The Astronomy Thread

Sylas said:

Then i'll ask you to show your work on where the energy comes from. Ignore fueling the ship even, just tell me where the energy comes from to run the robots for 400k years it'll take us to get to the closest habitable planet? Let's say we even get to 30% c (which makes fueling your ship even more impossible, but lets pretend) so it only takes 150k years through mostly empty void with only distant starlight, what powers the robots?

The answer is always fantasy. matter replicators and perpetual motion machines. Just say you put on your robe and wizard hat and cast a spell, it's more realistic.

No, we'll send robots into space that'll be slightly better versions of Voyager who have initial velocity granted by chemical propulsion of the rocket and the occasional assist from planetary gravity that we knew about and calculated in the initial trajectory and it'll hit a speed many many many thousands of a % of c and that's the speed it'll have forever.

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Who says the Robots need to run 400k years? We have mini nuclear Reactors now, in a thousand years they could be the size of a home generator. I'm not staying it's easy, but there are ways.

sylas is such a doomer. Fusion is the obvious technological advance we need to achieve, and there are lots of questions around how light works and the speed of light that are just not proven. It’s our understanding of the universe that is meager and limiting us here, not the other way around.

Chanur said:

androids caring for a massive ship full of fertilized embryos and food could spend a few generations taking us to other worlds to populate.

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I think I have seen this movie.

And fusion runs off of? Oh that's right, fuel. matter. Whether you are taking big atoms and making smaller atoms or taking smaller atoms and making bigger atoms, you need fuel.

Again the answer is always magic.

And the time required is a product of distance and velocity?
You guys truly do not understand the true problem is space is big.

If you think about it, it's kinda funny. We have the universe, we have intelligent races spread out amongst the stars and then we have physics going Hahaha fuck you all, you will never meet each other.

Sylas said:

And fusion runs off of? Oh that's right, fuel. matter. Whether you are taking big atoms and making smaller atoms or taking smaller atoms and making bigger atoms, you need fuel.

Again the answer is always magic.

And the time required is a product of distance and velocity?
You guys truly do not understand the true problem is space is big.

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Does matter not exist? Is space empty.

Also matter exists, therefore can be created. This is a simple logical fact. The only real question is “how”.

You’re assumption that these questions have no answer is objectively false, but you may be correct that humanity is too stupid to ever realize answers.

Furry said:

Does matter not exist? Is space empty.

Also matter exists, therefore can be created. This is a simple logical fact. The only real question is “how”.

You’re assumption that these questions have no answer is objectively false, but you may be correct that humanity is too stupid to ever realize answers.

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At least until we turn ourselves into Greys by fucking with our DNA for intelligence.

Furry said:

Does matter not exist? Is space empty.

Also matter exists, therefore can be created. This is a simple logical fact. The only real question is “how”.

You’re assumption that these questions have no answer is objectively false, but you may be correct that humanity is too stupid to ever realize answers.

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woah i'm not even sure where to start with this one. You think the answer is a perpetual motion machine combined with an infinite energy machine and a matter replicator, so like the trifecta of magic disguised as "science"

I regret to inform you that matter cannot, in fact, be created, nor destroyed. It can theoretically be converted into energy but i'm thinking that conversation is lost on you. I do not assume these "questions" have "no answers" I assume correctly that the answers which we've known for some time is, "No you can't travel FTL, that's not how the physical universe works"

Also i'm not sure why you think I"m a doomer? What's worse:

a) Life is super rare, b) intelligent life is super rare, c) intelligent life destroys itself before it ever reaches the stars via some great filter, or d) intelligent life is hiding from some super predator species that will come and wipe us out if we're ever silly enough to broadcast our location into space for decades on end like we've been and are currently doing. Either way, we're alone in the universe and always will be. The only possibility that we'll ever make contact with alien life is if it's the super predator variety when it shows up, any minute now, to annihilate us as a species.

That's the fermi "paradox"

Or, life is probably super common, intelligent life even, but space is so fucking big we never really have a chance to run in to one another. We're not alone, but it doesn't really matter. Space is too big to be colonized that's why nobody has done it. Everything we know about the universe and physics proves beyond a doubt that this is true.

Honestly, time travel is theoretically more probable than FTL travel, yet we never talk about it in any serious matter? In fact for FTL to even be able to exist in theory, time travel also exists.

Assumption 1: people make mistakes and/or have regrets, things they wish they could change. <--true, yes?
Assumption 2: People will continue to make technological advancements, leaps and bounds beyond what we currently see <-most likely true, yes?
Assumption 3: People will eventually create time travel, so why the hell isn't anyone popping up from the future to warn me about dating my ex? or giving me the winning powerball numbers? or killing hitler? Where the fuck is everyone??

What a paradox! This is the exact same "assumption" built in to the fermi paradox. Not only will we magically overcome the physics of the universe to travel FTL, but it's a foregone conclusion, every alien species will be able to do this, so where the fuck is everyone then? they must have died first or got killed by other aliens, because OBVIOUSLY everyone should be able to do the one thing we know for a fact can't be fucking done.

So since i'm not visited daily by terminators trying to revert the time line, where is everyone??

Well maybe every time people travel back in time, it creates a new multiverse and you're always in the one where they didn't go back in time to tell you that thing? Or maybe someone else travels back in time to stop that person from traveling so they don't break the space/time continuum and we end up with terminators and shit? Or maybe time travel requires some device to portal back to, so you can only travel back in time until the day time travel was invented and no further, so we'll never see them?

It's generous to call it a "thought experiment" but truly the fermi paradox is no different than the above about time travel, in fact the time travel question has more scientific rigor.

it's slightly better than a facebook quiz about which backstreet boy you are but to waste a moments thought to seriously consider the fermi paradox or FTL travel is fucking retarded.

Sylas said:

woah i'm not even sure where to start with this one. You think the answer is a perpetual motion machine combined with an infinite energy machine and a matter replicator, so like the trifecta of magic disguised as "science"

I regret to inform you that matter cannot, in fact, be created, nor destroyed. It can theoretically be converted into energy but i'm thinking that conversation is lost on you. I do not assume these "questions" have "no answers" I assume correctly that the answers which we've known for some time is, "No you can't travel FTL, that's not how the physical universe works"

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Where did I say any of your claims? I demonstrated that space is not empty. There is light, there is matter and there is gravity -everywhere-. Harnessing these forms of extant and potential energy is not magic, but science.

As for the fact that matter can be created, this is a simple indisputable truth. Things that can’t be created don’t exist. Matter however does exist. The conditions for its creation are what we don’t know, rather than if it can happen.

And the fact that you think time travel could be possible, I’m just not going to touch that. Past and future exist only theoretically. Could it be possible? Maybe, but I doubt the universe keeps a recording of itself more complete than the propagation of energy or inference gained from the effects of time observed in the present. I find the subject to be worthless speculation.

As for the Fermi paradox, I think human life has experienced an extraordinary level of luck that allowed it to develop to this point. I mean the most basic examination of how intelligent species fail to ever get to the stars could simply be they come to be on a planet where this is impossible. What of an intelligent species on a water world where resources simply don’t exist, or they don’t have the physiology to make or use complex tools. Never mind that most intelligent species will probably kill themselves off or be eradicated by nature.

I strongly believe highly intelligent life is inevitable on any planet that can support it, but most planets will only support moderately intelligent life. I’ve said before that I wouldn’t be shocked at all if we are the first and only species in our galaxy that is space capable.