/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.5047352]

>Believing the human species will ever leave our solar system

[Anonymous No.5047358]

>Thinking about leaving the solar system any time soon while there are lots of resources in it

[Anonymous No.5047357]

>>5047352
ambiguous

[Anonymous No.5047360]

>>5047352
Generation ships. Giant generation ships. Lumbering through space. Shuddering feebly against the cold with their limited resources ever depleting as they struggle madly to reach another world, another source of those raw elements necessary to live. If they should make it it there, they live, and harvest the asteroids and the poisonous atmospheres of alien worlds to build more ships, and spread out anew. The human race spreading exponentially into the dark vast isolation. Growing separate, its culture dividing, works of art and stories written on a centuries long journey between distant points of light, added to a library and inherited by their descendants, but never seen by their cousins who sailed off in another direction. What once was the human race, is once again wild tribes migrating to claim the substances of life, no longer meat, but hydrogen, oxygen, rare earth metals, and whatever else is necessary to keep life living for the eternal voyage. There is no destination, no end. We will just keep moving, because there is no good place to stop.

[Anonymous No.5047368]

Generation ships are a stupid idea. What we will use will be all purpose construction crafts with virtualized humans onboard. Using massive solar arrays in the inner solar system to boost them up to speed before leaving on an escape trajectory, shedding their solar shroud and switching to fusion thrusters for the rest of the journey. A generation ship will be left in the dust by such a probe. By the time the generation ship arrives the constructor wouldve already created a new civilisation and moved on to yet another system.

[Anonymous No.5047378]

>>5047368
The whole point however is not just to plant a flag, or build a factory. Its to actually spread the human race.

What's the point of just sending out "virtual humans"?

[Anonymous No.5047387]

>believing the human species will ever achieve immortality

[sage No.5047390]

>>5047387

why not? plants can already do it.

[Anonymous No.5047392]

>>5047390
Yes, but plants, as far as I know, don't get cancer.... wait do they? seems like they should. Someone look that up, I want to know if Pinus longaeva gets cancer.

[Anonymous No.5047396]

I really hope the ones who achieve immortality keep it to themselves

[Anonymous No.5047398]

>>5047387
>Implying other animals don't already have biological immortality

if they can do it, so can we

[Anonymous No.5047399]

>believing LFTR is ever going to be a reality

[Anonymous No.5047404]

>believing science will ever advance beyond its current state in any way, shape, or form

captcha: science psysnd

[Anonymous No.5047407]

>>5047392
don't need to look it it up...

Plants are fundamentally different to animals, and these differences mean that their cancers are also fundamentally different...

Normal plant cells have the ability to reorganise when they divide in order to become different kind of cells. Such cells are known technically as "totipotent"

In animals this special ability is only held by special cells called stem cells.

This difference is why you can take a cutting from a plant shoot and grow a complete plant from it, but you cannot take a "cutting" from an animal and grow another animal

In plants cells will only become cancerous if it loses control of both it's division process AND it's ability to be totipotent
...if it can still change it's "type", then the extra cell growth is not such a problem, because the extra cells can function normally and do so.


In animals, cancers can spread through the circulatory system (blood and lymph) and cause damage to many parts of the body at once

Plants don't have these circulatory systems and, therefore, cancers in plants will remain in a fixed location and only cause problems to that small part of the plant.
Even if a tumour (known as a "gall" in plants) develops, it will not spread to other parts of the plant.

some people argue about whether the plant cancers can even be classified as cancers as they are defined in animals...it's semantics

apples and oranges

[Anonymous No.5047408]

>>5047398
Name one that isn't the immortal jellyfish, which doesn't actually tend to live as long as its name would make you think.

[Anonymous No.5047409]

>>5047398
>Believing animals have achieved immortality

[Anonymous No.5047412]

>>5047407
>you cannot take a "cutting" from an animal and grow another animal
starfish

[Anonymous No.5047413]

>>5047408
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality#Organisms

[Anonymous No.5047416]

>Believing the human species won't destroy itself before it is able to colonize space in any meaningful way

[Anonymous No.5047415]

>believing religions will ever completely disappear

[Anonymous No.5047420]

>>5047408
Schmidtea mediterranea planarian

go to bed.

[Anonymous No.5047421]

>>5047412
flatworms too

...but thankfully they have totipotent cells in mass

[Anonymous No.5047423]

>>5047420
those aren't immortal. I could kill them with one stomp of my foot.

[Anonymous No.5047425]

>believing string theory

[Anonymous No.5047427]

>>5047413
Fire could kill everything on that list.

[Anonymous No.5047429]

>>5047423
>he thinks immortal means invincible

[Anonymous No.5047432]

>>5047427
see
>>5047429

[Anonymous No.5047437]

>>5047423

you know very well I speak of the absence of cellular senescence when using the term 'immortal'

No actual organism or individual cell is inviolably immortal (i.e. "invincible" or "indestructible").

A biologically immortal organism can of course die, for example, upon receiving sufficient injury or otherwise having its body destroyed or diseased.

[Anonymous No.5047450]

>>5047437

Youre fundamentally stupid.

Immortal doesnt mean invincible.

Immortal means to live for ever
Invincible means to be unable to kill

[Anonymous No.5047453]

>>5047450
why am i stupid?

i said the same thing you just did
only in big words

[Anonymous No.5047466]

>>5047453

Because youre wrong.
Wrong people are not often held in high regards

>implying flashy words undo being wrong at the core

am i on /v/

[Anonymous No.5047472]

>>5047466
oh! /v/!

okay, that explains that then.
let me know when you figured out you are typing at the wrong anon.

lol

[Anonymous No.5047474]

>>5047472

0/10

Now youve just lost all form

[Anonymous No.5047475]

>>5047466

The majority of people hate being told they are wrong/corrected and will make all kinds of excuses

I learned to live with it

[Anonymous No.5047476]

>>5047450
nope, in + mortalis, not + dying. If you can die, you are not immortal. Seriously, you just mean non-aging or long lived. immortal is reserved for things like mythic god's, and souls. It has no place in science.

[Anonymous No.5047481]

>>5047476

Agreed

But to say immortal and invincible are they same thing is questionable.

[Anonymous No.5047484]

>>5047481
well sure, since invincible is in + vincibilis, not + able-to-be-overcome/conquerable. To be conquered is not the same as to die.

[Anonymous No.5047507]

>>5047476

I'm sorry that you find it so disturbing, however biologists have chosen the word immortal to designate cells that are not limited by the Hayflick limit
Biological immortality is quite real
...not much you can do about it

[Anonymous No.5047510]

I'll discover FTL once I'm done discovering immortality and colonizing the solar system. So just chill for about 50 years.

[Anonymous No.5047522]

>>5047507
I don't recognize their authority to abuse the language as such. You are free to use it amongst your friends, but if you use it around me I will call you on it. That is all.

[Anonymous No.5047536]

>>5047352

Don't doubt the ingenuity of your own species.

[Anonymous No.5047541]

>>5047522
totally understandable.

like those tiny wire terriers that can't help yapping panic filled at a leaf that suddenly takes flight across a lawn or the daily rising of the sun.

simply adorable.

i can easily accommodate your needs now that i understand your state of mind

[Anonymous No.5047554]

>inb4 NSWR

[Anonymous No.5047570]

>>5047554
what does a nuclear salt-water rocket (NSWR) designed by Robert Zubrinhave have anything to do with it?

[Anonymous No.5047673]

>>5047360
Very good! Sounds like the cover blurb for a SF novel I'd like to read.

And ultimately, a good argument for why humans won't migrate. We must either evolve to make cold vacuum our comfortable home, or make way for our cybernetic children, built tough for interstellar space and slow for interstellar timescales. Every advance in computer tech and artificial intelligence is a step in the right direction. ISRU, too.

[Anonymous No.5047678]

Not humans, but our post human successors who are adapted to survival in space.

[Anonymous No.5047698]

>>5047678
Poves ?

[Anonymous No.5047699]

>>5047698
> Proves
Sry, almost dead keyboard

[Anonymous No.5047701]

>>5047673

Or you could just use cryogenics and artificial insemination to make small ships with an arbitrary number of people on board (though at least one woman, unless you've got artificial wombs), without cold voids, heartless expansionism, and without necessity of adaptation to space.

However, it looks like reality will be a lot stranger than that.

[Methos No.5047731]

>>5047678
>implying we wouldn't die out before ever even getting close to that far.

[Anonymous No.5047856]

>>5047701
You don't need any men, really. ;)

[Anonymous No.5047890]

>What's the point of just sending out "virtual humans"?

A constructor ship could breed flesh and blood humans in mechanical wombs if you insist on organic fleshbags.

After establishing a self sustaining colony the constructor would remanufacture its solar collectors and re-boost itself at several G in a close solar orbit, then coast out at escape velocity to the next system. The internal temperature could be hundreds of degrees in the vessel and pulling 500G manouvers would be no particular problem.

Also, not requiring lifesupport or living space would cut both mass and size a lot.

Machine is vastly superior to man when it comes to enviromental tolerances.

[Anonymous No.5047901]

>>5047352

Cthulhu will eat you when you get past the solar winds...

[Anonymous No.5048330]

>>5047476
Do you really think English is as simple as "add latin routes together and take the meanings literally?"

[Anonymous No.5048349]

>latin routes

square routes

[Anonymous No.5048384]

>>5047890
Last time I checked, computers were extremely temperature intolerant.

[Anonymous No.5048385]

>>5047890
no one's denying robots aren't more capable of enduring hardship, but what's the point of that? cloned humans bred by machines? no thank you. At that point humans have stopped being a species, there's no reason to even preserve them. And if there's no reason to preserve man, there's no reason to leave the solar system.

[Anonymous No.5048392]

>>5048330
Nope. But that's not really at issue.

[Anonymous No.5048478]

>>5048385
>Reach for the stars!
>"clones"
>Aw, nevermind. I don't want those stupid clones to do it.
Aw, come on. I promise they won't turn on you and take over the galaxy.

[Anonymous No.5049020]

>>5047484
>>5047476
>Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge")

How can a concept not have a place in knowledge?

[Anonymous No.5049025]

>>5047522
>Authority
>From the Latin "Auctoritas"
>Meaning: In reference to the general level of prestige a person had in Roman society, and, as a consequence, their clout, influence, and ability to rally support around one's will.

I didn't know scientists had the ability to rally people toward using a word a way you didn't like it to be used.

[Anonymous No.5049040]

Yo dudes, I'm in the country and can only post on my mobile, so I can't start a thread. However, this seems relevant to the thread. Check this shit out, cats.

It's happening.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/09/harold-white-warp-field-mechanics-update.html

[Anonymous No.5049053]

>>5047352

[Anonymous No.5049073]

>>5049053

MOOOOOAR

[Anonymous No.5049079]

>>5049053
Really good

[Anonymous No.5049099]

>>5049053
Very nice.

[Anonymous No.5049145]

>>5047378
One of the factories will be a human body factory. Or we'll think reality is way too boring to incarnate into anymore, and we just wanna go there for more computation substrates.

[Anonymous No.5049146]

>>5049053
I love these short stories.

Anyone have the one where the alien race gets the first broadcasts from Earth and decides to send a weapon to destroy us but then regrets it while the weapon is already on the way?

[Anonymous No.5049781]

>>5048392
It is when the justification is "well common usage might say X, but if I add the latin routes I get Y".

At BEST you're arguing for a true conclusion fallaciously.