Author Topic: Stephen Hawking Says: 100 Years to Find New Home  (Read 19743 times)

Offline Nilof

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1177
  • Liked: 597
  • Likes Given: 707
Re: Stephen Hawking Says: 100 Years to Find New Home
« Reply #60 on: 05/15/2017 02:34 pm »
I think humanity expanding into the solar system has the major benefit of putting humans further away from each other than 10 minutes by ICBM. Even if we did end up recreating a mutually assured destruction scenario across the entire solar system, it would give decision timescales on the order of months, not minutes.
For a variable Isp spacecraft running at constant power and constant acceleration, the mass ratio is linear in delta-v.   Δv = ve0(MR-1). Or equivalently: Δv = vef PMF. Also, this is energy-optimal for a fixed delta-v and mass ratio.

Offline TakeOff

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 392
  • Liked: 85
  • Likes Given: 115
Re: Stephen Hawking Says: 100 Years to Find New Home
« Reply #61 on: 05/16/2017 02:50 am »
I think "we" are alone. We commit a big mistake comparing alien life with life on Earth. We are all one and the same here, we have zero variation. You and I consist of more microbial cells that have unhuman DNA, than we have cells with human DNA. So if you thought that a bacteria or a virus is exotic, surprise surprise, they ARE you!

But the aliens are totally unrelated, they don't have any single similarity with us. And the combinatorics of biology is so enormous that we know that two similar proteins never have and never will occur independently in the visible universe. For example, chlorophyll and hemoglobin are the same molecules. We know that they only exist on Earth. No plants and no animals never have and never will exist anywhere else in the universe (unless we go out there and seed it). And evolution doesn't help the slightest, because evolution is only selection of variation that happens to occur. Evolution can never relate to that which never occurs. So the question is what we are missing. What has never happened on Earth?

We're stuck with this "intelligence" which is so stupid that it cannot even begin to study its very own subjective consciousness. Consciousness is a phenomena way beyond intelligence. No one has ever even suggested a way to start to observe it, and not a single bit of data has been collected about it. What other anti-objective phenomena exist out there that intelligence is too stupid to even try to study? Aliens will not be "intelligent", they will not have "civilizations". They will have totally different kinds of phenomena. In that sense "we" are truly alone.

I think humanity expanding into the solar system has the major benefit of putting humans further away from each other than 10 minutes by ICBM. Even if we did end up recreating a mutually assured destruction scenario across the entire solar system, it would give decision timescales on the order of months, not minutes.
Weapons of mass destruction are really easy in space. Just redirect the huge kinetic energy of a comet and a planet's entire surface can be molten. If all nuclear weapons were detonated in all cities on Earth, people would just rise up, clean off the radioactive dust and keep growing their food and rebuild their Hiroshimas.
« Last Edit: 05/16/2017 02:57 am by TakeOff »

Offline TakeOff

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 392
  • Liked: 85
  • Likes Given: 115
Re: Stephen Hawking Says: 100 Years to Find New Home
« Reply #62 on: 05/16/2017 06:19 am »
My saying that we cannot know anything about the aliens isn't very helpful for finding out the next step we need to take to deal with it. So lets look at something we can know about alien life.

Speed of light and the size of the galaxy necessarily means that there's no useful galactic coordination between any aliens, not even between those who have colonized stars from the same origin. A message from the center of the Milky Way would be like a cave painting in the stone age when it reaches us. If it orders us to pay every tenth grain of wheat in tax (and they didn't even have wheat back then) and cut out a stone for a pyramid, it wouldn't become our law even if the Pharaoh himself once painted that command on a wall. No one but archaeologists would care about it. That's the miserable command and control of the galactic empire.

So whatever is out there must have a huge variety. Hardly any similarities with each other, given the infinite combinatorics of biology and whatever path dependency that comes out of that in turn (like intelligence, civilization, whatnot). Thus, the worst thing possible is indeed around here in the Milky Way! How it is bad for us, we can hardly imagine. But it is there because it cannot have been defeated, it has not received any influence from anything because of the unbreakable spacetime distances.

That's how I would argue for trying to hide (which I doubt is possible, I think we must go on the offensive in order to survive). Not that we have any problem here on Earth to flee from. That's an insane mix of medieval geocentrism and current political doomsday mythology.
« Last Edit: 05/16/2017 06:32 am by TakeOff »

Offline TakeOff

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 392
  • Liked: 85
  • Likes Given: 115
Re: Stephen Hawking Says: 100 Years to Find New Home
« Reply #63 on: 05/16/2017 08:12 pm »

Are you really there, master?
Why can't I smell you? Are you dark matter now?
And how do these sonic funnels work? Should I pee in it?
(Just trying to communicate here. Do you hear me? "Helloween"! Woff.)



« Last Edit: 05/16/2017 08:32 pm by TakeOff »

Offline Chris Bergin

Re: Stephen Hawking Says: 100 Years to Find New Home
« Reply #64 on: 05/16/2017 11:05 pm »
This thread has run its course.
Support NSF via L2 -- Help improve NSF -- Site Rules/Feedback/Updates
**Not a L2 member? Whitelist this forum in your adblocker to support the site and ensure full functionality.**

Tags:
 

Advertisement NovaTech
Advertisement Northrop Grumman
Advertisement
Advertisement Margaritaville Beach Resort South Padre Island
Advertisement Brady Kenniston
Advertisement NextSpaceflight
Advertisement Nathan Barker Photography
0