18 August 2013

Aliens, other scientific wonders and the Pravda way

The Pravda (meaning "truth" in Russian) newspaper, which in modern times became a regular yellow tabloid (but still exceedingly loyal to whoever is at the helm) continues to provide fun and game with its headlines and scant reading comprehension. Which is what happened to an innocent celestial mechanics research titled Slingshot dynamics for self-replicating probes and the effect on exploration timescales by two Scottish doctors: Arwen Nicholson and Duncan H. Forgan from the University of Edinburgh. Their result could indeed provide a sound theoretical basis for a future deep space exploration project. For Pravda, though, it provided a basis for a sensational headline: Alien space probes visited Earth many times. Go figure. Now, it is not that other journos and the scientists themselves are must better. You can see the speculations about alien visitations in other articles on the subject, such as this one. And Dr Forgan himself just had to step into it:

Dr Forgan said that the fact that we have not detected or seen any evidence of alien probes in the solar system suggests there have been no probe-building civilizations in the Milky Way in the last few million years or that the probes are so hi-tech we are unable to detect them. Another possibility is that probes could be programmed to make contact only with civilizations that pass a set measure of intelligence, which could be the ability to detect the probes.
Oh well... at least Dr Forgan understands that there is a very simple explanation: a serious reluctance on the part of the E.T.s to have anything whatsoever to do with us.

And from this relatively simple example of yellow journalism to a less explicable example of a famous person either making a monkey of himself in public or hinting at some revolutionary discovery in physics that will overturn... well, the seats we are used to sit in. This example was provided, wittingly or not, by no other than famous Elon Musk, an entrepreneur of a star caliber indeed. In an interview on his plans for a Hyperloop Alpha design, Mr Musk stated, according to the above linked:
But passengers won't feel the speeds. "The g-forces would always point down," Musk said in a Monday conference call about the design. "It should really feel just super smooth and quiet. And there'd never be any turbulence or anything."
I was kinda flabbergasted by that frivolous attitude to the "g-forces" which are supposed to point exclusively down. Flabbergasted so seriously that I just had to look up the transcript of the original speech, and here we are:
The g-forces would always point down. In other words, you wouldn't really feel any turning.
Hm... Elon Musk's bio data points to a bachelors degree in physics. Either since his graduation our subject made a super-spectacular progress in this discipline and discovered a way to neutralize acceleration, or he found some papers of the late Tesla, where the old genius put paid to all that classical mechanics nonsense.

But at least the journo what wrote the article may consider herself exonerated.

For now.

10 comments:

SnoopyTheGoon said...

"The g-forces would always point down."
This is really not a problem if your sits can slide from position according to the acceleration. So, for example, whenever you are going faster forward your sits would incline towards the ground, whenever you turn left your sits would rotate to the right so that the major g-forces would always be felt from your head towards your (seated) ass.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

That should work.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

I am sure this is not in Musk's plans. But yes, if by "down" he meant the direction to one's ass, you are right.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

You bet.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

The Slingshot Dynamics article mentions the "Fermi Paradox." That looked interesting, so I looked up that on Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox That article features "A graphical representation of the Arecibo message – Humanity's first attempt to use radio waves to actively communicate its existence to alien civilizations." It looks like we've given the aliens the idea that we spend all out time playing 80s video games. No wonder they've decided we are to dumb to bother with.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

The fallacy of Fermi paradox is debunked by my beloved Stanislaw Lem, who simply asks why the E.T.s would be so eager to contact us. Well, in fact it is not that simple (what he says on the subject in his Summa Technologiae), but the end result boils down to this.

Indeed - why should they?

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Is there a real Summa Technologiae or is that something referred to in one of his books about imaginary books? (I love Stanislaw Lem also.) Even if the E.T.s aren't interested in us, why don't we pick up their talk-radio in our radio telescopes?

SnoopyTheGoon said...

This is a real book, not the easiest reading in his repertoir, but a grand book nevertheless, and it didn't lose none of its impact after (wow) forty years.:

http://www.amazon.com/Summa-Technologiae-Electronic-Mediations-Stanislaw/dp/0816675767

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Ah, the direct approach.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Sure - the best way, isn't it?