I really liked the part where he modified a old NASA probe to generate a tachyon beam to increase the strength of his force field to protect himself from the meteor shower.
I am reminded of the 70s movie The Jerk, where Steve Martin's character Navin R. Johnson becomes all excited when his name is put in the phone book for the first time. He exclaims "I'm somebody now!" The next scene shows a crazed psychopath picking out his name at random from the phone book to hunt and kill him.
The big difference between the 70s and now is that because of the internet, we are able to perform many of our social interactions anonymously. This simply was not an option in the 70s. Let's face it, with all this anonymous communications, people are more willing to perform actions that will make them enemies, because they don't see any consequences to themselves for their actions. Unfortunately, the big danger from this is that it could potentially lead to the end of the anonymous internet. A large percent of the population don't post anything anonymously (posting primarily on Facebook), and wouldn't care if all internet communications could be traced to their source. If the internet becomes "too scary", you could potentially see an end to anonymity.
I'm still partial to the Dark Forest solution to the Fermi Paradox.
Personally I think that technological civilizations are rare enough that the first one would develop at least a few million years before the second one in a galaxy. So the first one would dominate any following species and take control the entire galaxy before the Dark Forrest situation occurred.
A good candidate for the filter is the ability to do math. Think about how few humans can even do calculus. We might discover the universe filled with semi-intelligent species with number systems with only 3 numbers: one, two, and many.
In fact, the discovery of ET would be bad news. Refer to Nick Boström's "Why I hope The Serch For Extraterrestrial Inteligence Finds Nothing".
I agree. I hope we are the first technological species in our galaxy. Even at sub-light speeds a species could colonize the entire Milky Way in less than 5 million years, so chances are the first technological species will own the galaxy. Any other species will not have control over their fate.
We can get some idea of the likelihood of some stages by looking at how long in took for them to occur on earth. For instance, it took about 1 billion years for life to form on earth, but after that it took an additional 3 billion years before the Cambrian Explosion, where we saw significant diversification of complicated lifeforms. That 3 billion year gap allows time for all sorts of global cataclysms--we had one that nearly wiped out life during the snowball earth. After the Cambrian Explosion it took a mere half billion years to reach technological intelligence.
Um, no. Water as rocket fuel is separating out water into H and O, turning them into liquid, and burning them as rocket fuel.
Or you can separate the H and O and super-heat the H to a fusion reaction. Or you could pass the water through a hot nuclear core so it shoots out the nozzle at high speed (although in that case it is technically a propellant, not fuel.)
I read the article, was disappointed by how little information there was in it, and came here to get some informed commentary. I'm actually getting a little verklempt, reminded of the way slashdot used to be.
>We don't know how to make real dirt on mars
Bones, waste, excrements, and waste products. Buried and flipped. Maybe some bacteria.
That isn't the issue. The issue will be how many years it will take to get the unfertile mars land into something fertile, and how good that dirt will be for growing stuff.
The other pitfall is that we are growing a new microbiological sphere. Which means we can fuck it up really really bad, meaning that the bacteria isn't good for human life.
So, how many humans do we have to send to Mars before there is a pile of corpses large enough to fertilize one hectare of potatoes?
Very shortly, the general views that many people hold about privacy, such as 'I don't want the world to see my sex video' or 'Those pictures of me passed out on the toilet are mortifying' or 'I didn't mean to ramble on about your privates on Twitter' will seem Victorian by comparison to what people will simply accept as part of being human. Instead of going through the draconian methods that would be required to maintain privacy, society will simple learn to accept a world without it.
Personally, I only down-mod for posts that are way off-topic or obvious troll being obvious. If it is non-factual and fact-checkable I reply with the facts. If someone has incorrect empirical beliefs it is better for everyone to see them corrected.
Genius: Having the balls to tell the engineering team "Hmmm . . . it's not quite right. Go change it and bring it back tomorrow" as many times as it takes to get it right.
And if you say Helium-3 fusion, you are a complete and total space nutter idiot. We're not even near basic fusion yet, and He3 is not the easiest fuel to fuse.
I am a big proponent of harnessing fusion . ..using solar panels.
That's nice. And what will you do once you get there? Play some awesome networked FPS games?
I would like to build a Moon base with 2 goal, one as a base for astronomical observatories (radio, visible light, I think it would be a good place to try to detect gravity waves, test some dark matter detection theories) and it would be a good test of how viable it is to live on a very inhospitable world. Lessons learned from a Moon habitat will be useful for an eventual Mars habitat. I have no illusions about a Moon habitat being self sustaining over the long term.
Slashdot Mirror
I read that as Eddie Haskell first time through.
You look lovely today Mrs. Cleaver.
I really liked the part where he modified a old NASA probe to generate a tachyon beam to increase the strength of his force field to protect himself from the meteor shower.
I am reminded of the 70s movie The Jerk, where Steve Martin's character Navin R. Johnson becomes all excited when his name is put in the phone book for the first time. He exclaims "I'm somebody now!" The next scene shows a crazed psychopath picking out his name at random from the phone book to hunt and kill him.
The big difference between the 70s and now is that because of the internet, we are able to perform many of our social interactions anonymously. This simply was not an option in the 70s. Let's face it, with all this anonymous communications, people are more willing to perform actions that will make them enemies, because they don't see any consequences to themselves for their actions. Unfortunately, the big danger from this is that it could potentially lead to the end of the anonymous internet. A large percent of the population don't post anything anonymously (posting primarily on Facebook), and wouldn't care if all internet communications could be traced to their source. If the internet becomes "too scary", you could potentially see an end to anonymity.
I'm still partial to the Dark Forest solution to the Fermi Paradox.
Personally I think that technological civilizations are rare enough that the first one would develop at least a few million years before the second one in a galaxy. So the first one would dominate any following species and take control the entire galaxy before the Dark Forrest situation occurred.
A good candidate for the filter is the ability to do math. Think about how few humans can even do calculus. We might discover the universe filled with semi-intelligent species with number systems with only 3 numbers: one, two, and many.
So, is this evidence of the Great Filter - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ?
In fact, the discovery of ET would be bad news. Refer to Nick Boström's "Why I hope The Serch For Extraterrestrial Inteligence Finds Nothing".
I agree. I hope we are the first technological species in our galaxy. Even at sub-light speeds a species could colonize the entire Milky Way in less than 5 million years, so chances are the first technological species will own the galaxy. Any other species will not have control over their fate.
We can get some idea of the likelihood of some stages by looking at how long in took for them to occur on earth. For instance, it took about 1 billion years for life to form on earth, but after that it took an additional 3 billion years before the Cambrian Explosion, where we saw significant diversification of complicated lifeforms. That 3 billion year gap allows time for all sorts of global cataclysms--we had one that nearly wiped out life during the snowball earth. After the Cambrian Explosion it took a mere half billion years to reach technological intelligence.
How many people here pictured Scarlett Johansson playing the role of Johanssen?
Um, no. Water as rocket fuel is separating out water into H and O, turning them into liquid, and burning them as rocket fuel.
Or you can separate the H and O and super-heat the H to a fusion reaction. Or you could pass the water through a hot nuclear core so it shoots out the nozzle at high speed (although in that case it is technically a propellant, not fuel.)
The only way I can see us going to Mars is if we use nuclear rockets.
Now all we need is for Charlie Sheen to run for president to get a trifecta of crazy.
Please mod parent up 'informative'.
I read the article, was disappointed by how little information there was in it, and came here to get some informed commentary. I'm actually getting a little verklempt, reminded of the way slashdot used to be.
That's an oddly specific reward. They really couldn't spring for $400,000?
Convert it to Canadian dollars.
>We don't know how to make real dirt on mars Bones, waste, excrements, and waste products. Buried and flipped. Maybe some bacteria. That isn't the issue. The issue will be how many years it will take to get the unfertile mars land into something fertile, and how good that dirt will be for growing stuff.
The other pitfall is that we are growing a new microbiological sphere. Which means we can fuck it up really really bad, meaning that the bacteria isn't good for human life.
So, how many humans do we have to send to Mars before there is a pile of corpses large enough to fertilize one hectare of potatoes?
Yep. And once cars can drive themselves they can just sit at home and wait for the cars to come to them.
Very shortly, the general views that many people hold about privacy, such as 'I don't want the world to see my sex video' or 'Those pictures of me passed out on the toilet are mortifying' or 'I didn't mean to ramble on about your privates on Twitter' will seem Victorian by comparison to what people will simply accept as part of being human. Instead of going through the draconian methods that would be required to maintain privacy, society will simple learn to accept a world without it.
There are plenty of good reasons to go to the moon,
Such as?
Gravity wave detector.
Range Rover recalled over 65,000 cars? It wouldn't happen to be 65536 cars, would it? That might be a clue.
Personally, I only down-mod for posts that are way off-topic or obvious troll being obvious. If it is non-factual and fact-checkable I reply with the facts. If someone has incorrect empirical beliefs it is better for everyone to see them corrected.
Have they sent Dr. Susan Calvin to speak with the robot yet?
Genius: Having the balls to tell the engineering team "Hmmm . . . it's not quite right. Go change it and bring it back tomorrow" as many times as it takes to get it right.
Dark side of the moon radio telescope: no interference from Earth's radio signals. Gravity wave detector: the Moon is less geologically active.
And if you say Helium-3 fusion, you are a complete and total space nutter idiot. We're not even near basic fusion yet, and He3 is not the easiest fuel to fuse.
I am a big proponent of harnessing fusion . . .using solar panels.
That's nice. And what will you do once you get there? Play some awesome networked FPS games?
I would like to build a Moon base with 2 goal, one as a base for astronomical observatories (radio, visible light, I think it would be a good place to try to detect gravity waves, test some dark matter detection theories) and it would be a good test of how viable it is to live on a very inhospitable world. Lessons learned from a Moon habitat will be useful for an eventual Mars habitat. I have no illusions about a Moon habitat being self sustaining over the long term.
Is his real name Valentine Michael Smith?
I grok that.