Prometheus

FTL is possible with contemporary physics…  One can theoretically create a “Warp Drive” that contracts space infront of you while expanding it behind you.  You essentially are going FTL but you physically are not accelerating to that speed.  One can also generate “worm holes” to create tunnels in space/time to move from one side of the universe to the other.  Or what about entering another dimension/universe where one is capable of moving faster than light and re-entering our universe/dimension when we reach our destination.

All of these are possible, but we are no where near capable of performing these acts with our present tech.  Yet alone able to harness and focus the massive amounts of energy required to use these methods.

@frimmel:

******more  spoilers **********

The problem is not that they’re ignoring evolution but that they don’t adequately explain what is in fact at work. A good writer establishes rules for his fictional universe. There is a certain amount of belief you’re expected to suspend simply by stepping into the theater. But that doesn’t mean anything goes.

The problem also is not that there aren’t explanations or possibilities but that if I’m left to fill in the story however I like then they didn’t actually say anything. While it is reasonable to expect me to bring some external knowledge from things to catch some symbolism the whole thing with Shaw as Pandora’s Box is really a stretch (though that was a really cool sequence which was good because it kept me from thinking too long about why the medpod in the ladies survival bunker was not calibrated for women.)

It was there for Wayland in case something happened to him during the journey.

And really easy to miss since right after she’s running around covered in blood with a line of surgical staples visible across her belly and nobody says a word and let’s her go along to wake up the Engineer.

There’s an even worse one there - Shaw had abdominal surgery, which usually involves cutting the belly muscles and sewing them back together and prevents you from almost walking (like mothers after a cesarian). But again I could argue that the machine took care of that as well.

spoilers continue*******

@Hobbes:

It was there for Wayland in case something happened to him during the journey.

Why? The man had only days to live which is why he was in hypersleep. What kind of surgery was he going to need? The medpod was introduced in the context of Vickers, a female, being prepared for anything which read to me as “my own survival.”

There’s an even worse one there - Shaw had abdominal surgery, which usually involves cutting the belly muscles and sewing them back together and prevents you from almost walking (like mothers after a cesarian). But again I could argue that the machine took care of that as well.

I had those thoughts as well. But that is just more of how sloppy the script is. To further go into problems there. If it isn’t calibrated for females simply asking for ‘remove foreign body’ without the program understanding there is a uterus there? And since they didn’t go into why Shaw couldn’t have children we might ask if she in fact had a uterus or eggs or why did she get pregnant in the first place. That brings us back to the magic black goo with unexplained abilities that seems to be able to do whatever needs done to motivate the next action sequence. I shouldn’t have to do mental contortions to make the script work and there is a limit to the number of “It’s a movie” cards the filmmakers can play.

But the medpod sequence was pretty intense and gripping despite the sloppiness. Would it really have been less so if the medpod were calibrated for females?

I often hear and use the phrase, “You can’t polish a turd.” I think maybe with “Prometheus” that has been proven wrong. That script is a turd but I still find myself having trouble saying the film is bad. Perhaps therein lies its genius.  :lol:

:roll:@frimmel:

spoilers continue*******

@Hobbes:

It was there for Wayland in case something happened to him during the journey.

Why? The man had only days to live which is why he was in hypersleep. What kind of surgery was he going to need? The medpod was introduced in the context of Vickers, a female, being prepared for anything which read to me as “my own survival.”

The guy is like 100 years old and goes through stasis, I guess it was a way to deal with any unexpected complications after waking up. IIRC someone mentions that he has cardiac problems as well.

There’s an even worse one there - Shaw had abdominal surgery, which usually involves cutting the belly muscles and sewing them back together and prevents you from almost walking (like mothers after a cesarian). But again I could argue that the machine took care of that as well.

I had those thoughts as well. But that is just more of how sloppy the script is. To further go into problems there. If it isn’t calibrated for females simply asking for ‘remove foreign body’ without the program understanding there is a uterus there? And since they didn’t go into why Shaw couldn’t have children we might ask if she in fact had a uterus or eggs or why did she get pregnant in the first place. That brings us back to the magic black goo with unexplained abilities that seems to be able to do whatever needs done to motivate the next action sequence. I shouldn’t have to do mental contortions to make the script work and there is a limit to the number of “It’s a movie” cards the filmmakers can play.

But the medpod sequence was pretty intense and gripping despite the sloppiness. Would it really have been less so if the medpod were calibrated for females?

I often hear and use the phrase, “You can’t polish a turd.” I think maybe with “Prometheus” that has been proven wrong. That script is a turd but I still find myself having trouble saying the film is bad. Perhaps therein lies its genius.  :lol:

Yeah, the black goo is really the plot device here as you say, that can be used to explain almost anything (or at least that obsessed viewers will try to use it so…). At the same time, its properties can be explained (partially) if you think of epigenetics, which studies how outside factors influence the genetic properties of DNA and how genes are activated. One example is cell differentiation - all cells share the same DNA but epigenetics is what makes some become bone marrow, others liver cells, etc. The black goo seems to share those qualities since it activates specific DNA parts on each organism that infects.

I think most of those plot issues have to do with the movie’s pace, which is fast and I liked it. The mission briefing is really: ‘this is what we’re here for, get up and lets do it now’ - no one asks questions about anything (which makes sense, since I’d be trying to rationalize it as well). No one seems to want to wait (which I would do the same with an alien building waiting to be explored) - they land and go to the structure right away, without much time for preparations.
At the same time, I think that most ‘plot holes’ belong to this approach, to make you feel like a crewmember of the Prometheus, trying to figure out what’s going on exactly.

FTL is going a bit off topic but……I’m familiar with warp drive as you explained it, it seems to me that is how Star Trek explained it.  I’m not so sure about that in reality, would love to see a paper explaining how in theory it would work.  Worm holes might actually exist but from what I read (can’t find it on a quick google search) it would stretch out anything that went into it into a long long string ripping apart the molecules if not atoms.

The reason I suspect it is not possible for FTL space travel for complicated things like life forms is that we are not seeing it.  If a civilization in the universe could, then with a growth rate of 1% a year the population doubles every 70 years or so, lets say 100 years of ease of calculation.  Life has probably been possible in the universe for 10 billion years, life on earth is roughly a few billion years old.  So you would have the population doubling 100, 000, 000 times.  Even if it took not 100 years but 10, 000 years to double the population then the doubling would occur 1, 000, 000 times.  Suppose the first FTL civilization occured not 10 billion years ago not 1 billion years ago but a mere 100 million years ago and took 10, 000 years to double.  You would double the population 10, 000 times.  So lets say the population started out as a single being.  Well you only have to double one 120 times to get a trillion trillion trillion beings.  That is only 120 times, it could double 10, 000 times easily, so where are all the aliens?

@MrMalachiCrunch:

so where are all the aliens?

To which there are a number of theories, namely Earth as a Zoo (aliens know about us but due to our backwardness only keep an thing on things), or that advanced civilizations are extremely rare (due to a number of necessary factors required, such as mineral rich star systems, surviving asteroid impacts, etc.) and would be separated by time and distance (two civilizations would have to develop on the same area, at the same time to achieve contact).

would be separated by time and distance (two civilizations would have to develop on the same area, at the same time to achieve contact).

Only if a civilization had a finite existence or did not expand exponentially as humans do AND avoided contact.  In 1000 years I don’t think it beyond reason to assume humans could achieve 1% the speed of light with robotic self replicating space ships carrying human DNA that could be defrosted and artificially incubated to start a colony around a new star system.  In a matter of 10 million years humans would be around every single star in our galaxy.  At least we know there are no expansionist civilizations any where in a galaxy near us.  If these ships could replicate once every 10 years then in a matter of a century and a half there would be more ships than stars in the universe.  At that rate of growth, in a few 1000 years there would be more ships than sub atomic particles in the universe so obviously the growth would reach a limit of the entire universe;s available materials would be converted into ships and humans given infinite speed.

@MrMalachiCrunch:

would be separated by time and distance (two civilizations would have to develop on the same area, at the same time to achieve contact).

Only if a civilization had a finite existence or did not expand exponentially as humans do AND avoided contact.  In 1000 years I don’t think it beyond reason to assume humans could achieve 1% the speed of light with robotic self replicating space ships carrying human DNA that could be defrosted and artificially incubated to start a colony around a new star system.  In a matter of 10 million years humans would be around every single star in our galaxy.  At least we know there are no expansionist civilizations any where in a galaxy near us.  If these ships could replicate once every 10 years then in a matter of a century and a half there would be more ships than stars in the universe.  At that rate of growth, in a few 1000 years there would be more ships than sub atomic particles in the universe so obviously the growth would reach a limit of the entire universe;s available materials would be converted into ships and humans given infinite speed.

Yeah, but in that case why hasn’t an ancient older civilization done it so already as you asked?
From there you can conclude either that a) there are/have been already galactic civilizations, and they either are too far yet, have died or are ignoring us deliberatly. Or b) There has never been a civilization on the universe capable to expanding outside and colonizing other stars, due to the factors I listed above.

From there you can conclude either that a) there are/have been already galactic civilizations, and they either are too far yet, have died or are ignoring us deliberatly. Or b) There has never been a civilization on the universe capable to expanding outside and colonizing other stars, due to the factors I listed above.

Exactly.

Ignoring us deliberately is most likely if they do exist.

Died… Possible.  Even if we had colonies around every planet in our system, a GRB or Gamma Ray Burst 100 of light years away could take out an entire system if the beams are focused our way.  But it is a small window in time between becoming space faring as we are just now and interstellar space faring as we will become in about 1000 year assuming no breakthrough in technology like warp drives.  In a few 1000 years we ought to be immune to extinction.

Too far…  I don’t like this premise.  Given our growth rate, we ought to be in every star system in our galaxy in 10 million years.  10 million years is a rather short time in galactic history.  Had the dinosaurs not been wiped out 65 million years ago, the raptors may in a few million years evolved intelligence required for space-faring.  Had they done this 60 million years ago they ought to have reached every star in our galaxy assuming they could get to 1/2 of 1 percent the speed of light.

Here’s a nice artice from one of the guys at SETI.

Thanks for the link, I love articles like that.

The question that he doesn’t talk about, but that the British scientist Stephen Hawking has mentioned is that, if there are aliens out there, we may not want to meet them.

Only if a civilization had a finite existence or did not expand exponentially as humans do AND avoided contact.  In 1000 years I don’t think it beyond reason to assume humans could achieve 1% the speed of light with robotic self replicating space ships carrying human DNA that could be defrosted and artificially incubated to start a colony around a new star system.  In a matter of 10 million years humans would be around every single star in our galaxy.  At least we know there are no expansionist civilizations any where in a galaxy near us.  If these ships could replicate once every 10 years then in a matter of a century and a half there would be more ships than stars in the universe.  At that rate of growth, in a few 1000 years there would be more ships than sub atomic particles in the universe so obviously the growth would reach a limit of the entire universe;s available materials would be converted into ships and humans given infinite speed

For all you know… that’s exactly how Earth Started.

Could you imagine??!?!

Maybe George Lucas was right, and all those events did happen a long time ago in a galaxy far far away…

For all you know… that’s exactly how Earth Started.
Could you imagine??!?!
Maybe George Lucas was right, and all those events did happen a long time ago in a galaxy far far away…

I think Battlestar Galactica had it better planned out… It has happened before, it will happen again!

So Say We All!

Saw the movie tonight and enjoyed it. It was rushed in places. But well worth the money.