People Who Are Disproportionately Excited About Space

[Channelknight Fadran]

the heck is even going on out there

[Cinnamon]

@The Bookwyrm@The Last Fæ@Zuqol

This sound like your kind of thing?  

[That1Cellist he/him]

mmmmmm I'm certainly not as interested as some people are, but I do definitely like space a lot.

If you want explanations for just about anything I'm afraid you won't get a lot out of me, though.

Edited April 11, 2023 by That1Cellist

[Tea Leaf]

4 hours ago, Cinnamon said:

@The Bookwyrm@The Last Fæ@Zuqol

This sound like your kind of thing?  

You may have touched on a 'small' interest of mine. I spent 1 hour with an equation about speed of light and movement, then made my own hypothesis that effectively said the same thing just tied a relation in and now I apply it to time travel concepts. The sci-fi that I use as fuel is The Three Body Problem (and one day Era 4 Mistborn), though I enjoy a good paper. I think about the difficulty of teleportation and ethics of it. If required I can sit back and plan a Sci-fi TTRPG which will never happen.

[StormingTexan he/him]

@The Last Fæ Make time for civilization, for civilization won't make time.

[Tea Leaf]

5 minutes ago, StormingTexan said:

@The Last Fæ Make time for civilization, for civilization won't make time.

Oh I do think about how far future civilisations work. I also make time to do other things like talk to people (about space) and to write (about space) and to not do work.

[alder24]

9 hours ago, Channelknight Fadran said:

the heck is even going on out there

Well:

Spoiler

I like reading, hearing and watching (and thinking) about some cool facts and hypotheses about space and aliens, there is so much cool stuff that is out there, and so much more to discover.

4 hours ago, The Last Fæ said:

I think about the difficulty of teleportation and ethics of it.

You mean teleportation that disassembles your body to create an identical copy of your body somewhere else, with the same memories, indistinguishable from your original self? That kept me awake for a few nights.

 

 

So guys, what are your favorite solutions to the Fermi paradox?

[+Invocation]

Woo space!

4 minutes ago, alder24 said:

So guys, what are your favorite solutions to the Fermi paradox?

We're that one backwater place everyone avoids because we're crazy as a species and they don't want to deal with it.

[Tea Leaf]

2 minutes ago, alder24 said:

So guys, what are your favorite solutions to the Fermi paradox?

I hate and love the dark forest solution. 

3 minutes ago, alder24 said:

I like reading, hearing and watching (and thinking) about some cool facts and hypotheses about space and aliens, there is so much cool stuff that is out there, and so much more to discover.

4 hours ago, The Last Fæ said:

I love xenobotany. (Yes the technical term is a Astrobotanist)

3 minutes ago, alder24 said:

You mean teleportation that disassembles your body to create an identical copy of your body somewhere else, with the same memories, indistinguishable from your original self? That kept me awake for a few nights.

 

I actually don't mind that, it is nice to die.

If y'all like games In Other Waters

[Wittles he/him]

17 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Well:

  Reveal hidden contents

I like reading, hearing and watching (and thinking) about some cool facts and hypotheses about space and aliens, there is so much cool stuff that is out there, and so much more to discover.

You mean teleportation that disassembles your body to create an identical copy of your body somewhere else, with the same memories, indistinguishable from your original self? That kept me awake for a few nights.

 

 

So guys, what are your favorite solutions to the Fermi paradox?

That's a cool way to teleport! It's like what happens in the Prestige.

As fae said, I like the dark forest theory. It's horrifying, but I like it

[Channelknight Fadran]

42 minutes ago, alder24 said:

So guys, what are your favorite solutions to the Fermi paradox?

The possibility that we are actually just alone fascinates me, but as I grew up the prospect of aliens changed from "fun fantasy things that are fun to believe in" to "holy goodness where the heck even are they?"

Probably the most logical solution in my opinion is the Early Humans hypothesis or the Great Filter. Though recently (as my rank might suggest) I learned that only a handful of planets can actually see us in the same way we see them - maybe the aliens just haven't seen us yet.

[alder24]

42 minutes ago, Invocation said:

We're that one backwater place everyone avoids because we're crazy as a species and they don't want to deal with it.

That's smart  

41 minutes ago, The Last Fæ said:

I hate and love the dark forest solution. 

29 minutes ago, Wittles of Shinovar said:

As fae said, I like the dark forest theory. It's horrifying, but I like it

Me too, scary but so fun. The thought that they might be on their way to destroy us right now, because they received our Arecibo message is weirdly fascinating.

6 minutes ago, Channelknight Fadran said:

The possibility that we are actually just alone fascinates me, but as I grew up the prospect of aliens changed from "fun fantasy things that are fun to believe in" to "holy goodness where the heck even are they?"

Probably the most logical solution in my opinion is the Early Humans hypothesis or the Great Filter. Though recently (as my rank might suggest) I learned that only a handful of planets can actually see us in the same way we see them - maybe the aliens just haven't seen us yet.

That's the most logical to assume. To add more, I sometimes think that interstellar travel might be too hard (no FTL is possible) for any civilization to travel beyond their own star system and the possibility of nearby stars having also habitable planet with similar conditions is so low, that no civilization even created interstellar colonies. We are all trapped in our Solar System, never to venture out of it. 

 

I also like the Zoo hypothesis, but what I love the most is the von Neumann self-replicating probes. The limitless idea of a silent probe lurking in our Solar system, listening to us, waiting for us to cross the line we never even knew was there and then building a doomsday device to destroy us, while their creators are long time gone and all that's left of them are probes in every star system in the galaxy, causing extinction of every civilization in the galaxy, because they're all still waiting for the command to do something else, command that wasn't sent before their creators met their own extinction. Or the probe will see us crossing the line and then welcome us to busy galactic society.

[Channelknight Fadran]

 

how serindipitous

[Tea Leaf]

6 hours ago, alder24 said:

That's the most logical to assume. To add more, I sometimes think that interstellar travel might be too hard (no FTL is possible) for any civilization to travel beyond their own star system and the possibility of nearby stars having also habitable planet with similar conditions is so low, that no civilization even created interstellar colonies. We are all trapped in our Solar System, never to venture out of it. 

 

Please FTL, please...
Anti time FTL, please.

[Telrao she/her]

*happy screaming* SPACE!!!

[Channelknight Fadran]

NEW TOPIC:

THE HUMAN DEFINITION OF LIFE FORM THAT THINGS OF ORGANIC STRUCTURE MUST MAINTAIN HOMEOSTASIS BY METABOLISM, SUCH THAT OUR CURRENT UNDERSTANDING IS STRICTLY LIMITED TO CARBON-BASED ORGANISMS THAT REQUIRE WATER TO SURVIVE. WE SEARCH FOR PLANETS SIMILAR TO OUR OWN IN THAT REGARD, BUT COULD BE POTENTIALLY OVERLOOKING SEPERATE LIFE FORMS THAT HAVE EVOLVED FROM A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FORM OF HOMEOSTATIC SURVIVAL.BEGIN DISCUSSION.

[alder24]

13 hours ago, Channelknight Fadran said:

how serindipitous

Grabby aliens, cool topic. I stumbled upon it on Rational Animations YT channel, he has several good videos about grabby aliens talking about it in more detail (and he uses cute dogs for aliens <3): 

Spoiler

 

 

10 hours ago, The Last Fæ said:

Anti time FTL, please.

Anti time? I'm not familiar with this term 

 

3 hours ago, Channelknight Fadran said:

NEW TOPIC:

THE HUMAN DEFINITION OF LIFE FORM THAT THINGS OF ORGANIC STRUCTURE MUST MAINTAIN HOMEOSTASIS BY METABOLISM, SUCH THAT OUR CURRENT UNDERSTANDING IS STRICTLY LIMITED TO CARBON-BASED ORGANISMS THAT REQUIRE WATER TO SURVIVE. WE SEARCH FOR PLANETS SIMILAR TO OUR OWN IN THAT REGARD, BUT COULD BE POTENTIALLY OVERLOOKING SEPERATE LIFE FORMS THAT HAVE EVOLVED FROM A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FORM OF HOMEOSTATIC SURVIVAL.BEGIN DISCUSSION.

Tbf, we barely scratch the surface in the search of extraterrestrial life. So far we've discovered around 5000 exoplanets, most of them are gas giants. Compared to the low estimate of 100 billion exoplanets in our galaxy alone, we know nothing right now. It's like taking a glass of water from the ocean and concluding that there are no fish in the ocean at all. We might be hearing alien radio signals right now, but those might be filtered out as some galactic noise, because they're so quiet and don't fit our current models. Or radio signals for them are archaic technology, they might be using gravitational waves or particle entanglement for communication instead. We might be looking at exoplanets' atmosphere and missing some signs of life, because our detectors are too weak to pick up slight amounts of methane or other molecules signaling life, like Webb discovering sulfur dioxide for the first time showed us. Or our methods of looking for exoplanets are just not good enough, after all sun's ecliptic is at very high angle in relation to the galactic plane, most of the stars in the Milky Way won't be able to see Earth's transit in front of the Sun, therefore is fair to assume that we as well won't be able to see exoplanet's transits in most of the star systems in our galaxy. That's why I wouldn't dare to say "we're looking up there for alien life", we are just looking up right now, nothing more.

But on the topic, we have no idea how life could evolve differently without carbon. We don't even know how carbon-based life began in the first place, what was needed, how Earth's environment was like back there, or if life even originated on Earth. How could we tell what silicon-based life would look like? What do they need to form? Or life based on non-water solvents like ammonia or methane? While you have a good point about non-carbon-based life, we have no idea what to look for in the case of those kinds of life. We can't even predict what to look for, as we can't even create in the lab that kind of life to know what they need and what they are producing. If we were to start to look for non-carbon-based life we would basically have to look everywhere, on every planet, as for them everywhere could be suitable.

Or we just look for machine life instead.

Edited April 12, 2023 by alder24

[Tea Leaf]

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

Anti time? I'm not familiar with this term 

 

Goes backwards by going FTL

[Immortal Platypus he/him]

okay, uncommon opinion. All about FTL.

So we've never actually reached FTL travel, so we don't know what happens there (unless I'm wrong which would invalidate this whole theory and would be sad). So what if when we go FTL, physics just... breaks for lack of a better term. It changes. So all our theorizing about it (which I don't know a lot about) is just wrong.

 

On a random side topic, I've spent hours researching quesars, stars, time, and other space things. I still understand very little.

[alder24]

2 hours ago, Being of Cacophony said:

okay, uncommon opinion. All about FTL.

So we've never actually reached FTL travel, so we don't know what happens there (unless I'm wrong which would invalidate this whole theory and would be sad). So what if when we go FTL, physics just... breaks for lack of a better term. It changes. So all our theorizing about it (which I don't know a lot about) is just wrong.

The idea that the time moves backwards when moving faster than the speed of light comes from the fact that the faster you go, the slower time moves for you until you hit the speed of light, when time stops for you - everything is happening at once to you. That's how photons experience time. Because of that if you were to exceed the speed of light you would move backwards in time.
I don't know how much is it confirmed mathematically, but google says that special relativity does indeed predict what would happen if you were to exceed the speed of light - you would move backwards in time. But the problem with this is that no object with mass can even reach the speed of light, so the nature of our Universe might just prevent this from even happening.

Buuuuut, you could use a warp drive (Alcubierre drive) and move spacetime around you faster than the speed of light. Spacetime has no mass, so physics allows this, and you would be moving faster than the speed of light, but from the point of view of a distant observer. Wormhole works as well. But good luck finding negative mass for this.

That's why I don't believe there is a way to achieve FTL other than warp drive or a wormhole. You can't just do the Star Wars and go into hyperspace or something like that.

2 hours ago, Being of Cacophony said:

On a random side topic, I've spent hours researching quesars, stars, time, and other space things. I still understand very little.

I know that pain  

[Immortal Platypus he/him]

45 minutes ago, alder24 said:

The idea that the time moves backwards when moving faster than the speed of light comes from the fact that the faster you go, the slower time moves for you until you hit the speed of light, when time stops for you - everything is happening at once to you. That's how photons experience time. Because of that if you were to exceed the speed of light you would move backwards in time.
I don't know how much is it confirmed mathematically, but google says that special relativity does indeed predict what would happen if you were to exceed the speed of light - you would move backwards in time. But the problem with this is that no object with mass can even reach the speed of light, so the nature of our Universe might just prevent this from even happening.

Buuuuut, you could use a warp drive (Alcubierre drive) and move spacetime around you faster than the speed of light. Spacetime has no mass, so physics allows this, and you would be moving faster than the speed of light, but from the point of view of a distant observer. Wormhole works as well. But good luck finding negative mass for this.

That's why I don't believe there is a way to achieve FTL other than warp drive or a wormhole. You can't just do the Star Wars and go into hyperspace or something like that.

I know that pain  

well, I was saying that maybe all this theorizing is just wrong and random things happen  That's how I like to think about it

[alder24]

10 hours ago, Being of Cacophony said:

well, I was saying that maybe all this theorizing is just wrong and random things happen  That's how I like to think about it

I know, I just like pointlessly arguing about space 

[Immortal Platypus he/him]

5 hours ago, alder24 said:

I know, I just like pointlessly arguing about space 

ah yes, one of the greatest of life's pastimes

[Tea Leaf]

16 minutes ago, Being of Cacophony said:

ah yes, one of the greatest of life's pastimes

Yup a pi/3 type of thing.

[Immortal Platypus he/him]

AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH PI/3 IS SO ANNOYING!!!!!! LIKE e IN MATH!!!!!!!