It's called a case of 'Over Rationalizing Syndrome' and 'Not knowing how to live in the moment' Syndrome. A Common ailment that happens during the teens and twenty's when you spend alot of time reading instead of doing .
Not as confused as I was last night. I had a bit of a uhm, exorcist moment when my stomach turned the wrong time last night, so I was walking it off around the second floor before trying to lay down. The lights where off upstairs, but there's a window that lets light in. I saw a flash of light by the lamp in my ceiling fan, and I thought the power went out for a breif second. IT w as only a minute or two later that I realised I had the light off when I Saw the flash, and it must have been a reflection from the neighbors security light turning off, wich is damned bright.
Do you see any aliens? Any burning sensations in your lower half? Are you sure it was a "exorcist moment" and not beings from another world taking samples?
Nope, no aliens. No burning sensations, and I'm not suddenly growing a second one down there so that's good.... Yep, definet(sp) pea soup moment. No more than a minute after I got in the shower with the warm water, and the 65 or so temperature inside, then that's when it happened, but only a little bit. Oh, and a note for those also sick... no matter how thirsty you are, don't slowly drink half a glass of water. That dosn't help the stomach much either, but thankfully no where near as bad as the shower incident. Nothing upchucked that time, heh.
OK, I just read this answer and I'm still not sure what you find "highly doubtful". Is it the bouncing a signal off a distant object? "Pre-internet" and "pre-Windows 98" hardly qualifies as "primative" technology. It isn't like either of those things was particularly a technological breakthrough. (And the internet, of course, did exist pre-1996, it had existed since the 1970s in its earilest form. The Wolrd Wide Web - which is not the same thing as "the internet" - was newer and relatively few people had access to either, but they did exist.)
Anyway, if that's your problem all I can say is that we'd already been bouncing energy off closer objects to study them for a long time, so doing so with a distant planet or asteriod (I agree a star would be a poor choice) would be a matter of vastly increasing the signal strength and greatly increasing the tightness and accuracy of the beam, but also wouldn't require any new basic technology. (At present a pencil-thin laser beam sent a mere 250,000 miles to the Moon will spread out to cover a circle 1/4 mile in diameter, so you'd obviouly need a much tighter beam for it to be able to hit a target 10 light years away and still be detectable when it came back to Earth 20 years later.)
I always like how in cartoons, a giant magnet will be used to pull everything metal towards it, sometimes from great distances. Where can I get one of these super-magnets? Think of the military applications alone.
Another classic cartoon theory is that you can't fall until the moment you look down and realize you're going to fall.
LOL - and it usually works on objects that are MUCH bigger/heavier than the magnet itself. I mean, in that case, wouldn't the magnet be pulled toward the object and not the other way around??