I am not geneticist nor do I have friends who have direct contact with CRISPR, conclusion drawn were just aggregation of data. Two years ago I remember that lab in Holland has not published a paper that was saying how to turn H1N1 or alike viruses in more viral and more deadly versions.

But, I have knowledge in information science and I can tell you that even most complex 20000 lines code can be reverse engineer or modify by any developer if you have basic understanding and appropriate tools.

Viruses are not bigger than 20000 base-pairs ... So in my mind CRISPR/CAS9 is the tool, of course one would need some additional equipment, and the knowledge.

I am not worried about idiots in their garages, I am worried about that one genius with an emotional problems.

It is just an uncanny idea.

I must say that you answer is so well presented that my post now looks more like an emotional dribble.

That been said, I know that there was a purpose for religion and each commandment as well, as every part of it had intuitive knowledge necessary for survival of the species. On the other hand, moral of some stories in religious texts says that letting go is a necessary part, especially in Buddhism and Christianity so that people can realise on their own what is good or bad, right or wrong ...

I am trying to imagine what kind family would that be -- if all fathers or mothers punished their sons and daughters for leaving their families in order create their own. Speaking of which, it was not so unusual practice in many corners of the world earlier in the history ...

And as you hinted, having same in 21 century seems strange, although I feel that similarly we need to find that something that will connect us more (without punishment if possible), in the way that will, if nothing, protect us to wipe ourselves from existence on our way to become like gods ....

What is fascinating to me is connection of apostasy with story of Prodigal son, and also how different story tellers (nations), diverging from the original story react on it.

You should thank me for this I just spent 20 min looking for this video :)

So yes I know that, and let say that geneticist improve your life span and you live up to 1000 years, and that EM Drive works, that fusion energy would power our ship and we have enough fuel to travel. That again gives you just about 500 light-years in the life time if we ever achieve 50% of the speed. Our Milky Way Galaxy has size of a 100,000 light years.

So let say after 500 years of traveling you decide to send a message to the mother Earth, you will not get answer until you die.

And, what about observable universe and its size of 93,000,000,000 light-years?

And surely I am not interested in way of traveling where our genes will be stacked onto starship with AI that will resurrect us there, with only justifiable reason being civilization backup, or life preservation. But speaking in the terms of your mind and consciousness, you would be still in the cage of one to few solar systems. We will not be able to even communicate with each others, sharing good or bad things across the universe. Again above mentioned AI is maybe our future, maybe it is a logical evolution step in consciousness. It could be unimaginable smarter and intelligent, it could live millions of years, self repairing and replicating itself, so time would not represent a big obstacle for it.

But real point of that article is not discussion of the physics but more psychology of new inventions, and actually attitude we have about old knowledge and willingness to find a way out of the box.

We have put aside a powerful tool of our brain -- imagination and intuition, that can actually help us find solutions for many issues we are facing now and we will face in future.

For the last one I would be like:

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/degrassi/images/e/e0/Annie_fingers_crossed.gif

Your "2001: A Space Odyssey" reference made me smile, I like it.

I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave. This is in the realm of known physics.

And that is our cage. That little "can't" ...

Speaking in psychological sense (nothing to do with physics) we know that we "do not know" but, we do not know how to look for that unknown or usually we are very bad at it. Most of the time way how we look for the things can be compared with brutal force method in computing.

Psychologically if we say that something is impossible, we are shutting down our brains to look for solutions, we are saying this is it, this is all we can ever hope for. Every time we say it is "impossible", "it will never work", "there is no point" those cage bars become a bit bigger and stronger.

Do not get me wrong, I just like more when people intelligently try and failed thousand times trying to do something new, than when they give up at the beginning or just hold dearly to one standard already known thing.

am_Unition, Odder I like your answers ...

I had U turn long ago and went from physics to informatics, engineering and psychology (in free time) instead.

For me one notion was initial spark to write that post a idea that even when something outside happens we tend to be biased and apply same formulas, that obviously do not work for that particular case. In order to discover new things it is absolute requirement to look outside of the box. (all this is more psychology than physics really)

In my mind time is not a dimension but more relation between objects, whatever happen it will always go forward. (again this is speculation, as reality always has ways to surprise us).

Therefore, Alcubierre drive in my mind at least is just bridging the gap between two point of space. And while doing that -- time will still tick. Basically it will never catch its own copy from other time. So, someone may ask but what will happen with the light bouncing while it is still travelling, well again speculation, maybe nothing as it will not “react” with it in Star Trek subspace like manner.

And, although light bouncing of the original ship that has not started his journey, or the "shadow" from the ship, may arrive from the starting point in 2 yeas after ship has arrived, still does not violate anything.

Because ship would arrive just always one step in future, one millisecond, one second, but it would never go back ...

Again as I said before first I would need to find negative mass build experimental setup and prove it :) otherwise it is just speculation.