Post: #26

Post: #27

(01-19-2015 03:29 AM)Samseau Wrote:  

(01-19-2015 03:21 AM)CrashBangWallop Wrote:  The term mind-blowing is used too often and too liberally.

It should be reserved for images like this.

There's something about contemplating the scale of the universe that overcomes me with an overwhelming feeling of my mortality.

Yep, we'll never see it all, even though we desperately want to.

No way man. I got fucked up on peyote one time and had an out of body experience. I flew all over the Andromeda Galaxy and saw all kinds of cool shit. I put my dick in a black hole and it stretched it to infinitude, and ate lunch with Tommy Chong. I'd tell all that I seen, but it is so much your heads would literally explode.

Post: #28

This is all fine and dandy, but what I'm most interested in is the social justice message of the scientists' shirts who worked on this.

Post: #29

The important question is not whether or not we are alone in this universe, for statistically we must not be alone. The question is how to get to their planet. If they sent us a signal, it would reach in a million years. Basically it all calms down to inventing and creating a wormhole. For that theoretically we need a substantial amount of anti matter. We will never see that much anti matter produced in our lifetime, so I wouldn't be too excited about space exploration.

Another possibility is that, the said aliens are a civilization that is million times as advanced as ours, and they will open the first wormhole and contact us. But this doesn't count on our space exploration. It only comes down to us sitting tight, hoping and waiting for something to happen.

Another possibility is that before we all die, we will find a way to genetically engineer ourselves to stop aging, and then to start aging backwards. Then we don't have to necessarily die before seeing that much anti matter produced. That would be very interesting.

Post: #30

You don't necessarily want an advanced civilization contacting us first. Remember what happened to the native americans?

Gun beats spear. Anti-matter blasters beat nukes.

Post: #31

The best sign of intelligent life outside of us that they left us alone.

Would you want to visit a bunch of half-apes armed with nukes?

Post: #32

(01-20-2015 10:44 AM)Glaucon Wrote:  The best sign of intelligent life outside of us that they left us alone.

Would you want to visit a bunch of half-apes armed with nukes?

Post: #33

This is cool. Probably most of us remember as kids hearing if Sun were a basketball, earth would be a marble 2 football fields away or something. Anyway, now with computers you can see this for yourself:

Solar system to scale, if the moon were only 1 pixel
http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixe...ystem.html

Some quotes from Bill Bryson A Short History of Nearly Everything:

"Now the first thing you are likely to realize is that space is extremely well named and rather dismayingly uneventful. Our solar system may be the liveliest thing for trillions of miles, but all the visible stuff in it— the Sun, the planets and their moons, the billion or so tumbling rocks of the asteroid belt, comets, and other miscellaneous drifting detritus— fills less than a trillionth of the available space."

"Now a natural question is why it took so long for anyone to find a moon in our own solar system. The answer is that it is partly a matter of where astronomers point their instruments and partly a matter of what their instruments are designed to detect, and partly it’s just Pluto. Mostly it’s where they point their instruments. In the words of the astronomer Clark Chapman: “Most people think that astronomers get out at night in observatories and scan the skies. That’s not true. Almost all the telescopes we have in the world are designed to peer at very tiny little pieces of the sky way off in the distance to see a quasar or hunt for black holes or look at a distant galaxy. The only real network of telescopes that scans the skies has been designed and built by the military.”"

PS I can't stand Bill Nye

Post: #34

(01-20-2015 04:32 AM)Slim Shady Wrote:  You don't necessarily want an advanced civilization contacting us first. Remember what happened to the native americans?

Gun beats spear. Anti-matter blasters beat nukes.

I do wonder how extraterrestrials would react if they ever came here. They'd probably see us as primitive and would think we need to be civilized.

Post: #35

The fact that we even exist is alone just mind blowing. Like what the fuck? Totally insane when you think about it.

Post: #36

(01-20-2015 10:44 AM)Glaucon Wrote:  The best sign of intelligent life outside of us that they left us alone.

Would you want to visit a bunch of half-apes armed with nukes?

Frank Miller hit on this in The Dark Knight Strikes Back:

"Earth. One of the galaxy's crown jewels. But it's a jewel not to be touched. No, space travellers steer clear of Earth, for all its riches, for all its beauty. It's only rational to avoid a species that points weapons at its own territory."

Post: #37

How do scientists explain how something came from nothing? I'm not talking about the Big Bang per se but the appearance of the universe in general. How could it just create itself? Fucking insane...

Post: #38

This thread is awesome. So much incomprehensible shit out there for us to contemplate. I'll throw out another:

The universe is expanding, but at who's expense?

Post: #39

(01-20-2015 02:05 PM)YoungAngel1 Wrote:  The fact that we even exist is alone just mind blowing. Like what the fuck? Totally insane when you think about it.

Yeah, even a stupid cockroach is a miracle when you think about it. To think that even a bug has a brain and evolved from lifeless chemical compounds that somehow became automated and self replicating.

Now here we are. One of the few species with self awareness. I mean what the fuck is consciousness? How did we go from dirt to being self aware and being able to look back at the dirt we evolved from and figure out how it came to be?

It's like we are an extension of the universe observing itself. Maybe that's our ultimate purpose. The universe's means of observing itself through us.

If there are intelligent aliens, their brains may be wired so differently from us that we may not be able to relate to each other. They may have no concept of human emotions which are wired in out dna. They may have emotions that we can't understand. Logic that makes no sense to us but works for them. I'm dying to see what an alien civilization is like.

Post: #40

(01-21-2015 07:39 AM)speakeasy Wrote:  If there are intelligent aliens, their brains may be wired so differently from us that we may not be able to relate to each other. They may have no concept of human emotions which are wired in out dna. They may have emotions that we can't understand. Logic that makes no sense to us but works for them. I'm dying to see what an alien civilization is like.

Stanislam Lem has a very thought provoking book on this called Fiasco. Worth reading.

http://www.amazon.com/Fiasco-Stanislaw-L...em+contact

Post: #41

We probably live in out the boonies. Bum Fuck Egypt in the Milky Way. The distances between solar systems alone is ridiculous. Planets like Kepler 22B are just too far away. No one would live long enough to get to it, even if you could technically. Other systems have more earth like-ish planets in their same solar system but we are too far from even the closest one, it basically becomes futile.

A trip to Kepler would take 23 million years. At the speed of light 500+ years. Even if you built some super ship traveling that fast that would not pull everyone's skin off, they would destroy themselves inside with social politics before getting to the new planet. Putting everyone to sleep does not seem to make that much sense. How would replicate? Send eggs/sperm and artificial wombs with a computer scheduling to create them 20 years before arriving? We can call that Saiyan Strategy.

I bet we are better off terraforming Mars instead.

Post: #42

(01-21-2015 08:57 AM)TravelerKai Wrote:  I bet we are better off terraforming Mars instead.

If I'm not mistaken, the core of Mars has cooled, thus no major magnetic field to hold the atmosphere down. Or something like that. Thus, terraforming Mars is a nearly impossible job.

Post: #43

(01-21-2015 11:09 AM)Cincinnatus Wrote:  snip

Thus, terraforming Mars is a nearly impossible job.

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!!!

It's true magnetic fields prevent the solar wind from eroding a dense atmosphere. For future Mars exploration, a magnetic field would protect us from radiation, and we'll need another way to do the same thing, like underground or partially buried habitats.

Great thread guys. Regarding the OP image, here is a nice video with some context/cool music/pan/scan/zooms:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udAL48P5NJU&app=desktop

Post: #44

(01-21-2015 11:09 AM)Cincinnatus Wrote:  

(01-21-2015 08:57 AM)TravelerKai Wrote:  I bet we are better off terraforming Mars instead.

If I'm not mistaken, the core of Mars has cooled, thus no major magnetic field to hold the atmosphere down. Or something like that. Thus, terraforming Mars is a nearly impossible job.

Elon Musk will figure something out!

Post: #45

(01-21-2015 11:09 AM)Cincinnatus Wrote:  

(01-21-2015 08:57 AM)TravelerKai Wrote:  I bet we are better off terraforming Mars instead.

If I'm not mistaken, the core of Mars has cooled, thus no major magnetic field to hold the atmosphere down. Or something like that. Thus, terraforming Mars is a nearly impossible job.

I forgot about that. Well there you have it. Plants would have to grow inside some artificial atmosphere.

Mars would be interesting for archaeological study.

Post: #46

(01-21-2015 11:30 AM)Engineer Wrote:  

(01-21-2015 11:09 AM)Cincinnatus Wrote:  snip

Thus, terraforming Mars is a nearly impossible job.

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!!!

It's true magnetic fields prevent the solar wind from eroding a dense atmosphere. For future Mars exploration, a magnetic field would protect us from radiation, and we'll need another way to do the same thing, like underground or partially buried habitats.

Great thread guys. Regarding the OP image, here is a nice video with some context/cool music/pan/scan/zooms:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udAL48P5NJU&app=desktop

Couldn't we build dome communities on Mars?

Post: #47

Maybe we should focus on providing basic clay domes for the remaining 100 million homeless people on Earth (of which a ming-boggling 2-3 million in Europe and 1-2 million in USA reside in highly developed countries) before we start building high-tech ones on Mars.

Post: #48

I spoke of the Fermi Paradox on another thread and I think it's appropriate here too.

Post: #49

(01-22-2015 09:48 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  Maybe we should focus on providing basic clay domes for the remaining 100 million homeless people on Earth (of which a ming-boggling 2-3 million in Europe and 1-2 million in USA reside in highly developed countries) before we start building high-tech ones on Mars.

We'll never solve any given problem to a zero level of "badness". Diminishing returns will make that very expensive to achieve (and I realize that is not exactly what you advocated HCE). Best in my opinion to allocate resources via a free market with some safety net, which seems to optimize things across many options. I suspect the homeless problem is not one of actual lack of shelter, but of mental health care which has proven more difficult for society to address.

Post: #50

(01-21-2015 01:12 AM)getdownonit Wrote:  This thread is awesome. So much incomprehensible shit out there for us to contemplate. I'll throw out another:

The universe is expanding, but at who's expense?

It is expanding into nothingness. Nothingness can be infinite, matter not so much.

This is how galaxies can get further and further from us with more than the speed of light. Relativity is only applied to matter, but space can expand faster than the speed of light.

Ok, my head hurts, I stop this now. I need a drink

this explains: