zeo1234 wrote:In fact matter isn't even really solid, we're all composed of energy fields that interact and give the illusion of solidness.
What's an "energy field"?
The Replicators can also use any form of matter to make anything else, it's just more efficient to turn things into the same, like taking food and just re-arranging the molecules to a cooked state. Versus taking something totally unrelated and altering it's atomic structure to become food, etc.
And how is the re-arranging accomplished? A microwave oven is inducing molecular vibrations by electromagnetic means; and molecular vibrations ARE heat, by definition. The treatment is homogeneous, not detailed. That's one thing; but if you're talking about detailed work of taking an atom of this and an atom of that, and bringing them together --when not *forcibly* bringing them together--, you're talking about detailed, remote manipulations at atomic scale that would take years for a hamburger more tasteless than McDonald's, if you did a million such atomic manipulations per second, if it were possible in the first place without any kind of manipulators.
Also the more complex the final object the longer it'll take to make and the more energy it will take to create it.
Make that "will never be made".
The chances of another world producing intelligent life is about the same as winning the lottery, low but hardly impossible and considering how people have won the lottery a pretty high chance. All that really is required is that no mass extinctions occur long enough for intelligent life to have a chance to develop.
Pure speculation. This is the 50 million dollar question in exobiology.
It is the natural course of evolution that all life evolves towards more complex forms.
Not even necessarily so. Evolution is mere adaptation to survive. The adaptations can go up or down in the scale of complexity. Sometimes organisms evolve by simplifying themselves, and shedding like 90% of their genetic material all at once.
So developing intelligence is only a matter of time.
We've only got one case study, --our own planet--; and that's not enough to extrapolate. You may be right or you may be wrong; but either way, you're jumping to conclusions.
And since NASA and the military are already working on shield and cloaking technology I wouldn't go so far as go them magictech.
Let me guess you've read this in Popular Science. Ever since I was a kid, Popular Science (and Popular Mechanics) have been putting out a continuous stream of sensationalist crap, none of which has ever materialized. And every article they try to back it up with NASA this or DARPA that... research. In truth, NASA will fund all kinds of crazy research, their philosophy being that among all the crazy ideas there might be a gem hiding. But to say that NASA is investigating something is as meaningless a statement as you can get, by the same token.
NASA for example has already had some success in creating a plasma based energy shield that may one day protect astronauts from radiation and micro-meteorites, etc.
Just radiation; not micrometeorites.
And of course it's just a matter of pumping enough power into the system after that to protect against actual weapons.
What kind of power? What kind of weapons? If we're talking about charged particles, that's one thing, as their charge is their handle: A magnetic field can cause their motion to curve. But particles and objects without electric charge would be immune to any kind of EM field. And so would be light-based weapons, such as lasers, whose only response to an EM field would be to rotate polarization.
DARPA is also working on light bending technology, including ones based on energy fields.
There's
no such thing as "energy fields". That's a term borrowed from would-be sci-fi writers who don't have the first clue in the sciences. The term doesn't exist in physics, and is entirely meaningless; so, wherever you read that, know that they are pulling that out of a dark place. There are no fields of any kind known to bend light, except gravity, and only indirectly, by deforming space, rather than by excerting a force on the photons.
As well as other cool things like they just figured out how to reverse the Casimir effect, which means they can make magnetic fields repulse instead of attract. So tractor and repulsor beams are technically possible.
Got a link?
Even Replicators are being created, they can't of course alter molecular structures or anything like that but they are building machines that can take raw materials and use it to create anything you want through the computer.
I don't even understand this statement.
Like using a printer to create circuit boards, or a prototyping machine that will create an actual physical cast of an object created in CAD. And they are even making a machine that will automatically process food and give you a meal. So its not like such technology is totally impossible, just beyond our present capabilities.
If you're talking about printers that print in 3D, that's not rocket science; just a matter of getting some powder to stick together and stuff. It lends no credibility whatsoever to remote chemical synthesis.
Remember, Privateer, WC, etc is basically a sci-fi and the basic tenants of a sci-fi is that it has to be based on actual science.
Completely untrue. First of all, the Origin people didn't care at all about actual science, if we are to judge by the sizes and distances of planets, and having absurdities like a maximum speed in space. William Forstchen obviously gave much more of a damn, and in his novels he tries to repair and retcon the absurdities in WC, but he could only do so much...
Secondly, what you say, namely "the basic tenants of a sci-fi is that it has to be based on actual science" is the biggest lie I've heard in a long, long time. There's only a minuscule community of writers within the world of sci-fi that belive in upholding scientific plausibility. Arthur C. Clarke foremost among them. But even some authors that pretend to be "Hard Sci-Fi", like Robinson, are imposters.
Though of course they can stretch things, like gate system, etc are things we have theorized but have no proof if possible yet. But that doesn't mean everything is magictech.
Everything is not magitech; just what is.
Otherwise we'd be playing a fantasy game and dealing with Space Dragons and such.
Luckily it doesn't go that far, but pretty almost.