life expectancy of an enginer

@david1 Personally I didn't consider "nope" as an answer. I certainly didn't take your assumed various member responses as an answer either...although I would have to say that I agree that spice extends life and conciousness. Hold on one sec, let me go conquer shy'hulude and I'll get back to ya.

when the engineer drank the black goo whichj was designed to " break him down and introduce his DNA into the environment"......did they have an idea what the results would be? How exact would they be? I mean environment plays a big part, and the survival of the fittest thing does too on how we are shaped. over the million plus steps we went through from our primeval beginings to modern humans , they couldve ended up with any thing.

The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.- William James (1842-1910) American philosopher and psychologist.

That also counts for Engineers also.

Rubirosa: I'll have to do some research on the man's works. There are so many interesting people throughout History it seems impossible to keep track to. Nrlfetmefan: It's alright bro. Don't worry, you're entitled to your oppinion. P.s.: how was Shy'Hulud?

Indeed I am entitled! Shy'Hulud was good...just kept on complaining about the water. As far as the conquering...well he was gonna have none of it, so I had to walk. Good point Pulserifle187...how could they know the end result of seeding the planet with all the possible variables over when considering time and evolution.

We could speculate a couple of things about the Engineers lifespan and the contrasting aspects of their culture that we see in the film. First, they self-sacrifice with an extremely sophisticated technology that uses their DNA to spread life. This could be viewed as an earlier stage in their culture where, even though they figured out how to seed planets, they can't live forever - as the aged Engineer would suggest. If they were later immortal through engineering, it would be at the genetic level, as the degradative characteristics of cellular multiplication that have already been described here would dictate. Was the opening scene from their distant past - perhaps a depiction of Earth's beginnings? Have they augmented their biology since then? They aren't wearing the suits at the beginning, which either means it is just a different, but contemporary aspect of the culture, they hadn't gotten that far yet, and/or there has been a divergence in their culture that either currently pits the two types against one another, or one has already prevailed. It really is starting to look like it's about harvesting genetic material, although I had dismissed that idea before I had considered it's being for longevity. There still remains the question of gender-duality, and the question of "why" if their race no longer (or ever) had that characteristic. Is genetic-material harvest necessary for propagation? There could be a self-preserving faction, and a self-sacrificing faction. How gender roles and respective "traits" might play into it all could be interesting, if executed properly. There could be any number of combinations of fundamental-characteristic dichotomies operating in the plot - patristic/matristic, idealistic/nihilistic, domination/nurturing, and no necessarily stringent correlations among any of these. Well, maybe nihilistic/domineering... I can't help but think that it's not going to be quite as philosophical as I might like, though. They gotta put butts in the seats.

Also, the genetic material-harvesting idea, doesn't even need to be the purpose of the opening-scene Engineers. That idea could be separate or subsequent to the life-seeding thing. My whole intention was to get to the idea of correlation between the lifespan of the Engineers and that of the xenos. There are described as highly intelligent and advanced, but their lifespan is short, right? There's a trade-off, and someone said earlier that they thought the lifespan of the Engineers was relatively brief because of (assumed) similarity/connection to the xenos. However, they don't necessarily have the trade-off of advancement for longevity. The suits and stasis technology may be because of abandonment of the entire seeding program, and the unanimous conclusion that their past work need to be destroyed -for which they might need to stay alive a considerable time. It maybe the result of the conflict-divergence within the culture, or it could be that they never "gave up" but are falling further and further away from their goal, whatever that may have been, and need to supplement their lives with technological materials.

im all for the idea of the engineers having a "civil war". some having love for the human race and some being jealous of the humans ( and seek its destruction). the ones who want to destroy the humans created the xenomorphs to do the job. the DNA harvest thing seem pretty good too!!

OK, I got online to The Oxford English Dictionary. [i]immortal, adj. and n.[/i] [i]2. a.[/i] [i]imperishable, unfading, incorruptible.[/i] [i][/i] [i]imperishable, adj. (and n.)[/i] [i]not subject to decay[/i] [i][/i] [i]Ergo, a being that is not subject to decay is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, immortal.[/i] [i][/i]

Zzplural Thanks for that because it explains the definition very well. Now a question! Even If the engineers were "imperishable, unfading, incorruptible" do they have an "imperishable, unfading, incorruptible" source of energy ? What about time? Does the engineers have a "imperishable, unfading, incorruptible" amount of time ? Is immortallity not a having a definite yes to the above questions ? The universe is winding down, every day it takes earth 0.0000026 seconds (or something like it) more to turn around its own axis. That means even if we were able to find cold fusion eventually all energy in the universe would be expended. A guy by the name of chuck missler says it has been scientifically proven that the universe is not infinitely big - implying it has a defined size.. (saw that on god TV - have no link to substantiate) Which says to me only so much energy available. So where did the energy come from that formed all matter ? Where did the engineers DNA structure come from ? So where does the engineers come from ? The universe had a defined starting point . What is the engineers purpose in the larger scheme of things ? As shaw said who " who made them ?" And also at what stage did the entire genome of the engineers finds its way into our planet ? Are there goo virus that only writes a small part of the engineer DNA into the DNA of organisms and others that writes more ? Was the DNA of the sacrificial engineer immediately written into amoeba like organisms or are the DNA itself becoming the organism ? Martin hill From weta digital says the following in a youtube video and I quote: "......the DNA getting infected , breaking apart and then reforming and re combining to show earth DNA....." Link: http://m.youtube.com/watch?desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D2Dc_zsM2p34&v=2Dc_zsM2p34&gl=GB Name of video: PROMETHEUS: ALIEN ANATOMY (EXCLUSIVE) What exactly does this mean ? The main thing I am asking is does this statement quoted above mean the DNA caused OTHER lifeforms to change or does it mean the DNA itself became the cells deviding in prometheus at the start in the water ? I don't want to start a thread on the above mentioned quote from martin hill - can anyone who started a thread on this please indicate so and provide a link.