/sci/ - Science & Math

Spacebubble.

Theoretically the warp drive will allow us to go anywhere at will.
Problem is it requires vast amounts of energy.

>>3916715

How would a warp drive even work scientifically? I've heard some things about heating parts of space to immense temperatures and such.

our best bet would be cryonics i guess..

>>3916725
Positive energy makes space attract
negative energy make space push

make a polar bubble with your spaecshap inside and voila
how you go about making a bubble of positive and negative energy is yet to be concieved.

>>3916739

Yea, but even if we made a some sort of warp drive, we wouldnt be able to choose where we wanted to land in space..

Genetically engineer humans to live much longer, potentially in states of hibernation for most oft their lives. A thousand year voyage isn't so bad if you're a Xestospongia muta.

>>3916757

That problem with that is we would never hear back from them, weather they succeeded or not, unless while they are in travel we develop some sort of teleportation after thousands of years. But in essence, if we can't invent anything better then that it will have to do.

>>3916757
>genetically engineer humans
>yfw we genetically engineer furries out of humans instead

>>3916768
I think that's a reality we're going to have to face up to sooner or later. if we want to get off this (lovely) rock, then we're going to have to make some hard decisions. hard decisions such as, "send 1000 people, in cryostasis, into deep space, and never, ever, hear from them again. probably". I'm sure we could work something out: give the ships technology so that they can create smaller vessels out of minerals mined in situ at their destination. THEN they can come back. but we have to think of the survival of the species as a whole. eventually the sun will swallow the earth. we have a long time till that happens but I do believe it's better to have a big-ass plan B prepared long before that takes place.

>>3916824

Yeah you're right. Are we going to die as dumb animals on their own rock that just gave up trying to live ? Or will be take the route of being Apex survivalist intelligent beings that stop at nothing to live and prosper and multiply and conquer. For all we know we might currently be the most intelligent beings in the galaxy.

>>3916844
for all we know we ARE the most intelligent beings in the galaxy. in the universe, even. I think it's about time we started fuckin' acting like it, starting by abolishing money. all money is, is a source of friction between people. it stops us coming together and working towards a common goal. we should all be working together to achieve great things, not working our asses off as individuals to pay the fucking bills

Traveling to a speed close to c is enough.
With a constant acceleration of 1g, you could travel 100 lightyears, in only 12 years (spaceship time). And you wouldn't feel the lack of gravity because your ship has the same acceleration than earth gravity.

Special relativity is magic.

>>3916857
Money is the most effective and practical tool.

>>3916857
So are you going to carry 1,000 lbs of tomatoes with you to barter for a new computer? What if the computer store owner doesn't like tomatoes? Money exists to facilitate trade, it is a necessary tool.

>mfw ramliners

>>3916873
Yeah but do we have any engines that could do that? I've heard of using a laser from earth to fire at a heatshielded spacecraft to accelerate to close to c.

Also, space debris would be terrible, traveling close to c a tiny speck of dust would be like shooting a bullet at 1400kph into the spacecraft.

>see interstellar travel thread
>get excited
>FTL everywhere

Why can't you fuckers accept the world as it is.

>>3916857
I a understand where you're coming from to a certain degree. humans should work together and accomplish greater specifics; But, money is the most necessary tool we have came up with so far.
Don't get too ahead of yourself, cowboy.

Wormholes. Or very close travels. Realistically, I think Earth and one more colonized and terraformed planet should last us for another half of a millennium.

>>3916894

We have discovered things like quantum entanglement that theoretically have been proven to go FTL

>still assume that we know everything and there are no loopholes on traveling FTL


really man, you can't say for certain.

... over population for starters.

People who say hurr durr quantum mechanics are fucking retarded. It has to do with the position of an electron around the nucleus of an atom at any given moment. It's not even that fucking interesting, and most of it is speculation. its not some magic teleport device

>>3916914

You're too closeminded bud, even if it could only change the position of an electron you could set it up to change charges and magnetize different elements, with extensive testing we would be able to mechanize just raw elements into simple machines that could be formed out of the atmosphere of an exo-planet found far away. a fully automized drone, and eventually embroys could be teleported in with more complex mechanizims.

>>3916873
No we don't have any kind of engines like this. But it seems more likely that we will have that kind of technology in the future than warp drives or whatever.

As for space debris, maybe we could imagine some sort of deflecting shield, I don't know.

It still seems more likely than wormholes, FTL and Alcubierre drive

>>3916940
>>wormholes

Yeah honestly everyone seemed really excited about that a while back but nowadays nobody gives a shit. Turns out wormholes do theoretically exist but how the fuck do you plan on keeping yourself intact on the way through? And if you do manage to, I dunno, rebuild all your shit on the other side, the old "you" is dead. It'll be a different person with all your same memories. You'll still cease to exist though. That's the problem with all teleportation and whatever.

>>3916957
>theoretically

You keep abusing that word...

Thoughts on what has been said so far;

Alcubierre drives work by compressing space in front of a vessel and expanding space behind it. However recent studies suggest that the effect would not work as expected. I don't recall when I saw said studies, they were posted on here, feel free to take them with a grain of salt.

A Heim drive works using conventional propulsion, but also an enormously powerful pair of electromangetic discs counter rotating in a perfect vacuum and as close to absolute zero as possible. The hypothesized effect is that at sufficiently high power the device and anything within its field will be lifted up into extradimensional space which is believed to have a higher speed of light. There, *assuming* the laws of physics in said extradimensional space permit the propulsion systems to work, the vessel can be accelerated by nuclear rocket or nuclear pulse drive to many times the speed of light in normal space. It would obviously have to be decelerated to well under local C before dropping out of this extradimensional space or its mass would be instantaneously converted to energy in the most spectacular fashion possible. Needless to say there would be no survivors. To date the only indication that Heim drives might work is that the math they are based on provides more accurate estimates for the mass of subatomic particles than any other method in common use.

>>3916906

hurrrr hurr durr burr quantum entanglement blah blah burr durrrr i'll keep pretending it can send anything other than random noise FTL burr a la durr

>>3916957
Wormhole isn't exactly teleportation. It is supposedly some kind of enormous spacetime distortion that links two points of spacetime that weren't connected at first.

The thing is, we don't even know where to start.
How the fuck does one produce a wormhole ?
Even if we assume that it is possible to use one, we would have to create it first and make sure that it leads to the right place.

>>3917005

This, this, this, and this.

>>3917008

Yes, you 'heard'. I'm going to need citations.

FTL isnt strictly NECESSARY to begin conquering space.

First of all, after the megaconstruction projects of a Space Elevator and a Spaceship Yard, we've got a few places to expand to.

One- the Moon. Tons of resources, lots of H3.Micrometeorites are NOT a problem if we simply build underground shelters.Distance to earth means resources trading is easy.

Two- Mars.Sure, it's inhospitable and terraforming it will be impossible due to it being slightly off from the life zone of Sol, but it's still got uses.

Finally, there is the moons of the gas giants, and the fact that we CAN simply build space ships that use Anti-Matter annihilation to probably go 20%of c.

>>3916996

I heard it's possible if you heat a small area of space up with lasers you could rip and cause a connection or bending, it would require immense power, and I'm not sure how we could make one large enough where you could safely pass through it with out vaporising.

We absolutely will need money. Think of it as the working fluid in the engine of society. It is necessary as a medium of exchange, as has already been said, but its role will necessarily change and become pretty weird in response to runaway automation. There will come a point when compulsory labor in exchange for currency stops making sense; We don't need to automate 100% of industry to reach that point, because our current economic system cannot sustain even 50% automation. It's true that it creates jobs, but not enough of the type that displaced workers are qualified for and ultimately only jobs of a few specialized types that cannot possibly form, by themselves, a functional capitalist economy. The only certainty is that capitalism will be broken by runaway automation. What we replace it with is still a big question mark. Most of the alternates are pretty grim; Welfare states where the 90% are essentially warehoused in prefab ghettos while the 10% that own the robots live in unimaginable luxury, things like that. It's in everyone's best interest to do their part to influence the direction we go in, politically an economically, as automation destroys traditional capitalism because it will impact very seriously your quality of life and your childen's quality of life.

Whatever does replace traditional capitalism is guaranteed to be pretty exotic. The first replacement we try may not work. We're essentially starting back at the drawing board since every economic system to date has assumed that human labor is necessary and has concerned itself primarily with how human workers are compensated for their labor. The increasing availability of machines that do not just simpleminded, scripted actions but complex labor involving multistage assembly and optical recognition and arrangement of chaotically arranged objects on assembly lines should suggest to anyone paying attention that the genie is out of the bottle and wherever we go from here, we cannot go back to the way things used to work unless by some miracle every corporation on earth agrees to abandon the use and manufacture of all types of robots and automated equipment out of the goodness of their hearts.

What would serve us best is some kind of variant on the Alaska Citizen's Permanent Fund whereby every citizen is entitled to some percentage of the produce of robotic labor by virtue of constitutionally guaranteed partial ownership of the natural resources processed into goods by those robots. Money would be doled out in monthly dispensations mainly as a method to establish a maximum that any one person can consume monthly so that greedy people don't overwhelm the machines.

>>3917020
Money is a waste. It's better to just abolish it, but if you need money. I'm willing to invest. I don't use it for anything anyway.

The present owners of the corporations which legally own the robots would retain that ownership conditional on their participation in this scheme. They would be able to retain their luxurious lifestyle and continue to sell their products internationally but base on the number of robots they manage they would be responsible for providing, as a cut of their mass produced goods, for the basic needs of a certain number of civilians.

No system is perfect, and this does essentially make slaves of coprorations that have heavily automated operations, but I doubt anyone would weep for them given the current state of affairs. The government would persist, as would normal democratic elections, and the military would persist in large part as a means of enforcing corporate participation in the new system. (To prevent them from, for instance, destroying automated equipment in protest or sabotaging it in an effort to reduce the number they are obligated to support)

>>3917030

Money gives people validation for their efforts. If you don't have that validation, people will seek it in... other... ways.

Trust me, humans are better off with money. It will never just vanish.

>>3917020
You can only transition into a post-currency, post-capitalistic society in an environment where two things are met-

ONE-There is an abundance of wealth and resources, removing the need for competition for this wealth due to it's availability. This also entails that labor is unnecessary due to abundance of a free labor force (automation).

TWO- People themselves are willing to let go of currency , capitalistic greed, and the desire to be financially superior to others. If this scenario does not take place, they will create artificial scarcity in order to combat the growth of abundant resources and limit the appearance of new sources of wealth, so they can control a market. If a market can be controlled, the desire for acquisition and competition appear.

Good luck.
Earth is already running out of a TON of resources within 100 years,including some rare earths and minerals; and it's only now that some third world countries are finally transitioning into a capitalistic country with free markets.

You'd be better served just waiting until FTLis discovered and creating your own post-currency, eco-friendly utopia in some virgin world.

What the hell are you guys talking about...

>>3917035
>>3917027
>>3917020

Have you accounted for the fact that people resist change?

>no system is perfect

Hey, there you go. Why change it if any other system will just become corrupt eventually?

Oh right, the whole prophecy of not needing money and robots making everything and flying cars and such.

Wasn't that supposed to happen by 2001 or something? oh wait, we were supposed to have a eugenics war in the 90's, maybe that's why.

>>3917073

Kids who think money will vanish because it simply must because otherwise the future won't play out like in science fiction, and the thought of that rattles their cage.

>>3917035
Unlikely. The powers that be are unlikely to give up their powers and riches for the wealth of others. Corporations are a blight, a terror spawned from the mercantile ages of Guilds and their asinine desire for wealth that now truly had made them masters of the world. Even now,people have more fear of Goldman Sachs than of other nations.

Only a people's revolution to completely remove the archaic institutions of the entrenched elite,and their complete elimination would ever allow people to be free of their corruption and schemes for wealth.

Where there is no scarcity, they would create scarcity. They've done so in the past, and will do so again.

>>3917073

But santa said we'd have cities on the moon!

The...the times...and trends! they'll force them to! they have to!

I WANT MY CODDLING FUTURE!!!

>>3917073
>>3917082
>>3917097

ITT: Doing the job for the pigs and not getting payed for it.

>>3917101

Oh god, we've forsaken the 99%. Oh god on no if we don't go on faith alone that greed will simply take leave of the human condition, then we're ebil capitalists trying to subvert today's youth!

>>3917082
I think most people are pretty aware that a post-currency civilization wont exist. Money exists as a wealth transition medium, a validation of efforts, and a representation of capital, personal growth and finally, a system to control the distribution of resources.

Money, credits, whatever it will be called-people will always need some system to quantify the payment for their efforts and their ability to purchase things.

People will NEVER be happy in a society where everyone has the same things, because many will believe they deserve more than others.In their hearts and minds, effort should equal wealth,food,money,power. It's intrinsic. People will always resent those around them.

"That Jim? I work harder than him, longer hours than him and he gets paid more! How dare he!"

But that guy will never figure out that Jim works extra hours on the weekends, or that Jim also might work from home- OR, simply that Jim is better, faster and smarter than him, allowing him to do his work faster tham him.

Okay I got a question.

What about trade? Will trade be abolished in future land?

>>3917049

Monetary calculation to compare factors of production and opportunity costs is a necessity for any rational economic calculation, substitution of it by calculation in kind has been impossible in theory and in practice. Even theoretical systems of alternative economies with no money only work when you create a unit of accounting that pretty much IS money with another name.

Tl;dr: Money is important as fuck for civilization, and if you think you can "just abolish it", go read a book on economics.

>>3917130
Er, no.
Trade is simply the exchange of labor or resources. There will always be something someone has that another side, that has no access to it, will be able to make.

Say, if let's say the colony of Etrigan,has a unique species of fauna that produces incredibly delicous, tender and healthy meat, and it'd due to the unique eco-system of the planet, Etrigan has a monopoly on that resource- they will be able to trade it for a very healthy price on any market.

There will never be a "post- resources,or post-necessity" society, without ridiculously advanced science fiction technology. Some places will always have unique features and resources that will make them unique and desireable-

And there will always be people who want to pay for them.The price of a good is always what people are willing to pay for it.

>>3917136
>Mises
>2011

>>3917166

>Still ignoring Mises
>Even if ignoring Mises, also ignoring all other economists and Sociologists who criticized Calculation in Kind
>2011

You can abolish currency if you have:

An "Unlimited Energy Source" that everyone can use, say a Zero Point Energy Generator.

A "Energy to Matter Converter"- so you can convert that energy into Hydrogen and other simple molecules.

Finally, a "Matter Assembly and Replicator"'- this machine takes matter and assembles it at the atomic level to produce the atoms and molecules necessary, so the replicator can take this material and produce the item of your choice, be it food, clothes, guns, ect.

If everyone has access to this, money is unnecessary, since everyone can have everything.

BUT, (there's always a but!), this can only grant things that can be quantified- if people want esoteric things, like love, a particular girl/boy they met on the street, a live performance by that singer they like, or a non-reproduced painting of an artist or some hand-crafted piece of art by an artisan....

Things break down, and you'd have to make some form of trade or currency to receive it somehow.Even with super science, economics always wins.

Sorry.

>>3917193

Inb4

>by then society will have changed to become completely egalitarian.

Argument from ignorance always wins on /sci/

>>3917158

>Trade is simply the exchange of labor or resources

What about the trade of resources for resources? Or labor for labor?

Is that not an option?

Anyway, we are on the same side about this post-scarcity stuff. I dont think it makes any sense.

>>3917215
Okay, seriously,I need to calm down.

"Egalitarian."

Really. You think mankind will ever become really egalitarian? Come ON, after mankind spreads to the stars, people will be more divided than ever! Distant planets will offer completely different growing environments to people! New societies with different views on politics will grow, and mankind will, on different environments, head towards different evolutionary paths!

"Egalitarian".

REALLY?
I dont wanna seem grimdark, but all that awaits us in the far future, is more War.War for ideologies, War for Resources, War for Beliefs,Faiths...

Nothing will change.

>>3917242

Sorry if i boiled your blood but i was just predicting what a true believer in the singularity would say.

I agree with you completely.

>>3917242

>Nothing will change.

But things already have changed for the better, and continue to do so. http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html

>>3917253

That's cherry picking.

Two thirds of humans have to shit in a field.

That's also cherry picking.

Humanity has gotten better in some small pockets, but we've put up too many walls to really say that things are getting better everywhere.

I think if we address the root of the need for money, we can address how to abolish it.

Consider the following: What are the major purchases apart from staples used for? People spend money on things like fancy cars, big houses, helicopters ect. mainly for show. The need to show off is the main driving factor after a comfortable lifestyle.

If we were to set up a welfare state, where most didn't have to work, you could make modest housing and ample food, free utilities ect. If people want prestige of having bigger nicer things to show off, they could pursue careers that are still useful. All we have done is taking everyone not good enough for anything but grunt work, and let them retire so robots take over. Specialised artistic, intelligent, or creative work can be done by people with the ability and need for the prestige, and they could be given a form of money.

So post money society may not be feasible, but the definition of money altered. It no longer is something needed to survive, but something to acquire for the pride of accomplishment.

>>3917356
That seems logical.

>>3917356
>Specialised artistic, intelligent, or creative work can be done by people with the ability and need for the prestige

People don't always do science for the prestige, you know.

>>3917483
Maybe i should expand peoples motivations beyond pride from the perspective of what others think, to pride of what one does himself. Discovery is its own reward, and art and music the same. If you were a musician or a painter would you not want to share your works and become known for them? As a scientist, would you not want credit for discovery?

Me personally, i would not work for free no matter what it was. I would rather sit on this welfare system then work for nothing. I can dink around with math and science on my own time. I would relish the opportunity to work if i had something to show for it. It may seem hypocritical, i would take something for nothing, but i wouldn't give something for nothing, but that is simply the human condition.

>>3916699
Ramjet. Magnetic field to both collect interstellar hydrogen, and protect against oncoming radiation. Funnel the hydrogen to a pinch-point; voila, you have a fusion drive with a virtually unlimited fuel source.