Alien 13

17 minutes ago, neil phillips said:

Yes, there is room for both agreed. In many ways we are very different from chimps too. Who knows we may be more similar intellectually to some alien beings. Than chimps are to us.

The others so completely different of course could be a bridge too far. But even then, would it be truly impossible to find some common ground. There is no precedent so hard to be sure either way. 

But going back to chimps. dogs and humans communicate with each other in some very subtle and surprising ways. There can be a very deep intellectual connection that goes far beyond just empathy. Dogs observe our behaviour. And get many surprising cues from us. That we don't even realize we are giving off. Getting ready to take the dog for a walk. Go to get your jacket. And the dog is already standing there with lead in mouth waiting to go. Turns out prior to a walk humans often glance at the clock. Often take one last look at their mobile phone. Giving the dog all the cues, it needs to know. We are both now going for a walk. No words have been uttered. Yet intellectual synchronicity of sorts is happening all the time.

saw that on a pet documentary on netflix. Move over Ted talks

 

My dog not only used cues but reflecting them too for example by looking at the clock herself to remind me it was dinner time..

Alan

32 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Regarding communication, though, I have to come back to the point that we cannot meaningfully communicate with chimps who are incredibly similar to ourselves. Surely this must give us pause. 

Olly

We do ok with dogs though, actually far more than ok and to a lesser extent cats 😀 and its not just one way communication.

Alan

As an alien myself I don't have constraints on imagination...I imagine.

Intelligent life created from technology rather than nature.

Life that lives for billions of years and runs so slowly that we would consider it inert.

Life on every Planet and Moon in our solar system.

Life on the Sun.

Life in empty space.

Alan

10 minutes ago, Space Hopper said:

Looking through this beautiful assortment of telescopes on this thread, i asked myself  "what no Questars" ?   BUT THEN I FOUND IT ☺️

Its just a beautiful work of art isn't it ??

 

Here is another...

In my view the prettiest and finest scope ever made.

Alan

I have one of these for cleaning computer bits and keyboards, very powerful and because of the motor heat it does produce mildly warm air, might be a bit too strong for optics though as it can knock empty cans down from 12 foot away 😀

Alan

22 minutes ago, saac said:

Surely all our imaginings are based on interpretations or extrapolations of what we already know.  Here's a challenge, can anybody imagine something and describe it without reference to something we already know or have experience of.  I'm struggling; perhaps our imaginations are therefore not unlimited. 

Jim 

I agree although it only takes a new tiny observation or new discovery to open the imagination floodgates... Look at the discovery of electricity that spawned our 21st century life and gave us Frankenstein too 😀

Alan

7 minutes ago, iantaylor2uk said:

I doubt very much anyone born before 1900 would have been able to imagine the transistor.

Not impossible though as electricity was around then, would have been far more difficult to do in the middle ages..

Alan

Thing about imagination and invention is that we cant do either unless it has already been discovered/imagined, for example early bronze age man had all the ingredients sitting around him to make an electric carbon arc lamp but couldn't imagine the concept. 

I have tried to think of a single invention that wasn't discovered either by observation of nature or a complete fluke, all are small evolutions of what had gone before.

Alan

1 minute ago, Andy ES said:

Interesting Alan,  I suppose natural selection may have produced organisms that can sense everything that’s out there as an advantage? But then again I can’t sense magnetic fields like maybe a pigeon can so who knows? 

You didn’t mention sensing temperature but I suppose that is just touch?

Temperature is a valid one and those critters that can detect IR at a distance seem quite common. Another sense is pressure detection.

Alan

1 hour ago, JeremyS said:

Ugly ugly ugly

😊

It certainly is, looks like it belongs in a hospital 😀

Alan

Have been thinking (whatever that is) about the range of senses that are used by life on Earth and have come up with..

Visual covering the range from IR to UV.

Sound.

Taste.

Smell.

Magnetic fields.

Electro Magnetism.

To understand these inputs we need a processing unit and memory and a way of recording these for future generations.

So given these senses what would the development of technology require as a minimum and could it be done without sight for example and are there any other senses we don't know about?

Alan

7 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

But... since computer games are made by humans, for humans, are they not bound to recreate worlds which humans can understand? In which case our world is bound to resemble the computer game world. We wouldn't be able to play a computer game located in a world of physics entirely different from our own. It takes only a small step to move from the view that there is our world and the game world to our world is a game world. Small as it may be, I consider this a step too far.

Olly

I think one of the problems we face is that we use "human" math's and physics to describe the universe with our particular range of senses being a big influence, I imagine some alien species might have a completely different interpretation of the universe.

Regarding "computer" simulations etc they would work for any advanced civilization provided our view of physics is universal, however if you wanted to create a "game" for Dogs (most life in fact and probably some aliens too) to play then you would need to be able to understand and re create complex scents/taste as its probably there primary method for understanding the world.

Alan

After playing many many computer games there is no doubt in mind that we are in one or some type of simulation run by a collective intelligence. I firmly believe that the universe would not even exist without intelligent participants.

Alan

Not long now folks, hope it goes well...

Alan

Have been curious about the size of this rocked so found this which is interesting..

Alan

I like it very much, so natural.

Alan

9 minutes ago, Stu1smartcookie said:

Well I bought my tripod , and a little leveller which seems to work a treat 

Nice, that tripod looks very much like mine. Those bowl levelers are brilliant.

Alan

5 minutes ago, Ian McCallum said:

That happened to me, when I bought a TinySA spectrum analyser.🙄

So many usb C cables are power only as nobody uses a data cable for mobile phones these days with Bluetooth etc around.

I have been caught out too 😀

Alan

Make sure any cable is one that transmits data rather than power only..

Alan

I did think most modern Canon cameras have built in intervalometers, sometimes called "timelapse or interval" in the menu. My camera can do up to 99 shots at 30 seconds or a single bulb duration time but unfortunately not both together.

Alan

5 hours ago, The Admiral said:

At risk of flogging this one, from what I have subsequently read, the Mac Retina display should be close enough for your initial needs. Earlier versions appear to at least display the whole sRGB gamut, later ones something called P3, which is bigger, yet insufficient to include the Adobe gamut, though includes colours Adobe does not.

So, as long as your images are within the sRGB colour space then the colours should be reasonably represented by what you see on the screen. I would have thought that if you printed as per the tutorials, then you should get something pretty reasonable. If it's too dark, lower your screen brightness, or just brighten the image, until it looks OK. Affinity is a not as transparent as it should be, in that the paper profiles are not in a dropdown box that you might expect. Have you managed to find them yet? If you still can't find them, I'm not sure what you can do.

Let us know how it goes.

In fact I need to become better acquainted with Affinity myself, and could end up printing with it, so this is all grist to my mill 🙂.

Ian

I am using Affinity myself and too would be interested in any further thoughts regarding printing or indeed even compatibility when viewing images on sites like SGL etc. Have noticed that my monitor which is running natively in the P3 colour space and close to Adobe RGB does make everything very vivid when viewed by apps that use sRGB, thankfully my display does have a REC-709 mode which allows adjustment of brightness and contrast too.

Alan

I think it could work, my smartphone camera already blows my DSLR away for normal images and video and is not bad at astro either.

What would be nice is a dedicated smartphone micro EQ mount...

Alan

Display calibration has been mentioned a few times but even a rough "eyeball" check with some decent test images will get you close enough to start, setting gamma contrast and brightness correctly are key.

These are some useful sites https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/monitor-calibration.htm

https://www.pcworld.com/article/394912/how-to-calibrate-your-monitor.html

Alan

The question I have is what type of monitor are you using and what colour space is it running in and is it calibrated? Lol that's three questions 😃

Alan

5 hours ago, cadoran said:

I bought some used AP kit.

I have a lovely Alienware 17in with 32gb RAM, NVidia video card etc and SSD with 1tb second drive.

It doesn’t seem to like the older USB2 cameras so I got out my old Sony Win 7 with SSD and works nicely.

Perhaps better to have a lighter more disposable laptop for working outside?

I have an Alienware laptop myself and you wouldn't want to drop it on your foot when carrying it around 😆

Alan