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I remember seeing a simulated prediction of what they expected a couple of years ago, and it pretty much matches.

Here's one such article with illustrated predictions, although it's not the same article I remember.

Eventually Earth's moon will be a dwarf planet. Then the closest planet will be The Moon.

https://www.universetoday.com/...

The driest place on Earth is not in the Middle East, it is right in the middle of the Andes mountains. Where it tends to be quite cold. The Middle East is driest around Riyadh, which actually gets more rain than Las Vegas.

"Black Holes - Gravitational theory and measurements of the visible stellar systems don't result in the working model of what is known about galaxies."

Not sure what you are talking about here. Looking at the orbits of the stars whipping around the center of the Milky Way (Sagittarius A*) indicates that there must be a very large mass there, but there is no light being emitted from that location with all the mass. Nothing but a black hole fits that description. In fact, the Event Horizon Telescope project is in the process of imaging the "shadow" of that black hole to see if it matches the predictions of the General Theory of Relativity.

As it regards dark matter and dark energy, they are admittedly place holders. But there are multiple lines of evidence for dark matter, just no direct detection yet (as in we haven't found a dark matter particle). Modified theories of gravity fail to explain observed properties of galaxy clusters as well as the characteristics of the CMBR, while dark matter does.

The engineering of terraforming Mars is way beyond our current capabilities.
Actually: no.

https://www.universetoday.com/...

yes, CO2 is good for plans... but that it is not its only effect... how many plants you have in Venus? They have LOTS of CO2 there!
the quantity is very important, too much or too little are bad, just like water (too little: desert, too much... well sea or lake)
The issue with CO2 is that it gets hot and do not release the hot as fast as most other common gases. This make everything a *little* more hot... while the extra CO2 make plans grow faster, it also make water evaporate faster, that in turn form bigger clouds and so stronger storms ...usually far away from the water was taken out... so you get longer or permanent dry seasons in some places and floods and strong cyclones. As some areas are hotter and other cooler, winds also change a little, taking hot air from hot places to places where usually is not that hot, and taking cold air to places where usually is not that cold... the planet will sooner or later get back to a "normal" weather cycle, but may be totally different from what we have now, so killing many animals and plants (species extinction) and destroying lots of land, forcing people to relocate, migrate... current food cultures will have to change, sparking for hunger if not changed correctly or too late.

The fun fact about chain reactions is that after they started, it is hard to predict how they will evolve, small details may make huge differences in the long run... and like most chain reactions, it may not be easy to stop or control then... venus is a great example of a global warming out of control, while mercuryis much closer to the sun, it is colder than venus: https://www.universetoday.com/...

Science isn't a yes / no. Certainly we don't completely understand climate.

No but certain questions are yes and no. For example we don't understand gravity completely but it's "settled" that mass causes gravity and not pixie dust. That doesn't mean that science stops looking at gravity in detail.

No--we know that mass and gravity are connected. We have *guessed* that mass is the cause, but in reality we have no idea.

References: Here and here

Should we we reduce CO2 emissions? That isn't a "science" question, it is a political question that takes (or should take) as inputs climate models and economic models.

That's as idiotic as saying "yeah smoking has severe consequences, do we need to stop doing it?"

As a full-time employed scientist that has worked in academic, government, and private sector environments: I sure see a lot of people who know about smoking's severe consequences and yet choose to continue doing it. It is a political question. The science question is answered with "there's a consequence". The political question is simply "can we live with that consequence?"

Are we missing any important inputs to climate? (like the cosmic ray / solar wind effect on cloud seeding issue).

Bahahahaha. Climate scientists have been studying the inputs for like 50 years and you think they didn't think about this issue or investigated it. Again that's like tobacco companies trying to argue that lung cancer could be caused by other things thus smoking can't be the cause of lung cancer.

You talk about it as though scientists have looked into it, decided it doesn't have an impact, and stopped. Shall I remind you that space weather is a large field employing thousands of highly qualified scientists and engineers, and that the government continues to fund research on that very thing?

If the science were settled there would be no point spending more effort on it. (Newtonian mechanics is "settled", no one does research on Newtonian mechanics).

Well that's like saying gravity is settled and we don't need to spend any money on LIGO or research on gravity.

Newtonian mechanics and gravity are not the same thing. GP is right; no one does research on Newtonian mechanics, so it is, in a sense, "settled". As in, "this is useful, but not correct enough to continue, especially since the paths of general relativity and particle physics have been opened and prove to be more accurate than Newton's laws."

Why would I read you when I can read this?

Matter is just frozen light.

Geosynchronous orbit does not count as LEO. However, my post was in reply to existing geosynchronous service providers and their 600+ ms of latency.

LEO is between 99 and 1,200 miles. Typically, LEO satellites will aim for less than 620 miles so that they don't have to deal with Van Allen Radiation Belts. The Iridium satellites, for example, are at approximately 483 miles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://www.universetoday.com/...

Although I expect that this remark was intended to be some kind of humor, but in fact, it's accurate: Uranus is a planet composed mostly of water.

  https://www.universetoday.com/19309/water-on-uranus/

Gamma ray bursts typically have a beam angle between 3 and 20 degrees. Two beams are formed, opposite to each other, likely from the poles of the object that causes the burst. There are different types, the longer more powerful ones can convert up to a few suns worth of mass to energy in a handful of seconds. Smaller, more common, ones usually only convert about one thousandth as much. The effect on earth depends on the intensity, you would need to be within a few tens of light years and take a direct hit for it to cause epic devistation. However you can be moderately affected if you are within about 8000 light years. Roughly 1000 or so have hit earth since it formed. Even the strongest ones don't annihilate nearby star systems, much less the entire galaxy.

The current iteration of the universe is not infinite, which you state. So it's completely plausible the universe has always existed but it goes through "rebirth" every few trillion "years". Maybe the big bang that started our universe was the infinity + 1 big bang that happened.

Yep. That's one reason I put in that particular wording: "the universe has not existed infinitely in its current form.

I'm far from an expert and I'll go so far to say that I'm not even very knowledgeable on the subject.. but my simple brain seems to think that at some point expansion halts and contraction begins. Could the universe contract into a singularity and cause another big bang?

That is plausible in terms of the physics: it's sometimes called the "big crunch", and the idea that the universe expands to a maximum extent, contracts, and then recycles into a new big bang is called the "cyclic" or "oscillating" universe: https://www.universetoday.com/...

The best data we have at the moment, however, says that there is not enough mass in the universe for the expansion to be reversed by gravity (in fact, it suggests the opposite: rather than expansion slowing down and eventually stopping, expansion is actually speeding up.)

Has ISRO been doing that "women in spaceflight" superstition stuff too? I know Russia has, but I've never heard of anything from India about it. Russia even once blamed a technical mishap that could have killed the crew on the fact that there were two women aboard the craft. It appears to stem from the old naval superstition about women on ships being bad luck.

Touche, but since we are talking about Mars and providing references: how about these? The last one even explicitly mentions microbes that can survive on perchlorates.

It's a fairly safe bet that the environment of Mars will not pose any threat to the types of life that could survive the journey unprotected, in the vacuum of space, far colder than even the coldest night on Mars.

Ehm... Growing food is not a problem, but getting enough oxygen from plants is.

- For oxygen you either need plants OR water + electricity. Water exists on mars ( https://www.nasa.gov/press-rel... ) and solar power would be perfect on mars ( https://www.universetoday.com/... ) or possibly bring one or more small nuclear-reactors there (or parts to build together with resources available on site)
- For food, grow plants and/or algae. Would be able to support quite a few people with minimal resources.
- To expand the habitat, dig tunnels beneath the ground.

The above would be the most important things needed.. Things breaking down can be repaired if not too complex. Even easier if they were designed to be repairable from the start.

What would be missing is the production of modern tech, but give it enough time, and enough kick-starting equipment, and those things too can made there. Heck some quite advanced things can be made at home today like integrated circuits ( https://code.google.com/archiv... )

Some of the problems with living there would be:
- Getting there over and over, for a sensible amount of money, in a reliable manner to allow us to kickstart a colony..
- If you go there would you ever expect to come back to earth?
- If you are seriously injured there you may die, or become a too big drain on the available resources. (during the kickstart phase)
- Don't think you will ever be able to retire if you live there except when you are too weak/accident-prone to work.
- How to handle people when they get old and need care.. Not too many resources to go around.. Probably need a population above 1000 and 60-70% of the population working to be able to take care of kids and elderly.

. It needs to be proof against volcanoes far beyond anything we've ever seen

Tell me again, what is the largest volcano in the solar system? https://www.universetoday.com/... Better make sure your colony can handle that.

your bunker cannot rely on ANY outside resources

Neither can your colony.

You don't know that there will BE drinkable water afterwards.

There is no drinkable water on Mars. Period. Full stop.

We tried to build a self-sustaining environment in the 1990s - it was called Biosphere 2, it was a complete disaster.

Which sounds like a non-starter for your colony.

that means growing crops. With no sunlight - so that means you need electric lighting, and you have no outside energy sources.

Solar intensity on Mars is about half of what is on Earth. A completely cloudy day on Earth gets more sunlight than Mars at noon.

You can't even do nuclear - you have no way to dispose of the waste, no source of new nuclear fuel

After an ELE, we're not particularly worried about environmental impact. So we can just toss the waste out a hatch.

you can't spare the water to cool it,

You don't need potable water to cool a reactor. And the water is reusable. How are you planning to cool a reactor on Mars again? You don't even have liquid water to start with.

it's going to get very, very cold.

Not as cold as Mars. Which is sub-antarctic temperatures every single day.

If your soil gets overplanted - you're screwed because you can't know the soil outside isn't toxic or radioactive.

I guess you're screwed on Mars. Because the soil on Mars already is already toxic. And you have to deal with radiation every day because there is no magnetosphere.

Basically - you want to build something that is probably completely impossible.

Basically, you want to build something that is probably completely impossible BUT ON MARS. Can't you see the idiocy? You have to do every thing the bunker does, but ON ANOTHER PLANET.

but it does NOT have to be completely sealed off from the outside world,

The colony has to be at MORE sealed off than a bunker. My vault dwellers can put on a parkas and breathing tanks to go outside. Your colonists need full spacesuits.

it does not have to function without even SUNLIGHT

You have less sunlight that Earth would have.

it has access to external resources for raw materials and soil

My vault dwellers can go out and collect far more resources than your colonies. High quality processed materials would be piled up. Literally cities full of scrap metal and spare parts. What have you got on Mars that is even comparable to that?

But unlike your bunker - it's actually within the realm of conceivable possibility.

Every single objection to a bunker applies to your colony. If we are betting on the survival of the human race, then on a dollar for dollar basis, which plan makes more sense? A single manned mission to Mars is estimated to cost a trillion dollars. That is not even close to the cost of full colonization. How many bunkers can we build with that much money?

Since that was a pretty lame and useless comment, I'm high jacking it to harp on my favorite space exploration related issue.

The future is not in chemical rockets. Period.

The future is in a space SHIP. Not a throw away tin can, or a floating log cabin like ISS.

An actual ship consists of...

1. A very powerful and long lasting power source. Think naval reactors or other self contained, compact reactors. We are talking 80 megawatts of power or more. The more the better.

2. Indefinitely sustainable environmental system. So recycling everything from your breath to last night's dinner you just finished processing.

3. Magnetic Shielding. People poo poo that, but it has been modeled

4. "Artificial" gravity. Actually, a huge centrifuge for the living/working quarters.

5. Lastly...engines. Banks of ion engines, the infamous and yet to be proven EM drive, or who knows what else.

All of these things are within our reach and $23 billion would go a long way towards bringing some to reality.

Once this is achieved, exploration is a matter of packing up the food and drinks and heading out. But we need to think long term (i know, I know) instead of to the latest publicity stunt.

Would it be cheaper to do an "Apollo plus" with SOME modern technology where modern tech happens to be cheaper or the same price, but leaving out modern tech where it's more expensive?

What technology could be saved from Apollo? The idea of the technology could be re-used but in terms of actual physical objects none of the items from Apollo can be used. For example some of the technology of space suits pioneered by Apollo can be used in making new space suits but it will still cost money to make the suits. It will cost money to design the suit from scratch in the first place.

In other words, would we save $BIGBUCKS by building on what we have instead of starting nearly from scratch?

What money do you have in mind that could be saved? Because the vast majority of the engineering has to be re-done.

Before anyone points it out, I am aware that significant amounts of the original Apollo program's designs have been lost, either literally though lost blueprints/design-documents or in practice because the "institutional knowledge" is long-gone. I also know that the original manufacturing facilities are long gone and they would have to be rebuilt. However, significant parts of the design work is either available or easily reverse-engineered, so we wouldn't be starting from scratch.

Your assumption is flawed from the premise. Your assumption is that the 1) none of the technology has been advanced since Apollo so that era technology is the best fit. In many cases it is not. The "computers" used in the Apollo era are laughable by today's standards. It serves no purpose in re-building them.

2) reverse-engineering Apollo era technology would be cheaper than designing from scratch. Trying to retrofit technology from 50 years ago is sometimes not worth it. For example Apollo used Saturn V rockets. Besides using slightly different fuels and rocket technology, the cost of using really old rocket motors will be higher than adapting current rocket technology. This is a comparison between Saturn V vs Falcon. While the Falcon cannot lift as much as Saturn V could, the cost is significantly cheaper by almost a factor of 7 per launch. It would be cheaper to re-design and build a Falcon than to produce a single Saturn V rocket. That is barring any unforeseen problems with retrofitting the rocket technology.

Voyager 1 still took the most impressive close-up photographs of Jupiter

What about the Cassini photos? It took amazing images of Jupiter and Saturn.

In their shortsightedness, they will say these aren't of great scientific value. A more sophisticated mind understands that the scientific importance of these images was enormous, because it inspire hundreds, if not thousands, to do science as their calling.

Ahem, NASA put a visible light camera on Juno specifically for "public science and outreach and to increase public engagement".

What Einstein already figured out is that as you approach the speed of light, in your reference, time slows down. If you reach the speed of light, time stands still.

What Einstein already figured out is what the post you replied to is alluding to. For a photon, all time is now. To the photons reaching us from this event, it is exactly the same time as when they were created. To a photon, no time passes between when it is emitted and when it is absorbed. This is one of the most spectacular implications of relativity.

(giving up my mod points to comment here) That article drops its most significant qualifying phrase halfway through the explanation, which leads to a 100% incorrect conclusion. That phrase is relative to an observer back on Earth. In Earth's frame of reference, the time experienced by the photon is zero. In the photon's frame of reference, time is proceeding normally. It "sees" that the distance to its origin is zero at time zero, and that the origin is receding at a speed of c as time passes. And that time passes normally. Of course, the theory then goes into the actual weirdness of relativity, which is that in the photon's frame of reference, time has stopped at its origin.

What Einstein already figured out is that as you approach the speed of light, in your reference, time slows down. If you reach the speed of light, time stands still.

What Einstein already figured out is what the post you replied to is alluding to. For a photon, all time is now. To the photons reaching us from this event, it is exactly the same time as when they were created. To a photon, no time passes between when it is emitted and when it is absorbed. This is one of the most spectacular implications of relativity.

Q: What is a photon's favorite song?

A: The Smiths; 'How Soon Is Now?"

Because of the highly successful Mars Rover missions, many people have forgotten (or don't know) that about 60% of all missions to Mars have failed.

Not only that, but this specific probe's landing was an experiment in preparation for a future mission in 2020. The main thrust (no pun intended) of the mission was to position the mothership which will be gathering most of the data. It's disappointing the probe failed, but the information gathered and the root cause analysis of the experiment should provide good data for the next mission.

Because of the highly successful Mars Rover missions, many people have forgotten (or don't know) that about 60% of all missions to Mars have failed.

2 years to build a new Soyuz capsule after it's ordered? It takes Boeing and Airbus about 80 days to build a 777 or A380.

Even factoring in number of orders doesn't account for the difference. There are about 15 Soyuz launches per year. Airbus is delivering about 30 A380s per year. So that would only account for a factor of 2, putting expected build time for a Soyuz at 160 days, or less than half a year.

Colonizing Venus with floating cities is a far more sexier venture.

http://www.universetoday.com/15570/colonizing-venus-with-floating-cities/

Sorry, the missing piece is a closed cycle ecology. Well, nearly closed. This could be important, but it's not crucial as there are other ways of making ion rockets work in near-solar space. But the closed cycle ecology is needed if you want to get people living away from Earth. (i.e., the general category of "flexible ion rocket" is extremely important, this particular gadget is one possible implementation. But even all together without a [nearly] closed cycle ecology you're only facilitating robot exploration.)

P.S.: when you're talking about a habitat large enough to rotate for gravity, and with a good radiation shield to protect from the sun, you're talking something significantly heavy. Don't expect an ion-rocket of any sort to move you quickly. For an ion rocket 30 pounds of thrust is unbelievably large, and when you apply 30 pounds of thrust to something that masses 1,000 tons you're going to get very slow changes in momentum. (I grabbed "30 pounds" out of the air, but it resonates with some memory I can't identify, a Google search turned up "...the VASIMR has 4 Newtons of thrust (0.9 pounds) with a specif..." http://www.universetoday.com/4...

How the hell did this get marked as insightful? It's well known that the sun will gradually get hotter and brighter over the next few billion years. The increased solar output will eventually burn the Earth to crisp. Then the sun will expand and become a red giant, engulfing the planet in it's outer layers.

Earth becoming Venus-like not only can happen, it absolutely will happen. We have about a billion years, tops, before earth is uninhabitable by life as we know it. The only question is how much we'll end up hurrying the process along.

Here is some news from this year about the Great Attractor:

Professor Staveley-Smith and his team reported that they found 883 galaxies, of which over one third have never been seen before. “The Milky Way is very beautiful of course and it’s very interesting to study our own galaxy but it completely blocks out the view of the more distant galaxies behind it,” he said.

The team identified new structures in the ZOA that could help explain the movement of The Milky Way, and other galaxies, towards The Great Attractor, at speeds of up to 200 million kilometres per hour. These include three galaxy concentrations, named NW1, NW2, and NW3, and two new clusters, named CW1 and CW2.

Venus is tidally locked to the Sun, and it rotates the opposite direction of all the other planets. Theory is a major impact did this; so that puts comparing it's tilt to Earth and Mars non-comparative. And there is considerable theories that radioactive decay is not enough to explain the total core heat; both radioactive decay AND tidal frictional forces add together. And there is a large difference between "million or billion"; current estimates are that our core won't cool off until long after the Sun is a white dwarf. The axial tilt idea has been verified by hundreds of computer simulations and has been known about for at least few decades now. The core frictional dynamics is far more contested, though.

And their not "statements", but links to sites. If you have a spare $39.99 you can go read the actual paper. Like I said, this is still controversial and even the paper says "we suggest" and "we propose". But as for the axial tilt, even NASA agrees. So, you should show your math and argue with them and not me.

This page has a possible explanation: http://www.universetoday.com/1...

They say that the two black holes formed inside a giant star, and collapsed. This created both the gamma ray burst and the gravitational wave. Then the light needed to travel through the star's matter. While the gravitational wave can travel with the speed of light in vacuum, the light requires more time, that's where the .4 seconds delay comes from.

They say also that in order for there being a gamma ray burst, there needs to be matter close to the colliding black holes. So this rules out a pair of black holes that orbited each other for a long time, because they would have cleared out the region.

This page has a possible explanation: http://www.universetoday.com/1...

They say that the two black holes formed inside a giant star, and collapsed. This created both the gamma ray burst and the gravitational wave. Then the light needed to travel through the star's matter. While the gravitational wave can travel with the speed of light in vacuum, the light requires more time, that's where the .4 seconds delay comes from.

They say also that in order for there being a gamma ray burst, there needs to be matter close to the colliding black holes. So this rules out a pair of black holes that orbited each other for a long time, because they would have cleared out the region.

Muito interessante - http://www.blogpc.net.br/2016/04/Cuidado-com-o-que-voce-fala-em-frente-a-sua-smart-TV.html

This page has a possible explanation: http://www.universetoday.com/1...

They say that the two black holes formed inside a giant star, and collapsed. This created both the gamma ray burst and the gravitational wave. Then the light needed to travel through the star's matter. While the gravitational wave can travel with the speed of light in vacuum, the light requires more time, that's where the .4 seconds delay comes from.

They say also that in order for there being a gamma ray burst, there needs to be matter close to the colliding black holes. So this rules out a pair of black holes that orbited each other for a long time, because they would have cleared out the region.

This page has a possible explanation: http://www.universetoday.com/1...

They say that the two black holes formed inside a giant star, and collapsed. This created both the gamma ray burst and the gravitational wave. Then the light needed to travel through the star's matter. While the gravitational wave can travel with the speed of light in vacuum, the light requires more time, that's where the .4 seconds delay comes from.

They say also that in order for there being a gamma ray burst, there needs to be matter close to the colliding black holes. So this rules out a pair of black holes that orbited each other for a long time, because they would have cleared out the region.

Muito interessante - http://www.blogpc.net.br/2016/04/Cuidado-com-o-que-voce-fala-em-frente-a-sua-smart-TV.html

This page has a possible explanation: http://www.universetoday.com/1...

They say that the two black holes formed inside a giant star, and collapsed. This created both the gamma ray burst and the gravitational wave. Then the light needed to travel through the star's matter. While the gravitational wave can travel with the speed of light in vacuum, the light requires more time, that's where the .4 seconds delay comes from.

They say also that in order for there being a gamma ray burst, there needs to be matter close to the colliding black holes. So this rules out a pair of black holes that orbited each other for a long time, because they would have cleared out the region.

There is the H-R diagram - it's a graph of luminosity vs. temperature in Kelvin

http://www.universetoday.com/5...

A white dwarf is anywhere between 1/10,000th the size of our Sun and the size of the Sun. It can also be the same temperature or five times hotter.

Astronomers do look at the electromagnetic spectrum of the star, but only certain elements show up at different temperatures:

http://www.pic2fly.com/viewima...

Oxygen only shows up at 7000K and below 3000K

The success rate of Russian missions to Mars is quite low. In fact, if we don't include the launches made by the former USSR, which also had a low success rate, the success rate would be zero: two mission failures out of two launches. In contrast, India, a relative newcomer to deep space, managed to succeed with its one and only mission to Mars.

If this is accurate this is good news. One of the standard explanations for the Fermi Paradox is that Earth-like planets are very rare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis. You may ask why this is good news? The reason is that something is making civilizations rare. We don't see any signs of major civilizations, either in terms of visits, radio waves, or most importantly, megastructures and large-scale engineering projects. At this point, we've looked at 100,000 nearby galaxies and essentially none of them show signs of a highly advanced civilization in terms of energy use http://www.universetoday.com/119931/100000-galaxies-and-no-obvious-signs-of-life/.

The standard explanation for this is that there is some "Great Filter" which is making civlizations rare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter. If this is something in our past (e.g. habitable planets are rare, it is tough for life to evolve, it is hard to get those last few steps to necessary levels of intelligence, etc.) then we don't need to worry. But if it is something in our future, something that civilizations do to wipe themselves(e.g. nuclear war, bad nanotech) out then we're in trouble. We need to figure this out soon, since if there is a future Filter then it likely occurs very close to our current tech level.

Every piece of evidence for early filters should make us breathe more easily since it makes late filters less necessary. Unfortunately in the last few years, almost all new evidence has been in the other direction: we've found lots of planets and it looks like even small, rocky planets are common. So this is a refreshing piece of news. However, I'm very skeptical of it. First, it seems to go against other similar studies suggesting that as many as 1/3rd of stars may have an Earth-like planet (see e.g. here http://www.universetoday.com/119931/100000-galaxies-and-no-obvious-signs-of-life/) and they appear in order to be getting this result in part to be using an extremely narrow notion of what a habitable planet would look like.

I see you have completed your Nick Bolström course. Now lets contemplate the Simulation Hypothesis.

If this is accurate this is good news. One of the standard explanations for the Fermi Paradox is that Earth-like planets are very rare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis. You may ask why this is good news? The reason is that something is making civilizations rare. We don't see any signs of major civilizations, either in terms of visits, radio waves, or most importantly, megastructures and large-scale engineering projects. At this point, we've looked at 100,000 nearby galaxies and essentially none of them show signs of a highly advanced civilization in terms of energy use http://www.universetoday.com/119931/100000-galaxies-and-no-obvious-signs-of-life/.

The standard explanation for this is that there is some "Great Filter" which is making civlizations rare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter. If this is something in our past (e.g. habitable planets are rare, it is tough for life to evolve, it is hard to get those last few steps to necessary levels of intelligence, etc.) then we don't need to worry. But if it is something in our future, something that civilizations do to wipe themselves(e.g. nuclear war, bad nanotech) out then we're in trouble. We need to figure this out soon, since if there is a future Filter then it likely occurs very close to our current tech level.

Every piece of evidence for early filters should make us breathe more easily since it makes late filters less necessary. Unfortunately in the last few years, almost all new evidence has been in the other direction: we've found lots of planets and it looks like even small, rocky planets are common. So this is a refreshing piece of news. However, I'm very skeptical of it. First, it seems to go against other similar studies suggesting that as many as 1/3rd of stars may have an Earth-like planet (see e.g. here http://www.universetoday.com/119931/100000-galaxies-and-no-obvious-signs-of-life/) and they appear in order to be getting this result in part to be using an extremely narrow notion of what a habitable planet would look like.

I see you have completed your Nick Bolström course. Now lets contemplate the Simulation Hypothesis.

If this is accurate this is good news. One of the standard explanations for the Fermi Paradox is that Earth-like planets are very rare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis. You may ask why this is good news? The reason is that something is making civilizations rare. We don't see any signs of major civilizations, either in terms of visits, radio waves, or most importantly, megastructures and large-scale engineering projects. At this point, we've looked at 100,000 nearby galaxies and essentially none of them show signs of a highly advanced civilization in terms of energy use http://www.universetoday.com/119931/100000-galaxies-and-no-obvious-signs-of-life/.

The standard explanation for this is that there is some "Great Filter" which is making civlizations rare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter. If this is something in our past (e.g. habitable planets are rare, it is tough for life to evolve, it is hard to get those last few steps to necessary levels of intelligence, etc.) then we don't need to worry. But if it is something in our future, something that civilizations do to wipe themselves(e.g. nuclear war, bad nanotech) out then we're in trouble. We need to figure this out soon, since if there is a future Filter then it likely occurs very close to our current tech level.

Every piece of evidence for early filters should make us breathe more easily since it makes late filters less necessary. Unfortunately in the last few years, almost all new evidence has been in the other direction: we've found lots of planets and it looks like even small, rocky planets are common. So this is a refreshing piece of news. However, I'm very skeptical of it. First, it seems to go against other similar studies suggesting that as many as 1/3rd of stars may have an Earth-like planet (see e.g. here http://www.universetoday.com/119931/100000-galaxies-and-no-obvious-signs-of-life/) and they appear in order to be getting this result in part to be using an extremely narrow notion of what a habitable planet would look like.

If this is accurate this is good news. One of the standard explanations for the Fermi Paradox is that Earth-like planets are very rare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis. You may ask why this is good news? The reason is that something is making civilizations rare. We don't see any signs of major civilizations, either in terms of visits, radio waves, or most importantly, megastructures and large-scale engineering projects. At this point, we've looked at 100,000 nearby galaxies and essentially none of them show signs of a highly advanced civilization in terms of energy use http://www.universetoday.com/119931/100000-galaxies-and-no-obvious-signs-of-life/.

The standard explanation for this is that there is some "Great Filter" which is making civlizations rare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter. If this is something in our past (e.g. habitable planets are rare, it is tough for life to evolve, it is hard to get those last few steps to necessary levels of intelligence, etc.) then we don't need to worry. But if it is something in our future, something that civilizations do to wipe themselves(e.g. nuclear war, bad nanotech) out then we're in trouble. We need to figure this out soon, since if there is a future Filter then it likely occurs very close to our current tech level.

Every piece of evidence for early filters should make us breathe more easily since it makes late filters less necessary. Unfortunately in the last few years, almost all new evidence has been in the other direction: we've found lots of planets and it looks like even small, rocky planets are common. So this is a refreshing piece of news. However, I'm very skeptical of it. First, it seems to go against other similar studies suggesting that as many as 1/3rd of stars may have an Earth-like planet (see e.g. here http://www.universetoday.com/119931/100000-galaxies-and-no-obvious-signs-of-life/) and they appear in order to be getting this result in part to be using an extremely narrow notion of what a habitable planet would look like.

Below 10,000 ft, airplanes are travelling at less than 250 mph. At takeoff, it's closer to 175 mph for a jet like a 737. At less than a perpendicular angle, the rate of travel across a field of view is less than that. If a person holds their arm out they can point with a lot of precision -- it's a lot easier than tracking an object at the same distance with binoculars. Furthermore, you must consider being at a distance away from the airplane. The greater the distance, the slower the plane is moving and the easier it is to aim at. Pointing straight up is rarely the issue, but if you're a mile away and the plane is on approach at say 2000 ft, that's only a 20 degree angle. Sitting in the cockpit of a 737, a pilot can see the edge of a taxiway -- the vertical field of view out the window is quite good. The lasers involved in these incidents are often much more powerful than a pen laser pointer and are many are strong enough to cause permanent eye damage. Unlike an incandescent bulb, lasers lose very little energy on the way to their targets. It's like those idiots on the highway who blind you with high beams at night, only much worse -- and I've had my night vision temporarily ruined by headlights a couple miles away. Lastly, there are lots of metal bits in a cockpit to reflect the laser, and the windshields are often marked by micro-abrasions from dust and insects, which can cause the whole windshield to glow.

Here is what it looks like from the cockpit. Are pilots bullshitting? Try driving a car down an unlit rural road at night with that in your eyes and report back to us.

A 1 watt laser is enough to flash the ISS. It doesn't take much.

someone in a sub, or even an isolation chamber, knows that fresh air and home are only a short distance away, a few hundred feet up or a hundred miles thataway. If something goes wrong in a simulation you can always just open the door.

The people who go to Mars are going to have to face a completely new condition, that of being totally alone in an environment so hostile it will kill you in seconds. I don't think we yet know how to test for a personality type that can handle that,

Exactly right. How do you find someone who has the physical attributes, and skills that you want AND is OK with the fact that they are going to be committing suicide.

The first people who go to Mars will die trying to land (NASA has a dirty little secret that they don't want to talk about -- landing people safely on Mars is hard and they still don't know how to do it). Anyone who survives the landing will die of starvation, radiation poisoning, or any number of other problems.

These problems will eventually be solved, but first you have to find people who are nearly superhuman and who don't mind killing themself in the process.

Pretty nasty conditions for life on Saturn

Humans showed up very late in the habital period of Earth. Even with this, modern technological civilization has only been around a couple of tens of thousands of years beginning with the first agricultural revolution. Think about it, humans existed in their current evolutionary state for a million years as hunter gatherers before farming came along. http://www.universetoday.com/1...

If our decomposed remains remain on Earth, they'll be vaporized when the sun becomes a red giant. http://www.universetoday.com/1...

As far as I know, that prediction is compatible with all religions.

I choose to believe that my atoms will return and be the substance known as stars eventually.

That long-term view is a more pleasant way to put it than the short-term outlook some atheists state: "We're going to be nothing more than food for worms."

You do know that is the fastest flight to Pluto of any probe, right? You should read this article.

Lockheed Martin says 5

http://www.universetoday.com/36302/atoms-in-the-universe/ says there are about 10e78 to 10e82 atoms in the universe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6_address says there are 3.4e38 unique IPv6 addresses.

Obviously IPv6 is obsolete, so we need 512-bit addresses to give us 1.3e154 unique addresses....

Congratulations, one and all.

Say, people are beginning to pay attention. High enough, the climate is nice. Possibly not as nice as Jamaica. But nicer than, say, the moon:

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/n...

or
http://www.universetoday.com/1...

Yes, I said it.

Welcome to the Mark Levin Show.

Yes, I said it. It is a non-existing problem. And until you can find and post here a set of materialized predictions of the Global Warming "scientists", it shall remain non-existing.

http://www.universetoday.com/9...

https://theconversation.com/20...

http://www.theguardian.com/env...

I already posted, but I would bet that they just couldn't get any Pu-238 if they had wanted it. The stuff is in really short supply now. The New Horizons mission to Pluto launched with a less than the desired amount because it wasn't available. The Juno spacecraft enroute to Jupiter doesn't have any and was designed for solar power.
http://www.universetoday.com/1...