Tag: intelligence

Einstein

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If you could meet a historical figure, who would it be and why?

I would not pretend to be able to understand the Physics of the general and special theories of relativity, but Einstein has always seemed to be an interesting person. I think I know a bit about him, like he worked in a patent office. But I don’t know much. I think he regretted his research bringing about the atomic bomb, and about quantum mechanics. I think I remember him saying ‘God doesn’t play dice’, meaning he didn’t believe in quantum theory.

Recently Einstein has been depicted on British TV in an advert trying to persuade people to have smart meters installed in their homes. Given that 3G signals are being cut off and about 8 million smart meters run on 3G and are about to be turned off? I would ask him if he approved and also would he laugh at the awful makeup the ad makers have used to depict him!

From what I have seen it looks like Einstein had a sense of humour as well as a tremendous intellect. I would just like to have a general conversation with him, and if he was alive now, what would he think of our crazy world?

What’s out there?

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There’s something called the Drake equation that hypothesises whether there is other intelligent life out in the universe. I don’t know it and can’t quote it, but I looked it up (see above). The fact that the scientists have even found amino acids in space (the building blocks of life) means that there are possibilities of finding other beings.

The equation looks at how many possible inhabitable planets are out there, whether life could evolve, and whether intelligent life might come about. Then you have to think about time. If an intelligent life form was to exist somewhere else they might send out signals, but it could take millions or billions of years to travel across space before we detected it, and by then they could be long gone. So it would only be possible to communicate if they were closer, tens of years away? But then a conversation with someone even twenty light years away (the distance of a possible habitable planet) would be very boring. One question every forty years, one reply eafter another forty years. And space travel would only be possible at a small percentage of the speed of light, according to the laws of physics. So we might be able to talk but not visit.

It might be great to get a signal, but even if there are other civilisations it doesn’t mean we will ever find out.