitement :-) Has anyone any news on what happened during landing ? I'm not in the social networks ... and the spacex-site doesn't say much ...

I'm curious. Why did he refuse to teach that formula ? Did he miss relativistic considerations ? Or some supernatural power ? And: Of course error margins for reaction times, change in velocities, momentums, working pressures and i'm sure i forget something are much narrower at 8-9g than at 3g, at higher velocities than at lower velocities (and changes thereof). Plus the fact than one degree of freedom is nearly blocked when the system is already at 100%. A little fault can have a higher impact than. Edit: and i think firing up more engines won't help. First it takes a few seconds. Second all landings i watched had a little offset from the exact center. The whole process is a tradeoff between reaction time for corrections and braking power, though i don't know where the current limits are.

I'd rather put my bet on they calculated to the last drop of fuel + x. Or the high g-loads have an impact on the fuel system. Could someone do the math for me, pls: 3 Merlins, sealevel, 25(don't know were i have that from pls. verify ?) tons = many g's.

I must add: There is a high gradient today because of an ice age (continent at one of the poles, circumpolar current, north/south landmass distribution, conveyor belt, north atlantic deep water formation, etc.). Mammalian diversification (mostly) falls into the time of cooling that lead to the ice age and diversity of todays climatic zones. I'm pretty sure, had they looked 250my earlier, the result would have been totally different.

If you want to take a look at game engine source code: http://www.godotengine.org/ That's a high end game engine, MIT-licensed. Or: http://pioneerspacesim.net/ the latter a neat little open source space game. Cheers

Me again, 20 years ago it was a joke among PC users: "MS Windows ? It's an unstable mess, you have to shut it down every now and then or it'll crash sooner or later !". Today people got used to it and expect Windows to crash, like they expect a good vacuum cleaner to make a terrible noise or it's not a good vacuum cleaner. hehehe :-)

That was what i thought too. "Oh no, not again the Drake equation". The drake equation is based on assumptions of the 50s in a time of space fantasies and exorbitant space programs. It did its job by luring people into donations for a search program. It's not even an equation because the left value is a variable, so in most cases it is used by adjusting the right side in order to meet a desired "lvalue" ...

Err, .... well, nice, but that guy definitely talks too much. :-)