WELL GUYS THE COMPLEXITY OF A BACTERIUM IS ROUGHLY EQUAL TO _FOUR MILLION_ MEN ON UNICYCLES THROWING DONUTS IN THE AIR AND ATTEMPTING TO CATCH THEM IN THEIR MOUTHS

you're pulling all of these figures out of your ass just stop

No; I'm not; these figures are very much correct and they come from mainstream science publications.

And as far as the idea of our detection methods being faulty or our definition of life being narrow, what I, or anyone else, for that matter, has said has absolutely nothing to do with detecting planets; even if we assume that every star in the galaxy has eight planets, we still are left with the probability of one life-supporting planet for every few hundred galaxies. Our definition of life is perhaps narrow, but it is not by any means narrow-minded; it is chemically quite impossible for life to arise based on any element other than carbon, and carbon, in its turn, has its own set of demands that must be met if life is to arise. Thus leading us to our dillemma of the multitude of requirements for a planet to support life.

Those are purely fictional.

I always find these debates funny because at this point of time we cannot do such things and like clockwork you will get someone that basically says "It will never happen". Right now it is incredible ignorant to say that the possibilities of human expansion into the galaxy is impossible. Two hundred years ago if you told a "learned" individual or a scientist that we would be flying in Air planes and have landed on the moon the individual would have thought you were the dumbest man alive...

The human expansion will be as all things slow (yet fast in tech development), ugly, and a lot of people will die. The colonization of the solar system will rise to planets declaring independence from their former patrons and from their to some messy wars. The funny part is when we colonize the planets will earth be united or will it be divided? As such events will probably lead to a united earth when say the populace of Mars declares independence from their patron. What will be interesting is to see what type of political structures and societies could emerge from such movements.

The worst part of the exodus and a more solar system wide colonization will be the wars that will brew. The Earth is running out of resources and in the such a situation we might find that by that time the main resource if that this planet could use for any type of trade is food and water. Both sides now will be far more aggressive with eachother because the mindset will be different. Whatever happens it will definately be interesting times. What we might see is Neo-Fuedalism and onething i can see is whoever is foolish enough to be the colonists of say Mars will probably live like dogs.

If there is an alien civilization out there we better hope they aren't more powerful then us. Humanity might fool itself into the ideals that we are civilized and "Benificent" but in a war between two different species the idea that the life is equal will be thrown out the window. We better hope that they aren't really powerful as they may view us like we view an infestation of Roaches....

Sources please, or we assume you're pulling them out of your ass.

The majority of my figures come from the publications of various universities such as Princeton, MIT, Cambridge, etc.

And as far as Heritor goes, that is preposterous; the idea of flight was absurd to the natural philosophers of the eighteenth and nineteenth century because it was just that: absurd. The idea was not mathematically impossible, simply technologically. As it is, we have twenty billion years left to get two and two to make seven...

Granted colleges don't like wikipedia used as a reference since the information can be unreliable but I found this to be fair. Tachyons are not FACT but it can not fully be said they don't exist.

WWW Link

Used in sci-fi a lot because it allows writers to have a plausible explanation to do the impossible(or simply the improbable).
So tachyons can be a believable but fictional way to travel the speed of light in like how platitudes are believable but empty used to get liberals elected.

"Furthermore, an extremely conservative estimate of the probability of life-supporting planets coming into being comes out to be one over a one with fifteen zeroes behind it."

There's when you said "estimate", PraetorFenix.

Thank you for clarifying, but as I said, that is an extremely low estimate, and it is most likely far less common than that!

I hate to come off as gruff, but I'm still not 100% convinced. I just think that the nature of the unverse should be discovered by exploration and experimentation, not formulas and equations.

Like in the world of Halo, there might are various faction that want to be free and have there own type of government like the communist and fascist in Halo. Plus by the time we start colonizing other worlds it will occur because, Earth as become over populated. Like now there are 6 billion us they say in the next 10 years there will be close to 10 bilion, so if your a Halo fan you know the story

Well, since exploration and experimentation ain't happening, the best we can do is calculate.

The question of space wars and future politicsd will depend on if earth and its nations or unitfied Earth that founded the colonies either in our own solar system on moons mars and the astroid belt try to exert control over the colonies like england did with the 13 colonies during the 1700's. If it does then a nuclear appocalys, not sure how to spell it, will likely rain down on earth unless and defense shield, not nessearily an energy one, is in place. If a defense shield is in place a blood war will ensue and in the end much will be lost but the farther away the colony is the more likely it will be free is. In short history will repaet its self on a grander scale than ever before.

If we get that far. There will be another layer of government.one per planetary system. IE earth/moon. One for the whole system.

The planetary one covers the planet and moons. The solar system one would cover the solar system and not care about the planets. Sort of like the us system of government.


Remember there will free floating bases as well. Don't know if these will be a single unit or multiple or a combination of the two.