Reason we've never found aliens: humans are already going extinct

[Jeezy911]

"Humans are already going extinct"

[Akka]

Err, yes there is. It's called Carbyne, and it would be able to withstand immense physical pressures. Place a shield of the stuff in front of the ship and it won't get destroyed if the ship is going 10% the speed of light.

Most common failing when speaking about space : people in general have absolutely no fucking sense of scale.

Just try to calculate what is the kinetic energy of a spaceship at even 10 % of speed of light, and realize you're grossly, ridiculously, comically wrong. Not by "twice" or "thrice" but by "orders upon orders of magnitude".

[LMuhlen]

Being in a technology evolutionary state where every day we get better at stuff, it makes sense to assume that with time and money we can make anything. But maybe space travel just isn't possible and that's that, no matter how evolved a species is.

[Draco-Onis]

yeah those ideas do not come from reality aka don't exist

technology and magic are two different things try not to get them mixed up with each other thx

If you traveled back 1,000 years and showed someone a cell phone they would think you are a warlock and burn you at the stake now go back 10,000 years and pull out that same cell phone. A lot of ideas people used to think were not from reality we have today perhaps you need to expand your mind a bit.

"Technology advanced enough is indistinguishable from magic" - Shermer's law

[Fargus]

Most common failing when speaking about space : people in general have absolutely no fucking sense of scale.

Just try to calculate what is the kinetic energy of a spaceship at even 10 % of speed of light, and realize you're grossly, ridiculously, comically wrong. Not by "twice" or "thrice" but by "orders upon orders of magnitude".

Get your head out of your arse.

Engineers have already planned solar sails that can reach excess of those speeds. It has Stephen Hawking's backing. Do you think he'd back something that would have no chance of working at all? I'm sure he did your calculations.

Materials technology has come a long way, and is still being developed. I wonder if you know what carbyne even is.

So unless Mr Hawking is grossly, ridiculously, comically wrong about this venture... I'll back his thumbs-up over some random, MMO-Champion condescending nitwit like you.

[Akka]

Get your head out of your arse.

Pot, meet kettle. You have absolutely no fucking idea what you're talking about and even when I direct you toward realizing it, you just ignore everything and restate the same shit.
If you're dead-bent on being an ignorant fuck, at least go down your high horse and be a silent ignorant fuck.

Meanwhile, quoting Stephen Hawking about the ability to generate forward momentum while the point discussed was the ability of magical material to resist a collision at relativistic speed, makes your attempt at giving lessons even more comically dumb.

Hint : spaceships would need serious shielding to not disintegrate by repeated collision with FUCKING ATOMS at 20 % light speed. I'm talking of ATOMS. An encounter with a particle ONE HUNDRED TIMES SMALLER than a GRAIN OF SAND would tear through today's materials. You've no fucking idea about the SCALE, and that's exactly what I pointed to you, and you still seem too dumb to understand the concept even if handheld to it because you are lost in Hollywood world where physical scales and numbers are just a bunch of zero you can toss away when it fits the plot.

[Fargus]

Pot, meet kettle. You have absolutely no fucking idea what you're talking about and even when I direct you toward realizing it, you just ignore everything and restate the same shit.
If you're dead-bent on being an ignorant fuck, at least go down your high horse and be a silent ignorant fuck.

Meanwhile, quoting Stephen Hawking about the ability to generate forward momentum while the point discussed was the ability of magical material to resist a collision at relativistic speed, makes your attempt at giving lessons even more comically dumb.

Mmhmm.

I have no idea what I'm talking about yet there's a project called Breakthrough Starshot that pretty much illustrates what I'm talking about here that has the backing of some of the greatest minds of the planet.

Compared to some nobody "directing me" about something that he doesn't even have any calculations for.

The points are intrinsically linked, dumbass. Hawking is not going to be backing a project like this if there's such a massive engineering problem that hasn't been overcome (that being the spacecraft being destroyed by a spec of dust when it's travelling 10-20% the speed of light).

Hint : spaceships would need serious shielding to not disintegrate by repeated collision with FUCKING ATOMS at 20 % light speed. I'm talking of ATOMS. An encounter with a particle ONE HUNDRED TIMES SMALLER than a GRAIN OF SAND would tear through today's materials. You've no fucking idea about the SCALE, and that's exactly what I pointed to you, and you still seem too dumb to understand the concept even if handheld to it because you are lost in Hollywood world where physical scales and numbers are just a bunch of zero you can toss away when it fits the plot.

Please post these calculations properly or STFU.

I guess Stephen Hawking doesn't know shit about scale either (lol) considering he is backing this project.

[Burgerberg]

Hint : spaceships would need serious shielding to not disintegrate by repeated collision with FUCKING ATOMS at 20 % light speed. I'm talking of ATOMS. An encounter with a particle ONE HUNDRED TIMES SMALLER than a GRAIN OF SAND would tear through today's materials. You've no fucking idea about the SCALE, and that's exactly what I pointed to you, and you still seem too dumb to understand the concept even if handheld to it because you are lost in Hollywood world where physical scales and numbers are just a bunch of zero you can toss away when it fits the plot.

Please don't be criticising other people being ignorant when you don't seem to understand the science yourself. An atom travelling the speed of 20% of light isn't going to do shit to the ship.

For argument's sake, let's take a uranium atom (mass is 3.9* 10^-25 KG)

To get Kinetic energy we use this formula:




As you can see from this table, a uranium atom going at almost the speed of light barely has 1 joule of energy. What are these ships made of, tissue paper?

The materials Fargus is discussing, if I remember correctly, is a type of carbon nano-tubing that is 40 times stronger than diamond. A grain of sand hitting at 20% the speed of light gives off less energy than a nuke, and I'm pretty sure diamonds can survive a nuclear blast...

If you're dead-bent on being an ignorant fuck, at least go down your high horse and be a silent ignorant fuck.

This is especially funny coming from someone who said atoms travelling at 20% of c would "tear through today's materials". At room temperature you're being constantly bombarded by energies of about 1/40 eV; for diatomic Nitrogen molecules (28 u) this amounts to a velocity of about 400 m/s, or 1500 km/h. Clearly this doesn't cause much of a problem.

[Realitytrembles]

I'm an advocate of the Rare Earth hypothesis.

Now before everyone gets their underwear in a bunch, of course biologies alternative to carbon are possible. They are also (if you look carefully at the science on the subject) far less likely to occur than a carbon based ecosystem. The leaps of chance/coincidence needed for life based on silicon, ammonia, etc make the development of carbon ecosystems look like a sure thing by comparison.

With that out of the way, I think it will go something like this:

*simple, single celled life will be found in lots of systems; it can spread between worlds on meteors and comets, it evolves/adapts very quickly to changing conditions from one generation to the next

* the leap from that to multicellular life will be exceedingly rare

* then from that to sentient multicellular life even rarer still

*from that to a sentient species that survives its technological adolescence to spread into space even rarer than that

So, there will be endless streams of completely dead worlds, then lots of worlds with simple single-cell based ecosystems, then fewer worlds than that with animals/plants but no intelligence, then just a handful in any galaxy that spread into space. And these few will likely develop separate from one another in time by millions and even billions of years.

Likely one day if we make it, humans will find worlds that once harbored sentience that fell to various catastrophies.

One factor that could skew this all out of whack is if the very first sentient species to arise in a galaxy survives to spread into space, and then deliberately engages in a multi-million year project to manipulate life's chances of developing elsewhere.

[Burgerberg]

You have absolutely no fucking idea what you're talking about and even when I direct you toward realizing it, you just ignore everything and restate the same shit.

I don't blame him.

After all, 1 joule requires serious shielding for spaceships according to you *snort*. The same energy required for me to lift an apple 1m from the ground.

[Akka]

Mmhmm.

I have no idea what I'm talking about yet there's a project called Breakthrough Starshot that pretty much illustrates what I'm talking about here that has the backing of some of the greatest minds of the planet.

Compared to some nobody "directing me" about something that he doesn't even have any calculations for.

The points are intrinsically linked, dumbass. Hawking is not going to be backing a project like this if there's such a massive engineering problem that hasn't been overcome (that being the spacecraft being destroyed by a spec of dust when it's travelling 10-20% the speed of light).


Please post these calculations properly or STFU.

I guess Stephen Hawking doesn't know shit about scale either (lol) considering he is backing this project.

God, each time you post you are more and more stupid.

1) You are the one making the claim that you magical material can endure relativistic collision, which would make YOU the one who should provide the calculations (but obviously you're unable to do them, nor you have the tiniest bit of knowledge about them, or you wouldn't be so ridiculously out of scale, which was the whole point).

2) As you're unable to provide anything of substance, you just try to avoid the burden of proof by switching to a different narrative ("space travel is possible !", which was absolutely not my point), and even then you can't provide anything but trying to hide behind an appeal to authority. Which is fun, because :

3) You don't even manage to make a good appeal to authority.
First you use Stephen Hawkins' explanation of how to provide energy to reach relativistic speed, to try to disprove the effect of collision at relativistic speed. That's exactly like someone saying "you car will fold if you hit a tree at more than 25 km/h" and you answering "ahaha you don't know anything, this engineer who knows his stuff made an engine able to make this car go above 25 km/h !". Yep, it sounds retarded because it is.
Second you try to use another impressive project with a ton of impressive names in it, but show again a complete ignorance of what it means. For your information, it's a project focusing on a non-manned and tiny craft, and one of the many hurdles is PRECISELY how to protect it from being torn to pieces by space dust. Like, for example, this article says. Funny, it says the same thing as me : a collision with a dust as small as 15 microns wide would tear the spacecraft to shred.

Yeah, pretty hilarious how you try to bring up big names to give you credence, and the very source you want to draw from just prove me right

4) I've spoonfed you enough, if you're too retarded to even do some middle-school calculus, after all the ridicule you've dragged yourself through and which should be enough to make you wonder if you're not the ignorant tool, I'm not going to do it for you.
But I've some pity, so here are a few hints :
Nonrelativistic kinetic energy is 1/2mv² (it's much higher for relativistic speeds, but I'm feeling generous, and anyway if you're too dumb to apply this formula, you won't be able to manage the other).
20 % of the speed of light is 60000000 m/s.
A grain of sand 1 mm wide is about 2x10^-6 Kg.
Hiroshima bomb is about 80 TJ.

Have fun.

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This is especially funny coming from someone who said atoms travelling at 20% of c would "tear through today's materials".

Reading ability FTW :

An encounter with a particle ONE HUNDRED TIMES SMALLER than a GRAIN OF SAND would tear through today's materials.

One hundred times smaller than a grain of said is not "an atom", or your atoms are pretty big. Atoms encounters cause a problem because of heating, deforming the plating and possibly changing the trajectory of the nanocraft. A grain of sand would cause serious to catastrophic damage.

The materials Fargus is discussing, if I remember correctly, is a type of carbon nano-tubing that is 40 times stronger than diamond. A grain of sand hitting at 20% the speed of light gives off less energy than a nuke, and I'm pretty sure diamonds can survive a nuclear blast...

Okay, you just made a complete idiot of yourself here.
Hint : a bullet from a 22 rifle is about 170 joules. A punch is about 150 to 450 joules. Guess the difference in effect and wonder why it is.

[Burgerberg]

Like, for example, this article says. Funny, it says the same thing as me : a collision with a dust as small as 15 microns wide would tear the spacecraft to shred.

It also gives a possible solution to this problem, and goes so far to say the chance of an impact like this is incredibly low:

Fortunately, the odds of a collision with such a large dust grain in space are extremely low, with the researchers calculating the odds of being one in 10^50.

One approach could be to minimise the cross-sectional area of the craft to reduce the chance of collisions, or they could add a protective layer to the front of the wafer, so impacts with matter in space damage only the shield, and not the craft itself.

Not quite the catastrophic engineering problem as you are suggesting it is. You're making it sound like that the people working on this did not even contemplate these problems?

[Deleted]

The Fermi paradox

We live in a galaxy with between 100 billion and 400 billion stars, each potentially surrounded by planets. Until recently, we thought there were about 200 billion such galaxies in our observable universe, each containing hundreds of billions of stars and trillions of planets — but new NASA research indicates there are probably at least 10 times as many.

Even if habitable planets are rare and life is exceedingly unlikely to arise, those mind-boggling numbers suggest there should still be other intelligent life somewhere in the universe. If just 0.1% of potentially habitable planets in our galaxy harbored life, there would still be a million planets with life.

So, as the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi famously asked of our alien neighbors, "Where are they?"

Why haven't we heard from aliens or found any evidence of their existence? That question is known as the Fermi paradox, and there are several potential answers (most are fairly disconcerting).

One hypothesis is that before intelligent life manages to spread beyond its original planet to other nearby planets, it runs into a sort of "Great Filter."

Quite a stretch.

Perhaps we haven't found intelligent alien life because we've only been looking recently. And our technology is limited. We started looking for radio signals, but even those are becoming outdated on our own planet.

The years we've spent looking might seem like a lot to us, but in the grand scheme of the universe it's absolutely nothing. Not enough to reach even 0.0000000001% (even more zeroes, too many to count) of all stars.

So I think it's a stretch that the reason we haven't found aliens in the past few decades is because there aren't any. That's just a retarded conclusion. It downplays the size of the universe and it vastly overestimates our progress.

But suuuure, we need to shoehorn in another climate change warning. Pfff, what a joke.

[Burgerberg]

Reading ability FTW

Yes, FTW indeed:

Hint : spaceships would need serious shielding to not disintegrate by repeated collision with FUCKING ATOMS at 20 % light speed. I'm talking of ATOMS.

Such a ridiculous statement, that you have no high ground here to call other people ignorant or stupid.

One hundred times smaller than a grain of said is not "an atom", or your atoms are pretty big. Atoms encounters cause a problem because of heating, deforming the plating and possibly changing the trajectory of the nanocraft. A grain of sand would cause serious to catastrophic damage.

Clearly not what I was referring to. So much for "reading FTW".

Okay, you just made a complete idiot of yourself here.
Hint : a bullet from a 22 rifle is about 170 joules. A punch is about 150 to 450 joules. Guess the difference in effect and wonder why it is.

Are you even remotely aware of how strong carbon nanotubing is?

Your calculations are also wrong. A punch from an average person would be 80-90 J, a bullet weighing 2g and it's speed being 550 m/s would be 302.5 J. You can't even get it correct, yet you're arguing about it here?

[Allybeboba]

Lots of experts in this thread. MMOC-OT has lots of experts in lots of different fields it seems.

[Akka]

It also gives a possible solution to this problem, and goes so far to say the chance of an impact like this is incredibly low:


Not quite the catastrophic engineering problem as you are suggesting it is. You're making it sound like that the people working on this did not even contemplate these problems?

Reading FTW part 2 :

1) You are the one making the claim that you magical material can endure relativistic collision
[...]
2) As you're unable to provide anything of substance, you just try to avoid the burden of proof by switching to a different narrative ("space travel is possible !", which was absolutely not my point)

And this was in a context where he made the claims that some material could withstand relativistic collision with small debris (i.e. : something that is about the size of at least a screw or a pebble).

So for those with reading and context disabilities, let's sum up the point : I'm saying that there is no material possible with the laws of physics we know of, that we could make a not-grossly-sized spaceship (something like the size of maybe a cruiser, obviously hollowed for the crew and the machinery), which could withstand several collisions at relativistic speed (at least 20 % of light speed) with something like a pebble.

Are you even remotely aware of how strong carbon nanotubing is?

The point => .






Your head => o


You're trying to say "a diamond can withstand a nuclear explosion".
It's completely retarded of course if you make the diamond endure any noticeable fraction of the blast. You are at best referring to some diamond that could be found after an explosion because it was probably shielded by something else, and at best again because it took only an absolutely minuscule amount of the total energy released (obviously being at 100 m from the center of the bomb and with a surface of 25 mm² means you're taking about one fourth of a billionth of the energy, woopsy doo).

Compared to taking the whole amount of the energy released by a nuclear explosion concentrated on something like 1 mm².

Hence the "bullet vs punch" : both have comparable energy, but one will often just lightly concuss you, while the other will puncture you and wreck your inside. Duh.

Oh, BTW :

Your calculations are also wrong. A punch from an average person would be 80-90 J, a bullet weighing 2g and it's speed being 550 m/s would be 302.5 J. You can't even get it correct, yet you're arguing about it here?

From this :

Bullet mass/type Velocity Energy
40 gr. (2.6 g) Solid[2] 1,200 ft/s (370 m/s) 104 ft·lbf (141 J)

Maybe they are wrong. I don't care. The point was about how somehow comparable amount of energy have very different results depending on surface of impact, which is something people usually realize when they are about 4 years old and understand that pointy things are more dangerous than round things.
Seems that some others are a bit longer on the uptake, and they post here.

[Burgerberg]

Reading FTW part 2 :

And this was in a context where he made the claims that some material could withstand relativistic collision with small debris (i.e. : something that is about the size of at least a screw or a pebble).

So for those with reading disabilities, let's sum up the point : I'm saying that there is no material possible with the laws of physics we know of, that could withstand a collision at relativistic speed (at least 10 % of light speed) with something like a pebble.

First it's an atom, then a grain of sand and now a pebble. What's next? You sure like changing the goalposts. Even the article you linked explains that the chances of getting hit by something like that is ridiculously low. So your point is kinda moot in the first place. Then again, we are talking about very small particles of dust here, or grains. Not pebbles. Or rocks.

Anywho, I wouldn't lecture anyone on reading disabilities when you mistook my criticism of your atom statement for sand.

The point => .

Your head => o

You're trying to say "a diamond can withstand a nuclear explosion".
It's completely retarded of course if you make the diamond endure any noticeable fraction of the blast. You are at best referring to some diamond that could be found after an explosion because it was probably shielded by something else, and at best again because it took only an absolutely minuscule amount of the total energy released (obviously being at 100 m from the center of the bomb and with a surface of 25 mm² means you're taking about one fourth of a billionth of the energy, woopsy doo).

No, what I'm ultimately trying to say is that grain of sand hitting something of that speed isn't going to destroy the entire craft given enough protection (and the article you linked lists a possible solution). Nanocarbon tubing is still at its infancy, they've made it 40 times stronger than diamond (or more, I don't remember). Where do you think this research is going to go, exactly? What authority do you have to say that we've reached the limit of this technology here? That we can't make stronger materials to withstand such energies? Throughout this thread you are saying how this "magical material" doesn't exist, yet I am not aware of anyone here who is working in the front-lines of materials technology. Give it a couple of decades before writing things off like this. Your pessimism is depressing; your rudeness pathetic.

Hence the "bullet vs punch" : both have comparable energy, but one will often just lightly concuss you, while the other will puncture you and wreck your inside. Duh.

Comparable? That depends on what bullet you're talking about and who's doing the punch. A heavyweight boxer can rupture your internal organs, just like a bullet from a 22 would, if only using his knuckles. "Lightly concuss"... people have had severe brain injuries from punches. Not everyone has a thick skull, or strong bones, or rigid body/muscle structure.

Maybe they are wrong. I don't care. The point was about how somehow comparable amount of energy have very different results depending on surface of impact, which is something people usually realize when they are about 4 years old and understand that pointy things are more dangerous than round things.
Seems that some others are a bit longer on the uptake, and they post here.

Yes, very different results on human skin. To hell with variables like material strength and thickness! If you want an even better analogy on material strength, go look at the different types of armour people would use throughout the ages to protect themselves from bladed weapons, or crushing weapons like maces. My point is that we're constantly evolving our defences; and that includes the engineering problems faced with protecting spacecraft.

[Akka]

First it's an atom, then a grain of sand and now a pebble. What's next? You sure like changing the goalposts.

Actually that's the opposite, my initial claim was the last on your quote, the others are just different illustrations because the other idiot kept trying to move the goalposts. I even specifically pointed it.

Even the article you linked explains that the chances of getting hit by something like that is ridiculously low. So your point is kinda moot in the first place.

I specifically pointed it was not my point in the very post you quote.

You REALLY have reading comprehension troubles, don't you ?

Nanocarbon tubing is still at its infancy, they've made it 40 times stronger than diamond. Where do you think this research is going to go, exactly? What authority do you have to say that we've reached the limit of this technology here?

I'm not. I'm saying that at some point we'll reach the limit of what chemical bonding allows us to do, and that it will be still far below the scale of energy we can get with relativistic speeds.
Just like we could miniaturize conductive circuits for years, but they're still physically limited (if only by the size of an atom, practically quite a bit more).
Just like we can improve energy storage, but it's physically impossible to go higher than antimatter.
Just like we can put bigger engines and increase speed, but at some time we'll be limited by the speed of light.

Obviously we could get smart and try to find other way to avoid the problem (maybe one day we can do actual magnetic shield, able to deflect without impact ? Or we might find that teleportation or wormholes or whatever is possible ? Or maybe we get such an advanced technology we can alter the laws of physics ?), but that's a whole other aspect entirely.

Yes, very different results on human skin. To hell with variables like material strength and thickness! If you want an even better analogy on material strength, go look at the different types of armour people would use throughout the ages to protect themselves from bladed weapons, or crushing weapons like maces. My point is that we're constantly evolving our defences; and that includes the engineering problems faced with protecting spacecraft.

That's some epic grasping at straws to purposedly play dumb and ignore the point made.

[Burgerberg]

I specifically pointed it was not my point in the very post you quote.

You REALLY have reading comprehension troubles, don't you ?

It doesn't matter.

The chances of a pebble hitting a spacecraft like that in space is so extremely low that your point is completely moot. And you're the last to lecture anyone about reading comprehension, given your blubbering backtracking to sand when I mentioned the atom thing.

I'm not. I'm saying that at some point we'll reach the limit of what chemical bonding allows us to do, and that it will be still far below the scale of energy we can get with relativistic speeds.

Do you even know what this limit is? Are you even qualified to discuss this in confidence?

Obviously we could get smart and try to find other way to avoid the problem (maybe one day we can do actual magnetic shield, able to deflect without impact ? Or we might find that teleportation or wormholes or whatever is possible ? Or maybe we get such an advanced technology we can alter the laws of physics ?), but that's a whole other aspect entirely.

We are barely a toe in the ocean of knowledge. For hundreds of years we've made new discoveries that has challenged our grasp of the universe. I don't see this trend ending any time soon.

That's some epic grasping at straws to purposedly play dumb and ignore the point made.

I'm not ignoring anything. I'm saying use a better analogy, particularly something high-end with current materials tech. Considering human tech in that area is evolving (and quickly), it's not me who grasping here.

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why would it be arrogant? we live in a physical world there are limitations and they are already being reached

like evolution has stopped working in humans

another example would be televisions how have tv's evolved there is nothing left to do besides making up fake selling points to try and fool suckers

and why? because we are humans we have limitations if the technology exists that allows a spaceship to travel for 700 years to another planet guess what the crew will be long dead

Because it assumes we know most things about the universe, and how it works (we don't).

Oh, and evolution has not stopped. Not sure where you got this from.

[Deleted]

reason we haven't found them is because unlike going to a neighbors house to see them, or going to the local to meet people, the distances (and time) involved so staggering that the human mind is just not capable of comprehending the distances, which is why we use terms like Light year and AU.