Meeting Aliens

Recently, former president Barack Obama said on a podcast he believes there are aliens but he's never met them.

And that got me thinking about what might happen if we ever meet aliens.

In a universe as big as ours (the observable universe is at least 93 billion light-years in diameter, likely bigger, and maybe infinite), with about 2 trillion galaxies (at least), there almost has to be aliens somewhere. The problem is distance and traveling between star systems or even galaxies. The energy requirements to get a ship up to close to the speed of light are huge. To accelerate a small ship to 99% the speed of light would require all the remaining fossil fuels on Earth (4x10^22 or 40 sextillion joules or 40 zettajoules). And at 99% the speed of light, it would still take a little more than four years (Earth time) to get to the nearest star. Plus you'd have to slow down using the same amount of energy it took you to accelerate. And where is that energy going to come from at the back end of the trip?

If you accelerated your ship at one g (9.2 m/s/s; the acceleration of gravity on Earth), accelerated halfway to the nearest star, then decelerated the rest of the way to have no velocity relative to the star, it would take 5 years and 7 months Earth time to get to the nearest star but only 3 years and 5 and a half months ship time due to time dilation. But more energy than we have to spare.

And, as far as we know, nothing can go faster than the speed of light. As you get closer to the speed of light, the energy requirements asymptotically approaches infinity. 

Why would aliens use all that energy to come to Earth and not say "hello" but kidnap rednecks to probe.

Now maybe the aliens have a warp core or hyperspace shunt or can manipulate wormholes or something we can't even imagine to travel faster than light and the energy requirements aren't brutal or they have technology to produce the energy needed. So maybe they will drop by someday.

Humans (modern humans) have been around on this planet maybe 300,000 years. The earliest human civilizations started just about 6,000 years ago. But the universe is 3.8 billion years old. It would be no trick (and surprising if not) for an alien species to be millions years ahead of us technologically. We might be a bug on the windshield of the universe to them. 

And in human history, when a more technological society meets a less advance society,  the outcome is almost invariably catastrophic for the less advanced group, often resulting in rapid societal collapse, mass mortality, and the destruction of cultural knowledge. And we'd be the less advanced group in this case.

So meeting aliens may not be good for us. Likely they wouldn't be malevolent (likely) and maybe they know how not to destroy other civilizations. Maybe.

But the odds of meeting them at all are vanishingly slim.

What do you think? Have we met aliens already? Or are we likely not to meet them. Let me know in the comments below.

Lily's Day

 Lily is our cat. She's lived with us since September, 2017. In that time she's developed habits in her life here.

Her day (as far as we know) starts about 7am when she scratches on our bedroom door. Sometimes I hear her scratch as early as 5am but I ignore her and go back to sleep because if I let her in, she won't let me go back to sleep by lying on the bed where I sleep.

I get up and let her in the room. She makes this cute almost-purring sound as she comes through the door as if to say "It's about time." She used to jump up on the foot of the bed and curl up. But now she goes and lies down next to my wife's head and scratches the sheet. When my wife wakes up, Lily then goes to the foot of the bed and stays there as long as she wants, which usually ends before we're both out of the shower. Sometimes she hides under the bed where she knows we can't get her. Most the time she leaves on her own. 

She gets her morning meal once we get downstairs in the kitchen. 

She gets her afternoon meal later if she finishes her breakfast. Some days she doesn't seem very interested in eating. Some days she acts as if we starve her.

Then she usually sleeps most of the day. I know cats sleep a lot but I wonder what she does at night. Once recently I got up at 5am for a medical procedure and she was awake and acted surprised to see me.

She has a favorite chair with a blanket on it to sleep in and if not there, she like to sleep on her favorite blanket on the couch. She doesn't seem to like to sleep on leather and most of our furniture is leather. Also, on the couch, she likes to sleep on the crack between cushions on her blanket (see picture above).

Around 6pm she wanders into the family room where I'll be watching the news. She'll jump up beside me on the loveseat and curl up. I'm the only one in the family she'll do that with. 

If she's eaten her afternoon meal, she gets treats. But she has to earn them with nose boops. My finger touches her nose. She wants this and will grab my hand to pull it down to her nose. She probably wants it because she so desperately wants treats. 

She'll do that for a while and then maybe she gets bored. She'll jump down and move to the couch or her bed and sleep some more. 

The last thing in her day is "momma time." This is when, after I go to bed, she and momma sit on the loveseat and momma feeds her snacks. This is very important to Lily. In fact, if I don't go to bed on time (staying up to watch a late football game, perhaps), she'll glare at me.

When I do go to bed (late or not), she'll go upstairs to the bedroom. My wife will get ready for bed, too, even though she goes to bed after I do. Lily will hang around, sometimes wanting scritches on her back from me. But she always leaves with momma for their time. Momma time ends when one of them (usually Lily) falls asleep.

And that is Lily's day.

Do you have an animal that has a routine? Let me know in the comments below.

Simple Suspension Bridge

When I lived in Idaho Falls, Idaho in the 1960s (yes, I'm that old), I remember that there was a simple suspension bridge over the Snake River that led to an island. It looked a little like the one in the photo except there wasn't any netting. The bridge deck was wooden and I remember ropes or cables you could hang on to. There was very little to keep you from falling into the swift, cold river. Sometimes we tried to make it swing back and forth. My mother didn't like that.

Other times, if the river was running high (such as in the spring), the bridge deck would be covered in water. I don't remember if that stopped us. Maybe depending on the depth of the water. 

The last time I was in Idaho Falls (don't ask me when that was; I don't remember), the bridge was replaced by a concrete structure. And I was kind of disappointed because that was denying the children of the city that fun suspension bridge. 

There probably isn't any bridges such as that one anywhere in the United States anymore. I'd be surprised if there were. 

Do you know of any simple suspension bridges in the U.S.? Have you ever been over one? Let me know in the comments below.

Accountants versus Engineers

2006 Chrysler 300C

 The reason for a private company to exist is to create value/wealth for its owners. Those owners might be a mom and pop owning a small store or a huge company with millions of shareholders/owners. 

Car companies are no exception. They want to make as much money as possible to increase shareholder value. They have to do that by making cars people want to buy. But they have to make the cars cheaply enough to make a profit. And there's all sorts of regulations requiring more expense which is passed on to the buyer. 

So the company wants to make the car as cheaply as possible. With cars you get what you pay for. The cheaper the car the less amenities it will have.

I had a 2006 Chrysler 300C. It had the 5.7 liter HEMI V8 making 340 horsepower and 390 pound-feet of torque (looked a lot like the one pictured). It was also a big, heavy car. With that engine I could get going fast very quickly for a car its size. I really enjoyed that car. Except one thing. I think the accountants won over the engineers who designed it on the matter of brakes. For a big, heavy car you need really good brakes and the 300C had barely adequate brakes. Scared myself sometimes trying to stop that car. 

At the time, Chrysler was owned by Mercedes. The 300 was built with some Mercedes components but I doubt even Mercedes engineers would have put such bad brakes on that car. 

Other examples of accountants winning include the latest Corvette. While mechanically it is apparently brilliant, I've read complaints about a "Malibu interior" on a car that can cost close to $200,000 for the top models (base models are still about $70,000). Also, I've seen videos of people showing the dash bubbling on relatively new Corvettes. Not good!

Do you know of any instances where the accountants won over the engineers? It doesn't have to be in cars. Let me know in the comments below.