speicies and visual ranges

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speicies and visual ranges

Post by Tarran »

what are the visual ranges of the various races/factions?
I know humans (present day) fall within 400 to 700 nm (roughly)
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Post by jared_cormier »

nm?---you mean cm, right?
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Post by klauss »

No, he probably means nm - an alternative to armstrongs. For wavelength ranges (so... he's talking about the visible spectrum).
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Post by energyman76b »

Hi,

I never heard of armstrongs, only ångström, did you mean that?

For light wavelenght, nm is a very common unit.
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Post by klauss »

Yes, exactly that - :lol: , I meant <<exactly>> that, except without the accents - angstroms - I don't know why I wrote it like I did...
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Post by energyman76b »

It is Lance Armstrong's fault.

In the media all the time - and sounding so much like it, there is no way to keep them apart after some time ;)
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Post by Oblivion »

I dont think anyone should worry about those a lot. :) Radar is what all the species rely on (probably not modern RADAR, something high-tech probably).

I noticed something though, ALL the species I've come across that are described have Eyes. It may not be for light, but it just seems strange. There are other ways for an organism to detect its surroundings. Like Spider-Sense for example. Or Super Psycho Detection Power!. Or The Sixth Sense (I see Dead Rlaans...) :lol: just kidding around, guys.
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Post by energyman76b »

Hi,

'spider sense' which 'spider sense'? that they can feel light vibrations?


Eyes are a smart solution if you are living in a world with a lot of electro-magnetic waves (called light), it is long ranged, the resolution can be cranked up us much as needed and it is pretty fast.

It is always good to know where your enemy is, what he is doing and if he is coming closer before he knows the same about you and 'seeing' helps a lot ;)

Name one multi-cellular animal that lives in the sunlight and does not have any light receptors? I can't remember one. Even snails have eyes.
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Post by Halleck »

Who says that creatures like rlaan evolved on a light-bathed world? If they evolved in caves or on the dark side of a planet, they might rely more heavily on sonar or a method of sensory detection that doesn't exist in creatures from earth.
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Post by loki1950 »

non visual sensors how bout the lateral line in fishes that detect vibration very handy in low light.

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Post by Oblivion »

"Spider-sense", I meant the one that your friendly neighborhood spiderman has. lol :lol:

You're right about eyes, though. I can't think of one multicellular animal LIVING under sunlight without eyes. Yet, that may be because they all belong to the animal kingdom, which means everyone's related, so there is always the predilection of evolving to see light. We can't really imagine accurately the evolutionary paths alien organisms have taken on other ecosystems, so all of them having eyes are a bit starnge. Anyway, just found out that the Uln can see through a higher color spectra than us. :)

Like bees or butterflies that can see UV. How about bats, and dolphins, etc with echolocation? Lots of ways to see things. :)
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Post by Halleck »

Indeed. We have no reason to believe that other life-forms will even be made of cells, or carbon-based.

One of the greatest fallacies of popular exobiology (in my opinion) is the notion that the earth was "perfect" for the evolution of life... even that the universe itself was perfect.

What rubbish! Life evolved to meet the conditions on earth. Narrow-minded folks such as these seem to think that the "life" we know on earth is the only kind of "life" that can exist.

For this reason, I generally think of drake's equation as a highly conservative estimate... it factors in earthlike planets, but would be much larger if we had someway of knowing how many life-capable (but non-earthlike) planets there are out there.
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Post by Oblivion »

:D absolutely. Earth lifeforms are overrated.

"Perfection" is something we can't even begin to imagine. I apologize if this might hurt those still with beliefs out there... Man is supposed to be the image of God. :roll: I mean, humans have the arrogance to equate their form to the one chosen by an (THE?) ultimate being. kinda reminds me of the Lightbearers. :lol:

And yes, though I don't believe in UFO's actually "visiting" us poor earthlings, I do believe that there are more life-supporting planets out there than drake's estimate. Similarity to Earth and the Solar System is not really THE criteria for looking for life. God only knows what forms, aliens have taken on their planets (even deep space, asteroids, stars?!! dark matter??!!!!). We could already have contacted our first truly alien organism and not know it (it might be that their homeworld is stuck on one of the tires of the lunar rover. :lol: ). Aliens would differ not only in size, shape, interaction with the environment, but even probably with how they deal with space-time. How would you like to meet an alien that has a different time perception? I mean aliens who would look ultra-fast/sloooow to us; not knowing that to them, we look as equally distorted. :)

VS would probably be unplayable if we tried to implement that kind of realism. :lol: The Confeds would be fighting matchbox-sized armadas of the Rlaans while still trying to determine if the glob of space-turd they found was trying to communicate with them or not. haha :lol:
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Post by klauss »

May I remind you that Drake's equation was an estimate of the possibility of contact?

It factored out dissimilar species correctly enough, by assuming that any too different species would be unlikely to make contact - like you're going to make "intelligent contact" with a dust cloud on another planet... right...
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

OT:
May I also remind folks we have quite a few different planets and moons, IN our Solar System, and that although we haven't explored them all personally, so far there's little evidence of life in any planet except our own. If life were so versatile, we should have seen it, or its secondary effects (e.g.: atmospheric composition anomalies, seasonal color changes, etc.), around the corner, already. From what we can extrapolate, assumptions about life's dependence on liquid water might just be a correct assumption. Furtheremore, and about there being 10's of thousands of advanced civilizations in our galaxy, as some propose, the question remains, where are they? Wouldn't some of them have reached our parts by now? Wouldn't we find derelicts at places, as a tell-tale of their passing by, earlier? For all we can tell, we might be more the exception than the rule, in this little planet. The only other plausible answer is that there might be tons of life AND intelligent life, out there, but that there IS no solution to be found for FTL travel, and so all these civilizations might be fatefully isolated (and perhaps radio is NOT a common invention, even among otherwise advanced civ's).
One way or another, we seem to be very unique.
/OT
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Post by Halleck »

That's right klauss, thanks for reminding me. Still, I don't see why we should rule out non-earthlike planets entirely... what about hypothetical methane-breathers like the aera? etc.

Chuck: there are two factors that can vastly limit our perception of other civilizations.
1. The longevity of such civilizations. We do not know how long the average civilization lasts.
2. The radio presence of those civilizations. We do not know if those civilizations will even use radio broadcasting.

In a decade or so, the earth is going to (if I understand correctly) become relatively silent on radio frequencies as broadcasting equipment is phased out and replaced by high-speed lines and focused satellite communications. A highly advanced civilization may have no need for radio broadcasting, thus evading our current SETI techniques.

The FTL issue is also an important point. UFO's may not be *zipping by* because there is no way for them to, and the only way to cross astronomical distances is by way of generation ships.

Finally... what if there is life that we are "unable to contact" because of vast differences, as mentioned earlier? If they have 'been by' our backwater region of the galaxy, we may not have even been able to percieve them.
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Post by Sunfire »

Halleck wrote: and the only way to cross astronomical distances is by way of generation ships.
wouldnt it be interesting if the first contact with ailen life was a colony ship sent to colonize earth? after generation upon generation of spaceflight, they probably wouldnt just turn around and go home... if humans had the first colony ships... i shudder for the consequenses if european colonization of the new world is any example...
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Post by Oblivion »

@Halleck I think the Rlaan were the methane breathers.

maybe SETI wasn't really a failure. :) :) What if the radio "noise" they were recieving was actually part of an extremely long-winded alien greeting. haha.

@chuck The universe is VAST. and what parts we can see of it is actually the past. Everytime we look up at the night sky, we are seeing back into millions (billions(?)) of years of time. Light travels at the speed of light, even the sun we see is actually the image of the sun minutes (seconds(?) don't know on exact value)) ago. So, maybe, the whole Orion constellation has actually been converted to a network of Supergalacticmarkets a few thousands of years ago, though we still can't see it for millenia. Anyway, I wouldn't want to think of an EMPTY universe. :wink:

@klauss Yeah. Sorry. :wink:

@sunfire European colonizers (more specifically Spanish conquistadores - :) I don't have any ill feelings to modern mainland espanoles) were quite brutal enough with it. :wink: I don't think alien colonizers will be invading Earth soon. They had the chance for 4 billion or so years of Earth's existance. :) In VS, humans did discover a few unfortunate pre-space alien civilizations. The Mishtali had better chances, as they had been discovered by people as crazy as they were. The Dgn/Shmrn and the Klk'k did go through an Invasion of the Humans scenario though. tsk tsk :D
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Post by Halleck »

Sunfire wrote:
Halleck wrote: and the only way to cross astronomical distances is by way of generation ships.
wouldnt it be interesting if the first contact with ailen life was a colony ship sent to colonize earth? after generation upon generation of spaceflight, they probably wouldnt just turn around and go home... if humans had the first colony ships... i shudder for the consequenses if european colonization of the new world is any example...
If I recall, one of Harry Turtledove's series (Colonization I think) deals with this eventuality.
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Post by DancesWithProtons »

Halleck said:
If I recall, one of Harry Turtledove's series (Colonization I think) deals with this eventuality.
I believe this was his WorldWar series, set during WWII when aliens, who along with everyone else they have encountered progress very slowly, come to invade an earth they believe to have men on horseback carrying spears. They are a little surprised to find their information wrong after travelling so long.

Oblivion said:
though I don't believe in UFO's actually "visiting" us poor earthlings
How do we know they aren't? UFO's have been documented long before they became a part of the cultural lexicon, and the current sightings are caught on tape and witnessed by thousands of people (google Mexico City, UFO's). It is theorized that, like the infamous "Philadelphia Experiment" which sought to gain radar and physical invisibility, they use basically a cloaking device to slip in and out which they do fairly frequently. As for why they haven't made public contact, two words: Prime Directive.

Personally I believe they have bases here, keeping an eye on the up-and-coming spacers and using our planet as a stopover/fuelling point. The only real question I have is if they are in contact with our leaders <<shudder>> and what their intentions for us are. Do they plan on welcoming us into the galactic community or are we just being groomed for high-tech slavery?

As for FTL travel, I heard a scientist recently claim that we would have it within a hundred years, maybe less. With what we understand of physics at the present time and the rate of new discoveries, anybody who thinks something is "impossible" is simply not looking far enough ahead with an open enough mind. What do you think Lincoln would have thought of a computer or television? What about someone in the middle ages seeing an airplane? I believe it was Arthur C. Clark that stated that a sufficiently advanced technology was indistinguishable from magic.

There's really nothing to stop our level of advancement. Unless we blow ourselves back to the middle ages of course.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Oblivion wrote:@chuck The universe is VAST. and what parts we can see of it is actually the past. Everytime we look up at the night sky, we are seeing back into millions (billions(?)) of years of time. Light travels at the speed of light, even the sun we see is actually the image of the sun minutes (seconds(?) don't know on exact value)) ago. So, maybe, the whole Orion constellation has actually been converted to a network of Supergalacticmarkets a few thousands of years ago, though we still can't see it for millenia.
Most of what we can see with the naked eye is well within a million light years, though; and a million years is a blink of an eye in geological times. In any case, let's just take our immediate neighborhood in this galaxy, say the nearest 50,000 stars are probably within a radius of a thousand light years. If there were a number of civilizations among this small region, it would be really odd if they just happened to set up their markets and industry just in the last 1000 years, just so that we just missed the fact.
Nope. If there were many civilizations, AND ... either eventually discover radio or FTL, we should have been contacted already; and not just by the proverbial UFO's, but by many civilizations, with different types of ships. None of that is the case, and therefore the conclusion is that a) FTL is never invented, therefore probably unattainable AND that no civilizations out there ever invent radio, or don't care to make contact with other civs, or, more likely the case, they don't exist in the first place.
Anyway, I wouldn't want to think of an EMPTY universe. :wink:
Well, you just hit a nail: You don't want an EMPTY universe; and this is pretty common among SETI enthusiasts: They *want* to believe we're not alone, and do so in spite of mounting evidence to the contrary (SETI itself).
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Post by Halleck »

You're still making an awful lot of assumptions. What if, for instance, the average lifetime of a civilization turns out to be about 3,000 years? Doubtful we'd ever coexist with another one, but that wouldn't mean that extraterrestrial intelligence was "impossible", just impossible for us to detect.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

I'd say, then, if the average lifetime of a civ is so short, then their existence (or lack of) is irrelevant, and intelligence is irrelevant too. It feels to me like it would be pretty funny if intelligent life was proven to be so successful at arising, but sucked so much at making it past the 3k year mark, such that it never manages to meet its own success stories across a few stars. Not impossible, but just funny. Frankly, scientific duty calls, and I must, for the moment, accept the simplest explanation satisfying the available evidence, and that is that we're alone. People were very enthused with Drake's equation, at one time, but we've now scanned like 70% of the sky with pretty sensitive equipment and the biggest supercomputer ever assembled (SETI@Home), and the result, so far is ***NEGATIVE***. Now, it's true we wouldn't probably catch their cell phones. The seti project at berkely started off with a much more modest goal: Simply to detect ***INTENTIONAL*** transmissions beamed at us. And we've not seen such. I'd say the experiment is already conclusive about that, at least: Nobody out there within a few hundreds of light years is seriously trying to contact us by radio. Scratch that one out.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

There's something weird, contradictory, about the way we go about "aliens" in general. For like 30 years, aliens were depicted in fiction as invaders, predators, exploiters, body snatchers, government infiltrators, co-conspirators...
Then, suddenly the pendulum swang the other way, and they became our creators, ancestors, custodians, the only ones capable and willing to save us from ourselves, friendly, cute, and the personal coaches of Jesus Christ.

That's the part I liked about the movie Independance Day, the demonstrators on the roof of a building, welcoming the the aliens, and getting laser fried... I felt they deserved it ... :)

I'm writing this to clarify a subtle point: I said I believe we're alone. I don't believe this firmly, though; more like "chances are...". I firmly believe that chances are we're alone, tho ;-) But I won't bet past 10:1, if you know what I mean.

But what I find is that the more people seem faithful to the idea of intelligent life 'out there', the more skeptical they really are about it, deep inside, "subconsciously" you might say; and it shows...

I was reading a website, the other time, just following links off some Seti project or other (I used to be really into SETI@Home, not just upgrading my computer often just to process more units, but I used to spend time at the forums at Berkeley, discussing these subjects). So I found this webpage that described some school program, whereby students from schools in different countries, Russia and Europe mostly, would spend time thinking about how to device a message to send out to possible intelligent recipients; --would spend the whole course devising and perfecting a message, then they'd travel together to some radiotelescope site, at the end of the course, from which their carefully crafted message would be sent in some direction in the sky, or several, at maximum power.

Very nice. Now, what does that tell you?

It tells me that the teachers and organizers don't really believe any aliens exist that are listening, at all.
Why?
Because if they had the faintest shadow of a doubt about it, they would not gamble the future of humanity by advertising our position to a possibly hostile race, no matter how small the probability. Now, would they?

Can't help it, even as I think of the probability of intelligent life out there next to nil; I can't help feeling that's probably the most irresponsible act perpetrated in all of human history; and done just like that, like an "educational diversion", like "Hey, let's show them kids how to be really, really, ***REALLY*** irresponsible... yeah!"

Let's do the actuarian style math: If you ask me, I'd say the probability of an intelligent race out there is one in a thousand. Subjectively speaking. Presumably those teachers think the probability is higher. Now, for lack of past statistics, let's assume the probability of them being friendly or hostile is 50-50. That's one chance in 2000 for trouble? Multiply that by our 6 billion population, and it represents a 50-50 gamble of death or worse for 3 million innocent people, just for sake of kids having fun with a radiotelescope...

Just the fact that something like that can be organized by a bunch of stupid teachers, and needs no risk evaluation, nor government agency approval, proves to me that the vast mayority of us don't believe at all there's the slightest chance of intelligent life out there; yet so many people say they do believe so...
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Post by Halleck »

Don't forget that we've been pumping transmissions into the stratosphere for the past 50 years or so... one tiny message won't make an ounce of difference (unless they were broadcasting at that "silent" frequency.)

Still... where are you getting your "numbers" from? We know so damn little about what kind of other life there might be... saying that there is a 50/50 chance of them being hostile is just silly. Who knows if they will even care? Who knows if they will be capable of caring? Who knows if they can even percieve us, and if we can percieve them?

I think most of the speculation (and debate) about this is futile. I can't prove to you that intelligent life exists and you can't prove to me that it doesn't. Still... the thought of being the only intelligent beings in the galaxy seems awful geocentric to me. Just because we haven't found any yet doesn't mean we never will. Maybe we're not looking in the right places... or in the right way. And I think it's pretty clear that they're not trying to get our attention. Maybe they share your fears. :P
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