Morality

[Plaything of the gods]

Are you sure that we have the time ?? ?? I watched a programme last night about a space probe on its way to Pluto,it was launched in 2006. it is travelling at 35,000 miles per hour and will not get there until july 2015 (9yrs).. the nearest planet to us (outside our solar system) is over 100 years travel away at that speed and we have no idea whatsoever if it could even sustain life..

when our time is up here its up for everybody.

35,000 miles an hour eh? 150 years ago, the fastest man had travelled was less than 35 miles an hour.

Give us another thousand years and see how fast we can go then.

look how far we have come in 150 years mate..and how much damage to our planet we have caused in that time...

Do you think we have 1000 years left ?? In less than a hundred years there will be no oil/petrol,so unless we can harness nuclear fusion then we're not going to do too well.

100 years ago Titanic took 5 days to cross the atlantic, ships today take about the same time...time does not guarantee everything.

Everything comes down to thermodynamics and available energy (so you can forget all that is in those Hollywood fantasies). If we can discover a fabulous new source of energy, maybe testing the laws of thermodynamics and physics to breaking point along the way, without polluting the planet to fuckery then we might stand a chance of surviving a few hundred years, but our past history says the chances are not good. Otherwise it's back to the iron age my firends (sic!), if not the bronze or stone ages, or even a globalised Easter Island, depending on how many trees there are left around to burn and how many people to burn them. Welcome back to the Garden of Eden - without the Tree!

 

[Skashion]

It's perfectly possible to generate huge amounts of energy without breaking the laws of physics because something 93 million miles away is doing it right this very second and has been doing for about five billions years. The sextillions of stars out there are likewise all proving it. It's called fusion, and it's not a fabulous new energy source, it's well-known, and almost as old as the universe. Ee know how to do it and we're getting very close to net-energy gain. Within a hundred years, hopefully quite a bit less, we should have commercial fusion. It would be impossible to run out of fusion fuel. We could create enough deuterium from sea water alone to last 150 billion years at current rates. I would die a very happy man seeing the human race achieve commercial fusion power.

 

[BigJimLittleJim]

It's perfectly possible to generate huge amounts of energy without breaking the laws of physics because something 93 million miles away is doing it right this very second and has been doing for about five billions years. The sextillions of stars out there are likewise all proving it. It's called fusion, and it's not a fabulous new energy source, it's well-known, and almost as old as the universe. Ee know how to do it and we're getting very close to net-energy gain. Within a hundred years, hopefully quite a bit less, we should have commercial fusion. It would be impossible to run out of fusion fuel. We could create enough deuterium from sea water alone to last 150 billion years at current rates. I would die a very happy man seeing the human race achieve commercial fusion power.

I'll have a crack at that tomorrow for you if you like.

 

[Plaything of the gods]

It's perfectly possible to generate huge amounts of energy without breaking the laws of physics because something 93 million miles away is doing it right this very second and has been doing for about five billions years. The sextillions of stars out there are likewise all proving it. It's called fusion, and it's not a fabulous new energy source, it's well-known, and almost as old as the universe. Ee know how to do it and we're getting very close to net-energy gain. Within a hundred years, hopefully quite a bit less, we should have commercial fusion. It would be impossible to run out of fusion fuel. We could create enough deuterium from sea water alone to last 150 billion years at current rates. I would die a very happy man seeing the human race achieve commercial fusion power.

Fusion on earth is a pipe dream, other than in hydrogen bombs, where containment is not a consideration. Stars can only sustain fusion because of the enormous gravitational force they exert. Even so, some million tons of material still manage to escape the Sun's surface every second. Commercial fusion power is always 50-80 years away which is a nonsense really as no one can predict what will happen in 50-80 years time. It just indicates that there are lots and lots of currently insoluble problems with fusion power, problems which will persist unless the laws of thermodynamics and physics can be broken.

 

[Skashion]

Fusion on earth is a pipe dream, other than in hydrogen bombs, where containment is not a consideration. Stars can only sustain fusion because of the enormous gravitational force they exert. Even so, some million tons of material still manage to escape the Sun's surface every second. Commercial fusion power is always 50-80 years away which is a nonsense really as no one can predict what will happen in 50-80 years time. It just indicates that there are lots and lots of currently insoluble problems with fusion power, problems which will persist unless the laws of thermodynamics and physics can be broken.

I'd like to describe breaking the laws of physics as a pipe dream but that would be far too kind. Breaking the laws of physics is impossible. No-one serious about science would suggest we look at breaking the laws of physics sooner than fusion. Indeed, that's why billions of pounds of funding and some of the best scientific capital in the world are being poured into making fusion work. Progress has been slower than first anticipated in the 1950s, but it's a steady and inexorable march of improving the Q ratio, and steadily but surely it will increase, and will do so in bursts. When ITER comes online it might even jump to 10 very quickly. We're not talking 80 years before viable fusion. We're talking ten, fifteen years. Commercial fusion is a matter not of if, but when. It is going to happen, and I hope it's in your lifetime.

 

[ElanJo]

I am the source of my morality.....I want to kill little children

You are the source of your morality.....you want to protect little children

Who is right?

Neither since we are both the source of our morality....

If in your worldview you have explained fully the source or origins of your morality, that we are anatomically in control of our own bodies then right and wrong is simply anatomic/brain matter, blood

Morality is as evident as a God, neither is found in a test tube.

The Vicar

A god is the source of morality ....he wants to X

What is it about god that makes X right?

Give a philosophically reasoned argument for that and then we can begin. Until then you're just rambling, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Plaything of the gods]

Fusion on earth is a pipe dream, other than in hydrogen bombs, where containment is not a consideration. Stars can only sustain fusion because of the enormous gravitational force they exert. Even so, some million tons of material still manage to escape the Sun's surface every second. Commercial fusion power is always 50-80 years away which is a nonsense really as no one can predict what will happen in 50-80 years time. It just indicates that there are lots and lots of currently insoluble problems with fusion power, problems which will persist unless the laws of thermodynamics and physics can be broken.

I'd like to describe breaking the laws of physics as a pipe dream but that would be far too kind. Breaking the laws of physics is impossible. No-one serious about science would suggest we look at breaking the laws of physics sooner than fusion. Indeed, that's why billions of pounds of funding and some of the best scientific capital in the world are being poured into making fusion work. Progress has been slower than first anticipated in the 1950s, but it's a steady and inexorable march of improving the Q ratio, and steadily but surely it will increase, and will do so in bursts. When ITER comes online it might even jump to 10 very quickly. We're not talking 80 years before viable fusion. We're talking ten, fifteen years. Commercial fusion is a matter not of if, but when. It is going to happen, and I hope it's in your lifetime.

Well good luck with that.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/aug/23/fusion-power-is-it-getting-closer

I understand how it can be tempting to believe that mankind will always make advances, that the future will always be better than the past, but that isn't based on any law of nature.