Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2014 June 18

= June 18 =

paranomal activities
do ALIENS really exist? if yes how much percent believe in them .I don't — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.198.188.248 (talk) 05:31, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
 * The answer to your first question is "no-one knows". I don't know about the second.  Read our article on extraterrestrial life, there's a lot of good information in there. --Viennese Waltz 07:55, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Why are you associating aliens with the paranormal? There's no reason to believe extraterrestrial beings wouldn't be subject to the same sort of everyday physical law that we are. AlexTiefling (talk) 09:23, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Because "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", and aliens capable of visiting us must have such advanced technology (as we've pretty much eliminated the possibility of intelligent life in our solar system, outside of Earth, and interstellar travel requires advanced technology). StuRat (talk) 09:35, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * No visit to Earth was mentioned. 'Do aliens exist?' is a question to which the answer is either yes or no - regardless of whether anybody believes in them, and regardless of how hard it would be for them to visit us. AlexTiefling (talk) 11:25, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Also, unexplained events on Earth, like the Tunguska event, often garner alien explanations. More common phenomena, like ball lightning, have be attributed to paranormal or alien activity. StuRat (talk) 11:31, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * We exist, and we may very well be aliens if life developed on Mars before Earth. Viriditas (talk) 09:41, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * The term "paranormal" tends to be associated with ghost stories, but anything not demonstrable by science (so far) can fall into that general category, including bigfoot and extraterrestrials. Carl Sagan, who believed in the possibility of extraterrestrials, said there was no physical evidence indicating we had ever actually been visited by such. Hence VW's original answer, "we don't know", is the correct answer. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:16, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * See some related articles at Drake equation, SETI and, related to Viriditas' links above, Panspermia. SemanticMantis (talk)


 * Obviously we don't know for sure. Our best guess (for which the Drake equation is our best shot) is that even with REALLY pessimistic guesses for things like "how many earth-like planets are there" - aliens should exist within our galaxy - and in fairly large numbers.  However, the Fermi paradox more or less says that if they do exist, then they ought to be everywhere and we'd know about them...and we have zero scientific evidence that they do.


 * This raises worrying concerns.  If the math says that they should be everywhere - and they aren't - then one of the assumptions in the math must be false.   Which of the numbers in the Drake equation is so badly wrong?   Well, we can see lots of suitable star systems, with lots of suitable planets around them.  The chemistry for life doesn't seem that tough - brains have evolved separately in widely diverse species here on earth - so the kind of rough animal intelligence doesn't seem too difficult for nature to evolve.   It starts to look like the reason that there are no intelligent aliens communicating with us is that intelligent species are *ALWAYS* so destructive of their environments and/or warlike and/or resource-depleting that they always die out shortly after emerging as intelligent...which is bad news for us!


 * But regardless of that, it's certainly true that even if the universe is teeming with aliens, it's perfectly possible that we're incapable of detecting them yet.  One factoid that's worth remembering is that if you broadcast a radio signal out in all directions then the most powerful radio transmitter we've ever made would be indetectable by the most sensitive radio telescope we've ever made at the distance of the nearest star system to ours.  The only way the technology we have could manage a radio communication to another star is with an extremely narrow-beam transmitter like a laser beam - which means that you'd only be able to send messages to one star system at a time...which in turn means that you have to know where to send messages to.  You can't just say "Is there anyone out there?" - you have to check every single star one at a time.   Since the aliens don't know that we're here any more than we know that they are there, it's hard to get the kind of narrow-beam communication link set up.   If you shoot out radio messages to a different star every hour for a decade - what are the odds that the aliens have a radio telescope pointed in our direction at exactly the moment that our transmission arrives...or vice versa?


 * SteveBaker (talk) 17:35, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * We assume you mean intelligent extraterrestrial beings and not noncitizens, who most definitely do exist. The large majority of scientists assume that such aliens do exist in the universe.  The universe is quite vast, and in its entirety there must be many examples of intelligent life.  This reasoning is supported by the Copernican principle, which asserts that we are not in a central, specially favored position in the universe.
 * However, there are no widely accepted instances of contact of any kind between life on earth and extraterrestrial life. The distances between star systems are vast and not easily traversed.  In addition, some scientists have argued that intelligent life is quite rare, perhaps averaging no more than one technological civilization per galaxy (although, in fairness, many other scientists disagree).  If that is the case and we are the only technological civilization in our galaxy, then it is unlikely that we will ever make contact with intelligent life, even though there must be many examples in the universe.  John M Baker (talk) 21:32, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Given the age of the uni/multiverse, we are probably one of the youngest and newest civilizations rather than the first or the only one. We can therefore hypothesize that a truly intelligent civilization thousands or millions of years ahead of us  would not want to have anything to do with us.  This gives credence to several thought experiments associated with the Fermi paradox, namely the prime directive hypothesis, otherwise known as the zoo hypothesis.  Alternatively, a civilization may get to a certain stage of development where they retreat from matter and live in virtual worlds, in which case we would be looking for them in the wrong place.  The possibilities are endless.  The great silence may only indicate we aren't imaginative or intelligent enough to find or attract the others.  Then again, you wouldn't want to attract other predators to come harvest your planet, so SETI might be a grand folly that could lead to our immediate demise.  Perhaps the reason for the emptiness is that whenever a planet gets to a certain stage, a predatory species is alerted to their presence and culls their world. Viriditas (talk) 03:23, 19 June 2014 (UTC)


 * You know, I'm pretty much an optimist when it comes to interstellar travel. Recently I saw one of my friends on Facebook, a respected professor, try to explain to a friend of his why he didn't believe in UFOs, and it boiled down to he didn't believe it was possible to get here.
 * That I refuse to accept. Not enough hydrogen for, say, a Bussard ramjet?  That's an engineering difficulty.  All sorts of things that seem completely impossible, from an engineering standpoint, do get done.
 * Still. Even I am pretty sure that interstellar travel will never be cost-effective as a way of getting meat, by eating the inhabitants of another system :-) --Trovatore (talk) 03:33, 19 June 2014 (UTC)


 * It's not so much that they can't get here as they can't do so in a timely manner. The fundamental laws of physics, like the speed of light being a universal speed limit, are not just engineering problems.  So, unless they are somehow able to travel using wormholes, any aliens who became aware of us would need to spend thousands, millions, or even billions of years to get here, unless they happened to be remarkably close to us to begin with.  Thus, they may decide it's not worth the trip, or perhaps they are on the way and our distant ancestors will meet them. StuRat (talk) 13:41, 21 June 2014 (UTC)


 * As an aside from the comments earlier about predatory aliens, there are reasons why in terms of an ecosystem humans are at the top of the food chain. Also there are limits on how far an advanced  predatory species can expand. Anyone here an biologist/anthropologist? I was sure there were countless examples from this planet that showed why advanced species have to be farmers rather than hunters.

Sfan00 IMG (talk) 12:03, 19 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm a biologist of sorts. Problem is, what do you mean by "advanced"? There is tons of anthropological/political/religious/philosophical baggage there, and we don't really talk about "advanced species" in biology. Rather, we talk in terms of ancestral vs. derived traits. Anyway, the ecology of hunting vs. farming has a history in humans, but there are also many animal examples of agriculture. Take for example, the most successful clade in the history of Earth, the ants. Some of them are quite agricultural, farming fungus (Leaf-cutter_ant) and aphids (Aphid), much the way we raise wheat and dairy cows. But of course, there are also exclusively predatory ants (driver ant), as well as foragers. It really just depends on what niche they are filling. Like the ants, we are also a eusocial species, and some cultures have done quite well by hunting, while some do quite well by farming. You may be thinking of a broad tendency for there to be less biomass as you go higher up a food web, so that in a given system, we expect there to be lots of rabbits and sparrows to support a few hawks. But that's just a general trend; there is recent research suggesting some aquatic communities are very "top heavy". Still, every level in the trophic cascade removes about 90% of the available energy. So there is something to be said for the claim that it is generally more efficient to eat lower on the food web. . SemanticMantis (talk) 14:58, 19 June 2014 (UTC)


 * How would it then be possible for a food chain to be top-heavy, as this would require greater than 100% efficiency in converting food to biomass ? Or perhaps you refer to animals which tap into multiple food chains, at multiple levels, as omnivores like people do.  In that case the biomass of the apex predator could be more than the level of the food chains right below them, and possibly more than the base of one of the food chains, but still not more than the sum of the bases of all the food chains they access. StuRat (talk) 13:48, 21 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Maybe the aliens simply decided that communicating with other planetary civilizations is too resource-intensive, too dangerous or simply not worth the effort... 24.5.122.13 (talk) 00:18, 20 June 2014 (UTC)


 * The counter-argument for that is that if the Drake equation is to be believed (more accurately, if the numbers we plug into that equation are roughly correct) - then there should be a HUGE number of alien species out there. So for what you suggest to be true, all of them would have to decide that these are reasons not to do it.  That might be true - but from the sample of just one intelligent species that we know of (humans) - this is evidently not the case.  We don't think it's too resource-intensive, or dangerous, and it is worth the effort.   So, for what you say to be true, we'd have to be the only species of hundreds to thousands who made that decision.   The odds of that being true are very slim indeed.  That's not to say that this argument is impossible - just that it seems really, really unlikely. SteveBaker (talk) 19:33, 20 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Really? "We" don't think it's too dangerous or not worth the effort?  See Active SETI and see for yourself that your position is NOT universally accepted! 24.5.122.13 (talk) 02:46, 21 June 2014 (UTC)


 * As for the "HUGE" number of alien species out there -- keep in mind that even if this is true, many of them will simply be too backward technologically to communicate with other planets -- after all, our species has existed for maybe half a million years, but we've only invented the radio about a hundred years ago! 24.5.122.13 (talk) 02:50, 21 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Just to balance the percentages, there are lots of us who believe that they don't exist. That's not disagreeing with proper scientific answers above, just objecting to the "certainty" that life will automatically start wherever conditions are favourable, and to the "certainty" that the universe must contain infinite examples of everything.  Those are beliefs, not facts.    D b f i r s   07:06, 20 June 2014 (UTC)


 * As I said before, Carl Sagan believed in the possibility of ET's. There can't be any scientific certainty about their existence, because we have no evidence (so far). ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 09:12, 20 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Of course there are no certainties - only probabilities.  But then much of science is based on statistical experiments rather than hard data. SteveBaker (talk) 19:33, 20 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Dbfirs, do you follow current science at all? The position you defend, that of the Rare Earth hypothesis, has barely any adherents left because most of its premises have been supplanted by newer evidence.  Are you aware that in the last 20 years, astronomy books have been completely rewritten?  More to the point, since the Copernican principle has already been mentioned, can you see how the egocentric perspective of humanity over the last 10,000 years has gradually changed into a cosmocentric point of view?  In other words, we once thought we were special because of our tribe, but then we found out there were other tribes.  We once thought we were unique because of our geographical location but then discovered other continents.  We once thought our culture was superior but then we discovered other cultures.  We once thought our religion could not be outdone, but then we discovered other religions.  We once thought our technology could not be surpassed but then we found newer and better technology.  And finally, we once thought our planet was unique, but now we've found other planets, spread throughout the galaxy.  Now, balance the percentages. Dbfirs, are you aware that with current technology, the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will be able to detect the biomarkers for life on extrasolar planets, and considering the percentages, will probably detect them in every corner of the galaxy? Viriditas (talk) 09:46, 20 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Well, just because there are planets around every star doesn't mean that there's life in every stellar system: first of all, many of the planets will be unsuitable to life in the first place; second of all, even if a planet is suitable to life, it might be that abiogenesis has not (yet) taken place there; third of all, even if a planet harbors life, it might not (yet) have evolved intelligent life, or in some cases evolution might have taken a different path which cannot lead to developing intelligence; also, some forms of life might be so radically different from ours that we cannot detect it with our techniques (simply put, so different that we don't even know what to look for); and even on planets that harbor intelligent life, said life might well be too backward technologically to communicate with us. (This is very likely, given the fact that despite the fact that our solar system is more than 4 billion years old and is in mid-evolution, humans only evolved a few hundred thousand years ago, and technological civilization has only existed for 100-250 years, depending how you count.)  Or, even if other technological civilizations exist out there, they might choose not to announce their presence for any of a whole bunch of good reasons -- or, even if they do, they might be so far away that their radio signals haven't yet reached us and won't reach us for many centuries. 24.5.122.13 (talk) 02:41, 21 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Viriditas, yes, I do follow current science, and nothing has yet been discovered that causes me to weaken my belief in the Rare Earth hypothesis. I agree that recent discoveries of distant planets have slightly shifted the probabilities, but I'm still convinced that our Earth is rare and possibly unique in the universe.  If science discovers life elsewhere, I'm fully prepared to change my view, but there is currently no evidence to contradict most of the theory of a "rare earth", and, despite your claim, the theory has many supporters.  It is only a theory, with only limited evidence to support it, but then so is your theory of a universe filled with intelligent life, in which you seem to have unshakeable faith.  Theories based on probabilities require accurate estimates, and these are simply not available, so the best answer is still "we don't know".    D b f i r s   08:23, 21 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I think the answer to the OP's question has been exhaustively covered: We don't know. The second question has barely been touched, and it's rather slipperier. I think both you and I believe in the possibility of ET's, and we both agree there's no evidence. Saying you don't believe until you see evidence, leaves the door open for the possibility. No scientist worth anything is going to state with hard-line absolutism that there are no ET's... because we don't know. On the other hand, we have a depressingly significant percentage of folks who think we never went to the moon. It would be interesting to find out what the crossover is, if any, of those who deny the Apollo facts vs. those who accept or deny the possibility of ET's. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 09:35, 21 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, I suspect that Viriditas and I are actually closer in agreement than we purport to be in the exchange above (including a shared enthusiasm for certain SF series which we both recognise as fiction and not as evidence), though we do disagree on how to interpret the lack of evidence. I admit to being disappointed that no microbial life has yet been found on Mars because I rather liked the suggestion that life on earth came from there, giving a "rare solar system" theory. There are some who criticise "Rare Earth" theory as being a Post-hoc analysis, but I was surprised to see it regarded as "crank" or superseded.  It would indeed be interesting to see the correlations if anyone has done a survey along the lines that you suggest.    D b f i r s   12:22, 21 June 2014 (UTC)


 * There has been some recent support for the Rare Earth Hypothesis:


 * 1) Lack of any signs of life on all the planets, moons, and asteroids we have visited, or at least done a spectral analysis for signs of life, like free oxygen.


 * 2) Lack of signs of communication from other solar systems, despite SETI looking for them in recent decades.


 * 3) The fact that it took intelligent life so long to evolve here on Earth seems to indicate that younger solar systems aren't likely to have any intelligent life. This eliminates a good portion of the universe.  StuRat (talk) 14:02, 21 June 2014 (UTC)


 * All three of those objections have been addressed:
 * 1) In our Solar System alone, it is thought that life can survive on at least eight planets and moons: Venus (possible microbial life); Earth (alleged "intelligent" life, deemed "intelligent" by itself, not by any neutral species); Mars (possible biosignatures detected); Europa (oxygen atmosphere, predicted biosignatures);  Callisto (possible microbial life); Ganymede (thin oxygen atmosphere, liquid ocean); Titan (predicted biosignatures); Enceladus (liquid water ocean with an energy source, nitrogen, nutrients and organic molecules, including trace amounts of simple hydrocarbons); there is a "lack of any signs of life" on all of these bodies because we have barely begun to explore them.  Concluding that there is no life anywhere in the Solar System except Earth is an argument from ignorance.


 * 2) SETI has only looked at less than 1% of possible targets, and they've only been looking (off and on) since 1960. According to SETI, "only a few thousand have been scrutinized with high sensitivity and for those, only over a small fraction of the available frequency range."  Furthermore, advanced search projects utilizing the full 350 antennas of the Allen Telescope Array have never been operational.  In other words, no major operational SETI project using the most current and advanced capabilities available to us has ever taken place.  Concluding that we have not found a signal in the last fifty years when the project has never been fully operational due to funding issues is absurd.


 * 3) We don't know if this is the first time "intelligent" life evolved on Earth or even in the Solar System because of the fundamental limitations of the geological record and because of the inadequacies of our definitions of the concept of "intelligence". We don't know if all habitable planets go through they same type of bombardment phases characterized by the formation and evolution of our Solar System that repeatedly wiped out species after species. If they don't, life, once it gets a foothold, could evolve to become intelligent earlier than on Earth or not, perhaps helped along by other factors, such as panspermia or some kind of environmental adaptation that speeds cognitive development.


 * Life on Earth is readily apparent from just a spectroscopic analysis of the atmosphere, or the green jungles visible from space. We certainly don't have that level of life in any part of our solar system we've explored.  It's possible that a small amount of microbial life exists somewhere that we haven't discovered, but it seems a violation of Occam's razor to assume it exists before you discover it.  It's also a violation to assume earlier intelligent life existed on Earth, capable of communicating with aliens.  StuRat (talk) 14:07, 22 June 2014 (UTC)


 * You're assuming that all life climaxes at the macroscopic level and produces plants and animals in the surface biosphere. It's likely that different environments produce different types of lifeforms, and we might not recognize it if we come across it. It could be argued that there is more life living below the surface of the Earth, for example, than above it.  These so-called intraterrestrials living in the deep biosphere would go mostly undetected with our current surface surveys in the Solar System.  You assumed that we were the only intelligent species to evolve on Earth, however, the fossil record is incomplete.  How many species didn't become fossils?  How biased is the fossil record based on limited geographic location?  Most of the fossil record is missing, and lacking a time machine, lost forever. A recent case in point: Homo floresiensis.  We didn't even know about it until 2003 and there are still scientists who don't accept it. "This idea of H. floresiensis using advanced technology and cooperation on a modern human level has prompted the discoverers to hypothesize that H. floresiensis almost certainly had language." Viriditas (talk) 00:00, 23 June 2014 (UTC)


 * All of these REH arguments are rooted in a fundamentalist anthropocentrism, an attempt to enforce the belief that humans are special and different. Viriditas (talk) 00:32, 22 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I appreciate that you don't like "fundamentalist anthropocentrism", but we simply don't know what conditions are necessary for life to start and evolve, so all our arguments (and I include mine) are based on ignorance, not evidence. I choose a different interpretation of the lac tk of evidence.  Your claims of "possible" signs of life elsewhere in the solar system may just be wishful thinking: we don't know, and we haven't found any evidence.  I agree that SETI has a long way to go before (lack of) results can be regarded as good evidence.  The claim of possible previous intelligent life on Earth really is stretching credibility.  Have you discussed that "crackpot" theory with geologists?    D b f i r s   06:56, 22 June 2014 (UTC)


 * The claim of possible previous intelligent life on Earth is covered in our articles on dinosaur intelligence and Troodon. It has nothing to do with "my" theory.  My favorite version of sapient dinosaurs is found in the science fiction novel Evolution (2002) by Stephen Baxter. Viriditas (talk) 10:26, 22 June 2014 (UTC)


 * That reminds me of a couple of Far Side cartoons, one postulating that the real reason dinosaurs went extinct was because they were all cigarette smokers - and another showing a lecture hall filled with dinosaurs, with the speaker saying, "Gentlemen, the picture looks bleak - the climate is getting colder, the mammals are increasing, and we each have a brain the size of a walnut." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:45, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

help
need help with finding 350 Metro Cities - Top mechanical engineering firms nationwide    please  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.166.182.133 (talk) 13:46, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * The questioner geolocates to the USA, in case anyone else wondered which "nation" they were talking about. Now, I'm looking to find out what a "Metro City" is - sounds a bit like a model of Austin Metro. --Dweller (talk) 15:58, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I assume it means metropolitan areas. That is, a hub city plus it's suburbs.  I'm not sure there are 350 in the USA though.  By the time you get the the 350th largest city, it probably doesn't have any suburbs.  So, they probably mean "the 350 largest cities, including their suburbs, if any". StuRat (talk) 20:51, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

The article [List of United States cities by population] suggests that College Station, Texas is the 290th biggest city (by population) in the USA. It doesn't go beyond that but I would like to visit sometime. The article List of cities proper by population has some information but is woefully incomplete. This is the nature of things. Horatio Snickers (talk) 00:26, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

The article List of Metropolitan Statistical Areas lists 381 areas in the United States and 7 in Puerto Rico. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 07:58, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

I can't parse the question. Is it two distinct questions? What's the connection between a list of "Metro Cities" and "Top mechanical engineering firms"? Does s/he want us to allocate the top firms by Metro City? It's too vague. --Dweller (talk) 15:30, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

History of the buoy
Who invented the maritime buoy? When did they first come into common use?

Our article Georges Beuchat says that he invented the "Surface buoy" in 1948...but I'm quite sure that isn't when buoy's in general were invented.

History about these gizmos would generally be useful and our Buoy article has nothing to say on the matter...which is A Very Bad Thing!

SteveBaker (talk) 17:08, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Although it seems that they've existed quite a while before 1948, this source states that the first recorded buoy was put in writing in "La [sic] Compasso de Navigare", published in 1298. The article also discusses how they became regulated for common use, so it may be helpful in your search sorry ;-;  ~Helicopter   Llama~  17:18, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
 * HelicopterLlama: The thirteenth-century book is called Lo Compasso de Navigare in other sources. הסרפד  (call me Hasirpad) 18:40, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Definition of Edigu
Definition of Edigu, which is the name of a Mongol amir of the Golden Horde? 76.30.202.176 (talk) 21:51, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
 * See Edigu for our article. Is your question about the meaning of his name? Tevildo (talk) 22:53, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, looking for a translation; for example, Temujin = blacksmith, Nogai = dog. 76.30.202.176 (talk) 13:28, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
 * This article (which appears to be well-referenced) gives translations of a number of Mongolian names (including the examples you list), but none for "Edigu". I can't find anything else on-line immediately. Tevildo (talk) 20:23, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you--good article. Alternative spellings of Edigu include Edigei, Yedigei, Idiku and Idiqut. 76.30.202.176 (talk) 13:40, 21 June 2014 (UTC)