The Outer Space Thread

[Renegade7]

1 hour ago, The Evil Genius said:

 

That's not what she said. 

 

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Warp_factor

 

 

[Renegade7]

On 1/8/2020 at 11:26 AM, No Excuses said:

https://nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf

 

Nick Bostrom on why we shouldn’t be excited to find alien life in our solar system.

 

Read your link yesterday, I agree I believe the great filter is ahead of us. 

 

The planet has had 5 mass extinction events and we weren't around for any of them.  At first I was thinking maybe the future great filter of every civilization would be a natural cosmic threat, like a dinosaur killing asteroid or direct hit gamma ray burst, some not from the planet that would make it difficult for any species to evolve for in advance.

 

But maybe every intelligent species has to go through an event that kills between 50%-75% of life on their own planet to prove they can handle it. A 96%-99% event might not be fair, but life isn't fair, and that's what happened in the Permian Era one. Earth has had 5 mass extinctions and so far every dominant species at the time has failed this test. Argument can be made humans are causing the Earth's 6th mass extinction, and maybe every intelligent species causes at least one on their home planet to see if they can stop before its too late or survive once its too late. Even a multi-planet species might not be able to handle losing their home planet if their space colonization process isn't self-sustainable.  How lucky do you have to be to figure out FTL travel before experiencing a mass extinction event, though?

Edited January 9, 2020 by Renegade7

[PeterMP]

14 hours ago, Renegade7 said:

 

Read your link yesterday, I agree I believe the great filter is ahead of us. 

 

The planet has had 5 mass extinction events and we weren't around for any of them.  At first I was thinking maybe the future great filter of every civilization would be a natural cosmic threat, like a dinosaur killing asteroid or direct hit gamma ray burst, some not from the planet that would make it difficult for any species to evolve for in advance.

 

But maybe every intelligent species has to go through an event that kills between 50%-75% of life on their own planet to prove they can handle it. A 96%-99% event might not be fair, but life isn't fair, and that's what happened in the Permian Era one. Earth has had 5 mass extinctions and so far every dominant species at the time has failed this test. Argument can be made humans are causing the Earth's 6th mass extinction, and maybe every intelligent species causes at least one on their home planet to see if they can stop before its too late or survive once its too late. Even a multi-planet species might not be able to handle losing their home planet if their space colonization process isn't self-sustainable.  How lucky do you have to be to figure out FTL travel before experiencing a mass extinction event, though?

 

1.  There are very few things that could happen that would cause human extinction (the human population and societies could go backwards massively, but that's not extinction).  Even the dinosaurs didn't go extinct really (they evolved). 

 

2.  The 90-95% number for the Permian extinction is for marine organisms only.

 

3.  Previous extinctions were as great as they were partly because there was less diversity of life.  During the Permian era, there were very few warm blooded organisms.  The dominant flying organism were dragon flies (giant ones).  Most marine organisms still didn't move for much of their lives (e.g. mollusks).  Flowering plants were new and primitive and the most common plant still would have been things related to ferns and conifers.  Today, many of those types of organisms still exist (we still have insects of all kinds, cold blooded organisms, ferns and conifers, and marine animals that don't move for much of their life cycle), but we have other types of organisms.  Achieving the same level of extinction today would be much more difficult simply because the diversity of life.

 

4.  You don't need FTL travel.   That's part of the point of the Fermi Paradox.  Even with our current level of technology and some commitment colonization of the galaxy should be possible over 100 million years or so.  FTL travel might not be possible.

Edited January 10, 2020 by PeterMP

[Renegade7]

2 hours ago, PeterMP said:

 

1.  There are very few things that could happen that would cause human extinction (the human population and societies could go backwards massively, but that's not extinction).  Even the dinosaurs didn't go extinct really (they evolved). 

 

You missed my point by trying to correct me.  None of the dominate species stayed dominated species after the mass extinction.  To day the t-rex evolved into a chicken is an example how technically they arent extinct, c'mon man.  Ya, caimen and sharks are still around, but the world is run by mammals, Jaguars eat caiman if the wants same as killer whales going after great whites.

 

2 hours ago, PeterMP said:

 

2.  The 90-95% number for the Permian extinction is for marine organisms only.

 

Wikipedia's says 57% of all life, other articles, like one I looked at and national geographic say at least 90% of all life.  If Permian Extinction happened today I dont believe we could handle it.  Most accounts are it took millions of years for planet to recover, there'd jus be too much going on, for too long.  End of the day, if we run out of food from death of agriculture and global photosynthesis, it doesnt matter what caused it.

 

Ever watch 10 ways the World will End?

 

 

 

 

2 hours ago, PeterMP said:

3.  Previous extinctions were as great as they were partly because there was less diversity of life.  During the Permian era, there were very few warm blooded organisms.  The dominant flying organism were dragon flies (giant ones).  Most marine organisms still didn't move for much of their lives (e.g. mollusks).  Flowering plants were new and primitive and the most common plant still would have been things related to ferns and conifers.  Today, many of those types of organisms still exist (we still have insects of all kinds, cold blooded organisms, ferns and conifers, and marine animals that don't move for much of their life cycle), but we have other types of organisms.  Achieving the same level of extinction today would be much more difficult simply because the diversity of life.

 

How much diversity is there amongst the human species?  How much diversity was there amongst dinosaurs?  We are wiping out species left and right without even trying right now at a pace some scientists are saying should be labeled as a mass extinction.  We absolutely could destroy ourselves by triggering a run away climate shift. Pretty decent 2 hour documentary out there about worst case scenarios from once global warming doesnt need us anymore and global temps reach the 6 degree mark.

 

2 hours ago, PeterMP said:

4.  You don't need FTL travel.   That's part of the point of the Fermi Paradox.  Even with our current level of technology and some commitment colonization of the galaxy should be possible over 100 million years or so.  FTL travel might not be possible.

 

Our current technology with our current lifespan wouldnt get us to the nearest star, let alone the rest of them.  If FTL travel and communication, how can any species possibly maintain communication and contact with itself, let alone us? 

 

You are trying too hard to be right again, this isnt going to be fun if you dont want it to be : /

[RansomthePasserby]

4 hours ago, PeterMP said:

 

4.  You don't need FTL travel.   That's part of the point of the Fermi Paradox.  Even with our current level of technology and some commitment colonization of the galaxy should be possible over 100 million years or so.  FTL travel might not be possible.

Limited colonization of the galaxy in 100 million years maybe. The Voyager probe is currently the fastest spacecraft we’ve sent, and it travels at 38,600 MPH. At that speed, it would take about 100 million years to travel to the next arm of the galaxy and 1.7 Billion years to travel in a straight line across the galaxy.
 

If a spacefaring alien civilization is on the other side of the galaxy, or even in another arm of the galaxy, we still most likely wouldn’t know they are there 100 million years from now even if we are a multiple system civilization.

 

Assuming FTL travel isn’t possible. 

[PeterMP]

46 minutes ago, RansomthePasserby said:

Limited colonization of the galaxy in 100 million years maybe. The Voyager probe is currently the fastest spacecraft we’ve sent, and it travels at 38,600 MPH. At that speed, it would take about 100 million years to travel to the next arm of the galaxy and 1.7 Billion years to travel in a straight line across the galaxy.
 

If a spacefaring alien civilization is on the other side of the galaxy, or even in another arm of the galaxy, we still most likely wouldn’t know they are there 100 million years from now even if we are a multiple system civilization.

 

Assuming FTL travel isn’t possible. 

 

But Voyager wasn't built to go fast.  We're not building anything to travel in space fast, especially once in space.  There's no real doubt that we could build things that would go faster.

 

The speed and sizes of our space craft are not limited to engineering concerns or our ability to create thrust.  They are limited by our willingness to devote resources to doing it (vs. resources we spend globally to kill one another).

 

Using nuclear power, people estimate we could create space vehicles that could achieve 10% of light speed.

 

Even us today, we aren't not colonizing space, even beyond our solar system, because we can't do it.  We aren't doing it because we don't care enough about doing it.

Edited January 10, 2020 by PeterMP

[PeterMP]

2 hours ago, Renegade7 said:

 

You missed my point by trying to correct me.  None of the dominate species stayed dominated species after the mass extinction.  To day the t-rex evolved into a chicken is an example how technically they arent extinct, c'mon man.  Ya, caimen and sharks are still around, but the world is run by mammals, Jaguars eat caiman if the wants same as killer whales going after great whites.

 

 

Wikipedia's says 57% of all life, other articles, like one I looked at and national geographic say at least 90% of all life.  If Permian Extinction happened today I dont believe we could handle it.  Most accounts are it took millions of years for planet to recover, there'd jus be too much going on, for too long.  End of the day, if we run out of food from death of agriculture and global photosynthesis, it doesnt matter what caused it.

 

Ever watch 10 ways the World will End?

 

 

How much diversity is there amongst the human species?  How much diversity was there amongst dinosaurs?  We are wiping out species left and right without even trying right now at a pace some scientists are saying should be labeled as a mass extinction.  We absolutely could destroy ourselves by triggering a run away climate shift. Pretty decent 2 hour documentary out there about worst case scenarios from once global warming doesnt need us anymore and global temps reach the 6 degree mark.

 

 

Our current technology with our current lifespan wouldnt get us to the nearest star, let alone the rest of them.  If FTL travel and communication, how can any species possibly maintain communication and contact with itself, let alone us? 

 

You are trying too hard to be right again, this isnt going to be fun if you dont want it to be : /

 

But photosynthesis didn't end during the Permian extinction.  All plants didn't even die, much less all photosynthetic organisms.  And there were fewer types of plants than today.

 

We are in the middle of mass extinction, and it isn't affecting us (much).  Because there's more diversity among living things, and the importance of any given thing in the food networks, etc. is less important.

 

Let's consider a non-apex predator.  My cat.  My cat will eat insects.  It will also eat birds and other mammals.  If something happens and there is a mass extinction of insects, my cat would be negatively affected, but the direct affect wouldn't be so bad because it would eat other non-insect things (now over time, there would be a trickle down affect as many birds eat insects or are dependent on insect related activities for their foods (polination), but the direct effect would be less because of more diversity in living organisms. 

 

If you were a non-apex predator in the Permian era, there were no birds to eat.  There were no mammals to eat.  And if/when something happened that really hurt insects and causes massive deaths of insects, that non-apex predator is in big trouble because a large component of its direct food supply is dead.

 

If something like that happened today, food supplies would drop drastically.  There would be massive human death.  Civilization and societies would collapse, but I'm extremely dubious that human would actually go extinct.  Most likely, some of us would adapt.

 

The Permian extinction didn't happen at once.  It happened over thousands of years.  Over the last several thousand years, us combined with the reduction of ice sheets have caused a mass extinction, starting with the period of Woolly Mammoths through to today.  We haven't gone extinct and if anything, we've thrived.

 

The ships would clearly have to be something designed for inter-generational travel.  And they wouldn't communicate continually.  That doesn't mean it isn't possible.

Edited January 10, 2020 by PeterMP

[Renegade7]

10 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

 

But photosynthesis didn't end during the Permian extinction.  All plants didn't even die, much less all photosynthetic organisms.  And there were fewer types of plants than today.

 

Pretty much every tree on the surface of the earth died, so if photosynthesis didnt 100% stop it certainly wasnt enough to substain the level of agriculture we have today. 

 

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/prehistoric-world/permian-extinction/

 

It definetly got to this level of limited photosynthesis with extinction of the dinosaurs, huge reason why people believe pretty much everything on the surface of the earth over 30lbs died.  The food chain didnt jus break, it shattered, mammals were living underground eating on roots, we humans wouldnt stand a chance doing that.

 

10 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

We are in the middle of mass extinction, and it isn't affecting us.  Because there's more diversity among living things, and the importance of any given thing in the food networks, etc. is less important.

 

I'd say its jus getting started and disagree it isnt affecting us. Look at Australia right now, has society collapsed, no, but it will once we hit the 6 degree mark and more of the planet is basically uninhabitable like the middle east from heat waves and every place that depends on glacial melt water, for example.

 

10 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

Let's consider a non-apex predator.  My cat.  My cat will eat insects.  It will also eat birds and other mammals.  If something happens and there is a mass extinction of insects, my cat would be negatively affected, but the direct affect wouldn't be so bad because it would eat other non-insect things (now over time, there would be a trickle down affect as many birds eat insects or are dependent on insect related activities for their foods (polination), but the direct effect would be less because of more diversity in living organisms. 

 

If you were a non-apex predator in the Permian era, there were no birds to eat.  There were no mammals to eat.  And if/when something happened that really hurt insects and causes massive deaths of insects, that non-apex predator is in big trouble because a large component of its direct food supply is dead.

 

With all due respect, we are talking about civilizations surviving, not house cats.  How does this point apply to us?

 

10 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

The ships would clearly have to be something designed for inter-generational travel.  And they wouldn't communicate continually.  That doesn't mean it isn't possible.

 

How can we understand or intercept messages we cant even confirm as possible?

[RansomthePasserby]

34 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

Using nuclear power, people estimate we could create space vehicles that could achieve 10% of light speed.

I agree, all of your points are difficult, but not impossible. Assuming we could colonize the galaxy over a span of 100 million years, we would likely branch off into many different variant sub-species to the point where we would no longer be recognizable to ourselves. We would create our own aliens, which is an interesting thing to think about.

[Renegade7]

47 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

 

Using nuclear power, people estimate we could create space vehicles that could achieve 10% of light speed.

 

Even us today, we aren't not colonizing space, even beyond our solar system, because we can't do it.  We aren't doing it because we don't care enough about doing it.

 

Look forward to fusion rockets, word on the street NASA is taking that seriously.

 

https://www.space.com/fusion-powered-spacecraft-could-launch-2028.html

 

But for a generational starship, our nearest star at even 10% speed would be 43 years away, those planets are tidally locked and uninhabitable.  To get to the planet on page 3 if this thread would take 1000 years, how many generation is that?

7 minutes ago, RansomthePasserby said:

I agree, all of your points are difficult, but not impossible. Assuming we could colonize the galaxy over a span of 100 million years, we would likely branch off into many different variant sub-species to the point where we would no longer be recognizable to ourselves. We would create our own aliens, which is an interesting thing to think about.

 

Think thats inevitable considering our species history of groups branching off to do their own thing.

[PeterMP]

3 hours ago, Renegade7 said:

I'd say its jus getting started and disagree it isnt affecting us. Look at Australia right now, has society collapsed, no, but it will once we hit the 6 degree mark and more of the planet is basically uninhabitable like the middle east from heat waves and every place that depends on glacial melt water, for example.

 

The Australian wildfires are not the result of a mass extinction event.  They care contributing factor to a mass extinction event.  Things that land use, population demographics, and climate change are contributing factors to the fires.  I didn't say we were being affected by those things.

 

These mass extinctions take place of thousands of years.  The Permian extinction might have taken a period of 100,000 years.  At the time levels people talk about, the current mass extinction is going to go back to the retreat of ice sheets that began about 10,000 years ago and with humans was responsible for the extinction of things like woolly mammoth.

 

(A few more side points, even ignoring our ability to deal with Earth striking another object, the probability of doing so has and is going down.  As things like large meteors have collided with things over time the numbers of them have gone down.  The gas giants in the outer half of the galaxy have cleared a lot of the larger things from our solar system.

 

In the Permian extinction, temperatures went up to over 29 degrees C probably.  Today, we sit at about 15 degrees C globally and on average.  Even if we went up 6 degrees we'd be much cooler than in the Permian age.  

 

The other thing is that Pangaea had more land mass around the equator than we do now and less near the poles.  In terms of life, then the consequences of warming were more disastrous.  Six degree warming now will have a less of an impact because as land around the equator becomes inhabitable land closer to the poles that is essentially now inhabitable will become more habitable.

 

If we do go to 6 degrees C, it is going to take thousands and even tens of thousands years to get there and as it does human society will adjust, and I don't think that'll happen at all.

 

)

Edited January 10, 2020 by PeterMP

[mistertim]

4 hours ago, PeterMP said:

 

The ships would clearly have to be something designed for inter-generational travel.  And they wouldn't communicate continually.  That doesn't mean it isn't possible.

 

I'm not sure that's really colonization then. At those distance and time spans, you're basically in "spray and pray" mode where you just launch a ton of huge colony ships towards solar systems that appear to have habitable planets and hope that some of them make it. None of them will be able to communicate with each other or with Earth in any real way (especially as they get farther away), and they'll all evolve differently depending on the environment they find themselves in. 

 

We'd just be seeding the galaxy with our current biological makeup and then forgetting about it, because they're now completely on their own and chances are pretty good that nobody from Earth or any of the colonies will ever see or talk to each other.

 

I really can't imagine doing any "real" colonization (where the colonies and the home planet would be in contact with each other) without FTL travel and communication. The math for things like the Alcubierre drive is there, but the question is whether we can figure out how to generate negative energy (or enough of it) and whether we could figure out how to make the sort of exotic matter that would likely be needed to create that negative energy. If it turns out to be impossible, then that goes out the window. Though through various periods of history our science has always seemed to view plenty of things as "impossible" only to be proven wrong later, so who knows.

[Renegade7]

48 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

 

If we do go to 6 degrees C, it is going to take thousands and even tens of thousands years to get there and as it does human society will adjust, and I don't think that'll happen at all.

 

)

 

Um, the dinosaurs extinction didnt take thousands of years, and theres reason to believe Permian was a combination of factors that some took a while and some were near instant (like a suspect asteroid impact during that timeframe). 

 

And even Trump administration admits we might rise 4 degrees celcius by end of this century.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/trump-administration-sees-a-7-degree-rise-in-global-temperatures-by-2100/2018/09/27/b9c6fada-bb45-11e8-bdc0-90f81cc58c5d_story.html

 

I recommend looking into that 6 degrees warmer documentary I mentioned, it's by national geographic.

Edited January 10, 2020 by Renegade7

[PeterMP]

12 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

 

Um, the dinosaurs extinction didnt take thousands of years, and theres reason to believe Permian was a com inaction if factors that some took a while and some were near instant. 

 

And even Trump administration admits we might rise 4 degrees celcius by end of this century.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/trump-administration-sees-a-7-degree-rise-in-global-temperatures-by-2100/2018/09/27/b9c6fada-bb45-11e8-bdc0-90f81cc58c5d_story.html

 

I recommend looking into that 6 degrees warmer documentary I mentioned, it's by national geographic.

 

Ah no:

 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-long-mass-extinction-180949711/

 

"For example, radiometric dating of volcanic ashbeds in Montana and Haiti located near geological evidence of the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period suggests that mass extinction only took about 32,000 years. "

 

And I posted in the climate change thread about going to 6 degrees C, but I think I'll take the words of scientists over the Trump administration.

Edited January 10, 2020 by PeterMP

[abdcskins]

I'm pretty sure planet Earth is the only planet with life in the entire universe.  I'm basing this on nothing other than my own guess.  Pretty scientific I know. 

[Renegade7]

7 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

 

Ah no:

 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-long-mass-extinction-180949711/

 

"For example, radiometric dating of volcanic ashbeds in Montana and Haiti located near geological evidence of the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period suggests that mass extinction only took about 32,000 years. "

 

You got an article I can read I dont have to pay for concerning the cretaceous timeline?  Our civilization would definetly collapse near instantly with a similar impact, that was documentary I posted for an equivalent impact.

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.history.com/.amp/topics/pre-history/why-did-the-dinosaurs-die-out-1

 

Quote

The resulting darkness could have lasted for months, possibly years. It would have plunged the earth’s temperatures into the freezing zone, killing plants and leaving herbivores with nothing to eat. Many dinosaurs would have died within weeks. The carnivores who feasted on the herbivores would have died a month or two later. Overall, the loss of biodiversity would have been tremendous. Only small scavenging mammals that could burrow into the ground and eat whatever remained would have survived. The iridium layer plus the Chicxulub Crater were evidence enough to convince many scientists that the bolide impact theory was credible. It explained much of what previous theories could not.

 

7 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

And I posted in the climate change thread about going to 6 degrees C.

 

What page did you post it?  I'll take a look so you dont have to post again.

[PeterMP]

18 hours ago, Renegade7 said:

 

You got an article I can read I dont have to pay for concerning the cretaceous timeline?  Our civilization would definetly collapse near instantly with a similar impact, that was documentary I posted for an equivalent impact.

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.history.com/.amp/topics/pre-history/why-did-the-dinosaurs-die-out-1

 

What page did you post it?  I'll take a look so you dont have to post again.

 

https://earthlyuniverse.com/dinosaurs-todays-environment/

 

(Up to 32,000 years.)

 

Even going back to our last post and what you said about birds before and there are issues.  Birds are dinosaurs.  T-Rex didn't evolve into birds.  Birds (appear) to have existed at the time of other dinosuars.  Bees are insects, and there are other insects that bees evolved from, but bees and insects co-exist (partly because bees are insect).  Birds are dinosaurs, which evolved from other dinosaurs.

 

Birds survived.  So did lots of reptiles (alligators, crocodiles, snakes, etc.) So did lots of insects, including bees (that isn't to say that there also weren't lots of extinctions of insects and reptiles too). 

 

And we know how vulnerable bees are now.

 

https://www.astrobio.net/meteoritescomets-and-asteroids/did-bees-survive-when-dinosaurs-couldnt/

 

And those animals don't live very long if lots of other things are dead for very long.  Bees don't live very long without flowering plants.  Flowering plants either didn't all die or came back pretty quickly.

 

It isn't even clear if all of the non-bird dinosaurs go extinct at that time.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene_dinosaurs

 

(and again, this is the least likely type of event that's likely to cause us issues because as time has passed more and more of the other big things in our solar system have been cleared out and today, we'd likely see it coming so in the context of this conversation, it doesn't even matter if it did/would happen quickly.)

 

It should be the last post in the climate change thread.

Edited January 11, 2020 by PeterMP

[Renegade7]

@PeterMP the trex is gone, nobody cares if theres chickens left.  My point was in regards to the dominant species no longer being dominant species after each mass extinction.

 

There are 4700 PHAs in the solar system, wed still have to prove we could stop one or finish finding the rest.  It's unlikely that would be our great filter test, but my point maintains that I believe it would be done form of mass extinction that would prove our civilization could handle.  Dinosaurs didnt have a space program, at one point neither did we.  

 

Do you have an alternative great filter?  I believe we are creating ours as we speak with this 6th mass extinction, if we dont stop, we will destroy ourselves. There are probably countless civilizations in space that killed themselves off by believing they couldnt push their planet to the point that it changed dramatically and their civilization couldnt handle that change. They jus kept arguing and arguing and arguing and arguing until it was too late and they all f'n died.

Edited January 11, 2020 by Renegade7

[PeterMP]

10 hours ago, Renegade7 said:

@PeterMP the trex is gone, nobody cares if theres chickens left.  My point was in regards to the dominant species no longer being dominant species after each mass extinction.

 

There are 4700 PHAs in the solar system, wed still have to prove we could stop one or finish finding the rest.  It's unlikely that would be our great filter test, but my point maintains that I believe it would be done form of mass extinction that would prove our civilization could handle.  Dinosaurs didnt have a space program, at one point neither did we.  

 

Do you have an alternative great filter?  I believe we are creating ours as we speak with this 6th mass extinction, if we dont stop, we will destroy ourselves. There are probably countless civilizations in space that killed themselves off by believing they couldnt push their planet to the point that it changed dramatically and their civilization couldnt handle that change. They jus kept arguing and arguing and arguing and arguing until it was too late and they all f'n died.

 

I'm not sure there is a filter, much less a great one.  It certainly is possible that intelligent life (in reality) is rampant, and we don't see it (we are a simulation, we are being "protected" by superior beings from superior beings (for good or bad reasons, etc.)

 

I'm also not sure why the emphasis on a single "great" filter.  It seems to me that multiple smaller filters result in the same out come.  If the evolution of life is actually pretty rare, if the evolution of multicellular organisms is pretty rare, if the evolution of intelligence is pretty rare, etc. it seems to me the net out come is the same.

 

For whatever reason, it seems to me that people tend to think of it as something like having one occurrence where you have a 1:1,000,000,000 chance of rolling the right number (that would be a probability of 1E-9).  Why can't it be 29 different cases where there is a 50/50 chance (the net probability of getting each one right is 2E-9 so in the same ball park)?

 

And then some of the filters are behind us (e.g. multicelluar life evolving)  and some are ahead of us (creating a society that will actually put resources to inter-solar system colonization (and yes, as somebody states above, I am talking about spray and pray as colonization).

 

(But if there is a great filter, I'd bet it is behind us.  I suspect we might see life elsewhere in the solar system, but I don't think we are going to see evolutionarly different life elsewhere in the solar system.  I suspect we're going to find the inter-solar system diaspora of life is pretty common and pretty easy, but intra or inter-galactic is much less common or easy.  But I suspect it isn't that simple that there is one great filter.)

Edited January 12, 2020 by PeterMP

[Hersh]

On 1/9/2020 at 4:13 AM, PokerPacker said:

My team's goalie doesn't shut up.  He'll shout across the ice at the other goalie if he has to.

 

I thought very briefly about outer space at my game but it quickly went to thinking that one of the refs looked like Harry Potter and that he must get that a lot. Then it was damn, we can’t clear the puck at all and I’m getting tired. 

Edited January 13, 2020 by Hersh

[PokerPacker]

Just now, Hersh said:

I thought very briefly about outer space at my game but it quickly went to thinking that one of the refs looked like Harry Potter and that he must get that a lot. Then it was damn, we can’t clear the puck at all and I’m getting tired. 

This is the problem with mixing Sci-fi with Fantasy.  Can't even keep your mind wondering in the same place anymore.

[Burgold]

 

[Renegade7]

 

 

Edited January 24, 2020 by Renegade7

[RemoveSnyder]

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615113/these-are-the-highest-resolution-photos-of-the-sun-ever-taken/

 

Astronomers have just released the highest-resolution image of the sun. Taken by the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Maui, it gives us an unprecedented view of our nearest star and brings us closer to solving several long-standing mysteries.

 

It's beer honey.

[China]

THIS DAY IN HISTORY: FEBRUARY 07 1984

 

Navy captain becomes the first human to perform an untethered space walk

 

 

While in orbit 170 miles above Earth, Navy Captain Bruce McCandless II becomes the first human being to perform an untethered space walk, when he exits the U.S. space shuttle Challenger and maneuvers freely, using a bulky white rocket pack of his own design. McCandless orbited Earth in tangent with the shuttle at speeds greater than 17,500 miles per hour—the speed at which satellites normally orbit Earth—and flew up to 320 feet away from the Challenger. After an hour and a half testing and flying the jet-powered backpack and admiring Earth, McCandless safely reentered the shuttle.

 

 

Later that day, Army Lieutenant Colonel Robert Stewart tried out the rocket pack, which was a device regarded as an important step toward future operations to repair and service orbiting satellites and to assemble and maintain large space stations. It was the fourth orbital mission of the space shuttle Challenger.