Wasn't the combustion engine made obsolete by jet technology?

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

...and your claim is that this was all due to "alien intervention"?

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

Given the physical limits of a combustion engine, what improvements would you expect in the last 30 years?
Frankly not much, we have to absolutely chuck the idea now using this archaic power plant. We should invest tenfold or more into developing a reliable electric car. (would I be willing to pay more taxes? Yea I would)
I am a hypocrite when I write this, I drive one of the best machines Combustion Engine invented, I burn gas like it will never end.
I think we consumers & carmakers finally getting the point.

A weather balloon? (OK, it was a secret surveillance balloon.) What the heck kind of technological advances are we supposed to have made by analyzing our own technology? There's never been anything presented that proves it was anything but what the Air Force said it was, other than a bunch of conspiracy theorists who also have nothing.

As entertaining as CTs like the alleged incident at Roswell may be, without any kind of corroborating evidence I'm not going to give the ETs credit for my PCs.

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some novel theories can be had.
But keep your feet both on the ground;
Sometimes the astronomy's bad.

You may see the cosmos through the noise,
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Remember when reading conspiracy ploys,
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So keep your spider sense on high
And before they drive you to booze,
Take time to roll up your pant legs, boys,
It's too late to save your shoes.

When did jet engines stop using combustion?

Van Rijn...if I may, I'd like to change this quote just a "tad" to...

Given the physical limits of a combustion engine, when used in an automobile, what improvements would you expect in the last 30 years?

There are only so many "improvements"
that can be made to the combustion engine when it is used in an autombile. For instance, and as I posted earlier, the combustion engine "evolved" into the jet engine when used in airplanes. Well, we can't very well do that with cars, so the "evolution" of the engine in cars can go no farther than "ordinary" combustion.

In other words, Solomarineris, the premise for your analogy has been basically flawed from the beginning.

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

There are still some neat things going on with piston engines, though. Those six-stroke engines - basically a hybrid gasoline/steam engine - are fascinating.

And I stand by what I said. A person from 1910 wouldn't have the vaguest notion of what most parts of a car engine today are even for.

I think if you come into this forum presenting this argument:

Premise 1. The progress of Technology A, relying on a specific set of drivers 'A', has progressed by a certain amount.
Premise 2. The progress of Technology B, relying on a completely unrelated set of drivers 'B', has progressed by a greater amount.
Conclusion: Technology B has been sourced from a crashed alien spaceship.

...then I tend to agree that you probably do need to provide a little substantiation to support your argument.

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"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams

"Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful." - Ian Faith

So, then what is your basis of comparison between combustion engines and computers?

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What "discrepancy of progress" among scientific fields are you referring to?

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

What should you say? Start with something that supports your claim instead of just blindly insisting upon it. So far, you have failed to demonstrate that advances in computer technology should have proceeded no faster than in automotive technology, unless we had the benefit of alien technology from which to borrow. Just saying it's so won't make it so...and just saying it's so doesn't comply with our rules.

My direct question to you is, why is your claimed disparity in technological advancement remarkable and attributable to reverse engineered alien technology? I've already suggested some differences in the market forces between the two technologies. Please consider them when providing your timely answer.

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Brett
Peters Creek, Alaska
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You will only be censored if you use rude language. This might also lead to a banning.

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“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever”
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"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence - and then success is sure." - Mark Twain.

This is nonsense. The computer under your fingers right now still uses the same basic principles as the very first tiny hobby computers. You know, the ones without a proper screen, that had a 4 bit processor (or less), just a few keys, and a couple of LED number displays. It's still just transistors set up in such a way that they can perform very simple functions. The main improvements have been to put stuff that used to be discrete components into custom chips, and slow improvement of the material of which chips are made (allowing for faster speeds and more miniaturization).

What you see as crazy improvement is nothing but a long, long series of a small improvements, by many companies, on individual components, and a slowly increasing usage of those components as they could handle more. Many different manufacturers improved upon just a few components, and they become available constantly. When you buy a new computer every five years, all you see is how much faster and more capable it was then your previous computer. However, were you to buy a new computer every three months, buying one in the same price range as your previous one, you would notice a much slower rate of improvement.

To suggest that this improvement isn't normal, or possible, is a slap in the face of the millions of people in the computer industry, who have studied years, and worked hard, to get where we are now.

Don't believe me? http://www.old-computers.com/museum Click on the years and see the slow growth. Please stop defending silly statements on fields where you obviously have no expertise at all.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin
"Your right to hold an opinion is not being contested. Your expectation that it be taken seriously is." -- Jason Thompson
Meet the OOONG TOE.

The whole reverse engineering statement is nonsense.
Thought experiment:
Drop a laptop from thousand feet on the ground.
Take the pieces and put it in your timemachine and send the former laptop to some early genius, let us take Leonardo da Vinci.
Does anybody really believe Leonardo could reverse engineer from that heap of laptop trash an electronic device like a TI 30 calculator?

How do you reverse engineer things (which physics background are unknown) that needs technology you don't posess neither have the knowledge nor the necessary support to build?

Well, what do you think could be the difference?

Personally, I'd put at least a part of it down to the fact that a wheel is already about as good as you are going to get for moving things for a low energy cost, and to the fact that even a 1940s car was getting about 10% of the energy out of a litre of petrol.

On the other hand, we turned out to be using electronic components that were billions of times larger than they needed to be, leaving lots and lots of room for improvement.

On the other hand, you could look at things another way. The radio that my parents had in the 50s was pretty similar to the one that I have now, but the car parked on my drive would have won the first grand prix that was run, and would also get me to and from the event in comfort.

So maybe you are actually focussing on what you want to focus on to prove a point.

Which is well in fitting with your name, of course.

On the subject of advances in computing against cars, of course, there is the following (probably embellished) riposte to Bil Gates' claim that if car manufacturers had kept up with electronics we'd all be driving V-32 engined machines that could do 10,000mph and getting 1,000mph;

"But Bill, who'd drive a car that would crash twice a day".

Ooh, what is it?

I'd say that, depending on which direction you want to take, that would be an Elise S1 Sport 160 (or its Exige cousin), a Zonda F, an Atom, or, if you want to expand "drive" to cover two wheels as well, the new ABS Fireblade or a GSX-R1000. Did I guess right?

Or, if you prefer the older machinery, perhaps a Miura, or a Merc 300SL.

I assume that you are from the US (apologies if not), and it is rare to come across someone from there who shares the European's love of beautiful engineering and purity of design in automotive engineering. Sadly, all too often, they look up to Mustangs or Dodge Vipers or other abominations.

Anyway, apologies for the thread derail, but the above comment just is too much of a tease.

All we're doing is pointing out the fallacies in your posts. You're the one taking umbrage at the corrections.

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Friendly Rabid Atheists (mostly)

solomarineris

Given the physical limits of a combustion engine, what improvements would you expect in the last 30 years?
Frankly not much, we have to absolutely chuck the idea now using this archaic power plant. We should invest tenfold or more into developing a reliable electric car. (would I be willing to pay more taxes? Yea I would)

The sticking point for electric cars is battery technology. Even though battery technology is reportedly improving by up to 30% a year, it still takes a lot of batteries to store the same amount of energy as a gallon of gasoline that weighs only 6 pounds. Practical urban electric cars will be hitting the market soon but they won't serve the needs of a lot of people nearly as well as gasoline powered cars and trucks. They're also going to be quite expensive because of all those batteries.

In the meantime, gasoline engine technology for automobile use has advanced tremendously in the past 30 years or so, in part due to the advances in electronics. I read once (and can't find a source to back up the statement) that a car produced in the 1960s and 1970s produced as much as 400 times the pollution as a modern car. Most of them also produced less power and got worse gas mileage. Simultaneously improving power and economy while reducing pollution is a significant achievement in engine technology due in part to electronic ignition, electronic fuel injection, better materials, tighter tolerances, and other technological advances. Adjusted for inflation, these modern engines aren't that much more expensive than the old engines, either. Not too shabby.

Grashtel:

How about turning this around? If say a Global Hawk had landed somewhere in 1947 what could have been reverse engineered from it? As a Global Hawk is presumably much less advanced than an alien space ship, built by humans, and for this scenario it would have landed safely rather than crashing reverse engineering it would be far easier than from a crashed alien vehicle.

An interesting question. The basic aerodynamics of the Global Hawk wouldn't surprise anyone in 1947. They might be able to learn quite a bit about the alloys used in the airframe and especially in the jet engine. Jet engine technology was still in its infancy in 1947 with relatively short operational life and horrendous fuel consumption.

I suspect they'd have a much harder time understanding the avionics. The integrated circuits used in modern avionics are many orders of magnitude more complicated than any electronics made back then and you can't see what's going on inside of a chip. The satellite communications system might baffle them some 10 years before Sputnik. Without GPS signals, they'd likely have a hard time understanding how the plane navigated.

Now if one of the stealthy UCAVs like the X-47B were somehow transported back in time to 1947, that would likely baffle them. Its built of materials that didn't exist back then, is aerodynamically unstable, and has a lot of features that would just be outside of their experience.

I think a good example of OOPART would be a cell phone. Even if the phone itself was reverse engineered in 1947, something very unlikely, it would be useless, a "one of a kind" item with nobody to call.

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Your claim is based on the premise that both automotive engines and computer technology should have advanced at the same apparent rate if both were unaided by aliens. It is that premise you must prove before your claim has any merit.

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I would have expected computer performance to increase faster. Today's computers were designed using yesterday's computers and are being used to design tomorrow's computers. That fact suggests an exponential growth curve.

On the other hand, you can't use an engine to design an engine. . . move it around maybe, but not design it.

There is a good reason for this; gasoline produces energy when combusted with oxygen, but on this planet oxygen is free and doesn't have to be carried around inside the car. That saves on mass.

A battery generally has to carry all the chemicals it needs to store the energy it retains; except for batteries that use oxygen out of the air (such as fuel cells), a battery will always hold lower energy per kilogram than gasoline or hydrogen. Unless you can start running cars on nuclear power or antimatter, there is a real limit to how much energy you can pack in a given mass of motor vehicle.

Perhaps one might think that a nuclear-powered car is a good idea; but the need for heavy anti-radiation shielding and safe waste disposal seems to suggest that fission cars are not recommended. Fusion power is still fifty years away, so they say, and small car-sized fusion plants seem unlikely in any case. Antimatter would be a great fuel but is probably the most expensive material currently produced on Earth. So I really don't hold out much hope for phenomenal improvements in motor car fuel technology for the foreseeable future.

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Well, when you think about it, the modern computer is, at it’s most basic function, really just an “automated” (or “virtual” for lack of a better analogy?) version of the abacus which was invented what… over 4,000 years ago?

In comparison, the internal combustion engine has been around (in practical form) for what… around 200 years?

I say give it time… still waiting for my air car.

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Moeller just filed for bankruptcy, so you'll have to wait a while longer.

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Friendly Rabid Atheists (mostly)

What precisely is ridiculous about requiring you to be able to back up your claims? If you can not do so...maybe you shouldn't be making those claims. That *is* an option.

Anyway, as has been mentioned several times already, the technology needed to produce transistors, integrated circuits, etc. can not be reverse engineered from the final product. At the time of the Roswell incident, the concept of microscopic circuitry certainly existed. Semiconductor rectifiers were in use (crystal detectors, selenium rectifiers, etc), and the theory underlying transistor action already existed...patents were being given for transistor designs decades earlier. The main obstacles to production of transistors were materials and fabrication. Production of ultra-pure semiconducting materials and formation of doped regions, thin films, and metal contacts. Many approaches were tried, and in fact the first generations of commercial devices used point contact and grown junction technologies that were not useful for integrated circuits, and lots of other dead-end ideas. Kind of like what you'd expect from a technology being developed from scratch.

Photolithography, plasma deposition, and various other technologies are required to actually fabricate high density integrated circuits...what was required was advancements in a variety of fields including chemical industry, process control, etc, things that just would not be obtainable from examination of the finished product. And coincidentally, things that themselves benefit from the electronic devices they make possible. Automotive engines don't make it massively easier to make automotive engines, at best they make it a little cheaper to haul materials around. Electronic controls allow more precise fabrication of electronic parts and better automation of production, and computer aided design both greatly reduces the time required to get a working product and greatly increases the complexity of the designs that are practical to work with.

And finally...automobiles are the product of revolutionary advances. The explosive development in machine industry was what made mass-produced self-powered vehicles at all feasible. You're comparing an entire field to a specific product that emerged relatively late in the development of another field. Automobiles relied on compact, high power engines that were the result of earlier advances. Many refinements have been made since then, but those early vehicles used engines orders of magnitude more advanced than those of a century before. What you're doing is no more valid than comparing the development of portable media players to the industrial revolution: there have only been incremental improvements in sound quality and the variety of media that can be played on portable devices, compared to the massive jump from wobbly toy steam engines that were incapable of doing any useful work to the great locomotives and steamships. Does this mean that high power steam engines and the Bessemer process for mass production of steel must have been results from even earlier UFO crashes?

They should have hooked up with Steorn to solve the problem of having to carry all of that fuel around.

""Meade Layne had made these discoveries on the true nature of the flying saucer by the intermediate of a psychic named "Probert". "Probert" had been contacted by ancient spirits, such as "The Yada Di'Shi'ite", an Oriental chap who had lived 500.000 years ago as a citizen of an Himalayan civilization, as well as one friend of Gallilée, and a deceased German scientist.""

Of all the whackamundoes in all the world, you had to find the one that is my nominal favorite; "E Yada Di Shi'ite" and his famous ads in fringe publications....
I say "nominal" in the true meaning of the term...

Dale in Al

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We are looking at IC engines from the end of their development . Look back to the end of the 19th century and then forward to the 1930s. That's where the big leap forward came, the comparable rate of development with computers today.

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