Space, the Final Frontier: It Gazed Into My Open Refractor

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Space, the Final Frontier: It Gazed Into My Open Refractor

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

This thread is great and the Fermi Paradox is a legit fascinating thing. I read a great book on it last year:

If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens ... WHERE IS EVERYBODY?: Fifty Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life

The book covers a whole bunch of potential solutions to the Fermi Paradox from the super trivial (God is real and it only made humans) to the more complex (we live in the equivalent of the boonies of the galaxy) to the meta-physical (reality is simulated).

Personally I think it's either that the universe is simulated, that space is really, really big and we just aren't close enough, or that we currently lack the method of communicating with other species and they don't care enough to use our methods to talk to us.

The Great Filter is a rather scary prospect though and every time we find indications of life on other planets my heart sinks. At this point the only Great Filter candidate in the past is probably the development of eukaryotic life or the development of general, human-level intelligence. Everything else seems fairly common. And if the Great Filter hypothesis is correct, it's more likely it's in our future than our past which...isn't very reassuring.

Anyway, go read that book I linked if you wanna learn about the Fermi Paradox.

Also when I get some more time I'll write an effort posts about Our Mathematical Universe which had a very, very good explanation of known science about the Universe's formation and a pretty good hypothesis on how things fundamentally work that's a bit mind-blowing.

edit: for those unfamiliar the Great Filter postulates that there is a "filtering" event that prevents most life from colonizing nearby places. Basically there's a process for making a space-faring civilization which is roughly:

1. Have the right star system (including organics and potentially habitable planets)
2. Star system must create reproductive molecules (e.g., RNA)
3. Simple (prokaryotic) single-cell life must be created
4. Simple life must evolve into complex (eukaryotic) single-cell life
5. Complex life must evolve to use sexual reproduction
6. Multi-cell life must evolve from sexually reproducing single-cell eukaryotic life
7. Tool-using animals with big brains must come into existence
8. Tool-using animals must make it to where humans are now
9. Colonization explosion happens

If the Great Filter exists in steps 1-7 it means it's very likely that humans are alone. However if it's in steps 8 or 9 that's very, very bad for continued human existence. At this point the only early steps that look unlikely are 4 and maybe 7.

edit 2: And for those not familiar with the Fermi Paradox, here it is laid out in the Drake Equation.

The Drake equation is:

N = R ∗ fp * ne * fl * fi * fc * L

where:

N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible (i.e. which are on our current past light cone);

and

R∗ = the average rate of star formation in our galaxy
fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fl = the fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life at some point
fi = the fraction of planets with life that actually go on to develop intelligent life (civilizations)
fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space

If you do out the math based on what we know, N should be a very, very high number and yet right now our observed N is 1 (us). So if that's the case one of the numbers here must be spectacularly low and it's unlikely its R, fp, or ne just based on what we've discovered in the last 20+ years. Which means you need at least one very low number for the equation to work out and some of them being low (e.g. fc) implies that humans are extremely likely to destroy themselves.

The "good" news is that L is most likely the value that's really, really low as we already have seen our civilization move away from releasing detectable signals into space as things like terrestrial radio/TV are being deprecated.

axeil fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Nov 29, 2018

# ¿ Nov 29, 2018 17:10

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 07:00

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

Haystack posted:

Every single alien civilization has lived and died in its own home system. Even if FTL travel were possible (which it almost certainly is not), the resource costs of operating in space are too high. Gravity wells are a bitch, to say nothing of the radiation.

What about von Neumann probes?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Von_Neumann_probes

Why don't we see them? You'd only need 1 civilization around our tech level in the galaxy to decide to make them for us to likely see evidence of their existence.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2018 17:29

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

feedmyleg posted:

As just some idiot on the internet, I've found the idea quite compelling that as the universe expands, the distance between galaxies increases at such a speed that it makes even near-light speed travel between systems prohibitively difficult. I believe I picked up this idea from a Kurzgesagt video on YouTube, but is there anything more to this?

There is more "space" in between everything in the universe in general as time goes on but on a local scale you have our galaxy generally occupying the same space and things are still moving toward us (e.g. the Andromeda galaxy) even as the universe on average moves away from us.

The constant expansion of the universe is a good reason why everything will end up very cold and lonely in a trillion years, but I don't think it's a good explanation for why we're so lonely now.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2018 17:33

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

A Wheezy Steampunk posted:

This is an older article but I share it whenever this topic comes up because it's a good summary of the various outcomes of the Great Filter:

https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

I'm personally a fan of the "we're first" outcome. There's another article (I don't remember enough details to find it and I might be getting some of these details wrong) where someone graphed the "complexity" of life on Earth and worked backwards to find that the origin "should" be before the universe formed, another point in favor of "we're first".

Yeah that Wait But Why article is good and it's before the author completely lost his marbles talking about cryo-freezing his head and how Elon Musk is our savior.

I'd be interested in reading that 2nd bit you talk about as it sounds interesting and lines up with the theory that you need a star of at least the 3rd generation to generate life because you need heavier elements.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2018 17:36

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

Adar posted:

Here's a horror movie type take on it:

-Let's assume that life is extremely common and intelligent life is only slightly less common.
-Let's further assume that the technological curve of any given civilization is similar to our own, i.e. an Industrial Revolution type event can make a military from the year 2000 completely obliterate every military combined on an 1800-era planet.
-Let's also assume technology doesn't ever entirely stall out / there will always be some advancements to be made.
-This means no two civilizations will ever be at the same stage of development and the more advanced civilization is extremely likely to technologically and militarily dominate the weaker one. Insert colonialism comparison here.
-This also means the weaker civilization can never catch up without immense effort.
-Based on the law of large numbers, any given civilization is vanishingly unlikely to be the most senior. Unless you're leading the Galactic Council and have personally checked, you can never be sure.
-It is also vanishingly unlikely that all civilizations have the same benevolent mindset. Wholly benevolent civilizations could happen, but they themselves would never be sure there isn't a Big Bad out there. A Big Bad would also never know whether it was the biggest. Game theory suggests a preemptive arms race of some type is a certainty by at least some civilizations; even if they don't run into the Biggest Bad they could always come across an only slightly inferior and hyper militarized force.
-If you don't have galactic FTL scanners and cannot check everything, how do you deal with this? What happens when you can build Dyson sphere type monuments but they're a galactic broadcast to anyone who uses the visual spectrum? Aren't you eventually marking yourself for death?

If you're a sufficiently unified and late stage civ, I think the answer is that you pick a planet, build a big shell around it, put giant thrusters on it and sail off away from the galaxy into the deepest, darkest corner of space possible, trusting the unlikelihood of anyone checking that exact region for the next few trillion years. The only way to compete in a game like that is to remove yourself from the board and make sure no one ever finds you.

It's from reddit but there's a great short story on this premise from a few years back.

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/2j3nxz/radio_silence/

quote:

36,400,000. That is the expected number of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy, according to Drake�s famous equation. For the last 78 years, we had been broadcasting everything about us � our radio, our television, our history, our greatest discoveries � to the rest of the galaxy. We had been shouting our existence at the top of our lungs to the rest of the universe, wondering if we were alone. 36 million civilizations, yet in almost a century of listening, we hadn�t heard a thing. We were alone.

That was, until about 5 minutes ago.

The transmission came on every transcendental multiple of hydrogen�s frequency that were listening to. Transcendental harmonics � things like hydrogen�s frequency times pi � don�t appear in nature, so I knew it had to be artificial. The signal pulsed on and off very quickly with incredibly uniform amplitudes; my initial reaction was that this was some sort of binary transmission. I measured 1679 pulses in the one minute that the transmission was active. After that, the silence resumed.

The numbers didn�t make any sense at first. They just seemed to be a random jumble of noise. But the pulses were so perfectly uniform, and on a frequency that was always so silent; they had to come from an artificial source. I looked over the transmission again, and my heart skipped a beat. 1679 � that was the exact length of the Arecibo message sent out 40 years ago. I excitedly started arranging the bits in the original 73x23 rectangle. I didn�t get more than halfway through before my hopes were confirmed. This was the exact same message. The numbers in binary, from 1 to 10. The atomic numbers of the elements that make up life. The formulas for our DNA nucleotides. Someone had been listening to us, and wanted us to know they were there.

Then it came to me � this original message was transmitted only 40 years ago. This means that life must be at most 20 lightyears away. A civilization within talking distance? This would revolutionize every field I have ever worked in � astrophysics, astrobiology, astro-

The signal is beeping again.

This time, it is slow. Deliberate, even. It lasts just under 5 minutes, with a new bit coming in once per second. Though the computers are of course recording it, I start writing them down. 0. 1. 0. 1. 0. 1. 0. 0... I knew immediately this wasn�t the same message as before. My mind races through the possibilities of what this could be. The transmission ends, having transmitted 248 bits. Surely this is too small for a meaningful message. What great message to another civilization can you possibly send with only 248 bits of information? On a computer, the only files that small would be limited to�

Text.

Was it possible? Were they really sending a message to us in our own language? Come to think of it, it�s not that out of the question � we had been transmitting pretty much every language on earth for the last 70 years� I begin to decipher with the first encoding scheme I could think of � ASCII. 0. 1. 0. 1. 0. 1. 0. 0. That�s B... 0. 1. 1 0. 0. 1. 0. 1. E�

As I finish piecing together the message, my stomach sinks like an anchor. The words before me answer everything.

�BE QUIET OR THEY WILL HEAR YOU�

There being no signals from intelligent life because the Reapers from Mass Effect are real is a distinct and terrifying possibility.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2018 20:50

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

thegalagakid posted:

Berserker, I didn't know about this one. Thanks!

The Berserker theory is an interesting one and sort of ties into the one example above. Any time a species gets relativistic flight, the Berserkers show up and destroy them because they possess the ultimate weapon: throwing a stone at a civilization at near the speed of light.

Just the ability to do it means that whoever is first sets up Berserkers to defend themselves from some more violent upstart trying to conquer the galaxy. Or if the first are conquerors themselves, to ensure their supremacy.

Solaris 2.0 posted:

I always figured a "hive-mind" like species could conquer space. There would be no factions, no intra-conflict, no individuality or wants or need, and with that an effective use of resources to keep the home-planet sustainable (no civilization killing climate change).

What I'm saying is, if there are interstellar civilizations out there, they are probably like the Arachnids from Starship Troopers or buggers from Enders Game.

As for our species, I could see us colonize the inner solar system "The Expanse" style, but only if we figure our poo poo out regarding climate change on Earth.

Not to get all Ray Kurzweil on everyone, but I could see humans developing a hive consciousness. We already are highly connected because of the internet and if you jammed everyone's phone into their brain and turned the technology up to 11, I could see some sort of collective consciousness establish itself.

No individual would be able to perceive it, but everyone's actions could be subtlety coordinated. It'd be weird and alien but your hand/liver/etc doesn't realize it's part of your overall body and this collective consciousness would work similarly.

axeil fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Nov 29, 2018

# ¿ Nov 29, 2018 21:56

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

A Wheezy Steampunk posted:

Found it after more searching! Here's the summary: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/513781/moores-law-and-the-origin-of-life/ and the original: https://arxiv.org/abs/1304.3381. I did have some of the details wrong, it wasn't before the universe formed, it was before the Earth formed:

This is interesting but my main objection is how do they know the data actually fits a linear regression? What if it's some sort of weird exponential thing that doesn't model easily? And what if each step has varying levels of difficulty in "doubling"?

That they got a result that seems implausible (life should have sprung into existence before the earth's existence) makes me question their methods.

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

Again though, if berserkers are everywhere why doesn't the fermi paradox apply to "if berserkers are everywhere, why don't we see them"? if not seeing things is possible than we solved the fermi paradox without berserkers.

We aren't looking correctly perhaps?

Berserkers solve the issue around "if there are millions of civilizations why did none of them try to colonize space?" If you admit that there are likely lots of civilizations out there, the chance that none of them tried to make probes or other things we would see evidence of is very small. But if Berserkers exist then they kill off every civilization that tries to explore or communicate.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2018 22:10

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

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 :black101:

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

# ¿ Nov 29, 2018 22:33

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

Failson posted:

Using this thread as an excuse to refresh my space knowledge,and I found a bad infographic while googling the fastest man made object:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/infographic.view.php?id=11489

Which would take 6000 years to get to Proxima Centauri...

BUT! I didn't know about this new telescope that will potentially be able to actually image exoplanets:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_Large_Telescope

I'm still bummed NASA won't send a probe to Venus. Sure, the Russian ones melted, but it seems like a much more interesting destination than Mars.

I read a pretty interesting thing a bit back that Venus might be a more workable 2nd Earth than Mars, provided we live in essentially a space station. Venus has Earth-like atmospheric pressure and temperature a few miles up and you wouldn't need a spacesuit, just something to provide oxygen, unlike Mars where it's basically a vacuum and terraforming isn't real technology right now.

axeil fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Nov 30, 2018

# ¿ Nov 30, 2018 00:55

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

People only like spooky visions of the bad future, if you ever name anything nice happening it gets written off as nonsense (by you for example) so instead of sending normal bacteria we will only send bacteria where the most conserved regions of the DNA are genetically altered to include the entire text of fountainhead.

only sending out bacteria with a hope they eventually evolve into intelligences millions of years later after we are long dead as a way to colonize the universe is sad but like, all living things ever do is send their kids off to carry things on long after they are gone. plus all it takes is one alien species doing that that doesn't think it's too sad and loves space cumming all over the entire universe for it to happen.

twist ending: this already happened and we are the end-result of Earth being life-seeded.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2018 01:00

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

The Butcher posted:

Sometimes I think too hard about fundamental physics poo poo and get all bothered by it before dumping it from my brain and getting drunk and watching hockey or whatever.

It's incredibly frustrating.

Why is the speed of light an exact and specifically measurable thing instead of any other arbitrary value?

What the gently caress is gravity even? It's a force, based on mass, and we can clearly measure it, but what the hell is acting on what to generate it? Again, why at the same rules and not others?

Why even have time (in the space time sense ) and not just space? Or vice versa.

It feels like someone or something could have set a bunch of arbitrary rules and fired off a simulation starting from the also inexplicable big bang to test them out. There is no reason any sufficiently advanced system couldn't simulate human brains to the point where the sims wouldn't have the full and rich lives we currently experience.

Any of the natural phenomenon that just make up the base rules of the universe could have been equally as set up by an alien nerd in his parent's basement running a hyper-dimensional gigacomputer or a magical divinity also creating the universe for kicks with random rules.

Neither of which satisfies the final question of who the gently caress created the alien basement goon or the bored and detached creator god.

This is from a bit back but I'm waiting for some code to run so I figure I'll give a quick synopsis of a cool book I read that attempts to answer this, Our Mathematical Universe.

https://www.amazon.com/Our-Mathematical-Universe-Ultimate-Reality/dp/0307599809

It's written by a Swedish-American cosmologist named Max Tegmark and is divided into 2 sections, the first covering basically everything we know and setting things up for the 2nd section which is wild theorizing and may or may not be provable, but is an interesting idea.

In the first bit he outlines all the physical features of our universe and how odd it is but describes a framework for 3 "types" of muli-verses, based on our current scientific understanding. He uses a lot more detail but to summarize:

1) Our actual Universe, aka the level where you describe initial conditions (Level 1)

Consider our observable universe. Since light can only travel so far and move so fast our understanding of the universe is limited to what we can observe. Right now that's about 83,000,000,000 light years across. However if we all shifted say, 5 light years in any direction, we'd still only be able to see 83 Gly, but the last 5 light years of that would be slightly different from what we can see right here on earth. If we move further, we just find that different parts of the universe are visible and that space is truly infinite. Which is really neat! But the real neat part comes next.

Because of quantum mechanics there are only so many possible positions an area of space can take. That is, if you have a 1x1x1 square of space, there's a limit on the different ways you can arrange matter in it. It's a very, very high limit but a limit nonetheless. If you move far enough over in space, you might find the exact same arrangement since the number of arrangements is limited and a 1 cubic meter space is pretty small. Similarly, there's a cap on the positions all the quantum particles in our ~83 Gly observable universe can take and if we know that the space in the universe is infinite, it means there's effectively copies of our observable universe everywhere, you just need to move "far enough". So there's a parallel you reading this post somewhere. It's interesting but kind of trivial if you think about it.

2) Cosmic Inflation, aka the level where you describe fundamental physical constants (Level 2)

This was the part that I enjoyed the most as it explained what exactly the Big Bang was. There's a level "above" our universe where the Big Bang originated as a singularity that suddenly experienced cosmic inflation. But our little singularity wasn't special or unique and there are an infinite number of them "next door". The interesting thing about them is that they all can take on different values for fundamental physical constants like gravity, electro-magnetism, nuclear forces, etc. The only reason things are the way they are here is because the inflationary bubble we are in happened to have these constants set the way they are and those happen to be the ones that can produce intelligent life. The cosmic bubble next door where atoms can't form isn't the one we're in because we need atoms for life. We can't travel to these or necessarily observe them because matter acts fundamentally different from how it does here.

3) Quantum Many Worlds, aka the level where you describe what quantum branch you're on (Level 3)

This took a long time in his book to setup but the tl;dr is that Many Worlds is the right interpretation for quantum mechanics and it forms another multiverse that contains our particular version of Level 1 and Level 2.

Even though this is another level "above" level 2, it functionally acts just like Level 1 since we can never go to Level 2 multiverses because matter stops working right (and if matter does work the same as here it's just another way of describing Level 1)

This is all again, based pretty solidly on current scientific understanding. I think cosmic inflation as a theory may be a bit new or controversial but the other areas are not. However, the author still had one nagging question in the back of his mind, namely:

Why Does Math Work to Describe All Of These?

When you think about it, it's a bit odd as we've discarded nearly everything we've ever used to describe reality to replace it with another tool. But we've never done that to math...why? Additionally, we keep finding new ways of describing the world but those just lead to more and more questions. It's the "turtles all the way" down problem where it things just keep iterating further and further and getting more and more abstract.

Tegmark's conclusion, which again, he spends half of the book describing and defending is that there is a 4th tier of multiverse above everything. He theorizes that the ultimate laws of the multiverse, reality, etc. are that everything is just a physical manifestation of the concepts as described by mathematics. The "real" reality is just that everything's all numbers...literally. That is, the physical universe is not merely described by mathematics, but is mathematics (specifically, a mathematical structure). Mathematical existence equals physical existence, and all structures that exist mathematically exist physically as well.

Which is weird as gently caress and I still can't quite describe it as well as he can. It basically is radical neo-Platonicism but he makes a fairly good case for why even if you don't agree with it, you probably can't rule it out.

There's a wikipedia article on it if you're curious https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothesis

I figured people itt would like the book and be interested by it because the author's an actual scientist and does a good job of summarizing all of human knowledge about the cosmos circa the early 2010s and goes much more in depth about things than I have seen elsewhere. Plus his radical neo-Platonic model is something people might want to debate and discuss because there is literally no way to prove an argument about it right or wrong as we lack evidence, but you can still poke some good logical holes in it.

So what does everyone think?

# ¿ Dec 3, 2018 22:02

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

physeter posted:

Your posts have a bunch of sciency words and fantasy nonsense, and you still experience yourself as an intellectual, and not as a bunch of unsubstantiated childish ideas wrapped in noisy meat.

Can you actually provide any evidence that insect colonies have a "hive mind"?

I don't think OOCC is arguing ants have a conscious hive mind, but rather that even though ants are individual organisms when they're grouped together they behave in ways that accomplish large, organized tasks.

By that logic though, humanity has a hive mind which...I'm not actually as opposed to arguing as I thought I would be.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2018 22:20

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

LtStorm posted:

But what are you describing with your basic rear end, fundamental math? Abstract math may be a universal language, but reducing it down doesn't yield the rules of the universe.

Reducing math down yields axioms like "there is a natural number we call 0" and "every natural number, a, has a successor, Sa". You then use those axioms to generate theorems like the Pythagorean theorem, a² + b² = c² which is proven by a proof that uses basic logic with those axioms. You can also write a proof that 1+1=2, like here which I link instead of pasting because proofs for even simple things can be lengthy and look like the scribbling of madmen.

And that happens because to actually write a proof of anything in math you have to wade into the actual language of logic and math, instead of relying on the fact our brains are fantastic at intuitively understanding math such as us just knowing 1+1=2. And again, the language of logic isn't describing the rules of the universe, just the rules of math.

If you want to describe the rules of the universe you're going to take your math you generated with logic and start applying it to phenomenon and attributes of the universe you can see to try to describe them as accurately as you can based on the information about them you have. You're building models, and as you learn more you can refine those models. Because every part of science is a model that lets us both understand and make predictions about how a part of the universe works.

e: When you're building models to describe the rules of the universe is where you run into the fact we have no proof that our model is accurate everywhere in the universe.

Absence of proof is not proof of absence though. Thanks for the 1+1=2 proof though, that's the story I always tell when people assume that abstract math is really easy. Even proving trivial stuff is maddeningly complex, much less when you get into things like real analysis.

What Tegmark's book is getting at is even if the models and language around certain theorems change, they still at their core will describe a mathematical relationship. E=mc^2 is a theory that describes the conservation of mass and energy, but that it can be described as a mathematical equation (along with pretty much every fundamental theorem about the Universe's operation) is notable. It's very curious that, despite every other tool we've had for measurement and description eventually being out-classed or proven inaccurate, math/logic still always works.

That you can definitely prove that, given a certain set of axioms, 1+1 must equal 2 is a pretty curious thing. Maybe the axioms are different in different multiverse planes (although the basic mathematical axioms are really, really basic), but if the mathematical axioms don't hold I don't think there's any real way for us to describe or understand the multiverse.

For reference, when I say "basic mathematical axioms" I'm referring to the Zermelo-Fraenkel set. This is the most "basic" mathematical set that avoids annoying paradoxes and logical holes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zermelo%E2%80%93Fraenkel_set_theory

Here are the axioms of that set. Keep in mind that when I say "set" that is a very abstract thing. A set can be something like "addition" or "the real numbers". This is just me quoting wikipedia.

quote:

1. Two sets are equal (are the same set) if they have the same elements.
2. Every non-empty set x contains a member y such that x and y are disjoint sets.
3. Subsets are commonly constructed using set builder notation. For example, the even integers can be constructed as the subset of the integers Z satisfying the congruence modulo predicate x ≡ 0
4. If x and y are sets, then there exists a set which contains x and y as elements.
5. The union over the elements of a set exists. For example, the union over the elements of the set { 1 , 2 } , { 2 , 3 } is { 1 , 2 , 3 }
6. The axiom schema of replacement asserts that the image of a set under any definable function will also fall inside a set.
7. There exists a set X having infinitely many members.
8. By definition a set z is a subset of a set x if and only if every element of z is also an element of x
9. For any set X, there is a binary relation R which well-orders X. This means R is a linear order on X such that every nonempty subset of X has a member which is minimal under R.

For the set theorists/abstracts mathematicians out there, 9. is functionally equivalent to the axiom of choice.

If you use this as your "set" for mathematics you can prove everything that we currently understand in math. When Tegmark says that math is the multiverse, he's saying there's a way to boil this list of axioms down further and further so there is no language operating on it, it's all just pure logic.

There are still issues here, namely that there are some mathematical things that exist outside this set. The response I'd have to that is that there may be a set that is defined differently than this one that allows you to bring in those stragglers...which ties into the main problem I think people have with this hypothesis: it violates G�del's Incompleteness Theorems.

Simply put, the Incompleteness Theorems show that it's impossible to find a set of axioms that are complete and consistent that describe all mathematics (and derivatively, the Universe as a whole). I'll let wikipedia explain what the theorems are:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems#Second_incompleteness_theorem

quote:

1. No consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an effective procedure (i.e., an algorithm) is capable of proving all truths about the arithmetic of the natural numbers. For any such consistent formal system, there will always be statements about the natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system.

2. A system cannot determine its own consistency

This is why things like the halting problem exist. Simply put, the halting problem is a computer science problem where you cannot write a program that universally determines if a program will halt or run forever. It seems like this would be easy to determine, but if you think about loops and conditionals, just because the program hasn't halted doesn't mean it won't halt somewhere down the line. There's been a lot of discussion on this problem and it's tangential to what I'm arguing here so I'll stop there.

So for Tegmark's radical neo-platonic view of the Universe to work, you have to somehow fix the issues caused by G�del's Incompleteness Theorems. And here is what he argues to get around it. And once again I'm quoting from Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothesis

quote:

Tegmark's response in[10] (sec VI.A.1) is to offer a new hypothesis "that only G�del-complete (fully decidable) mathematical structures have physical existence. This drastically shrinks the Level IV multiverse, essentially placing an upper limit on complexity, and may have the attractive side effect of explaining the relative simplicity of our universe." Tegmark goes on to note that although conventional theories in physics are G�del-undecidable, the actual mathematical structure describing our world could still be G�del-complete, and "could in principle contain observers capable of thinking about G�del-incomplete mathematics, just as finite-state digital computers can prove certain theorems about G�del-incomplete formal systems like Peano arithmetic." In[3] (sec. VII) he gives a more detailed response, proposing as an alternative to MUH the more restricted "Computable Universe Hypothesis" (CUH) which only includes mathematical structures that are simple enough that G�del's theorem does not require them to contain any undecidable or uncomputable theorems. Tegmark admits that this approach faces "serious challenges", including (a) it excludes much of the mathematical landscape; (b) the measure on the space of allowed theories may itself be uncomputable; and (c) "virtually all historically successful theories of physics violate the CUH".

I can't really carry his argument any further than just quoting his response to the criticism because I don't have a strong enough background in this stuff to argue intelligently beyond quoting others so unfortunately I'll have to end it there. It does feel very clever though and I feel like he's being a bit too clever here with his solution.

tl;dr: there are issues caused by a radical neo-platonic look at the universe, mainly caused by G�del's Incompleteness Theorems. There might be a solution to that problem where the universe is only made of fully decidable mathematical structures having physical existence. This may or may not be a sufficient rebuttal.

Disclaimer: I didn't really deeply study set theory during my math degree (I focused on statistics and number theory) so I may have misstated some things here. I also haven't done formal, abstract math in almost 10 years so I may have also made some mistakes in logic or describing things. Apologies. I also used wikipedia as a source because I don't have my formal logic books easily accessible and I wanted to try and make this argument without getting too far into formal logic to explain what I was going on about.

And if you got to the bottom of this post, thanks for reading! Hope it was interesting.

edit:

silence_kit posted:

This view sounds a lot like what the wikipedia page on the philosophy of mathematics calls 'mathematical realism' or 'mathematical platonism'. I suspect that these kinds of views are not very popular on this message board. Probably the average D&D poster is more inclined towards 'mathematical anti-realism' or 'mathematical formalism'.

I would say that a popular view on this forum is likely 'mathematical social constructivism', since on this forum everything and everyone can be reduced to being wholly a product of society. However, paradoxically, it is also often thought on this forum that researchers and scientists should act and do act above the whims of society and that they are kind of like the priests of the modern era.

To address this, I don't think you can rebut neo-platonism by saying "I don't think it's a very popular view itt". You don't even have proof it isn't very popular, much less an argument for why something unpopular is wrong.

zoux posted:

I'm going to preface this by saying that obviously climate change is the greatest threat facing humanity today, that it will already lead to hundreds of millions suffering and dying, and if unchecked will lead to the death of billions and the vast majority of all humans. I am in no way trying to deny or downplay the threat of anthropogenic climate change to our species.

But, I see "climate change = human extinction" frequently and I'm genuinely curious what the exact cause for that is considered to be. Toba Catastrophe Theory hypothesizes that at one point the global population was reduced to 10-30k, but that's not extinct. And I'm not saying we'll just bounce back, if we go that low, we're probably never getting past the early agrarian stage again, but does the human extinction theory presuppose a disease or a war precipitated by resource loss, or something else?

Even if it doesn't cause human extinction, catastrophic climate change may be a "frisbee on the roof" scenario. You need fossil fuels to bootstrap yourself into better forms of energy use (solar/hydro/nuclear/etc), however if society completely collapses due to climate change even if the Earth is able to right itself and return things to balance the fossil fuels that would be accessible by any surviving humans would be locked up in a way where you need fossil fuels to reach them. You also can't use alternate power sources because you lack the fossil fuels needed to jumpstart nuclear power plant construction, solar panel manufacture, etc. Thus, you can't have a 2nd industrial revolution because the fuel isn't there and as a result no one ends up founding the Human Galactic Empire because we're all stuck on a desert planet, assuming we also don't all die from the calamity.

So even if humans were to survive we might all be stuck here in pre-industrial age societies and technologies. And this might be a thing that happens to every society to ever spring into existence where they harness fossil fuels, use them all up, and before they can transition into space faring they unleash catastrophic climate change from fossil fuel use and permanently knock themselves back to a technological level where space travel is impossible.

axeil fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Dec 4, 2018

# ¿ Dec 4, 2018 17:44

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

The Butcher posted:

Tegmark's book is a very good read, thanks for the recommend thread. I'm learning a lot of poo poo!

He's got a good writing style, it's quite approachable so far.

Not into the really complex brain melting poo poo yet, but hopefully I'll still be able to keep up with him.

Cosmology is a trip mannnn.

Oh good! I'm glad you're liking it. Let us know what you think as you go along, I know I'd be interesting in reading some posts about your feel on things and you can probably do a good job of filling in the blanks on what I originally posted in my review.

Hungry posted:

I'm only half-joking when I say that's an incredibly bad idea but not for the reasons you're arguing.

Hello thread! I am the one crazy person who thinks that Active-SETI/METI is incredibly dangerous and stupid because if we're wrong about the answer to the Fermi paradox we'll be dead before we know it.

Is this a controversial opinion? I thought the consensus was that Active-SETI was too risky to consider (and yet we still sent the Aricebo message...)

The probability of the berserkers/apex predators existing is low, but if they do they'll almost certainly wipe us out. Best not to advertise our position.

LtStorm posted:

I feel I was being kind. It's really easy to reject his or her argument out of hand the moment he or she starts talking about fields of research not "pulling their practical weight" and how all funding should be going to research with immediate tangible benefits.

Imagine you have a government with the primary goal of spending all of its money to improve the lives of its citizens who are the worst-off. That would be great. Imagine if our current government were to reallocate funding to achieve that goal. That would mean, alongside all those great public works and strong welfare programs you have helping your citizens, you would also be robustly funding scientific research to further improve the lives of those citizens. Which would, again, be great.

If you have a robustly funded research program, one of the things it does is basic research. This is the research that has the goal of expanding the total knowledge of science we have without a specific tangible benefit to us intended--which is what a lot of space research currently is. It's also the cornerstone all other research is built upon. Those other types of research may target problems our worst-off citizens have to look for solution, perform studies to analyze a problem our worst-off citizens have so they can be targeted for a solution, or act as oversight to ensure problems aren't arising for our worst-off citizens as we help them. Basic research gives these forms of applied research more and better tools to use.

Saying you want to cut basic research funding completely is myopic and hurts us by directly undercutting our scientific progress. Wanting to cut certain types of basic research out completely is incomprehensible and also hurts us by denying us knowledge that could have been useful in ways we don't understand yet.

A great example of this basic research is something I can talk about at detail, Number Theory.

For those not in the know, number theory is a branch of math that studies the integers. Sounds fairly simple, but it's maddeningly complex with all kind of weird freaky questions. Because it's all about integers, unlike most abstract math, the questions are fairly intuitive to explain, even if their answers are complex. Some good examples of unsolved or famous number theory problems are:

-Can every even integer greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two primes? (aka the Goldbach Conjecture, so far proven up to 4 x 10^18, but not proven generally) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldbach%27s_conjecture

-Are there infinitely many perfect numbers (an integer that's the sum of its divisors. 6 is a perfect number (1 + 2 + 3 = 6) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_number

-Does 4/n = 1/x + 1/y + 1/z have a positive integer solution for every integer n ≥ 2? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s%E2%80%93Straus_conjecture

And most famously, Fermat's last theorem that states for any n>2 a^n + b^n = c^n does not have an integer solution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem

This historically was just stuff mathematicians messed around with. It wasn't thought to have any real application...

And then we discovered cryptography.

See, cryptography works because multiplication is weird. It's very easy to multiply 2 numbers to get an answer, but it's very, very hard to get the divisors of 2 numbers out of a single number. You basically have to logically guess. This is why it's more difficult to teach kids division than multiplication, from a computer science perspective integer factorization is in a much harder class of problems than integer multiplication.

Number theory has long been obsessed with primes and factorization because of this weirdness, with composite (non-prime) numbers whose divisors are themselves prime being especially interesting. These are numbers that instead of being prime and only having 1 as a divisor, they have 2 sets of divisors, with both sets being prime. It's trivial, but 4 is a one of these numbers as it's divisible by only 1 and 2, both of which are prime.

Okay so what?

Well let's take an example. I'll take 2 co-prime numbers and multiply them together to give an answer.

In this case the answer is 10. What are my 2 numbers?

This is trivial as the answer is 2 and 5. However, if we think of a much more difficult example where instead of a 2-digit number I pick say a 100 digit number, figuring out the 2 co-primes is basically impossible.

Thus, if we say that one of the co-primes is a secret message, and the other a decrypter, we have a system for transmitting coded messages out in the open, with the 100 digit number the message. There's no way to decipher it without one of the divisors and so long as our 100 digit number is truly made of 2 co-prime numbers we're in the clear.

This is literally how at a conceptual level every encryption system in computers works. And this was all just a weird hobbyist area of math, but without it the modern internet wouldn't exist because we'd have no way to communicate securely, and yet Number Theory as a discipline goes back the 1600s, 300+ years before it would have any real world application.

To bring it back home, there could be some weird esoteric area of science or math that appears completely useless to everyone that could be invaluable in the future. We have no way of predicting what that is, so we research everything.

If you want to read more here's an article on number theory and unsolved problems in math, both which are interesting reads.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_theory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_mathematics#Number_theory

edit: i really love talking about abstract math again, it's so cool. abstract math is basically solving puzzles for a field of study. if people have more questions about stuff feel free to ask itt. i'll try and answer as best as i can

axeil fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Dec 6, 2018

# ¿ Dec 6, 2018 05:11

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

twodot posted:

This is totally false. Factorization is hard, multiplication and division are basically identical. Teaching kids division is not any harder than teaching multiplication. Especially given modern techniques for teaching multiplication are "memorize it, and if you didn't memorize the answer start to add the numbers" and teaching division is "reverse recall the table we made you memorize, and if you didn't memorize the answer start to subtract the numbers.". You could use non-memorization methods for multiplication and division it would just be slow for the same reasons.

Also even with factorization being hard, modern cryptography wouldn't work without a bunch of other math we don't ordinarily teach to children.

Factorization is division where you can only have integer results. Multiplying 2 integers together is easy. Dividing a number so that the result is 2 integers is hard.

silence_kit posted:

A lot of basic research isn't really a cornerstone for anything though, and is kind of navel gazing. Take finding the Higgs Boson, for example. We now know that we have the Higgs Boson (well, I guess we've always had it), but after finding it, nothing really has changed. The Higgs Boson doesn't really inform or matter to anybody outside of the insular world of high energy physics.

Do you have a rebuttal for my post on number theory and cryptography?

edit: additionally the GPS network only works because of relativity. Computers only work because of our understanding of quantum mechanics.

I'm real curious to see you try and argue your way out of this one, because your position is completely untenable and I have a hard time believing you're not just trolling.

axeil fucked around with this message at 14:42 on Dec 6, 2018

# ¿ Dec 6, 2018 14:37

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

twodot posted:

Again completely wrong. Multiplying two numbers 8 * 2 = 16. Dividing two numbers 16 / 2 = 8. These are the same complexity, multiplication isn't weird, division isn't harder than multiplication or requires guess work. Factorizing a number, the factors of 16 are 1, 2, 4, 8, 16. Factorization is a totally different (and harder) task from division.

I believe the rebuttal is "You are an idiot who doesn't even know what division is".

It's amusing how angry you're getting about a simple difference in definition and not understanding what I'm saying.

Last time I'll try and explain.

If we're dealing with numbers that are created from multiplying prime numbers together, then yes, division and factorization are functionally the same thing. You're picking really trivial examples and rolling your eyes at me, but if we're talking about how you divide 239,812,851,035,039 into 2 integers then you're doing division because there are only 2 factors that aren't trivial.

Count Roland posted:

I also think the Rare Earth hypothesis is absurd and frankly narcissistic. We don't know how life developed, and we barely know what sorts of planets are common or rare, but no Earth is a special butterfly.

For a decidedly different take on the matter of life on other planets, here's an interesting site that I hope hasn't been posted already:
http://www.worlddreambank.org/P/PLANETS.HTM

Its basically some eccentric fellow who dreams up planets, sculpts them (I think) and uses knoweldge of planetary geology to describe how they work. He's done a wide variety of worlds which are habitable, including ones that, by design, fly in the face of the rare Earth hypothesis.

For anyone that likes to think about life forming on alien worlds, I really suggest checking it out, its extremely interesting.

e:

You should read Aurora, by Kim Stanley Robinson.

these hypothetical planets are super interesting, thanks for sharing!

the world 1000 years after catastrophic climate change is pretty sobering.

I also liked the one with the poles on ocean

It's analog, both poles on land is a pretty hellish planet though and the author talks about how if you have to have global warming or global cooling (not that either are good), warming is probably the better one because it at least doesn't dry everything out.

axeil fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Dec 7, 2018

# ¿ Dec 7, 2018 17:37

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

my dad posted:

Besides, the foul xeno may or may not see you as an existential threat, but trying to kill them and failing, which the attempt probably would, guarantees they will see you as an existential threat. Civilizations aren't individuals. There's no "headshot" unless you can blow up their star somehow, and that's where we start talking about space magic.

This is an interesting thought and makes me think of that one SCP where we accidentally genocide an alien species by accidental contamination with microbes. We then try and help and accidentally sterilize the whole species because we don't completely understand their biology. This then causes them to try to exterminate humanity with a variety of different mechanisms.

Maybe the reason no one talks to each other is because everyone's afraid of visitors coming and giving everyone Space AIDS? Even if that's not the case, I think things could very quickly go south when it comes to inter-species relations because of how alien we will be to each other. We struggle today with inter-cultural dialog and understanding, it's going to be much more difficult communicating with an entity/group where we have nothing in common.

Here's the relevant excerpt, it makes for a good little short story.

http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1322

quote:

08.1952 Anomaly discovered.

09.1952 Foundation obtains custody over SCP-1322. Containment chamber constructed (see Document 1322.v.SRD3006 for plans and technical specifications).

10.1952 Metallic cylinder emerges through anomaly. Cylinder is retrieved and subjected to quarantine and sterilization. Following clearance, cylinder is examined and found to be hollow, with screw cap. Cylinder contains triangular sheets of paper-like substance, upon which glyphs are inscribed. Artifact referred to Linguistics Unit.

11.1952 Experimentation with SCP-1322 progresses, including introduction of various (string-tethered) objects through anomaly. Samples taken of atmosphere in SCP-1322-A space; found to resemble Earth atmosphere but with a higher concentration of argon.

12.1952 Several additional cylinders, containing documents, emerge through SCP-1322 and, after quarantine, are subjected to analysis.

07.1953 Linguistics and mathematics personnel report breakthrough in analysis of documents obtained from SCP-1322-A. Message on glyphs interpreted as representations of geometric principles and texts apparently composed with a deliberate purpose of establishing cordial contact with the discoverers of the message. Linguistics Unit composes reply message using same writing system, prints same on paper, places paper in a metal cylinder of Foundation manufacture but resembling those used by SCP-1322-A culture and inserts cylinder into anomaly.

09.1953 Light activated on "far side" of anomaly. Close observation of anomaly indicates that "far side" of anomaly is located in what appears to be an artificially-constructed containment chamber, broadly similar to that constructed by Foundation for containment of anomaly.

10.1953 Approx. start date of extensive communication with SCP-1322-A civilization. Communication initially consists of reciprocal delivery of text messages on paper, first in glyphic system in which initial messages were composed (which is determined to be a simplified form of the standard written language of the SCP-1322-A civilization), and subsequently in a mutually-developed blend of said glyphic system and English. Communication accelerated when SCP-1322-A civilization proposes the construction of a telegraphic system involving a specially-shielded cable traversing the anomaly, with reciprocal equipment for the encoding and decoding of communications on both ends.

11.1953 Communications with SCP-1322-A civilization indicates that the civilization is composed of Homo sapiens (or a species not meaningfully different therefrom). Organization with whom communication has been established is a scientific institute associated with the polity comprising the geographic area surrounding the SCP-1322-A-side location of the anomaly (approximately analogous to a nation-state). Details of political organization and technologies of the SCP-1322-A civilization are disclosed. SCP-1322-A civilization has attained an advanced degree of technological and engineering sophistication, particularly in the fields of mathematics and high-energy physics in which that civilization's achievements surpass those of Earth (viz. the creation of the anomaly as an unintended consequence of an experiment to investigate the properties of quantum foam), but with less sophistication in biological science. SCP-1322-A civilization expresses strong interest in sharing samples of music, visual arts, literature (particularly metered poetry in various languages, with a particular interest in Indic and Sinic cultures) and mathematics, but no interest in medicine or religion. Reciprocal deliveries of data from SCP-1322-A civilization are archived and undergo analysis.

01.1962 SCP-1322-A civilization provides detailed log of astronomical observations and suggests that Foundation reciprocate. Analysis of provided data by Foundation's researchers suggests strong probability that there is no position within our observable universe that can correlate to the provided data. Foundation personnel assemble data file for delivery to SCP-1322-A; data is altered at direction of Site-122 administrator citing security concerns. Within 9 hours following delivery of data file, SCP-1322-A civilization identifies the false information and suggests that Foundation personnel proceed with more candor in the interest of mutual scientific and cultural development. Suggestion forwarded to O-5 for consideration.

11.1972 Telegraphic cable through SCP-1322 temporarily disconnected and withdrawn into containment chamber for routine maintenance. Following maintenance, SCP-1322-A cable end is re-inserted into SCP-1322 where SCP-1322-A personnel re-connect it to equipment on their side.

12.1972 Communication received from SCP-1322-A, indicating that a temporary degradation in the customary response time to signals from Foundation would be experienced due to personnel shortages on SCP-1322-A side. In response to a query, message sent by SCP-1322-A side indicating that the organization having custody of their side of SCP-1322 is experiencing a higher-than-normal incidence of personnel illness resulting in absenteeism.

01.1973 Message sent by SCP-1322-A side reporting that its personnel situation is back to normal, but that illness is becoming widespread in the geographic area of the SCP-1322-A facility.

03.1973 Message sent by SCP-1322-A side indicating that local government is imposing quarantine measures in an effort to arrest spread of what is evidently a viral outbreak on their side. In response to a Foundation offer to render assistance, SCP-1322-A civilization delivers data package containing pathology data.

04.1973 After appropriate quarantine measures are taken at Site-122, Foundation requests that SCP-1322-A civilization deliver a sample of the virus. Sample is delivered through SCP-1322 in appropriately shielded ampule, which is then secured and analyzed subject to Class V Contagious Disease Protocol (see document ref 033234098). Upon analysis, virus found to be a harmless flu variant. Foundation researchers send analysis data to SCP-1322-A, together with suggestions on synthesizing a vaccine and administering inoculation protocols.

06.1973 SCP-1322-A reports at least 8 million worldwide casualties attributable to virus (approximately 0.091% of their global population), and that Foundation-developed vaccine has been distributed and administered on widespread basis.

08.1973 SCP-1322-A reports that spread of virus appears to have been arrested and that the number of new incidents of illness from the virus is dramatically decreasing.

10.1973 SCP-1322-A reports worldwide inoculation against the virus.

12.1973 In the course of normal communications, SCP-1322-A reports an unexpected decrease in new pregnancies.

05.1974 SCP-1322-A reports a dramatic drop in birth rate.

08.1974 SCP-1322-A reports that its analysis indicates that decreases in fertility appear to be a side effect of the Foundation-provided vaccine.

01.1975 SCP-1322-A reports widespread social disorder attributable to fertility issues and corresponding stresses on family life. In response to Foundation offer of assistance, message received stating �NO THANK YOU. YOU HAVE DONE ENOUGH�

05.1975 Change in management structure of SCP-1322-A organization with custody of their side of SCP-1322. Communications received from their side are frequently belligerent and accusatory in tone.

07.1975 SCP-1322-A organization unilaterally discontinues communications dealing with scientific and cultural exchange.

09.1975 SCP-1322-A organization reports massive, ongoing worldwide upheaval attributable to drop in fertility. Message received indicating fewer than 1,000 live births reported globally in the past 72 days.

10.1975 Last communication received from SCP-1322-A. Communication consisted of text reading �YOU KILLED US. YOU DID THIS TO US. IN YOUR CARELESSNESS AND YOUR ARROGANCE YOU HAVE DESTROYED OUR POSTERITY. BUT WE SHALL AVENGE. WE OF THE LAST GENERATION PLEDGE AND VOW THIS. WE WILL FIND A WAY."

12.1976 Monitors in SCP-1322 containment chamber indicate that various pathogens have been introduced into the containment chamber from the SCP-1322-A side but have been isolated and destroyed.

01.1977 High-energy particle beam fired through SCP-1322 from the SCP-1322-A side, damaging Site-122 containment chamber. Damage is promptly repaired.

03.1984 High-energy beam of coherent radiant energy fired through SCP-1322 from the SCP-1322-A side, immediately followed by the insertion of various pathogens through SCP-1322. Damage from beam repaired and pathogens isolated and destroyed.

08.1984 Directed energy weapon fired through SCP-1322 from the SCP-1322-A side, immediately followed by the insertion of various pathogens through SCP-1322. Damage from weapon repaired and pathogens isolated and destroyed.

04.1991 Beam weapon fired through SCP-1322 from the SCP-1322-A side, immediately followed by the insertion of various pathogens through SCP-1322. Damage from beam repaired and pathogens isolated and destroyed.

06.1991 At direction of Site-122 administrator, Foundation fills containment chamber of SCP-1322 with quick-setting hardened ceramic.

07.1991 Ceramic dissolved by means of unknown solvent introduced through SCP-1322 from the SCP-1322-A side.

09.1992 High-energy particle beam fired through SCP-1322 from the SCP-1322-A side, immediately followed by the insertion of nanobots through SCP-1322. Damage from beam repaired and nanobots isolated and destroyed.

10.1992 Large numbers of nanobots inserted through SCP-1322 from the SCP-1322-A side over a long and continuous period. Damage to containment chamber from nanobots repaired, and nanobots destroyed.

01.1994 Iron rod, at least 8 kg in mass, fired through SCP-1322 from the SCP-1322-A side at velocity estimated at 200 km/sec., immediately followed by the insertion of nanobots through SCP-1322. Damage from rod repaired and nanobots isolated and destroyed.

12.1994 Beam of coherent radiant energy fired through SCP-1322 from the SCP-1322-A side for over 108 continuous days. Total energy of beam over that period estimated at over 1033 eV. Site-122 extensively damaged, but pathogens and nanobots introduced through SCP-1322 after cessation of particle beam are successfully contained.

03.1995 Device inserted into chamber through SCP-1322 from the SCP-1322-A side. Device is activated and, over a 40-minute period, heats the atmosphere within the containment chamber into a superheated plasma, which damages containment chamber. Plasma successfully vented from chamber, and containment protocol altered so as to require chamber atmospheric pressure to be maintained at near-vacuum.

02.1998 Miniaturized two-stage thermonuclear weapon of incompletely-understood design introduced through SCP-1322 from the SCP-1322-A side and detonated. Site-122 extensively damaged, but pathogens and nanobots introduced through SCP-1322 after detonation are successfully contained.

07.2006 Corrosive fluid pumped into containment chamber through SCP-1322 from the SCP-1322-A side under extremely high pressure. Pressurization of fluid continues after chamber is filled, resulting in damage to containment chamber. Pathogens and nanobots introduced through SCP-1322 after removal of fluid are successfully destroyed and facility repaired.

04.2007 At direction of Site-122 Administrator, remotely-operated miniaturized probe placed in containment chamber and commanded to approach SCP-1322. When probe came within 3 meters of SCP-1322, a series of iron rods, each at least 8 kg in mass, were fired through SCP-1322 at high velocities comparable to that experienced in 01.1994 incident. Rods destroyed probe and caused extensive damage to Site-122, which was promptly repaired.

11.2008 Gas of unknown composition introduced into chamber through SCP-1322 from the SCP-1322-A side under pressure. Following introduction, additional substance introduced through SCP-1322 resulting in extremely rapid phase-change of gas into solid with greater intermolecular separation than gas, which exerts pressure on chamber sides resulting in extensive damage. Solid then rapidly evaporates, following which pathogens and nanobots are introduced. Pathogens and nanobots destroyed and facility repaired.

06.20██ Several miniaturized thermonuclear weapons introduced through SCP-1322 from the SCP-1322-A side and detonated, followed by several high-energy particle beams being fired through SCP-1322 from the SCP-1322-A side at various angles. Site-122 extensively damaged, but pathogens and nanobots introduced through SCP-1322 after cessation of particle beams are successfully contained.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2018 17:11

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

BardoTheConsumer posted:

I dont think this works? Our bacteria and viruses evolved to infect us, specifically, in the same way as we evolved to need a particular set of fats and proteins. Alien life could maybe outcompete native life, but the idea that an earth virus would have the apparatus necessary to infect an alien species seems... far fetched. Bacteria are more likely, but even they evolved a certain way, with certain sugars as their primary food, which an alien body likely wouldnt contain.

Oh hm, I didn't think of that.

There are some cross-species diseases (rabies) on Earth but they're not very common compared to the cold/flu.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2018 21:22

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 07:00

axeil: Feb 14, 2006

squirrelzipper posted:

I didn�t know this and also this is perhaps my favorite thing I�ve learned on SA. Also I�m glad they can�t get drunk they�re already really dumb.

These were both great posts VitalSigns. Also great thread, it�s like a dilettantes buffet in here.

The sheer numbers involved in this topic are beyond my ability to really grasp. Like I can do so logically but my brain just goes �nah, gently caress it, let�s use the word big and call it a day.�

100-250B stars in our galaxy. 200B - 2T galaxies in the universe. So that�s how many planets? Nah gently caress it. Going with big.

And yet they're all nothing compared to Graham's Number.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham%27s_number

They had to invent new forms of mathematical notation just to write it out. It is so large a standard decimal representation of it would not fit in the universe.

When you finally start wrapping your mind around it and realize that Graham's Number / Infinity still rounds to 0 you get to realize just how big infinity is.

Wait But Why also did a good write-up on it, back before the author went off the deep end on Musk worship.

https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/11/1000000-grahams-number.html

Scientific American also has a good write-up on it.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/grahame28099s-number-is-too-big-for-me-to-tell-you-how-big-it-is/

# ¿ Dec 13, 2018 16:51

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Space, the Final Frontier: It Gazed Into My Open Refractor