True, Galileo was found to hold a heretical heliocentric belief. However, Copernicus came up with the heliocentric theory a century earlier in 1533, and it wasn't kept a secret from the then-current pope: — Bitter Crank

Galileo was hauled before the Papal Court of the Inquisition, and so the threat was clear - particularly given the Church was burning people alive for heresy right through to 1792.

Further, Copernicus' book on the heliocentric system was published around 1543 or so, about the time Copernicus died at age 70 from the effects of a stroke. Maybe Galileo just rubbed his current pope, Urban VIII, the wrong way. — Bitter Crank

Galileo was tried for the heresy of proving the earth orbits the sun; emphasis on PROVING the earth orbits the sun, using scientific method. Copernicus constructed a heliocentric model, but did he build a telescope and prove it with reference to observation? No, but Galileo did!

But why blame the church for everything? One Claudius Ptolemy is responsible for the long-running geocentric model of 'the universe'. Why don't you blame this Roman Egyptian for setting science back--a millennia and a half!? — Bitter Crank

Are you suggesting Ptolemy knew the earth orbits the sun, and chose to remain ignorant?

This might be where your train goes off the rails. Holy Mother Church was never in charge of whatever constitutes the "scientific establishment". Science marched on, whether the pope thought it was heretical or not. Our "natural evolution" had unfolded long before Jesus, Mary, and Joseph came along. — Bitter Crank

Are you a Catholic by any chance? Is it that you're offended on behalf of mother Church - that she could possibly have made an error? Sticking with the infallibility thing, huh? For what it's worth, I think it was probably an honest mistake - a mistake made in faith, with no idea of the long term implications.

Human beings have been a damned, doomed species from the get go. Our Original Sin occurred when we emotional volatile apes added intelligence, curiosity, and blind ambition to our species. After that it was only a matter of time before we would get our hands on clubs, arrows, bullets, and atomic weapons, and gas ourselves with CO2. — Bitter Crank

So you don't see an epistemological evolution of humankind over time; no progress of knowledge from "less and worse" toward "more and better" - that the Church interfered in? Because for me, it seems like they dumped a huge boulder in the epistemological stream in an attempt to block it, but only succeeded in diverting an irresistible force.

Sure, much that happened in western culture after the Renaissance (and the Enlightenment) contributed to the situation we are in. Everything from double-entry bookkeeping, the expansion of credit, harnessing steam, global exploration, capitalism, the French Revolution--it all figures in. The history of cultures just can't be reduced to some simplistic explanation like the pope deciding that Galileo's theory was heretical. — Bitter Crank

So your argument then, is that the trial of Galileo had no effect on the subsequent development of philosophy or science? Declaring Galileo grievously suspect of heresy had no effect on how science was used - even as it was used to create 70,000 nuclear weapons at the height of the Cold War? While the technologies we have applied are over-used to the point where the planet is literally bursting into flames, you take to twitter, via your iphone, to deny climate change is real, and you think there's nothing in that that requires explanation? Our relationship to science is as it should be? Science is just gadgets - and no truth, and that's how it should be? Then make sure to yell hallelujah as we fall into the abyss!

It’s the natural human instinct to explore, but I also think it is sometimes the sublimated longing for Heaven. — Wayfarer

Or a kind of job security: If you set out to explore something as vast as space, you'll always have something to do, your life will always be directed toward a goal, you'll always have something to be passionate about and to look forward to.
Earthly tasks are never so promising.

So your argument then, is that the trial of Galileo had no effect on the subsequent development of philosophy or science? — counterpunch

If you look at the lives of the four great astronomers who followed Galileo, it would seem that his heresy trial did not bring astronomy to a screeching halt.

Copernicus, 1473–1543, proposed heliocentric system
Galileo, 1564–1642, heliocentric system, moons of Jupiter...
Kepler, 1571–1630, established that the planets' orbits were elliptical
Cassini, 1625–1712, measured Mars' and Jupiter's rotation time; discovered 4 Saturn moons
Huygens, 1629–1695, improved telescope, theory of light, discovered Saturn's moon Titan
Newton, 1643–1727, theory of forces including gravity

Bear in mind as well that other things were going on that could interfere with the development of science. There were political upheavals going on among the many fractious kings and princes of Europe. There was the reformation, among other things. (Luther didn't know much about astronomy, and heard only hearsay about Copernicus, who he thought a fool.).

Are you a Catholic by any chance? Is it that you're offended on behalf of mother Church - that she could possibly have made an error? Sticking with the infallibility thing, huh? — counterpunch

I am not now, nor have I ever been Catholic. I'm somewhere between agnostic and atheist. As for infallibility, the pope didn't become 'infallible' until 1869-70, when Vatican I decreed that the pope was infallible when he spoke “ex Cathedra” – or from the papal throne – on matters of faith and morals. What the pope had in the 16th century was quite substantial secular power behind the ecclesiastical curtain.

So you don't see an epistemological evolution of humankind over time; no progress of knowledge from "less and worse" toward "more and better" - that the Church interfered in? Because for me, it seems like they dumped a huge boulder in the epistemological stream in an attempt to block it, but only succeeded in diverting an irresistible force. — counterpunch

Of course there was epistemological progress over time. And revolutionary change (in whatever field, in whatever time) often meets with stiff resistance until the revolution becomes the new establishment. What Galileo proposed was "contrary to [what appeared to be] common sense". It wasn't just the pope who found the idea of the earth whirling through space unacceptable.

Religion has been tried and found wanting on many fronts, continuing up to the present, whenever religious leaders become custodians of sacred ancient viewpoints. Galileo demonstrated that we were not the center of the universe. Darwin explained how we evolved from primitive primates (and worse). Freud revealed that we aren't even in charge of our own minds. Etc. These demotions in status meet with resistance.

If you want to blame nuclear proliferation on the 17th century pope Urban VIII, fine. Or blame all the popes from Peter to Francis if you want. But it would be a good idea to demonstrate HOW Pope Urban and successive popes managed to control and direct scientific and technical developments in immensely complicated fields.

Murican — T Clark

No, I spelled it correctly.

So your argument then, is that the trial of Galileo had no effect on the subsequent development of philosophy or science?
— counterpunch

If you look at the lives of the four great astronomers who followed Galileo, it would seem that his heresy trial did not bring astronomy to a screeching halt. — Bitter Crank

I suppose not. But then Kepler confirmed Galileo's observations, and Cassini confirmed Kepler - so what would be the point in continuing to object to heliocentrism? The cat was out of the bag. Looking into this, I'm struck by the fact that astronomical knowledge was a big concern at the time, and coming from all quarters. What would it have benefitted the Church to continue to point out the disparity by hauling astronomers into court one after another? That they didn't, doesn't mean the inclination went away.

According to Barker and Goldstein: "Kepler was motivated by the religious conviction and belief that God had created the world according to an intelligible plan that is accessible through the natural light of reason."

This is the line the Church should have taken, but didn't, and it's here Descartes method of sceptical doubt, as a means to establish subjectivism - as the only certain knowledge, stands out like a sore thumb. Given the success of scientific method - how could any philosopher consider Descartes argument epistemically robust? How could it have become such a mainstay of philosophy unless it served a religious purpose? That is, to de-emphasize the material, and so promote the spiritual. And the subjectivists are still going strong today; such that they claim reality is subjectively constructed, that truth is relative and decry material explanations of anything as reductionist.

If you consider the fact Newton had to hide his religious views to advance in his academic career, and the troubles Darwin ran into - there's a clear antipathy between religion and science, that didn't stop science dead in its tracks. No, but that has never been my contention. Rather, the philosophical implications of science as an understanding of reality have been undermined with reference to arguments based on Cartesian subjectivism - such that science was used as a tool - but ignored as true knowledge of reality.

Galileo demonstrated that we were not the center of the universe. Darwin explained how we evolved from primitive primates (and worse). Freud revealed that we aren't even in charge of our own minds. Etc. These demotions in status meet with resistance. — Bitter Crank

No, I'm sorry - that may be true, but it is not explanatory, because - however you look at it, religious and political power was based on a divine conception of reality, challenged by science, and science lost. They didn't accept Kepler's argument that: "God had created the world according to an intelligible plan that is accessible through the natural light of reason" for that would imply that science would have been authoritative, as true knowledge of Creation.

Power remained in the hands of religion and European monarchies, justified with reference to God and the Divine Rights of Kings, even as science continued in service to industrial and military power - but somewhat disdained by polite society. The ideological architecture was not reformed in relation to science as truth. Science was not afforded authority as a valid conception of reality. Instead, science was used as a tool to further empower these religiously justified ideological architectures - and otherwise ignored. And we see this playing out everywhere, from nuclear proliferation to climate change denial, and in a thousand other ways; technology - developed and applied with no regard to science as a true understanding of reality, to further ideological ends - and that's why we have a climate and ecological crisis.

Now for the good news. Flip that over, and we have a rationale to tackle the climate and ecological crisis. Give science authority, and apply technology accordingly. Put the science out front as a guiding star, and just follow along in the usual capitalist way, creating industries, revenues and jobs, and saving the world in the process. There's an implicit assumption that environmentally beneficial action must necessarily be sacrificial - that it's swimming against the tide, but that's not scientifically true. The tide is purely ideological. If science is made authoritative, and we all follow in the course of that rationale, we can have a long, prosperous and sustainable future.

uncontrolled obliteration in the context of the entire planet from nuclear holocausts, germ warfare run amok, etc. — Outlander

That would be a "reset" button. The end of life as we know it, but hardly the end of life. Who is to say that it has not happened before? We could be the result of microbes that were brought back and then nuked long ago. Likely over a coffee dispute.

I would be horrified to have it confirmed that this is the only planet with life, that no where out there is someone doing it better. Just depressing as hell.

As a 'murican (or Terran / Terrestrial / Earthling), what will make me really sit-up and take notice is (if and) when we drop a (constructed in a hard lunar vaccum) AI-driven "fleet" of (cephalopod-like) submersibles through one or all of the frozen carapaces of the watery moons of Ganymede, Enceladus, Europa and/or Callisto to explore those pitch black oceans where 'extraterrestrial life' most probably resides, and maybe also is most abundant, in this solar system. And I hope this happens before I'm too decrepit or decomposed to appreciate the "eureka" moment. — 180 Proof

I've been thinking about how to overcome the time lag. Do you know how much further Saturn 9.58 AU is than Jupiter 5.2 AU? That's almost twice as far.

Some untethered, autonomous smart bot - has considerable drawbacks, like it would require a lot of processing power in its own right, which means it requires more energy, and is more complicated and so more prone to breakdowns. And what then? To keep the bot simple means spreading its brain across space, and so I think what we need is a distributed network in space, of communications servers, i.e. an internet in space.

There would be a constant two way stream of data. From earth we would upload conditional commands, if A then B, if C then D, if E then F, and so on - covering the range of possible actions, that are then processed in a hierarchical fashion - with inappropriate suggestions filtered out as outgoing data and incoming data passed by en route, informed by constant input from earth, on the basis of information coming in about what had transpired. Only commands appropriate to the situation would be acted on at the other end, by a relatively simple, and hence, more disposable robot. Once this system was in place, it could run hundreds of simple robots at the same time - all over the place.

I would be horrified to have it confirmed that this is the only planet with life, that no where out there is someone doing it better. Just depressing as hell. — Book273

Thankfully, due to the one-way nature of black holes- we, here, would never know for sure. How delightful, is it not? :grin:

Agreed, makes a lot of sense with current tech. However, a few decades from now (and ratcheted-up on such an 'interplanetary network' infrastructure), power utilization – efficiency – and very robust (photonic processor) neural net systems, etc, I suspect, will make "untethered, autonomous smart bots" feasible – perhaps each running many disposable drones in real-time.

The possibilities are truly exciting - if only we can get our act together. My terrible fear is; there's a lot of doom and gloom about; and the prevailing view of the future is in terms of limits to resources. That's rubbish. Science could solve climate change in a long weekend if everyone would just shut up and do as they're told. We need massively more energy from the molten interior of the earth, and we can produce resources. Limitless clean electricity, hydrogen fuel, capture carbon and bury it, desalinate water to irrigate wastelands for agriculture and habitation, recycle, farm fish. This doesn't have to be the evensong for humanity. This could be the break of day. Scientifically and technologically, we could make a paradise of this world - but the people get in the way!

Materials science is very interesting. I've been looking at whether carbon nanotubes are strong and light enough to dangle a tether from an asteroid in orbit, as a space elevator. If the tether could span the 100 miles from an asteroid in a low geosynchronous orbit, to the upper atmosphere, we could lift cargo from earth with balloons - catch the tether, and take the elevator the rest of the way. If we can do that, we can build in orbit, and mine space - and our resources would become effectively infinite.

I would be horrified to have it confirmed that this is the only planet with life, that no where out there is someone doing it better. Just depressing as hell. — Book273

Thank heavens it's not possible to prove an absolute negative, heh.

Speculating recently on a topic-related thread:

... (if and) when we drop (constructed in a hard lunar vaccum) an AI-driven "fleet" of (cephalopod-like) submersibles through one or all of the frozen carapaces of the watery moons of Ganymede, Enceladus, Europa and/or Callisto to explore those pitch black oceans where 'extraterrestrial life' most probably resides, and maybe also is most abundant, in this solar system ... — 180 Proof

... a few decades from now (and ratcheted-up on such an 'interplanetary network' infrastructure), power utilization – efficiency – and very robust (photonic processor) neural net systems, etc, I suspect, will make "untethered, autonomous smart bots" feasible – perhaps each running many disposable drones in real-time. — 180 Proof

And from older posts (btw, the links don't bite):

Btw, deep space travel is for machines -- the tinier the better -- Von Neumann self-replicating/nano-fabricators (e.g. Bracewell Probes), and not living organisms (re: hard radiation exposure is too lethal, transport size increases likelihood of hazardous particulate impacts, life-support limitations & extreme durations between destinations, etc which exponentially compound the costs/risks). — 180 Proof

Ad astra ex machina? — 180 Proof

I was in grade school when the Apollo program was moth-balled and then later we space nerds were pacified with the Space Shuttle program to low earth orbit; by the late 1970s it became clear that manned space flight was dead for the foreseeable future, and lower-cost remote-controlled robotic space probes landers & rovers were the future. It wasn't until I was an engineering student in the early 1980s – as well as reading more hard science fiction than "space opera" – that I began to fully comprehend the physics, and thereby economics, of vehicular space exploration and became an advocate of unmanned (and eventually AI-controlled) space missions. Decades later when President Obama (also a child of the Apollo program) officially transitioned NASA to unmanned space exploration, I welcomed the realism of NASA's new focus.

As for the future – a century or more hence – I imagine we will be "terraforming" the interiors of hollowed-out, spun @0.6-1g, asteroids for sustainable space habitats rather than dead, irradiated planets.

Why recreate the techno-economic problems of ingress-egress from gravity wells?

In the name of not 'keeping all human eggs in one terrestrial basket' any longer than necessary, why try to "colonize" large populations down deep gravity wells on extinction-event (e.g. impacts from comets, asteroids, solar flares) attractors with uncontrollable orbits (like Mars & Venus) when hundreds or thousands of manueverable asteroids (networked throughout the (inner) solar system) can be engineered to house small-medium size city populations instead – and in only decades rather than centuries or millennia (will we survive that long)?

Humans (i.e. nano/genetic-augmented not "baseline") will become extraterrestrials, I imagine, once our machines have both sufficient intelligence and technological capability to mega-engineer heavily shielded, solar & fusion-powered (O'Neill / McKendree cylinder) space habitats from space-based resources & raw materials. Maybe (conservatively guesstimating) sometime during the latter half of the 22nd century. :nerd:

I think it would be extremely extraordinary if life existed only on Earth. — baker

The Bioshock paradox.

1. It would be shocking if life existed only on Earth
2. It would also be shocking to find life somewhere other than Earth

Humans (i.e. nano/genetic-augmented not "baseline") will become extraterrestrials, I imagine, once our machines have both sufficient intelligence and technological capability to mega-engineer heavily shielded, solar & fusion-powered (O'Neill / McKendree cylinder) space habitats from space-based resources & raw materials. Maybe (conservatively guesstimating) sometime during the latter half of the 22nd century. — 180 Proof

UK Royal Astronomer, Sir Martin Rees and I seem to be on the same page (more or less):

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/30/space-billionaires-cosmic-earth-elon-musk-jeff-bezos

From which:

Musk and my late colleague Stephen Hawking envisaged that the first “settlers” on Mars would be followed by literally millions of others. But this is a dangerous delusion. Coping with the climate crisis is a doddle compared to terraforming Mars. Nowhere in our solar system offers an environment even as clement as the top of Everest. There will be no “planet B” for most of us. But I still want to cheer on those pioneer “Martians” because they will have a pivotal role in shaping what happens in the 22nd century and beyond.

This is because the pioneer settlers – ill-adapted to their new habitats – will have a more compelling incentive than those of us on Earth to literally redesign themselves. They’ll harness the super-powerful genetic and cyborg technologies that will be developed in coming decades. These techniques will be, one hopes, heavily regulated on Earth – but those on Mars will be far beyond the clutches of the regulators. We should wish them luck in modifying their progeny to adapt to alien environments. This might be the first step towards divergence into a new species.

Man that gives me the chills. The idea of man becoming his own creator, altering the genetic code so as to 'survive'. I think it's a really dangerous delusion. Here's the one myth that makes sense: Spaceship Earth. We have a vehicle that could potentially support billions of people for perhaps tens of millions of years. It's dangerously over-heated and facing severe resource depletion. Preserving it is the only form of interstellar survival worth betting on in my view. Rees' idea is science fiction.

potentially support — Wayfarer

What about life needs supporting anyways? We haven’t even figured that out and you rush to the assumption we should. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness? Mowing the lawn? Brushing your teeth? Shoving food in mouth? Reading about philosophy? Support all the sum activities of the circular logic of what we do?

What about life needs supporting anyways? — schopenhauer1

Just because you can't see any reason for existence doesn't mean that there isn't one.

Spaceship Earth — Wayfarer

:up:

I've always been drawn to that idea. I even went so far as to conjecture that we're going to rendezvous with a habitable planet in (say) another 10k to 20k years if all goes well. Unfortunately, there seems to be no evidence for my conjecture - the solar system seems to be adrift in the void with no particular travel plan deducible from its trajectory.



Remember how the Voyager spaceship was launched when a special planetary alignment was happening (every 176 years). We need to do the same but this time with a star that has an earth-like, habitable planet in orbit around it.

Just because you can't see any reason for existence doesn't mean that there isn't one. — Wayfarer

:mask:

We take it back home to Earth and see if it attacks us like Covid :rofl:

If life is found, the first question will be whether it is directly related to life on earth. It's possible life originated on Mars, and came here via meteorite. Or it could have an extra-solar origin, came to both Earth and Mars from that source.