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axeil posted:
Like that in general is so clearly the solution to the femi paradox, our actual study of the universe is in it's infancy and we literally are just barely into the study of most astronomical objects. There is absolutely zero reason we would have noticed aliens by now in any meaningful way. Name anything about the study of space and there is massive unanswered questions. The answers aren't going to be 'aliens did it" but without solid answers we can't actually know what is anomalous.
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Nov 29, 2018 22:22
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We know everything about the moon: it sucks and is boring and I can't believe we got the worst moon in the whole solar system.
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Nov 29, 2018 22:26
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Which are the top 10 best moons in the Solar System?
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Nov 29, 2018 22:27
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zoux posted:It's not a serious theory. ....I hope.... This is why discussions about the Fermi Paradox that don't end with "we simply can't detect them with our lovely instruments" get real facile real fast. Like, we have people itt that seriously think we actually live in a Lovecraft story, I mean come on.
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Nov 29, 2018 22:31
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DrSunshine posted:Which are the top 10 best moons in the Solar System? 1. Luna because it is an absolute unit relative to the planet it orbits and we actually went there 2. Ganymede because it is also enormous 3. Titan because it's the only one anyone remembers that orbits Saturn 4. Io because volcanoes  5. Phobos because it had a bunch of levels in the original DOOM 6. Europa because it's got water and we were told we can't go there in 2001 A Space Odyssey 7. Charon because it's almost as big as Pluto but no one cares about it. It's so big the orbital point between Charon and Pluto is outside Pluto 8. S/2018 J 1 because it was discovered this year (it orbits Jupiter and is only 1 KM around) 9. Miranda because it's the only notable moon around Uranus 10. Trition because Neptunian representation Sorry Venus + Mercury for not being cool enough to have moons. Also Pluto is a planet don't @ me. axeil fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Nov 29, 2018 |
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Nov 29, 2018 22:33
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1. Titan 2. Europa 3. Io 4. Charon 5. Ganymede 6. Enceladus 7. Triton 8. Mimas 9. Iapetus or Callisto, both look insanely cool but I can't pick. I think Phobos and Deimos have a lot of spunk as well so HM.
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Nov 29, 2018 22:35
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Kerning Chameleon posted:This is why discussions about the Fermi Paradox that don't end with "we simply can't detect them with our lovely instruments" get real facile real fast. I don't seriously think we live in a Lovecraft story but I also think the fact that you think it's implausible there are things in the universe far more consequential and dangerous than humanity is silly. We are but small fish in a big, big ocean, an ocean that is ancient and that we can only see a small slice of.
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Nov 29, 2018 22:40
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I think the most disheartening explanation for the Fermi paradox is that galactic phenomena like ELE asteroid strikes and gamma ray bursts are constantly wiping out civilizations before they get a chance go interstellar.
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Nov 29, 2018 22:43
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DrSunshine posted:Which are the top 10 best moons in the Solar System? IO has to be on that list, top 3 for sure. It's my personal favorite.
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Nov 29, 2018 22:44
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Lightning Knight posted:I don't seriously think we live in a Lovecraft story but I also think the fact that you think it's implausible there are things in the universe far more consequential and dangerous than humanity is silly. We are but small fish in a big, big ocean, an ocean that is ancient and that we can only see a small slice of. Every single intelligent species clings for dear life to its slowly dying mother sun(s). The luckier and more canny ones might be able to ride out the star's expansion by island hopping planetary orbits until it settles into brown dwarfhood, but the idea any of us in the Big Brain Club could personally visit even a single extrasolar planet (given what we now know about physics and the realities of existing in space) is the real laughable idea. Kerning Chameleon fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Nov 29, 2018 |
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Nov 29, 2018 22:47
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Kerning Chameleon posted:This is why discussions about the Fermi Paradox that don't end with "we simply can't detect them with our lovely instruments" get real facile real fast. I don't really think people seriously believe that. It's an "ooh creepy!" kind of tongue-in-cheek thing -- this is still a comedy forum despite being the "Serious" one for debates.
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Nov 29, 2018 22:50
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Kerning Chameleon posted:Every single intelligent species clings for dear life to its slowly dying mother sun. The luckier and more canny ones might be able to ride out the star's expansion by island hopping planetary orbits until it settles into brown dwarfhood, but the idea any of us in the Big Brain Club could personally visit even a single extrasolar planet (given what we now know about physics and the realities of existing in space) is the real laughable idea. None of us personally will go to space, no, but that doesn't mean that no one could ever make it to space. And if they can't, then perhaps that is the great filter. I think that assuming the great filter is nuclear weapons or even global warming is human-centric tho, assuming similar evolution and social development as us.
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Nov 29, 2018 22:50
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Lightning Knight posted:None of us personally will go to space, no, but that doesn't mean that no one could ever make it to space. Yes, my choice for Great Filter is "laws of physics makes interstellar travel en mass impractical if not impossible", I consider that the most reasonable stance to take on the matter. We're in a cage, but so is everyone else. We are effectively if not literally alone in the universe, just like everyone else. Kerning Chameleon fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Nov 29, 2018 |
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Nov 29, 2018 22:53
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Kerning Chameleon posted:This is why discussions about the Fermi Paradox that don't end with "we simply can't detect them with our lovely instruments" get real facile real fast. Yeah, I feel like people absurdly overestimate how much we have completed research into space and the universe. Like the idea that if there was aliens in another GALAXY we'd have seen them by now. We barely can resolve even individual stars in anything but the closest galaxies.
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Nov 29, 2018 22:55
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Kerning Chameleon posted:Yes, my choice for Great Filter is "laws of physics makes interstellar travel en mass impractical if not impossible", I consider that the most reasonable stance to take on the matter. Isn't the problem with this that even not going faster than light, one could still colonize other planets given a sufficiently large time scale (i.e. millions of years), and given the age of the universe (i.e. billions of years) this implies we fundamentally misunderstand something about the galaxy or that somehow there has not been intelligent life before us?
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Nov 29, 2018 22:56
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Lightning Knight posted:Isn't the problem with this that even not going faster than light, one could still colonize other planets given a sufficiently large time scale (i.e. millions of years), and given the age of the universe (i.e. billions of years) this implies we fundamentally misunderstand something about the galaxy or that somehow there has not been intelligent life before us? I think his point is that it may not be practical to do it even the slow way. That entropy and interstellar radiation etc mean you just can't build a craft capable of slowboating it between the stars over a couple of centuries without it failing.
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Nov 29, 2018 23:02
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Lightning Knight posted:Isn't the problem with this that even not going faster than light, one could still colonize other planets given a sufficiently large time scale (i.e. millions of years), and given the age of the universe (i.e. billions of years) this implies we fundamentally misunderstand something about the galaxy or that somehow there has not been intelligent life before us? The big question is... Why would anyone do that? My island hopping idea would be plenty for a species to survive a longass time on, if they live sustainably and accept limits and periodic culls in population. Trying to send colony ships you'll never hear from again gets you nothing but inaccurate warm fuzzies about your species specialtude, and it's so unlikely they'd survive the journey, much less the destination... It's just a huge buy-in for enormous risk with basically no payoff. I can't imagine anyone but the Alien Elon Musks of the universe seriously considering it at that stage.
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Nov 29, 2018 23:02
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Heat in space is very difficult to get rid of. Most space fightss will be incredibly far away, or heat guns boiling crews to death or surrender. Its not fun or cool its boring and stupid. The vast majority of us would probably be appalled at hunting deer packs with miniguns just the same as a 1800s society would be annihilated by drones hell even 1900s society so much so that it would be boring to conquer them. Maybe boring is the wrong word, i dont have another word that makes sense tonme other than a waste of time and grueling. Even people working on rovers and mars unmanned missions are concerned with tainting evidence of life or eradicating it entirely by accident. Imagine 500 years from now. We will be watching planets like zoo keepers ourselves and we cant even get to most places yet. We could have millions of von neuymann probes launched rapidly after we hit certain energy levels that are not far out of reach. It so goddamn easy its ubelievable. We now have reusable rockets, drones, solar panels etc. Put it all together and we can have long range communications (earth to moon communications being referenced as long range ) longer and faster space communications mean longer range automated exploration. WAR CRIME GIGOLO fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Nov 29, 2018 |
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Nov 29, 2018 23:03
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Lightning Knight posted:Isn't the problem with this that even not going faster than light, one could still colonize other planets given a sufficiently large time scale (i.e. millions of years), and given the age of the universe (i.e. billions of years) this implies we fundamentally misunderstand something about the galaxy or that somehow there has not been intelligent life before us? there's also a baked in assumption that species must want to colonize the stars. truly alien psychology may recoil at the idea of leaving their planet
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Nov 29, 2018 23:06
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Deptfordx posted:I think his point is that it may not be practical to do it even the slow way. That entropy and interstellar radiation etc mean you just can't build a craft capable of slowboating it between the stars over a couple of centuries without it failing. I don't follow. Could you elaborate? Kerning Chameleon posted:The big question is... Why would anyone do that? My island hopping idea would be plenty for a species to survive a longass time on, if they live sustainably and accept limits and periodic culls in population. Trying to send colony ships you'll never hear from again gets you nothing but inaccurate warm fuzzies about your species specialtude, and it's so unlikely they'd survive the journey, much less the destination... Ok Thanos.  I think you're assuming aliens would think the same way we do, however. ^ fair!
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Nov 29, 2018 23:09
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Lightning Knight posted:I don't follow. Could you elaborate? Let me know when you can design a space station in orbit around Io capable of comfortably housing all of Earth's current population to escape Creeping Red Giant Sun. And we kind of have to assume aliens think like us, because otherwise we have to assume Star Trek energy cloud alien morality, which isn't very useful for discussions.
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Nov 29, 2018 23:12
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Kerning Chameleon posted:Let me know when you can design a space station in orbit around Io capable of comfortably housing all of Earth's current population to escape Creeping Red Giant Sun. Who says it has to be all of humanity? Also I don't think I agree with that, that seems rather uncreative and unscientific to me to assume that aliens will think anything like us. They could, but they also could very well not.
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Nov 29, 2018 23:14
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I thought entropy wasnt such an issue because there is no heat dissipation in space
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Nov 29, 2018 23:15
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Lightning Knight posted:Who says it has to be all of humanity? Okay, so you're fine with abandoning some humans to a sun-baked hellscape to save the rest. That's culling. Yes, but at that point, I can make my theoretical aliens believe anything I want to to make my case, no matter how absurd that may be, and then expect you to disprove my angel aliens or Stay-Puft Gozer Aliens, or whatever. It's rhetorically useless.
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Nov 29, 2018 23:18
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Lightning Knight posted:Isn't the problem with this that even not going faster than light, one could still colonize other planets given a sufficiently large time scale (i.e. millions of years), and given the age of the universe (i.e. billions of years) this implies we fundamentally misunderstand something about the galaxy or that somehow there has not been intelligent life before us? or that there is plenty of intelligence all sorts of places and there was no actual rule that it'd reveal itself by 2018 or we would know there was none. We have barely done any seti stuff and have completed like, a couple radio frequency searches on like a small percentage of the stars near us. The idea we searched so hard and so completely the entire universe that we need to start coming up with explanations is pretty absurd.
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Nov 29, 2018 23:19
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Kerning Chameleon posted:Okay, so you're fine with abandoning some humans to a sun-baked hellscape to save the rest. That's culling. I mean, there's a difference between "we literally cannot scientifically or technically transport this many people away from a natural disaster" and culling, which implies intentional killing. If you do everything in your power to save as many people as you can, the fact that people still die to a natural disaster isn't your fault. Also there's a difference between "it's reasonable to believe aliens will not be human like" and coming up with aliens that are manifestly not scientific. Owlofcreamcheese posted:or that there is plenty of intelligence all sorts of places and there was no actual rule that it'd reveal itself by 2018 or we would know there was none. This makes more sense to me.
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Nov 29, 2018 23:24
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thegalagakid posted:Prove I'm wrong, or that you're right. The main issue is that practical interstellar travel, or particularly FTL interstellar travel that would be necessary for any sort of interstellar civilization to be a thing, is basically in the territory of "magic" in terms of being technology that doesn't exist and for which there's no reason to be confident it will exist in the future. People often make dumb comparisons to flight in this context, but the situations aren't remotely comparable. Basically, it's reasonable to think other intelligent life exists, but it's not reasonable to assume that this will naturally result in that life developing the sort of technology that enables practical interstellar travel and interstellar civilizations. A lot of people operate under the false assumption that literally anything can be accomplished with technology, but there's nothing about the universe that guarantees that, for example "life being able to practically travel on the scale of a galaxy" is even possible. (This isn't to say it necessarily isn't possible, but that's why I compared it with magic; it's something for which no evidence exists.) edit: To put it another way, assuming that tech will inevitably progress to the point where stuff like FTL travel is possible is basically the same as any other sort of religious belief, and there's certainly no reason to think it's more likely than it not being possible. The universe wasn't exactly "created" with the imagination of Earth humans who had been exposed to science fiction in mind, so there's absolutely no guarantee that every fantastical thing that you can imagine must be possible with sufficient technological advancement. Lightning Knight posted:And if they can't, then perhaps that is the great filter. I think that assuming the great filter is nuclear weapons or even global warming is human-centric tho, assuming similar evolution and social development as us. If I absolutely had to guess what a "great filter" is (if any exists), I would assume it's practical interstellar space travel. While it's very difficult for multicellular life to form, and took billions of years on Earth, the universe is so massive and there are so many planets that I'd still bet that it's happened elsewhere. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Nov 29, 2018 |
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Nov 29, 2018 23:27
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LeoMarr posted:I thought entropy wasnt such an issue because there is no heat dissipation in space Entropy used here in the sense of "Stuff wears down and breaks" Lightning Knight posted:I don't follow. Could you elaborate? That it may not just not be possible to build machines with the kind of reliability that would be required over centuries of slower than light travel. That all the fancy handwavy, basically magic, Nanotech self-repair you see in SF shows are not compatible with the actual laws of physics.
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Nov 29, 2018 23:28
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Deptfordx posted:That it may not just not be possible to build machines with the kind of reliability that would be required over centuries of slower than light travel. Ah I see, this makes sense.
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Nov 29, 2018 23:32
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N.b. I am not definitely saying it is/isn't possible. Don't know enough to say. But it's definitely a possibility.
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Nov 29, 2018 23:35
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Deptfordx posted:That it may not just not be possible to build machines with the kind of reliability that would be required over centuries of slower than light travel. This exactly lines up with my feelings on the issue. There is no natural law stating that all our wildest technological dreams must be possible, and it's entirely possible there just literally isn't any way for life to practically travel interstellar distances. This doesn't mean we shouldn't still keep exploring the idea, but a lot of people just kind of treat it as a given that we'll figure out how to do this stuff someday.
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Nov 29, 2018 23:38
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Ytlaya posted:This exactly lines up with my feelings on the issue. There is no natural law stating that all our wildest technological dreams must be possible, and it's entirely possible there just literally isn't any way for life to practically travel interstellar distances. I mean perhaps the limitation is our ability to engineer the human body and possibly consciousness rather than the space vehicle itself. That is a huge political can of worms tho since it will open the door to eugenicists and poo poo.
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Nov 29, 2018 23:41
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Lightning Knight posted:This makes more sense to me. Like almost all of organized seti is for microwave radiation that is not absorbed by our atmosphere originating from nearby stars. That is something, but the totality of what it rules out is not nearly absolute. If everyone just uses 10ghz microwave radiation or live farther away than we can check or use directional lasers we basically haven't looked at all. If they encrypt or compress things it's even worse, since that looks more and more like random noise so we are really looking for analog broadcast. If it's anything past that we are even more babies in the crib, like in 2009 we discovered the space roar, a band of cm range radio we had never looked at out of the atmosphere before where we expected to be essentially quiet with a faint signal where instead we found a constant static louder than all previously known radio signals in the entire galaxy combined. Or like cosmic rays, we have detectors and sometimes we see single particles going so close to the speed of light that it's a signal atomic nuclei with more force than a baseball and our answer for where they come from is basically "no idea at this point". And again, I'm not suggesting either of these things are aliens, but that people are talking crazy that we are near the end of the search, we are absolutely not. We are absolutely at the absolute beginning of collecting the absolute preliminary data about our universe. Like we are not at the point we have checked the cm radio range so thoroughly and completely we must now declare no signals are set through that, we are at the point we were are just a few years past checking it even enough to notice "oh hey, a giant nonstop constant roar is on this frequency boy our theory that range would be near silent and a good place to investigate background radiation with a space telescope was sure wrong!"
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Nov 29, 2018 23:54
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Ytlaya posted:The main issue is that practical interstellar travel, or particularly FTL interstellar travel that would be necessary for any sort of interstellar civilization to be a thing, is basically in the territory of "magic" in terms of being technology that doesn't exist and for which there's no reason to be confident it will exist in the future. People often make dumb comparisons to flight in this context, but the situations aren't remotely comparable.
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Nov 29, 2018 23:54
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Deptfordx posted:That all the fancy handwavy, basically magic, Nanotech self-repair you see in SF shows are not compatible with the actual laws of physics. I don't know about this claim, considering that all life on earth is made of self-repairing nanobots.
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Nov 30, 2018 00:11
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DrSunshine posted:I don't know about this claim, considering that all life on earth is made of self-repairing nanobots. Self repairing nanobots that do not survive well beyond the ionosphere at all.
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Nov 30, 2018 00:13
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MSDOS KAPITAL posted:You don't need FTL to have an interstellar civilization, just STL and bodies capable of surviving the trip (and probably also immortal, if you want people to care to make the trip). We have the former, and while the latter is beyond our ability right now, it's not the sort of "not allowed by physics as we currently understand it" sort of problem that that FTL is. Yeah, this is why I kept throwing the word "practical" in there; it's not impossible that humans could travel to other stars, but you'd never have anything that could really be called an "interstellar civilization" in the sense most people think of it. And even then, that's reliant on a bunch of technological progress that, while much more plausible than FTL travel, still isn't guaranteed to be possible. Speaking of barriers to interstellar travel, are there any plausible solutions to the issue of radiation? edit: Regarding the issue of "changing the human body," I personally consider stuff like "the elimination of aging" more plausible than stuff like "being able to 'upload' the brain" (or otherwise allow the mind to be divorced from the human body). The latter I think can basically be filed in the "similar to FTL travel, basically magic" territory.
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Nov 30, 2018 00:19
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Kerning Chameleon posted:Self repairing nanobots that do not survive well beyond the ionosphere at all. This is a categorical error in response. The class of issues to which I was responding -- the claim that "self-repairing nanobots are physically impossible" -- is entirely different from an argument on engineering practicality. It's one thing to claim that something is impractical or implausible for humans to engineer, it's another thing entirely to claim that something is impossible by the laws of physics. I responded with an example in living organisms on earth being a form of self-repairing nanobots, which implies that they are physically possible. EDIT: At any rate, the question of whether or not humans will expand past the solar system is kind of beside the point. The main question of the thread is to discuss the Fermi Paradox. DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Nov 30, 2018 |
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Nov 30, 2018 00:26
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Ytlaya posted:Speaking of barriers to interstellar travel, are there any plausible solutions to the issue of radiation? It's not entirely outside the realm of possibility that in the distant future our civilization is replaced entirely or mostly with machines, which may be less susceptible to radiation. There are also extremeophiles that can survive intense radiation. I don't know of any reason that genetic engineering couldn't achieve the same given enough time. This doesn't seem like a "laws of physics" issue to me.
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Nov 30, 2018 00:33
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Kerning Chameleon posted:Self repairing nanobots that do not survive well beyond the ionosphere at all. There is radiation in space but like, you are wildly overstating things, there is less radiation in interstellar space than in the solar system. It's a thing you'd have to design for but it's not some mystical force that would reduce all physical objects to ruin. You can just put a wall in front of something and it stops radiation too, and our solar system and most others have very convenient giant collections of free rocks you can take in any size you need for the trip right at the exits. Also a dude not being able to go isn't really a barrier to a species spreading to a whole galaxy anyway. like if it's a million years from now and we are really sure we absolutely can't send any dudes we could still just send bunches and bunches of those bacteria that live 6 miles deep in rocks in little sealed up ecosystems and spray them in every direction nonstop and make sure to include plenty of very sturdy bibles and ayn rand books or whatever it is we feel will be important for our weird kids to find in a hundred million years to pass on to them. we could still colonize the galaxy with earth life even if we don't get to come personally Owlofcreamcheese fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Nov 30, 2018 |
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Nov 30, 2018 00:41
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