@Gareth - You talk about seeing new technology. How do we know that some current technology has not been spawned from previous 'visit'

Hypothetically speaking of course

Well tecnology is pretty linear in its advance.

I think alien tech would stick out like a sore thumb.

One word Gareth:

Velcro

Nah, velcro was a gift from ourselves in the future, sent back in time in a box that also contained sporks.

Don't you mean Knsporks?

Or was that from later on?

No, that was just a classic example of taking advanced tech and developing it ourselves. We looked at sporks and we liked. But the arrogance of our white coat lab men thought they could do better. I don't think they will catch on though.

Time for today's second ob xkcd reference, I think...

Great invention... I do a bit of fishing and the spork is a known life saver !!!

Velcro as shoe-fastening is a good argument for the dangers of time travel.

^^ Not to my three year old it isn't !!!

Unless Nellybear Jr has extra terrestrial levels of intelligence, I'd very much doubt that is a debate that would keep his attention for long, no matter what I came up with!

Velco Football or Velco Pegga Pig... there you'll be on to a winner !!!

Someone needs to read up on SR-71 engines, they were a high bypass ramjet with the actual jet engine only providing a small proportion of thrust at supersonic speed.
The SR-71 was possibly the most advanced aircraft of its time, not for the technology used although the engines were a very clever design, it was the airframe that was cutting edge due to its all titanium structure which had never been done before. An aircraft leaking fuel is hardly a measure of technical advancement, it leaked fuel on the ground because the airframe was cool, the structure was designed to operate at the high skin temperatures caused by the friction of supersonic flight.

No more questions your honour

Ok I'll admit it. All this talk of UFOs has had me listening to War of the Worlds for the last 3 days....

with Tom Cruise

Tommy who? Never 'erd of 'im.

Jeff Wayne & Richard Burton = WIN.

Slightly higher level of hard science than in this thread, mind...

I did some more thinking about plasmas, in the interests of fairmindedness...

Stand back - I'm going to try SCIENCE!

Plasma is state of matter in which the protons, neutrons, and electrons are completely disassociated; this occurs only at very high temperatures.

I have been unable to find any references to superconducting plasmas. Superconductivity is normally considered a low-temperature effect. The temperature at which the alleged mercury plasma is claimed to be is above that at which mercury is superconducting, but massively below plasma temperatures.

There's something wrong here...

I did find this site: long on speculation and short on science: http://www.gctspace.com/main.html

Thanks for the pain of that, Barnacle...



Yay! Go chemistry!



Great, now I have to hunt you down and kill you.

I *did* warn you...

errrrr, why would you want superconducting plasma? Of all the states of matter, plasma would be bottom of my list to conduct electricity through.

Because the person who wrote the original description of this wonderful device was a science fiction fan, not a scientist, and superconducting plasma represent (a) 2 words that sound cool and sciency and (b)represent concecpts that the average person isn't sufficently informed of and, as such, can't discredit in seconds.

I'd be sure that superconductivity was included to be deliberately disingenuous, as the web can provide many photos and videos of magnets levitating over superconductive materials.

Of course they are nothing to do with anti-gravity, any more than a helicopter hovering is anti-gravity, but the web-sites reporting this nonsense continue to trap people who are (a) desperate to believe any evidence of alien vistations, (b) under-schooled in physics, or both of the above.

Gareth - come to your senses, man!

If one item in the 'ufo' is of extraterrestrial origin, that should be enough. Why do you need more?

But to find 'one item' you may need to check every other item.

Here's the problem I raised earlier, and why I insisted on technology which we could not replicate. In practical terms, there's little which would be required for interstellar travel which we could not make *now* - the main problem is the drive unit and perhaps long-term environmental systems.

As an example - given sufficient enthusiasm and money, I could fabricate computer systems using voltages which we don't use on earth, hand wired rather than circuit boards, using different paradigms, using different semiconductors etc. It would *look* alien, but that would be all. (And of course, Jeff Goldblum with a Mac would be able to give it a virus!)

If a modern i-phone or one of its friends were delivered to the brightest and best in the second world war - just seventy years ago - not only would it look like magic, but they wouldn't be able to see what it was doing: they would probably recognise power rails and printed circuit boards - though everything then worked at much higher voltages and was wired point-to-point, but they wouldn't have the test equipment to even see the internal logic signals (waaay too fast) and their best analysis would reveal silicon within those little black boxes that was more pure than they could measure.

Which is why I ask for things we specifically can't do now, like zero-g foam alloys in industrial quantities.

Better is life traces which can be shown not to be related to anything earth-based, but best of all is intelligent life which can actually answer questions...

<bites tongue>

Ever tried to talk to a web bot? Sheffield uni created a turing bot a few years back and the night before the competition input current affairs and "chat" into the database. It had poor opinions though. Intelligent?

Probably safest...



Somehow, I doubt it. But applied to a mobile and self contained organism, capable of answering questions like 'How much for the ship, eh, guv? It's got a lot of miles on it, mind, and I'm not sure about these tyres, and the cam-belt probably needs changing...'

Its a big boat the tires are only there to stop it wubbing rubbing on the quay side.

And the cam belt will be fine if you keep it bellow 40rpm for another million hours.