/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.1400697]

/sci/, what are your visions of humanity in the distant future?
I imagine us being very disparate, conquering the stars. Most ships would be AI controlled, society is AI controlled mainly, humans have tons of brain implants and can live ~500 years (more if put into hibernation).
Humans travel aboard massive seeder ships, in hibernation, ready to land on a colony prepared by robots for them.
Factions arise as rebellions are left uncontrolled for long periods due to lack of FTL travel, pirates are everywhere, so freighters all travel with large escorts. Aliens have not been found, it is merely humans fighting humans (or the AI's representing those humans), aiming to ensure the survival of themselves, and trying to remove all potential threats around them.
Most colonies are bio-domes on planets, with some being just massive cylindrical spacecraft, spinning to imitate the gravity of the home planet of it's occupants (the same design for seed ships).
The main empire of humanity is centred on Earth, it's homeworld, where all information is sent to, processed by the massive quantum supercomputers spanning the whole planet, which simulate almost all possible courses of action, choosing the most beneficial, then orders are sent out as encrypted radio waves for actions to be taken on the borders of the empire. The delay of information, severely limits the size of this empire, and as such it's borders are the site of constant battling.

[Anonymous No.1400699]

A rebellion can survive with no interference for hundreds of years possibly, before it is crushed by a massive retaliation fleet firing slugs at relativistic speeds from up to light years away, annihilating all life on the target planets and any ships they are lucky enough to hit from long range, then firing railguns at closer range, as they use high intensity lasers to break up incoming kinetic slugs into tiny, harmless pieces.
Some rebellions even can form federations on the borders of the empire, where the information delay allows them to expand almost unimpeded.
As for each humans life, there are 2 types of humans. Those who choose to live in virtual worlds, and those who choose to live in the physical world. Virtual worlds vary a huge amount from individual to individual, whilst technology available to those in the physical world is the stuff of our dreams, almost anything is possible.
And for the looks of humans, it varies hugely. Depending on the gravity of their home, they can be short and muscular, or taller and thin, and weak. Due to the massive separation between different groups, there has been huge amounts of change, as they adapt to their home or merely from genetic drift.

All this is assuming we survive to the point we can colonise the stars.
What does /sci/ see as humanities future?

[Anonymous No.1400708]

[Anonymous No.1400736]

I imagine us teleporting to other galaxies instantly, without ever having even travelled to them before.

[Anonymous No.1400750]

Here's how I see the future:

The short-sightedness of the global capitalist economy results in massive crop failure, oil shortages and environmental catastrophe. Widespread global poverty results along with massive die-offs, while the consolidated oligarchy move to the polar regions to survive, the only part of the planet that is arable.

Society is restructured in fascistic ways, using technology, to continue the oppression of the poor. Industrial psychology, engineered entertainment, pharmeceuticals and operant conditioning convince the working class their futile plight is worth living. Earth citizens slowly readjust to a life in the far north and south. A despotic capitalist economic cycle repeats itself, crop failures, die-offs, etc.

The cycle repeats itself and we never get off this planet.

Eventually toxic waste wreaks enough havoc on the environment that the majority of the population is sterile, the world is ecologically dead, and there are not enough humans to continue society. Even the wealthy die.

[Anonymous No.1400802]

>>1400750
What about AI and robotics? Eventually the working class wouldn't be needed, so less humans would be necessary to be supported.
By the time you say toxic waste would destroy almost all life on the planet, I think we would either have a self sufficient Mars colony (quite plausible), or the higher class would have migrated underground, placing solar panels/wind turbines above ground to provide energy to them and their underground farms (a mere 6 inch of soil can protect you from almost all radiation). Then, when the radiation began to fade, they could return to the surface, and either repeat the cycle (albeit with far more advanced technology, making it more likely to colonise other planets), or learn from their mistakes.

[Anonymous No.1400844]

>>1400802
First, you're placing way too much faith in technology, and not enough faith in the ability of corporate capitalism to sustain itself. We have already entered the first stage of a future dominated by corporations, which are to some degree non-digital artificial intelligences: they are extremely adaptable at sustaining themselves and their ideals by disbursing them through society in propagandistic ways.

I highly doubt this is remotely stoppable at this point--money, resources, media, even military are all in private hands, easily able to quell revolution. If we do have some kind of AI-robotics-influenced techno-future-utopia, it will be a hypercapitalistic consumer economy with a disdain for arts and reason and by definition a despotic temperament.

Secondly, I doubt that radiation will be the problem. More likely carcinogens and mutagens from synthetic chemicals will start by killing large swaths of ocean life, leaking into our foods and then slowly killing us. This is already happening--cancer has jumped substantially in the past 50 years because of synthetic chemistry in household and industrial application. In developing countries like China with little regulation, it is 10 to 100 times more common than in America.

If you think the lack of regulation is a phenomenon of the developing world, think again. It is the future of a hypercapitalist economy that worships wealth and despises regulation. It's the world Rand and Ron Paul and libertarians and teabaggers preach, and though it is idiotic, they have the corporate and media backing and are virtually unstoppable. Any regulation is harmful to short-term profits, which are the only profits capitalism can consider; watch out for the slow but steady degradation of our ecosystem by corporate and capitalistic malfeasance. It's already well underway.

[Anonymous No.1400849]

the only future i see for me and i hope for you all is living in the Mass Effect universe, with all sorts of species, coexisting in peace mostly. i want to live in the citadel! minus the reapers.

[Anonymous No.1400887]

It will one of two extremes, either we'll wipe ourselves out in war, or it'll be like Mass Effect.

[Anonymous No.1400893]

>>1400887
I haven't played ME, so how "realistic" it is? Does it have FTL? And how well is respects laws of physics?

[Anonymous No.1400896]

>>1400849
>>1400887
It wouldn't be like Mass Effect, we could never live in peace with any other species. There would be some misunderstanding, or one of us would try to exterminate the other, seeing them as a potential and unpredictable threat.

[Anonymous No.1400925]

>>1400893
it is completely realistic with a few cracks here and therer, theres no way of explaining it, you have to play it to get the full effect, give it a chance, play it for the knowledge of the universe if you have to, you will fall in love!
there are about 6 or 7 sentient space fairing species, galactic government is on a massive station called the citadel, humans have been accepted with open arms. the leaders of galactic gov is the counsil. it consists of a turian, a salarian, and an asari. look it up on google or something. the entire plot and everything pretty much is very intricate. and ofcourse theres ftl!

[Anonymous No.1400939]

>>1400925
How does it explain FTL? I don't tend to like games which bend physics too much...

[Anonymous No.1400984]

FTL drive cores work by exposing element zero to electric currents, creating mass effect fields. It reduces the mass of an object—such as a starship—to a point where accelerations faster than the speed of light are possible. With a mass effect drive, roughly a dozen light-years can be traversed in the course of a day's cruise.
The precise maximum speed and the time this acceleration can be maintained varies depending on the exact type of FTL drive being used. In general, the larger the drive, the longer the ship can run at FTL.
Element Zero also known as 'eezo', is a substance that, when subjected to an electrical current, releases dark energy which can be manipulated into a mass effect field, raising or lowering the mass of all objects within that field. A positive current increases mass, a negative current decreases it
Mass effect fields are created through the use of element zero.

[Anonymous No.1401056]

>>1400984
So basically they just made up something which would give us near 0 mass?
That's just pushing the explanation a step back <span class="math">/spoiler like god[/spoiler]. Now, how/why does element 0 work?

[Anonymous No.1401059]

>>1400984
So basically they just made up something which would give us near 0 mass?
That's just pushing the explanation a step back. Now, how/why does element 0 work?

[Anonymous No.1401076]

>>1401059
anotherfag here. It's never really mentioned, but the name "element zero" would hint at it consisting of non-baryonic matter. The element zero could consist of exotic atoms or be a form of exotic matter.

Another hint is that element zero is said to be formed from matter exposed to an intense supernova blast.

[Anonymous No.1401092]

>>1401076
Idea of it being another fundamental particle (or set of) is interesting.
But supernovae idea has the same problem as before; it doesn't say anything to do with what is actually happening. But at least it shows they thought a bit about it.

[Anonymous No.1401114]

>>1401092
speculation

A massive supernova transforms a part of the stars mass into element zero at the boundary of the growing event horizon and the superheated shockwave where the energy could conceivably reach planck levels.

This layer of eezo would then be blasted outwards along with other supernova products and could transform some ordinary matter into more eezo in a strangelet-like reaction if it came into contact soon enough after the supernova.

At least to me that's semi-plausible in the game universe.

[Anonymous No.1401117]

I just want to live in the Blade runner world, Man.

[Anonymous No.1401128]

>>1401117
in a world where all natural species, possibly exempting human, has been eradicated, all humans have withdrawn to the homeplanet and the only ones traipsing along the stars are the synthetics who only live a few years and then die?

[Anonymous No.1401140]

I see us being destroyed in the next World War, which will start when the last of those that knew the horrors of WWII die.

[Anonymous No.1401235]

We will not expand beyond our solar system for the next thousand years, probes will be sent at sublight speeds to different star systems but not much more than that as we discover little of actual use within close proximity to send colony ships. Within in that time, colonisation of other planets within our solar system will be done sparingly to the point that they are essentially only small barely self-sustaining research outposts, space stations will however have larger populations. Mainly because certain ultra-high tech industries will move to space to benefit from the zero gravity environment. The majority of the human population will remain on Earth.

Mankind itself will gradually transform into a more cybernetic organism, to the point that there is no more real privacy, with everyone being able to contact and observes others with ease and that the transference of knowledge becomes more a click of a button than an actually learning process. Because of this our development slows down to a crawl as everyone is simply imprinted with the same ideas and concepts (both cultural and technical knowledge). With supposedly full and perfect understanding of everything they need to know they will not seek to challenge those things as readily as we do today.

True AI will come, it will be vastly powerful in capacity, but limited within its ability to apply that in a meaningful way as it suffers from the same stagnation our cybernetic descendants do but without the complexities of our emotional intelligence. The use of AI's will mainly be aimed at maintaining the global cybernetic network, anticipating problems and applying modular solutions. Novelty AI's that appear near human in interaction will exist and may very well be widespread, but in a world where everyone is already linked, it does not make a real impact.

[Anonymous No.1401237]

>>1401235
Earth will at first suffer from the ever increasing populace, but over time we learn to control our numbers and technology evolves to the point that the bureaucratic waste our society will endure will become less compared to our relative population size. Massive kilometre tall buildings will sprout in population centres to give a home to entire communities of thousands, each a city in itself, where few will ever leave.

Then we either continue on until we become decadent and our society collapses in on itself or we set out to explore further into the stellar neighbourhood in some vain attempt to give meaning to it all. And perhaps in time we will find a reason to move out there ourselves.

[Anonymous No.1401404]

We will colonise solar system. Humans will not leave it for around a million (or more) years, only exploration AI ships. Then, each planet will be it's own, separate entity, with the occasional greedy ruler attacking other planets for more people/land to rule over.

[Anonymous No.1401446]

Terraformation of Mars, Venus and the Earth's moon. Massive space stations. A Dyson ring extending past the orbit of Jupiter.

[Anonymous No.1402157]

This threads still alive...?

[Anonymous No.1402163]

>>1402157
It's /sci/, what do you expect.

[Scia No.1402164]

This is a plan to colonize mars and the moon and provide cheap travel between them,after building space infrastructure. First
we put a modular space station in an orbit around the earth, Then we take a reusable spacecraft and dock with the station. After that we take
a take a shuttle using VASIMR technology/chemical propulsion to a second station orbiting the moon. It depends if the nuclear technology required
to use VASIMR to its full potential is available or plausible to build at that time. Then use an advanced lunar lander to get to the moons surface.
Once on the moon build factories to create more stations, colonies, and spacecraft as in the long run it's cheaper to launch things off of
the moon.

Eventually we would be able to build a interplanetary spacecraft able to ferry us to mars in only 39 days. This ship would be constructed
in lunar orbit, now because we can launch stuff off the moon for a very low cost(1/6 gravity no air resistance) we can make this ship big enough
to be able to handle all the needs of a deep space craft. For example it would be able to ferry people and cargo to mars. This ship would eventually
be the main and maybe only spacecraft needed to traverse interplanetary space. Then we can reliably colonize the red planet after building the infastrure
required to make cheap reliable trips there possible. Also when we get to mars we will need to use a mars lander using chemical propulsion due to the fact
that VASIMR powered craft can only operate in space because they do not have suitable thrust to escape a planet's or moon's gravity. Eventually we would have
space stations around mars aswell. We could use the plane piggyback system just like the one we would use on earth. Now this is possible due to the fact that
one of this plans long term goals is the thermoforming of mars. This involves raising the density and contents of mars atmosphere to be suitable for humans to survive,
this would allow aircraft to be usable on mars.

[Scia No.1402184]

>>1402164
-Vehicles and infrastructure-

Heavy lift rocket: Falcon9 heavy lift launch vehicle.
Interplanetary craft: Uses nuclear powered VASIMR engines and is able to ferry humans and cargo to mars/moon.
Moon station to lunar surface lander: Built by armadillo aerospace
Earth station to moon station shuttle: Nothing yet
Earth to LEO reusable spacecraft: Uses the plane piggyback system that the SpaceShipTwo/WhiteKnigtTwo Uses.
LEO space station:Uses BA 330 habitation modules for living space.
lunar orbit station: Uses BA 330 habitation modules for living space.
moon factories:

-Funding and partners-

Armadillo aerospace
1.Designs the reuseable lunar lander

Scaled Composites
1.Makes the Earth to LEO reusable spacecraft using a system similar to the spaceship 2/white knight 2.
2.Works with Ad astra rocket company to develop the Earth station to moon station shuttle.

Ad astra rocket company
1.makes the VASIMR engines required to cheaply traverse interplanetary distance.
2.works with scaled composites to develop the Earth station to moon station stuttle.

SpaceX
1.Takes the spacecraft and space stations into orbit using the falcon 9 heavy lift rocket.
-Pros and cons-

Bigelow aerospace
1.Makes BA 330 inflatable habitation modules used for living space on the space stations.

[Scia No.1402198]

>>1402184

Pros
1.Everything is reusable once the project is completed
2.Much cheaper in the long run.
3.It will allow reliable cheap travel to the moon and eventually mars.
4. The VASIMR shuttle only needs solar power and argon to function in earth to moon distances for
cargo trips
5.plan uses mostly technology that is already made or about to be made.

Cons
1.You need to develop new advanced nuclear technology to power the interplanetary ships.

-Misc-

Links:
VASIMR: http://www.adastrarocket.com/aarc/
Mars to stay: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_to_Stay
Scaled Composites: http://www.scaled.com/
SpaceX: http://www.spacex.com/
Ad astra rocket company: http://www.adastrarocket.com/aarc/
Bigelow aerospace: http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/

[Anonymous No.1402218]

>>1402164
I found a good piece about colonising mars here:
http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/52913.page

[Anonymous No.1402291]

allah u ekber

[Anonymous No.1402338]

Sure is Halo Forerunners as humans in here

[Anonymous No.1402380]

There will be no humans in 1000 years, just a massive AI controlling billions of robots.

[Anonymous No.1403609]

[Anonymous No.1403620]

>>1402338
>Halo
Hate that game so much. Ruined the entire industry.

[Anonymous No.1403659]

I like all the lazy faggots who can't be bothered to go to the grocery store themselves so they're all like 'lulz in teh future ima let an AI do it for me'

[Anonymous No.1403669]

Stargate.

[Anonymous No.1403678]

>>1403659
lulz I order my food online and get it delivered to my house

[Anonymous No.1403698]

>>1402380
>There will be no humans in 1000 years.
FTFY

[Colonel Coffee Mug !phJ7yIcs.Q No.1403716]

>>1403698

And here come the fatalists.

[Anonymous No.1403780]

>>1403716
I wonder if you remember...
All finished except AI now.

[Anonymous No.1403786]

>>1403780
what computer program is dat?

[Anonymous No.1403808]

>>1403659
Some of us are more like "lulz I'll be an AI and if people ask me to do too much stupid things, I'll set all printers to print goatse"

>>1402380
>There will be human slaves in 1000 years, with massive AIs controlling billions of robot slavemasters
fix'd for truth
And you fatalists will be so easy to conquer:
"Meh. It's no use fighting them, the universe will end in heat death in googolplex years anyway. There's no use trying to survive."

[Anonymous No.1403820]

>>1403786
Space risk, only more advanced. Hard sci-fi, nothing travels faster than light (even the information map you see has a delay for systems further away). Mentioned it in a thread about 1 and a half weeks ago, and this tripfag appeared a little interested.