AREA 51 (the thread)

[mentholated]

Originally Posted by Wimpinator

Sunlight? Uranium? Radon?

Granite anyone? Naturally radioactive, and the Egyptians used a lot of it.

[Malt]

Personally if we ever find or are found by an sentient alien race chances are they will be aggressive since aggressive species tend to become dominant, ie: humans

[DaBrit]

I've spent a decent amount of time looking in microscopes. It really, really, really looks like an image captured from a microscope. Also, none of your arguments have made any scientific sense so far as I can tell.

[mentholated]

Originally Posted by Malt

Personally if we ever find or are found by an sentient alien race chances are they will be aggressive since aggressive species tend to become dominant, ie: humans

You've got it backwards.. in my opinion. Any intelligent species would at some point either destroy themselves or become entirely peaceful (working somewhat like a hive, to benefit the whole colony). We only have ourselves to gauge other possible life forms, and theres also the possibility that our own species has been had outside intervention in the past (assistance with basic technological advancements like the use of fire for example). If they're as power hungry as we are.. I don't think they would've made it very far. They might've learned how to coexist with eachother peacefully while developing technology to benefit their society. Of course, we must assume they would be able to defend themselves, we as a species have that one speciality, our own ingenuity at killing is unmatched by any other species on earth. We're the only ones that do it just for the sake of doing it.

[mentholated]

Originally Posted by DaBrit

I've spent a decent amount of time looking in microscopes. It really, really, really looks like an image captured from a microscope. Also, none of your arguments have made any scientific sense so far as I can tell.

http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/...on-sts-75.html

[DaBrit]

I'm not saying that the mission didn't happen, all that link is to is the mission information page. Also, if the video is supposedly slowed down so much, why is the audio still playing at the same speed?

[mentholated]

Originally Posted by DaBrit

I'm not saying that the mission didn't happen, all that link is to is the mission information page. Also, if the video is supposedly slowed down so much, why is the audio still playing at the same speed?

Most likely because whoever re-synced it didn't stretch the audio, only the video channel.

[luna]

We also tend to get higher rates of cancer than other primates because of self-induced stress, which has a negative impact on our overall health.

That said, other animals get cancer at rates that vary in relation to humans. Dogs get cancer at a far higher rate than humans, whereas cats get cancer at about half the rate as humans. Even wild animals get cancer. The disease is indiscriminate in terms of what species it impacts.

I'm sorry, but what was the point in bringing up random totally false facts about cancer again?

And what on earth is mentholated talking about? I am totally not understanding what his argument is. I mean, this thread is amusing the hell out of me, but.. what was the point again?

[El_Gringo_Grande]

Originally Posted by luna

I mean, this thread is amusing the hell out of me, but.. what was the point again?

Point? You want a point in the sandbox? You should know better!

[xTYBALTx]

According to Jared Diamond, most of humanity's most serious infectious diseases arose precisely because of our close proximity to domesticated animals. Sharing close quarters with animals allows diseases which they get to be transferred to us. For a recent example, look at bird flu.

As for cancer, I frankly don't know much. But I do recall, from one of my history courses, that men actually didn't live drastically shorter lives - on average - before modern medicine. As we all know, the life expectancy of pre-medicine people was much much lower, but this can be largely attributed to high child mortality and high female mortality during child birth. Such is the drawback of using life expectancy in these sorts of discussions.

I find the alternative metric of "years left to live" more useful than "life expectancy" for these purposes: A years left to live chart will tell you how much longer a 25 year old would be expected to live in any given year. This in turn provides better insight into what modern medicine has gotten us as adults - the fact that modern medicine has vastly improved child mortality and female birthgiving survival is well established and far from controversial. It's been a while since I last had a look at the US government's years to live chart, but it's publicly available if someone wants to waste a couple hours searching for it. The oldest available government data was from around 100 to 150 years ago, and showed that a 30 year old in 1890 expected to live only about five or ten years less than a 30 year old in 1990. Again, "if I recall correctly" applies, but that's the general gist.

Of course here we're talking about 100-150 years, not 200+ as Kero brought up. But this time frame still puts us pre-antibiotics, pre-green revolution, and pre-ICU. I've also heard it claimed that a blanket miracle cure for cancer would add a whopping six months to general life expectancy - although I'm unsure of what impact it would have on the years to live of a 50 year old. Almost certainly more than six months.

Edit: Jackpot!

Years to live chart from the Roman Empire, courtesy of UTexas. As you can see, the years to live at age zero was a paltry 25, but people who were age 25 were expected to make it to 57. People who made it to 35 expected to see age 61 - and 8.2% of the population was over 60. Child mortality was a whopping 31.9%!

A person around 25 to 30 years old living in the US today is expected to live to age 79, so we're only talking about an increase in real life expectancy of 19 years since Roman times(!)

[xTYBALTx]

And about the video... that looks like a microscope slide.

[mentholated]

Originally Posted by xTYBALTx

And about the video... that looks like a microscope slide.

Yes, it does.. but I assure you it is not. Also your post previous to the one I quoted almost makes me want to make another thread about the real causes of so much disease and disorder these days, but I won't.


Just wanted to establish from here on out that if you're still reading this thread, the video in the first post does LOOK like organisms on a slide, but thats due to the quality of the video itself. This was merely taken and manipulated to emphasize motion, the original videos can be found in your library or online as they were aired nationwide and you can see them for yourself, as they were, and examine them if you wish.

[xTYBALTx]

Originally Posted by mentholated

Also your post previous to the one I quoted almost makes me want to make another thread about the real causes of so much disease and disorder these days, but I won't.

So much disorder? The human race hasn't seen this little disorder ever before.

[LuckyStrike]

Originally Posted by Wimpinator

Sunlight? Uranium? Radon?

Cosmic rays and naturally occurring radiation make up 85% of our exposure. The reason cancer is more prevalent now is that we live much longer. Few get cancer when you only live to 40. Radiation Protection is my job and I'm a Registered Radiation Protection Technologist. Not an X-Ray tech.

http://www.nrrpt.org/index.cfm/m/1/m/2

[Azura]

I dont know about you guys, but I thought there would be some action in that movie not a guy talking about some straw-thing.