Think we’re getting good value for our tax dollars?
Here’s a government science project that didn’t get off the ground but still had to be paid for.
Scientists Say the Darnedest Things! (A Job for Dead Astronauts)
Is there any possibility that planting a dead astronaut on a planet in a star system light-years away would have any tangible result at all?
Where do they find the people who dream up these things? But maybe sending the dead to distant planets will at least get them out of our elections.
Um, real science requires observation and the testing of theories. Light years away means they’d have no way of knowing whether the corpse ever got there or what happened to it if it did. In other words, no observation, no tests, no information, just “I shot an arrow into the air; / It came to earth [or wherever] I know not where.” No, let me correct that: Not shooting arrows into the air, just throwing taxpayers dollars down the toilet.
And why does it have to be a dead astronaut? Why not a dead scientist? or politician? Both seem to be full of a lot of organic waste.
AND… if “Evolution” is true, millions of years would have to go by before you could see anything.
Except, of course, that you wouldn’t be around to see it.
It gets crazier every day. I had a rather “different” time around 4AM. Extreme pain on lower right side. Woke me right up. It was very severe, almost scary. When it didn’t stop after ten minutes, I prayed and shortly, it stopped completely. I dropped off to sleep again for a few minutes, then got up around 5. Thank God for His healing power and His mercy.
I do wish you’d see a doctor about that. Just to be on the safe side.
These people live in a fantasy, which makes me question whether they even understand the science they claim to represent. The fastest out outbound spacecraft, to the best of my knowledge, is the Voyager I, traveling at somewhere in the area of 38,000 miles per hour as measured in relation to the Sun. To travel the 5.88 trillion miles to Proxima Centauri at 38,000 MPH would take something on the order of 73,000 years. Well, it’s not that simple, because the speed would likely decay over time, but at some point the gravity of Proxima Centauri would take over and accelerate Voyager.
Proxima Centauri is much smaller than the Sun, so the equagravisphere would be way out there in space, somewhere on the order of 5.226 trillion miles away from the Sun, and according to my understanding, the craft would be subtly slowing all the way to that point. (Don’t make any wagers based upon my math regarding the equagravisphere, I’m just using the ratio of the masses of the Sun and Proxima Centauri, and there may be much more to it than that. I’m no expert on orbital dynamics.)
But, anyhow, at some point, assuming that the energy of a Voyager-like craft was adequate to actually break away from the Sun’s gravity at the equagravisphere to Proxima Centauri, the craft would accelerate slowly towards that star, and with nothing to restrict it, no atmospheric drag, it would be haulin’ the mail by the time it got to the vicinity of Proxima Centauri. So now what are we to do. Allegedly, there are at least two planets orbiting that star, so if you didn’t want to absolutely cremate the 73,000 year old corpse aboard the spacecraft, you’d have to aim for one of the planets, and in order to slow down enough to make an orderly approach, and to establish a parking orbit, you would have to have adequate fuel to slow the spacecraft to just the precise speed required to be captured by the planet you intend to land upon.
So, your 73,000 year old rocket motor would have to burn some 73,000 year old fuel, which would have to be ignited by … a 73,000 year old battery? I was thrilled when the battery in my pickup lasted 8 years, and I don’t live in the cold of space. But what was I thinking? They’ll use 73,000 year old solar cells, actually stellar, cells to ignite the fuel. Unless they use Monomethylhydrazine (MMH) + nitrogen tetroxide (NTO) as Hypergolics. Why shouldn’t Monomethylhydrazine last 73,000 years in the cold of space while being bombarded with radiation?
Ok, so now our spacecraft, which has to be much larger than Voyager in order to store braking fuel and have a braking engine, is happily in orbit around an exoplanet whom we can detect because it causes minuscule dimming every time it transits across the side of Proxima Centauri facing the Sun, but somehow we really smart scientists have determined enough about it to know it’s atmosphere, if any, and how to select a landing spot. Keep in mind, that a two way radio exchange with the craft would take 8.5 years, so it has better know what to do when it gets there.
We will err (greatly) to the side of blind optimism, and assume that we have landed our corpse on Proxima Centauri One and we’re ready to deliver it to the surface. Assuming that the proteins and lipids haven’t chemically deteriorated beyond recognition (remember, we must stay blindly optimistic at all times) what about the microbial life which is the actually point of this exercise. Have they somehow sustained for 73,000 years? I tend to doubt it. Maybe, just maybe, the bones would still be intact, at least chemically, and we would have succeeded in delivering the rough equivalent of some calcium tablets to a planet orbiting our nearest stellar neighbor.
But where is my blind optimism? Ok, let’s suppose that we actually have some viable biological chemicals and some robust little bacteria to give as a gift to PC-1. If it were inhabited, and I strongly doubt that to be the case, we could easily cause a pandemic which could end all life on that planet, but this is in the name of Science, so we have to accept that risk.
If it’s not an inhabited planet, a bet I would gladly wager my last cent upon, is there oxygen on PC-1? Is there a magnetosphere to shield against stellar and cosmic radiation? The surface of a planet with no atmosphere or strong magnetosphere would make your microwave look like it wasn’t even trying. Our happy little bacteria would be reduced to their base materials in seconds.
But let’s backtrack a bit. The Voyager spacecraft were launched in the late ‘70s, and it’s a very pleasant surprise that these are still at all functional. They will continue their journey out into the unknown, by literal physical momentum, but at some point they will become electrically inoperative and unable to tell us anything. These are the furthest manmade objects to ever leave this planet, and it’s a minor miracle that the tiny bit of function remaining is still occurring, and the Voyagers are currently at roughly 1/1500th of the lifespan needed to reach Proxima Centauri.
Mankind has made amazing discoveries, and has accomplished things which stagger the imagination, but we are quite impotent when it comes to interstellar space. Even if we somehow developed spacecraft which could approach the speed of light, tearing through the cosmos at those speeds would inevitably result in collisions with stray dust particles, which would not be trivial events if the speed differential approached the speed of light.
I watched Star Trek, and Star Wars, plus some other science fiction, and the problem of interstellar and intergalactic travel is depicted as having long since been overcome, but these are works of fiction, and works of fantasy. There are many theories regarding such travel, but the farthest we’ve actually gotten away from earth are the Voyager probes, and in interstellar terms, they are still very close to home.
Adam was given dominion over the earth, and as his descendants, we have a degree of mastery, but there is very much of the earth we know little about. The depths of the ocean are far from fully explored, and there are places, such as the Congo, about which we know very little. Antarctica has been explored, to some degree, but it’s far from being fully known. Many lives have been lost learning what we already know, and in many cases, weather has played a significant role in hindering exploration. How can anyone blithely think that we can extend our reach beyond our Solar System, when our greatest accomplishments to date have been moon landings and some long distance probes? If we could reach the closest exo-planet, how could we predict the weather there? We haven’t even perfected that on our home planet.
Suggestions such as these accomplish but one thing; they generate publicity, and may help in generating donations or in being considered as grant recipients. If the people generating such publicity, they really should question the effectiveness of their education, because they have crossed over from scientifically rooted to something more in common with myths and fairy tales.
So what’s wrong with science based on fairy tales? Ain’t you ever heard of Evolution?
The evolutionary tale has become a fanciful tale, that’s for certain. If you follow the timeline they propose, the reasoning becomes very circular. Fossils are dated by the strata in which they are found, while stratum are dated by the fossils found within. Add in a catastrophic global flood and all of this goes out the window, but even without the flood, their reasoning is built upon any number of assumptions that are not proven, nor are likely to be provable.
I have seen doctors on several occasions and got nowhere. The last time I was in hospital, they told me after just a few days that they might as well send me home if somebody could pick me up, cause unless I wanted open heart surgery, there was nothing they could do.
Well, I certainly did not want that, and the very little they did do cost a fortune, which I am still paying for, and will be for probably the rest of my life. The Lord knows what all my symptoms are, and what HE wants to do for me. I trust HIM. He blesses me instead of charging me 1,000’s.
All we can do at our end is to pray for you–which some of us do every day.
There is no scientist like a dead one – dead in the sense they don’t believe in a personal Creator God. They need to be regenerated by the Holy Spirit to become a force for the truth of the kingdom of God.