/sci/ - Science & Math

Vonnegut has a short story called the big space fuck where we launch a rocket filled with 800 pounds of semen at alpha centauri with the hopes of it going through a few wormholes in order to spread out seed throughout the entire galaxy, hopefully impregnating something so we can live elsewhere with intelligent life

>>5195995
Interesting first response to the question haha, people have funny little ideas sometimes

And yet at a tenth the speed of light it would take only a million years to cross the Galaxy. That's not a lot of time as far as the Galaxy is concerned. As Enrico put it "where is everybody".

A million years is a long time for a human but we aren't taking about one person now are we.

>humans will probably never ever ever meet any other form of intelligent life
Agreed.
>The only way I see feasible is developing some sort of space craft that can support a large population and is fit to house generation after generation whilst constantly travelling.
Certain nuclear-powered drives e.g. Mini-Mag Orion can get up to a decent portion of the speed of light. Antimatter drives would work. And the Alcubierre drive just might be possible.

I'd say the big obstacle to finding other intelligent life is how long it'll survive. Earth's had life for at most 4.5 billion years. Australopithecus only appeared 4 million years ago; anatomically modern humans, a mere 200,000 years ago. Most life on Earth will probably die 600 million years from now (http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.2482).). If it takes similar lengths of time for intelligent life to evolve on other planets, and those planets stop being habitable after comparable lengths of time, the odds of finding other intelligent life before it goes extinct aren't great.

That's assuming that most intelligent life never figures out how to get off its home planet or massively geoengineer its home planet into continued habitability, of course.

>>5195980

>never ever ever

that's a lot of time for an event that's possible to not happen even once.

or do you think alien organisms don't exist anywhere in the universe?

>>5196008
thats why I made my point about a ship able to sustain a large and reproducing population. but even with these ridiculously powered drives the amount of power needed is immense if you want to get up to that speed with such a large ship

>>5196016
Of course i think aliens exist, its an extremely low chance for them not to even in our relatively smallish universe

>>5196020
That makes it difficult but not impossible. if you aren't concerned about getting there quickly you can go as slow as you like, the Galaxy will wait.

>>5196036
but the galaxy won't necessarily wait. The other point about the average time a species exists for ties in here and of course the fact that nothing lasts forever

>>5196020
Can you imagine leaving Earth to be stuck in a space ship for the rest of your life? Also communication with the Earth would become increasingly difficult the further you go.

>>5196057
the ship doesn't necessarily have to communicate with earth. And maybe some form of deep hibernation would be developed or just a heck of a lot of stuff to do, with a ship that big and a lot of unexplored space, meeting life wouldn't be the only goal

>>5195980
Easy, we defeat death. Then we spend some million years travelling.

>>5196044

>The other point about the average time a species exists

Average time of what species? Previously existing terrestrial organisms? Why would those numbers apply in any way to human beings, much less anything extraterrestrial?

Call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure human beings are bit better off when it comes to cataclysmic events than the dinosaurs or wooly mammoths. I don't think there are any particularly probable scenarios that could cause the extinction of humanity any time soon, and our growth in population and technology are exponentially decreasing the probability of an event like that ever being possible.

I don't see any convincing reason to believe humanity (in some form or another) won't exist for an incredibly long period of time if not until the death of the universe, that's a spurious assumption to base this line of reasoning on.

>>5196061
well yes I guess that could be an option, tying into the hibernation system, a crew could be submitted to a deep sleep being woken for a year every thousand years to carry out experiments and check progress and whatnot, plus that would eliminate the need for such a huge ship able to maintain a population

>>5196061
Actually, I think it's kinda interesting how everyone is eager to think about nearly-light-speed travelling, wormholes and huge artificial biospheres but the simple thought of people not dying seems to be still considered absurd. It's kinda telling about the limits of our imagination set by our world.

>humans will probably never ever ever meet any other form of intelligent life.

derp, my dog says hi

>>5196067
Yeah, either through hibernation, or through genetic engineering, or through artificial intelligence, or somethign else entirely.

>>5196064
well maybe we will, or maybe we will become extinct tomorrow from a random scientifically unknown event. I think it is arrogant to believe humans are borderline invincible as a species and we are absolutely nothing in comparison to what is out there

>>5196073
I correct myself, any form or extraterrestrial intelligent life :)

>>5196075
But still, this is just one of so many factors involved which I still think makes the idea of meeting aliens impossible

>>5196070
I may misunderstand what you've said but I see this thread not as an example of the worlds limits of imagination but of the amazing curiosity humans have and I find pretty much every view on here fascinating

Wormholes, bending space and time. Why do you keep thinking in terms of velocity?

>>5196082

It's not arrogance, it's the reality. The reason why you can't name something would cause human extinction tomorrow is because anything like that is so unlikely as to almost be impossible.

Assuming that we can't rely on science to predict future events because anything is technically possible is a fallacy. It's like saying, I'm going to point this gun at you and pull the trigger, because hey, we don't know for absolutely certain that a bird won't dive down and intercept the bullet with it's body!

>>5196097
well i just looked up the nearest black hole to earth is 1600 light years away for a start (i may be wrong with that figure) but the main point is the technology required to make use of this very theoretical idea of wormholes working the way you suggest is massively more advanced than the idea of simply travelling. so to answer your question, I for one an thinking in terms of velocity as i think it is the simplest and only reasonable way to think of it

>>5196108
I still completely disagree with this idea of humans lasting significantly long. yes we might last longer than the earth and migrate to new planets but the universe would catch up to us and there are things that we simply cannot control

>>5196125

How? I mean seriously, I'm literally asking you to provide just one single plausible scenario how that might happen. If you can't, it's because it doesn't exist or at least is so wildly improbable it's almost certainly not going to happen.

Especially once we've left Earth, short of aliens swooping down and hunting us all down systematically I can't even imagine how that might happen. At any time at least some of us would be beyond virtually any individual cataclysmic event's reach.

If you can't provide an example of the "the universe catching up to us" that there's actual evidence for, I'm never going to believe you. If you can't even imagine a wild, unprecedented scenario that's never been observed, I don't even understand how YOU possibly you.

>implying intelligent life won't find us

I have never understood why people classify life by what we're made up of. We're out looking for lakes and rivers on other planets looking for organisms similar to us, but why can't life be anything? We know so little about our universe. Why is it hard for us to imagine beings of (example) pure energy, or made consisting entirely of something other then flesh. There may be life closer then we think.

>>5196155
In all honesty I cannot provide you with a particular event but I think that over time the odds of humans being wiped out will be much higher than the odds of a few happy colonies happily drifting through space inharmed

yea humans will outlive the earth trololol, civilization as we know it will end when oil runs out, then we will be back to raping and pillaging and running around on horseback and at the mercy of anything that gets thrown at us be that disease or climate change or whatever

Warp drives.

That is all.

>>5196169
An interesting point which I hadn't thought of, for arguments sake in this case I want to think about life as we currently define it

Maybe the earth is the ship that will eventually get mankind into contact with other intelligent life. And maybe some intelligent life that existed millions of years ago came to the same problem as op stated and decided to use the earth as their ship in order to reach a specific planet millions of years in the future.

>>5196197
I'd go as far as saying that is impossible beyond fiction. Of course who knows all of the extra undiscovered physics that exists. Maybe I'm putting the idea off too soon

>>5196202
This is why I like this thread. An unlikely idea but I find it incredibly interesting to think about

Anyway i'll check up on this thread tomorrow probably if it still exists. Too much thinking not enough sleep so I'm off

>>5196205
Theres been some massive consideration on warp drives recently. Not only have they been deemed possible, they recalculated the needed fuel from the size of Jupiter to the size of Voyager 1.

Pic related, its one of the better, more possible theorized warp drives.

>>5196179

But that's exactly my point, it won't be a few colonies, ever. We're expanding exponentially. At our current rates of population and technology growth, there will be trillions of human beings spread across a huge area of space within just the next 1000 years, and that's nothing on a cosmological time scale. An entire solar system could be consumed by supernova and it would be as damaging to human civilization as a hurricane or tsunami is now.

If you really still want to insist on believing that somehow a mystery apocalypse could come out of nowhere and disintegrate the entire galaxy or something, I can't stop you. But, you should at least reconsider that opinion in the context of the fact that your idea of the odds just isn't based at all in science or reality.

>>5196230
No. The fuel they require may not exist, nobody can say if it's possible or not. There are many problems with Alcubierre drives, simply put they cannot go faster than the speed of light.

>>5196243
Well, I'm just saying, they've been brought down from the realm of fiction to a possibility and some short of practicality. The whole how to get it moving part, still has to be tackled.

Should also mention the drive I mentioned would be made out of some kind of Exotic matter.

And actually, Alcubierre drives can go faster then the speed of light, theoretically.

>>5196169

It's not hard to imagine, it's hard to explain scientifically because it doesn't really make sense in terms of anything ever observed by science. While we may not have observed every kind of life in existence, we do have the ability to study the fundamental properties of the universe, and none of those indicate anything like that could be possible.

In fact, that 'pure energy' statement doesn't even make sense. What exactly do you think 'pure energy' is?

I'm not saying extraterrestrial life won't be radically different. It probably won't have anything like what we'd call 'flesh,' sure. But there are definitely certain things that are absolutely required to produce life, and especially sentient life. That level of complexity of function can only emerge from certain types of matter. We're not arbitrarily carbon based, we're carbon based because its tetravalency allows for enough diversity of possible structures to give rise to the many different protein structures needed for complex life.

What is possible in the universe isn't limited by what you can imagine, it's limited by the fundamental scientific rules of the universe.

>>5196275
Different guy here, btw. I understand that we can only imagine a few possible scenarios for life to arise (carbon-based, etc.), but there could nonetheless be entirely different life forms out there. Atm, we're this close to transhumanism and saving minds in non-biological forms. Even now, if all humans died but some aliens could get ahold of the internet, they'd have a pretty accurate idea of how human beings lived. Most of what we actually are is already encoded there.

tld;dr I'm waiting for a fat swarm of robots

>humans will probably never ever ever meet any other form of intelligent life.
Wrong.

>developing some sort of space craft that can support a large population and is fit to house generation after generation whilst constantly travelling
This is called a Generation Ship. youre a giant fucking noob for not knowing this

>Even if we somehow managed to get these giant ships to approach light speed which would be interesting in itself it would still take years to get anywhere.
I guess youre not familiar with time dilation either. 0.7c is the practical limit unless you enjoy travelling into the future (who doesnt amirite?)

Stasis chambers would take care of the the issue of travelling distances being beyond the natural lifespan of a human and is vastly more efficient than a generation sgip

>It's not arrogance, it's the reality. The reason why you can't name something would cause human extinction tomorrow is because anything like that is so unlikely as to almost be impossible.

Anything travelling at the speed of light (or close to it) can threaten human species with little hope of us preventing it. The most common such occurrence is gamma ray bursts, which are actually considered one of the most likely explanations for the worse extinction event known.

but anything can be flung at earth at such high speeds, technically. A giant iceball could be heading straight for it, and if its travelling close to light speed, there would be zero warning

Reaching decents speeds (0.1c to 0.7c) actually isnt that difficult. The issue is, at such high speeds, space dust becomes extremely damaging. IIRC, 0.1c to 0.3c is significantly more reasonable than faster speeds in this aspect

>>5196559
>0.7c is the practical limit unless you enjoy travelling into the future
Why?
>Stasis chambers
How do you plan on making those, champ?

Even if the Alcubierre drive can't be made to safely exceed c, as a reactionless engine it would still be an extremely useful technology to have.

>>5196586
dont call me champ, cunt

beyond 0.7c, time-dilation takes an extremely noticeable effect. time-dilation is well explained in Einsteins theory of relativity. If you travel at a speed faster than 0.7c, your time becomes significantly out of sync with those still on Earth. So if your travel time to you only seemed like 2 years, when you came back home to Earth, to everyone else, 20 years will have gone by.

There are already companies that make devices similar to stasis chambers. One I recommend you look into is called Alcor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcor_Life_Extension_Foundation

>>5196625
>time dilation is unwanted
Not that guy, but why? Getting a high Δt would diminish or eliminate the need to invent a working stasis system.

I am a huge faggot please rape my face

>>5196625
I fail to see any problem with getting out of sync with people on Earth if you're not planning to return to Earth.

Alcor's form of cryopreservation is not terribly useful. Freezing always damages the brain. Very low non-freezing temperatures might be an approach, though.

>>5196716
u dumb faggot. they use anti-freeze. fuck off