Are We Alone in the Universe?

[Foxfyre]

One more thought before I have to utilize modern technology to get me to the grocery store--I wish we could improve on that -- the first man made object to make it into space was believed to be a German V-2 rocket in 1917. That certainly put the many more seeds of curiosity and possibility into human minds.

It would take 40 more years (1957) before humankind would be able to put Sputnik into space and the space race for military supremacy/equity was on. It took only 11 years before Apollo 8, with humans on board, orbited the moon 1968 and in 1969 Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon. And we humans had also evolved to the point that at least us Americans were determined that space be neutral, peaceful, and unmilitarized which gives me much hope for future space exploration as well.

So if it took us a short half century to get from that first relatively primitive rocket launch to putting a man on the moon, and considering all the amazing technology accomplished in the half century since then, just imagine what we can/will accomplish in the next 50 years.

 

[alang1216]

Depends on what you call practical. You said it yourself in #376, they want to be free to practice their religion free from restraints. Sounds practical to me, nor would I classify any and all religions as a "cult". Which is an attempt on your part to demagogue all of them, not cool.

You can define 'practical' however you want but I was using 'cult' correctly, IMHO, and was not demeaning either. All religions begin as cults. All cults become religions or disappear. Cults are begun by a single individual, in my examples, Jesus and John Smith. You have to join a cult, you're (almost always) born into a religion.

 

[Montrovant]

Well, I dunno - there's a lot of work going on to build an outpost of some kind on Mars, and some people think we'll have a station there:

What do we mean when we say an environment is “habitable”? When referring to exoplanets, the term “habitability” is usually equated to whether or not liquid water can exist on the planet’s surface. But that doesn’t always answer the question of whether humans can inhabit a given environment. After all, Earth’s South Pole doesn’t have liquid water on the surface. Neither does low-Earth orbit. Yet resourceful humans have been inhabiting both locations for decades.

What about Mars? Mars is on the outer boundary of our solar system’s habitable zone, and we know what looks like briny, liquid water can exist on the surface for short periods of time. But does that really make Mars habitable? From a practical standpoint, the answer depends on what technologies we bring there to create our own artificial habitable zones on the surface.

Long-term habitation on Mars will require us to master the conversion of raw Martian materials into resources we can use to survive. Fortunately, Mars has a wealth of these materials, making it arguably the most human-habitable place in the solar system, other than the Earth itself.

Is Mars habitable? With the right technologies, yes

----

Then there's Europa, one of Jupiter's moons:

NASA scientists believe that one of Jupiter's moons is the most likely place in the universe beyond the Earth that could harbour life. Europa, the sixth closest moon to the planet, is far more likely to be habitable than desert-covered Mars which has been the focus of recent US exploration, they say. It's ocean, thin shelf of ice and the presence of oxidants on Europa make it far more likely to be home to a life form than the red planet.

Read more: Jupiter's Europa moon is 'most likely to support life than the deserts of Mars', claim NASA scientists | Daily Mail Online

----

And Enceladus:

Today Earthlings came one very giant step closer to finding life elsewhere in our solar system. In the final months of its 20-year mission, the spacecraft Cassini delivered its most noteworthy revelation yet: the ocean of Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, is releasing hydrogen, an energy source for some microorganisms. In other words, that ocean is inhabitable. “Enceladus,” says Cornell University astrophysicist Jonathan Lunine, “is the place to go to look for life.”

The ocean—made of liquid water and resembling a hybrid of the Atlantic Ocean, a desert mineral lake and the fluid found near hydrothermal vents—covers the entire surface of this moon. A thick shell of ice surrounds the entire body of water, though, leaving it dark and frigid. But something happening inside that ocean is strong enough to break through those miles of ice. At the moon’s southern pole, a geyser-like plume spews water vapor, ice, salt and a mix of gases hundreds of miles into space at a force of 800 miles per hour.

Cassini spacecraft delivers biggest revelation yet: A moon of Saturn is habitable

The possibilities of course are endless. Certainly if humankind can live quite comfortably for weeks or months in a space station in orbit around the sun, we could build a structure on Mars making lengthy periods of habitation possible, most especially assuming we can acquire speeds to shorten the 150 to 300 day one-way travel period that a trip there now requires. And since Mars does have a natural gravity, we wouldn't have to compensate for weightlessness there nearly as much as we do in space.

But I don't see Mars as a place to colonize so much as a base for scientific experimentation and explorations and perhaps mining. We still need to find some Class M planets that humankind would be right at home on.

I think you're right, Mars has little to offer since we'd never walk its surface with a space suit. If we're going to do that we might as well stay in space and use asteroids for raw materials and not fight Mars gravity well.

I think you misunderstood what I said though. I could see purpose in a permanent scientific research base on Mars, possibilities if Mars has critical elements to mine, etc. I just don't see it as a permanent habitat for humankind.

It will probably depend on a few different things. Can Mars be terraformed to be human-friendly? Will other bodies in our solar system (like the moons of Jupiter, for instance) prove to be more easily adapted to human habitation? How long will it be before humanity is capable of interstellar travel in a reasonable time frame? Will population continue to increase, or will there come a point (perhaps due to technology) at which population starts to decrease, making the desire to settle elsewhere less pressing?

No Mars cannot be transformed into being human friendly any more than humans are capable of changing the timeless characteristics of our own planet. But unless there are unknown properties there that would make it harmful or deadly to humans present there--unlikely--I can see it as suitable for a base for scientific research and possibly mining. Certainly establishing a protective cocoon there would be no more difficult than building and maintaining a large scientific laboratory in space which has already been done.

As for the distance problem, now that we know how warp speeds can be accomplished, we only need to figure out how to develop the technology to do it. At half pulse--half warp speed--it would take about 10 minutes to travel between Earth and Mars while it now takes us three days to reach the moon with our current technological abilities. I wouldn't be surprised if we haven't figured it how to do that within the next 25 to 50 years, probably a bit longer to build the prototype that would actually accomplish it.

And I do envision space vehicles that won't need hugely expensive enormous rockets and projects to launch them into space but will be able to come and go from Earth as easily as a helicopter now travels from city to city.

Once we can do that, traveling to and from the space station will be no more of a project than my getting to the grocery store now in heavy Albuquerque traffic. But for now just imagine the incredible amount of know how it took to put the ISS out there and getting to and from it to even build it. It is such a tiny speck out there in an unimaginable vastness and it is moving at 17,500 miles per hour making figuratively chasing it down and actually docking with it a major scientific marvel. And I think it is but an early baby step what we will be able to do to achieve even greater more wonderful things.

Too often folks tend to think the science we know is all that we will ever know. I think we know only a teensy fraction of all the science there is to yet learn, to know.

Mars cannot be terraformed with current technology. With current technology, there is nowhere other than Earth for large amounts of people to live. I thought the whole point of this conversation was speculating about possibilities. I certainly don't think discussing the possibility of terraforming is any more strange than discussing travel with warp speed.

 

[Foxfyre]

The possibilities of course are endless. Certainly if humankind can live quite comfortably for weeks or months in a space station in orbit around the sun, we could build a structure on Mars making lengthy periods of habitation possible, most especially assuming we can acquire speeds to shorten the 150 to 300 day one-way travel period that a trip there now requires. And since Mars does have a natural gravity, we wouldn't have to compensate for weightlessness there nearly as much as we do in space.

But I don't see Mars as a place to colonize so much as a base for scientific experimentation and explorations and perhaps mining. We still need to find some Class M planets that humankind would be right at home on.

I think you're right, Mars has little to offer since we'd never walk its surface with a space suit. If we're going to do that we might as well stay in space and use asteroids for raw materials and not fight Mars gravity well.

I think you misunderstood what I said though. I could see purpose in a permanent scientific research base on Mars, possibilities if Mars has critical elements to mine, etc. I just don't see it as a permanent habitat for humankind.

It will probably depend on a few different things. Can Mars be terraformed to be human-friendly? Will other bodies in our solar system (like the moons of Jupiter, for instance) prove to be more easily adapted to human habitation? How long will it be before humanity is capable of interstellar travel in a reasonable time frame? Will population continue to increase, or will there come a point (perhaps due to technology) at which population starts to decrease, making the desire to settle elsewhere less pressing?

No Mars cannot be transformed into being human friendly any more than humans are capable of changing the timeless characteristics of our own planet. But unless there are unknown properties there that would make it harmful or deadly to humans present there--unlikely--I can see it as suitable for a base for scientific research and possibly mining. Certainly establishing a protective cocoon there would be no more difficult than building and maintaining a large scientific laboratory in space which has already been done.

As for the distance problem, now that we know how warp speeds can be accomplished, we only need to figure out how to develop the technology to do it. At half pulse--half warp speed--it would take about 10 minutes to travel between Earth and Mars while it now takes us three days to reach the moon with our current technological abilities. I wouldn't be surprised if we haven't figured it how to do that within the next 25 to 50 years, probably a bit longer to build the prototype that would actually accomplish it.

And I do envision space vehicles that won't need hugely expensive enormous rockets and projects to launch them into space but will be able to come and go from Earth as easily as a helicopter now travels from city to city.

Once we can do that, traveling to and from the space station will be no more of a project than my getting to the grocery store now in heavy Albuquerque traffic. But for now just imagine the incredible amount of know how it took to put the ISS out there and getting to and from it to even build it. It is such a tiny speck out there in an unimaginable vastness and it is moving at 17,500 miles per hour making figuratively chasing it down and actually docking with it a major scientific marvel. And I think it is but an early baby step what we will be able to do to achieve even greater more wonderful things.

Too often folks tend to think the science we know is all that we will ever know. I think we know only a teensy fraction of all the science there is to yet learn, to know.

Mars cannot be terraformed with current technology. With current technology, there is nowhere other than Earth for large amounts of people to live. I thought the whole point of this conversation was speculating about possibilities. I certainly don't think discussing the possibility of terraforming is any more strange than discussing travel with warp speed.

We know we can achieve warp speeds. We just haven't developed the technology that will allow people to do it yet. I don't think we will ever develop technology that will allow us to effectively terraform on any large scale. I hope and pray that we never do because it would be such a terrible weapon in the hands of those with evil purposes.

 

[task0778]

I think you're right, Mars has little to offer since we'd never walk its surface with a space suit. If we're going to do that we might as well stay in space and use asteroids for raw materials and not fight Mars gravity well.

I think you misunderstood what I said though. I could see purpose in a permanent scientific research base on Mars, possibilities if Mars has critical elements to mine, etc. I just don't see it as a permanent habitat for humankind.

It will probably depend on a few different things. Can Mars be terraformed to be human-friendly? Will other bodies in our solar system (like the moons of Jupiter, for instance) prove to be more easily adapted to human habitation? How long will it be before humanity is capable of interstellar travel in a reasonable time frame? Will population continue to increase, or will there come a point (perhaps due to technology) at which population starts to decrease, making the desire to settle elsewhere less pressing?

No Mars cannot be transformed into being human friendly any more than humans are capable of changing the timeless characteristics of our own planet. But unless there are unknown properties there that would make it harmful or deadly to humans present there--unlikely--I can see it as suitable for a base for scientific research and possibly mining. Certainly establishing a protective cocoon there would be no more difficult than building and maintaining a large scientific laboratory in space which has already been done.

As for the distance problem, now that we know how warp speeds can be accomplished, we only need to figure out how to develop the technology to do it. At half pulse--half warp speed--it would take about 10 minutes to travel between Earth and Mars while it now takes us three days to reach the moon with our current technological abilities. I wouldn't be surprised if we haven't figured it how to do that within the next 25 to 50 years, probably a bit longer to build the prototype that would actually accomplish it.

And I do envision space vehicles that won't need hugely expensive enormous rockets and projects to launch them into space but will be able to come and go from Earth as easily as a helicopter now travels from city to city.

Once we can do that, traveling to and from the space station will be no more of a project than my getting to the grocery store now in heavy Albuquerque traffic. But for now just imagine the incredible amount of know how it took to put the ISS out there and getting to and from it to even build it. It is such a tiny speck out there in an unimaginable vastness and it is moving at 17,500 miles per hour making figuratively chasing it down and actually docking with it a major scientific marvel. And I think it is but an early baby step what we will be able to do to achieve even greater more wonderful things.

Too often folks tend to think the science we know is all that we will ever know. I think we know only a teensy fraction of all the science there is to yet learn, to know.

Mars cannot be terraformed with current technology. With current technology, there is nowhere other than Earth for large amounts of people to live. I thought the whole point of this conversation was speculating about possibilities. I certainly don't think discussing the possibility of terraforming is any more strange than discussing travel with warp speed.

We know we can achieve warp speeds. We just haven't developed the technology that will allow people to do it yet. I don't think we will ever develop technology that will allow us to effectively terraform on any large scale. I hope and pray that we never do because it would be such a terrible weapon in the hands of those with evil purposes.

"We know we can achieve warp speeds."

Uh, wait a minute, if we have not yet developed the technology yet to do it then how do we know we can achieve it? How about "we believe we can eventually achieve warp speeds.".

 

[Foxfyre]

I think you misunderstood what I said though. I could see purpose in a permanent scientific research base on Mars, possibilities if Mars has critical elements to mine, etc. I just don't see it as a permanent habitat for humankind.

It will probably depend on a few different things. Can Mars be terraformed to be human-friendly? Will other bodies in our solar system (like the moons of Jupiter, for instance) prove to be more easily adapted to human habitation? How long will it be before humanity is capable of interstellar travel in a reasonable time frame? Will population continue to increase, or will there come a point (perhaps due to technology) at which population starts to decrease, making the desire to settle elsewhere less pressing?

No Mars cannot be transformed into being human friendly any more than humans are capable of changing the timeless characteristics of our own planet. But unless there are unknown properties there that would make it harmful or deadly to humans present there--unlikely--I can see it as suitable for a base for scientific research and possibly mining. Certainly establishing a protective cocoon there would be no more difficult than building and maintaining a large scientific laboratory in space which has already been done.

As for the distance problem, now that we know how warp speeds can be accomplished, we only need to figure out how to develop the technology to do it. At half pulse--half warp speed--it would take about 10 minutes to travel between Earth and Mars while it now takes us three days to reach the moon with our current technological abilities. I wouldn't be surprised if we haven't figured it how to do that within the next 25 to 50 years, probably a bit longer to build the prototype that would actually accomplish it.

And I do envision space vehicles that won't need hugely expensive enormous rockets and projects to launch them into space but will be able to come and go from Earth as easily as a helicopter now travels from city to city.

Once we can do that, traveling to and from the space station will be no more of a project than my getting to the grocery store now in heavy Albuquerque traffic. But for now just imagine the incredible amount of know how it took to put the ISS out there and getting to and from it to even build it. It is such a tiny speck out there in an unimaginable vastness and it is moving at 17,500 miles per hour making figuratively chasing it down and actually docking with it a major scientific marvel. And I think it is but an early baby step what we will be able to do to achieve even greater more wonderful things.

Too often folks tend to think the science we know is all that we will ever know. I think we know only a teensy fraction of all the science there is to yet learn, to know.

Mars cannot be terraformed with current technology. With current technology, there is nowhere other than Earth for large amounts of people to live. I thought the whole point of this conversation was speculating about possibilities. I certainly don't think discussing the possibility of terraforming is any more strange than discussing travel with warp speed.

We know we can achieve warp speeds. We just haven't developed the technology that will allow people to do it yet. I don't think we will ever develop technology that will allow us to effectively terraform on any large scale. I hope and pray that we never do because it would be such a terrible weapon in the hands of those with evil purposes.

"We know we can achieve warp speeds."

Uh, wait a minute, if we have not yet developed the technology yet to do it then how do we know we can achieve it? How about "we believe we can eventually achieve warp speeds.".

I go back to the documentary movie "Space" that we recently saw at the Museum of Science and Natural History here. While doing a recap of what we have been able to learn and accomplish re space so far, they also showed us what the vision of the future would be. And one of those visions, complete with illustrations, was how warp speeds would/could be accomplished. The laws of physics have always included electricity, radio waves, light waves, ability to transmit sound and pictures over the entire Earth and even from the surface of the moon. Such things were very poorly understood or even unknown all the way into the Renaissance, the Reformation, and beyond. But once humankind can envision and begin to understand it, some humans will relentlessly devote massive time and energy to figure out how to prove/solve/invent/or utilize it and eventually they always do. You can be sure that the ideas and suggestions for prototypes for warp speed machines and capabilities are already on the designers tables. And I would lay odds that within the next 25 to 50 years, they'll figure out how to build one.

 

[task0778]

From the link below. It's a year old, and indicates that while warp speeds may be theoretically possible, right now we don't know how to do it. Yet. Sorry Foxy, but I'm not seeing this as a done deal within the next 50 years, it takes one heck of a lot of power to do this stuff even if we did know what/how to do it. It starts out talking about Star Trek:


One of the most important technologies that Federation ships are equipped with is the warp engine. This engine, fueled by Dilithium crystals, allows spaceships to travel at phenomenal speeds and visit worlds that are many light-years from Earth. The speed is FTL, or Faster Than Light, and there are theories behind whether or not it is achievable. Einstein said no, as nothing with mass can travel faster than the speed of light. My understanding of Star Trek warp speed is that it follows the Alcubierre theory on FTL travel, where an object inside a bubble that is moving at the speed of light is not actually moving. If the space-time is collapsed in front of the bubble, then the bubble, including the ship, passes through quicker than the speed of light. This makes sense to me as the often talk of a warp field around the ship when the ship is travelling at this speed.

I don’t think Einstein and Alcubierre ever met, because I think they would have had a rather big disagreement. In Einstein’s celebrated work, the Special Theory of Relativity, he fervently implied that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. If we are ever going to get to another world outside of our own solar system, we are going to need Einstein to be wrong, for once. Alcubierre was a Mexican physicist who stated that fabric of space-time could be stretched and moved, allowing an object to pass through at faster than the speed of light. For Star Trek to happen in real life, we need this dude to be correct.

Alcubierre Theory:
To put it simply, this method of space travel involves stretching the fabric of space-time in a wave which would (in theory) cause the space ahead of an object to contract while the space behind it would expand. An object inside this wave (i.e. a spaceship) would then be able to ride this region, known as a “warp bubble” of flat space. This is what is known as the “Alcubierre Metric.” Interpreted in the context of General Relativity, the metric allows a warp bubble to appear in a previously flat region of space-time and move away, effectively at speeds that exceed the speed of light. The interior of the bubble is the inertial reference frame for any object inhabiting it.

Einstein might have disagreed with the theory, but there is a way that they can both be right. Considering that the region of space is moving, and not the ship itself, normal conventions would not apply. Time dilation doesn’t happen and as such, no breaks in the rulebook of space-time and the laws of relativity would have been made. Everyone would be happy campers.


The Problem:
The Alcubierre drive remains a theory for a very good reason. The reason that we haven’t tested and confirmed the theory yet is that we can’t. We don’t actually have a way of creating the bubble that would be needed for FTL travel. There are also no known ways to create a warp bubble, but if anyone knows please give me a call and we can go from there.

The Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project (BPP) was created by NASA to research and develop methods of getting ships to incredible speeds. Unfortunately they made very little progress and as such, the funding was cut. They broke away and created the Tau Zero Foundation which concentrates on studying theories of interstellar travel. NASA announced back in 2012 that they were researching warp drive and hoping to determine whether or not it was possible. They continued on the work done by Alcubierre and projected the possible effects of expanding and contracting space-time.

“We’ve initiated an interferometer test bed in this lab, where we’re going to go through and try and generate a microscopic instance of a little warp bubble. And although this is just a microscopic instance of the phenomena, we’re perturbing space time, one part in 10 million, a very tiny amount… The math would allow you to go to Alpha Centauri in two weeks as measured by clocks here on Earth. So somebody’s clock onboard the spacecraft has the same rate of time as somebody in mission control here in Houston might have. There are no tidal forces, no undue issues, and the proper acceleration is zero. When you turn the field on, everybody doesn’t go slamming against the bulkhead, (which) would be a very short and sad trip.” – Dr. Harold Sonny White – NASA researcher

The results of the tests were inconclusive and researchers gave opposing theories and suggestions as to what happened and whether it could be done.

Conclusion
Unfortunately warp drive will remain a theory for a while yet. The brightest minds on the planet have yet to prove that it is even possible, despite several theories giving suggestions on how to do it. We have a strong theory from Alcubierre, and an opposing argument from Einstein.

Warp Speed: What Is It And Will It Ever Be Possible?

 

[Foxfyre]

From the link below. It's a year old, and indicates that while warp speeds may be theoretically possible, right now we don't know how to do it. Yet. Sorry Foxy, but I'm not seeing this as a done deal within the next 50 years, it takes one heck of a lot of power to do this stuff even if we did know what/how to do it. It starts out talking about Star Trek:


One of the most important technologies that Federation ships are equipped with is the warp engine. This engine, fueled by Dilithium crystals, allows spaceships to travel at phenomenal speeds and visit worlds that are many light-years from Earth. The speed is FTL, or Faster Than Light, and there are theories behind whether or not it is achievable. Einstein said no, as nothing with mass can travel faster than the speed of light. My understanding of Star Trek warp speed is that it follows the Alcubierre theory on FTL travel, where an object inside a bubble that is moving at the speed of light is not actually moving. If the space-time is collapsed in front of the bubble, then the bubble, including the ship, passes through quicker than the speed of light. This makes sense to me as the often talk of a warp field around the ship when the ship is travelling at this speed.

I don’t think Einstein and Alcubierre ever met, because I think they would have had a rather big disagreement. In Einstein’s celebrated work, the Special Theory of Relativity, he fervently implied that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. If we are ever going to get to another world outside of our own solar system, we are going to need Einstein to be wrong, for once. Alcubierre was a Mexican physicist who stated that fabric of space-time could be stretched and moved, allowing an object to pass through at faster than the speed of light. For Star Trek to happen in real life, we need this dude to be correct.

Alcubierre Theory:
To put it simply, this method of space travel involves stretching the fabric of space-time in a wave which would (in theory) cause the space ahead of an object to contract while the space behind it would expand. An object inside this wave (i.e. a spaceship) would then be able to ride this region, known as a “warp bubble” of flat space. This is what is known as the “Alcubierre Metric.” Interpreted in the context of General Relativity, the metric allows a warp bubble to appear in a previously flat region of space-time and move away, effectively at speeds that exceed the speed of light. The interior of the bubble is the inertial reference frame for any object inhabiting it.

Einstein might have disagreed with the theory, but there is a way that they can both be right. Considering that the region of space is moving, and not the ship itself, normal conventions would not apply. Time dilation doesn’t happen and as such, no breaks in the rulebook of space-time and the laws of relativity would have been made. Everyone would be happy campers.


The Problem:
The Alcubierre drive remains a theory for a very good reason. The reason that we haven’t tested and confirmed the theory yet is that we can’t. We don’t actually have a way of creating the bubble that would be needed for FTL travel. There are also no known ways to create a warp bubble, but if anyone knows please give me a call and we can go from there.

The Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project (BPP) was created by NASA to research and develop methods of getting ships to incredible speeds. Unfortunately they made very little progress and as such, the funding was cut. They broke away and created the Tau Zero Foundation which concentrates on studying theories of interstellar travel. NASA announced back in 2012 that they were researching warp drive and hoping to determine whether or not it was possible. They continued on the work done by Alcubierre and projected the possible effects of expanding and contracting space-time.

“We’ve initiated an interferometer test bed in this lab, where we’re going to go through and try and generate a microscopic instance of a little warp bubble. And although this is just a microscopic instance of the phenomena, we’re perturbing space time, one part in 10 million, a very tiny amount… The math would allow you to go to Alpha Centauri in two weeks as measured by clocks here on Earth. So somebody’s clock onboard the spacecraft has the same rate of time as somebody in mission control here in Houston might have. There are no tidal forces, no undue issues, and the proper acceleration is zero. When you turn the field on, everybody doesn’t go slamming against the bulkhead, (which) would be a very short and sad trip.” – Dr. Harold Sonny White – NASA researcher

The results of the tests were inconclusive and researchers gave opposing theories and suggestions as to what happened and whether it could be done.

Conclusion
Unfortunately warp drive will remain a theory for a while yet. The brightest minds on the planet have yet to prove that it is even possible, despite several theories giving suggestions on how to do it. We have a strong theory from Alcubierre, and an opposing argument from Einstein.

Warp Speed: What Is It And Will It Ever Be Possible?

I have probably lived quite a bit longer than you and have watched human creativity and determination do the impossible a lot longer than you. I have watched the world so dramatically change over my lifetime that I no longer consider anything worthwhile as impossible.

I still remember Jim Lovell's line when leading a tour of NASA citing all the technological wonders on the horizon such as 'a computer that can fit into a single room.' Even he had not yet envisioned the small compact PC that sits on my desk and has more computing power and capability than any computer that existed in 1970.