Favorite intellectual discussions

Well...as a S/F fan, I had always 'wanted' man to work it out...but I really doubt it will ever happen.
When I was 17.....that was 1971...I had just finished secondary [high] school and was about to start changing the world as an Architecture student....keeping a close eye on whether I'd be conscripted to Vietnam or not.
My intellectual discussions revolved around which school's girls wore the shortest mini skirts.
If anyone is interested, it was Niddrie High School....

Jafo: Did we go to the same school? because I have a degree in short skirts!!(BA Hons.) My intellect finds it hard to get past this theory...:
If things moved at the speed of light, would they blow those short skirts up as they went past?
I am also happy to say that I have never stopped studying my chosen subject!

Ah, BoXXi, fellow member of the Randy Old Men's club...

Intellectual discussions? Me? Anyway, if "we" don't mess up and kill humanity, we'll certainly go beyond that "limit", only to find another one deemed to be the absolute limit.

And it's too cold here so we can only enjoy mini-skirts during the few sunny summer days we have. The rest of the time, we just dream about it.

crae when you wear your mini skirts and it's cold all you have to do is put on some leg warmers, that's all!

Leg warmers?, I haven't seen them since "Fame"!!. lol.

hehe BoXXi
well I'm not into dress to impress as you can tell... hehe

haha Oops

Buncha Pervs!

Yeah, right, China....
/me leans over to check out her icon's cleavage...

Um...was this supposed to be about 'intellectual discussions'?

/me BoXXi lowers the tone of the thread again.........Sorry

hey....jafo....my partner viv went to Niddrie High School

Jafo, I grew up with much the same concerns about Uncle Sam helping to broaden my horizons by sending me to SE Asia. (BTW, did you hear that Country Joe McDonald is being sued for stealing the music to the Fish Cheer from some Jazz song? And its 1,2,3 what are fighting for..But I digress.) I was a big S/F fan as well, and my intellectual discussions centered on future social interactions. It seemed a given that man would go faster than light and travel to other stars. But what would life be LIKE when we got there?
I was big into Robert Heinlein then. Short story "Jerry was a man." Novel's like "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress."

Supposedly there were particles called 'tachyons' that could exceed the speed of light (thus they were travelling backwards in time). Although they were theoretical their existence would break the absolute reign of 186k miles per second. The big problem is the 'time' and 'mass' question. If all you want to do is cover great distances, exceeding the speed of light creates more problems than it solves.

At this point I think science has a pretty good chance of working with the structure of the universe with 'super string theory'. The multi-dimensional models of string theory's space-time are not limited to realms where light-speed is an outer boundary as regards distance. I think that a method of bending space with gravity will ultimately prove to be a more efficient way to cover interstellar distances. If you want to go to Rigel, you bend space enough that Rigel is right next to where you are. Doing this still conforms to Einstein's rules, it just requires a bit of technology we haven't quite figured out yet.

I always thought leg warmers were a very sexy look.... ;]

yep, dave.. this is the most popular sf theory, and probably the most likely for how it eventually happens. the thing i really wonder about is how it will end up being implemented :]

personally, i can't wait til they figure out gravitons and we can rip up the highways :]

Actually mig I got the idea from the Bob Lazar story. He claims to have worked at a secret base in Nevada (near area51) where we are supposedly reverse engineering some alien flying discs. They use a gravity amplifier for propulsion which explains all the unexplainable characteristics of their flight, wobbly rather than stable, able to accelerate instantly and stop on a dime plus acheiving fantastic speeds.

The problem for observers of these machines was always that such acceleration (and the sudden stop) would generate G forces far beyond what a human could physicaly withstand. The gravity bubble formed around the craft takes care of this as there is no change in the gravity force applied to the occupants.

Whatever the real story is about Lazar and his claims, the science is excellent and workable. It just requires an element we don't seem to have on the earth (which Lazar calls Unobtanium) that is a couple steps off the basic elements chart (115).

Here's a link to the amplifier model described by Lazar http://www.boblazar.com/protected/space.htm

and an explanation of the propulsion dynamics http://www.boblazar.com/protected/maximum.htm

It's great stuff, especially for science fiction fans. Having seen a 'flying saucer' myself I love how neatly it explains the incomprehensible flight characteristics of what I (and several others) watched in a Canadian sky on a cold winter night in 1965. Science fiction indeed, we watched a flying display for twenty minutes that was "impossible" and later watched as fighter jets from the Royal Canadian Air Force tried to find it....

Since the temperature was minus 25F there were no mini skirts in the area....

Most of my late teen discussions...which wasn't long ago mind you...revolved around love. Is there the perfect person out there for you? Do we have soul mates?