Looks like we will have to say goodbye to V'Ger 1. She's obeying commands but hasnt returned readable info in 3 months....

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4976]

[WBT 20572]

maybe they don't want to be found

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

[NeverMarryAStripper 21907]

14 hours ago, WBT said:

maybe they don't want to be found

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

Yes, any intelligent species would want to mask itself from possibly more advanced and hostile species.  That's why humanity blasts its presence all over the universe

[tx 3 putt 76958]

14 hours ago, WBT said:

maybe they don't want to be found

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

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Clues_(episode)

 

[Gatorubet 30238]

14 hours ago, WBT said:

maybe they don't want to be found

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

I think normally they would’ve destroyed us by now, but the ratings for the reality show ‘Idiots of Planet Earth’ are so high they have to postpone that for now.

[Brisketexan 105139]

Just now, Gatorubet said:

I think normally they would’ve destroyed us by now, but the ratings for the reality show ‘Idiots of Planet Earth’ are so high they have to postpone that for now.

I mean....you joke....but it's not a non-credible hypothesis that we are on a "no, don't destroy them -- they can't harm any of the rest of us, and they're fucking hilarious to watch" list.

[sidis 9828]

15 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

2 trillion galaxies. Two fucking trillion. Estimated average number of stars per galaxy: 100 billion.
Est total stars: 200 billion trillion.
It’s a fucking incomprehensible large number.
We know nothing about what/who is “out there.” Maybe nobody. But even if we could look at every star that exists…we couldn’t do it in a jillion human lifetimes.
We’lll never “know” anything outside of our little local part of the galaxy.

well not with that attitude we won't.

[thunderlounge 7832]

 

[Prepuce of Doom 21073]

Anyone who has been enjoying this general discussion might also appreciate this essay. It's a good bit longer than the introduction pasted below. It's from a list serve that I subscribe to - highly recommended, and I don't want to deprive them of clicks, etc. 

Quote

What makes computation possible? Seeking answers to that question, a hardware engineer from another planet travels to Earth in the 21st century. After descending through our atmosphere, this extraterrestrial explorer heads to one of our planet’s largest data centres, the China Telecom-Inner Mongolia Information Park, 470 kilometres west of Beijing. But computation is not easily discovered in this sprawling mini-city of server farms. Scanning the almost-uncountable transistors inside the Information Park, the visiting engineer might­ be excused for thinking that the answer to their question lies in the primary materials driving computational processes: silicon and metal oxides. After all, since the 1960s, most computational devices have relied on transistors and semiconductors made from these metalloid materials.

If the off-world engineer had visited Earth several decades earlier, before the arrival of metal-oxide transistors and silicon semiconductors, they might have found entirely different answers to their question. In the 1940s, before silicon semiconductors, computation might appear as a property of thermionic valves made from tungsten, molybdenum, quartz and silica – the most important materials used in vacuum tube computers.

And visiting a century earlier, long before the age of modern computing, an alien observer might come to even stranger conclusions. If they had arrived in 1804, the year the Jacquard loom was patented, they might have concluded that early forms of computation emerged from the plant matter and insect excreta used to make the wooden frames, punch cards and silk threads involved in fabric-weaving looms, the analogue precursors to modern programmable machines.

But if the visiting engineer did come to these conclusions, they would be wrong. Computation does not emerge from silicon, tungsten, insect excreta or other materials. It emerges from procedures of reason or logic.

This speculative tale is not only about the struggles of an off-world engineer. It is also an analogy for humanity’s attempts to answer one of our most difficult problems: life. For, just as an alien engineer would struggle to understand computation through materials, so it is with humans studying our distant origins.

Today, doubts about conventional explanations of life are growing and a wave of new general theories has emerged to better define our origins. These suggest that life doesn’t only depend on amino acids, DNA, proteins and other forms of matter. Today, it can be digitally simulated, biologically synthesised or made from entirely different materials to those that allowed our evolutionary ancestors to flourish. These and other possibilities are inviting researchers to ask more fundamental questions: if the materials for life can radically change – like the materials for computation – what stays the same? Are there deeper laws or principles that make life possible?

Link to full article: https://aeon.co/essays/is-life-a-complex-computational-process?

I'm sure there's an option to subscribe somewhere - again, I highly recommend it. 

[McCroskey 1504]

2 trillion galaxies. Two fucking trillion. Estimated average number of stars per galaxy: 100 billion.
Est total stars: 200 billion trillion.
It’s a fucking incomprehensible large number.
We know nothing about what/who is “out there.” Maybe nobody. But even if we could look at every star that exists…we couldn’t do it in a jillion human lifetimes.
We’lll never “know” anything outside of our little local part of the galaxy.

Yet another area where AI will be an interesting application. Let Hubble or JWST take photos and just let the AI goto work.

[thunderlounge 7832]

Yeah…. no

 

AI isn’t really AI. 

[BamaATL 16593]

1 hour ago, thunderlounge said:

Yeah…. no

 

AI isn’t really AI. 

Not what we currently have anyway, it's a glorified search engine, nothing more.  AI implies sentience, and while everything we are doing perhaps points to this being possible, no where near it now.  (It irks me a bit that everything right now seemingly be marketed as AI, and it's anything but).  

I do think @McCroskey is on the right track, but it's not so much software that is needed to really search, it's hardware.  Right now we have a handful of satellite telescopes out there, but that isn't enough, nor are they big enough for this sort of search.  Hubble's mirror is a shade under 8 ft, Webb works differently but it's the size of a small house footprint.  Bottom line, we have neither enough of these, nor do we have any that are really big enough to seriously search for exoplanets and their properties.  Imagine if we had 10 Hubble's at 10 times the size of the mirror, or even bigger.  That would give us much greater ability to really search, obviously at first near Sun star systems and work our way out.  I do think that this is the way to more seriously search for both potential life and to greater understand probability of habitable planetary bodies and their rarity.  Alas, we are no where near capable yet of accomplishing such tasks, but perhaps in the near future we will be able to do so.  

You then of course we need new and better software, but without the hardware, its sort of useless.  

[McCroskey 1504]

Well I never said today's AI would do it, I said "AI."   At some point we'll be able to teach a machine what to scan for across thousands of images to detect specific variance or changes.  The magnitude of the project will take time but it's not crazy to think we'll be making quantum leaps in our understanding of the universe over the next 10-50 years.  It's not going to take a "jillion" human lifetimes to study what feel like incomprehensible tasks today.

[BamaATL 16593]

37 minutes ago, McCroskey said:

Well I never said today's AI would do it, I said "AI."   At some point we'll be able to teach a machine what to scan for across thousands of images to detect specific variance or changes.  The magnitude of the project will take time but it's not crazy to think we'll be making quantum leaps in our understanding of the universe over the next 10-50 years.  It's not going to take a "jillion" human lifetimes to study what feel like incomprehensible tasks today.

That wasn't at all meant as a shot at you, I understood what you meant, it was just to say I think you and on the same track, just looking at it differently.  

I don't know much about making mirrors, and certainly not how they do it on these telescopes, but I do wonder if they have done any zero g small scale tests on ISS.  It seems far more practical to transport the necessary raw materials to orbit that it would ever be to make and transport something so delicate here on earth and then attempt to launch it on a billion pounds of explosives.  I could see there being many potential upsides to manufacturing something like this is space, given the need for impurities to be purged, etc.  I'm just not sure how you could make concave or convex surfaces without gravity, I suppose some form of vacuum sealing (which is interesting because could a vacuum seal work in a vacuum?  I suppose not, you'd actually likely have to do the exact opposite) .  

[Hagbard Celine 10864]

i've posted this 5 or 6 times on this and the prior incarnetations of this website

now seems like a good time for a redoubt

 

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4976]

37 minutes ago, BamaATL said:

That wasn't at all meant as a shot at you, I understood what you meant, it was just to say I think you and on the same track, just looking at it differently.  

I don't know much about making mirrors, and certainly not how they do it on these telescopes, but I do wonder if they have done any zero g small scale tests on ISS.  It seems far more practical to transport the necessary raw materials to orbit that it would ever be to make and transport something so delicate here on earth and then attempt to launch it on a billion pounds of explosives.  I could see there being many potential upsides to manufacturing something like this is space, given the need for impurities to be purged, etc.  I'm just not sure how you could make concave or convex surfaces without gravity, I suppose some form of vacuum sealing (which is interesting because could a vacuum seal work in a vacuum?  I suppose not, you'd actually likely have to do the exact opposite) .  

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if this hasn't been done. How many years ahead of current technology is our military when it comes to black projects? Discretely putting things into space would be much easier with multiple launches if we are talking something big. 

[BamaATL 16593]

10 minutes ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if this hasn't been done. How many years ahead of current technology is our military when it comes to black projects? Discretely putting things into space would be much easier with multiple launches if we are talking something big. 

Just in poking around a found a few interesting theoretical ideas. 

One that stood out to me is actually to use liquid mercury combined with centrifugal force that causes a parabolic shape to be formed, making it ideal for telescope (I'm unclear how this would work in zero g, perhaps microgravity is enough).  These have been built on the ground, but have some pretty big drawbacks here on earth, the first being that it can only sit vertical, the second being that it's extremely sensitive to any changing conditions.  An immediate draw back would be potential containment, if you have in stop spinning for any reason, the mercury would just float off (far from ideal).  I'm sure someone smarter than myself could think of something.  

The most pragmatic (with our current skill set), and Webb works with this system is using the hexagonal mounting system, making lots of small mirrors, each on servos that could be finely tuned as needed.  These mirrors are extraordinarily expense, but perhaps with mass production you would capture some level of economies of scale.  If you could combine that with 3D printing the rig in space, it would seemingly be expandable as you go.  Obviously you would need either a human presence or robotic one that accomplish the necessary tasks of assembly and any troubleshooting as you go.  With this idea, unlike Webb, which had to fold up in the most complex origami man has ever created, the unfold and have everything go exactly perfectly (what an extraordinary accomplishment), you'd have some leeway.  

A solid mirror, ground and polished, is still the ideal scenario, but for now, making that a reality on a large enough scale in terms of size and in terms of replication seems well beyond current abilities.  

Those are just a few ideas that popped up from a google search, I'm sure there are a lot of other ideas with a lot of promise out there.  

[atomheartbevo 89668]

On 9/16/2024 at 2:09 PM, NeverMarryAStripper said:

Yes, any intelligent species would want to mask itself from possibly more advanced and hostile species.  That's why humanity blasts its presence all over the universe

On 9/16/2024 at 2:43 PM, Gatorubet said:

I think normally they would’ve destroyed us by now, but the ratings for the reality show ‘Idiots of Planet Earth’ are so high they have to postpone that for now.

They will destroy us once they start getting our dick pics.

[Wally Fairway 5550]

On 9/16/2024 at 2:45 PM, Brisketexan said:

I mean....you joke....but it's not a non-credible hypothesis that we are on a "no, don't destroy them -- they can't harm any of the rest of us, and they're fucking hilarious to watch" list.

So you are saying Aggy does serve a useful purpose?

[Hagbard Celine 10864]

On 9/16/2024 at 7:27 PM, thunderlounge said:

 

just in case the minister of culture ever comes across this post, i want him to know that this will be remembered as his most important film role long after everyone reading today shuffles off this mortal coil

reconciling the divine, spirit and faith with science and knowledge undiscovered or yet to be re-discovered, will become our greatest challenge, if we survive ourselves

[Brisketexan 105139]

1 hour ago, Hagbard Celine said:

just in case the minister of culture ever comes across this post, i want him to know that this will be remembered as his most important film role long after everyone reading today shuffles off this mortal coil

reconciling the divine, spirit and faith with science and knowledge undiscovered or yet to be re-discovered, will become our greatest challenge, if we survive ourselves

I'll share the whole story later, but one of the most profound experiences of my life was the night before this last solar eclipse.  My wife's cousin is a big-shot astrophysicist, and his friend-group is similar types (and man, those folks LOVE solar eclipses -- they travel from all over the world to see them).  Among them, Juna Kollmeier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juna_Kollmeier.  She is literally the person in charge of the project to count all of the galaxies and stars in the universe: 

That night, as things wound down, the unspeakably brilliant Dr. Kollmeier sat across the campfire from my wife, a theologian and minister.....and ENGAGED.  It was just the two of them, with me sitting on the side, sipping my whiskey.  She asked pointed questions of my wife, drinking up the information, openly stating that she is not a "believer," but she's not a non-believer, she wants to understand.  I watched the back-and-forth between the two of them, and I didn't say a goddamned thing.  The brilliance bouncing back and forth blew me away.  I was speechless, because the conversation was between two people in entirely different fields, teasing out the truth that they both actually work in the same field.  They both have the same job: trying to understand the universe.  And each of them grasped the significance of both disciplines/approaches in accomplishing that task: science and spirituality.  

Bottom line, you can't truly understand the universe unless you try to understand it through both lenses, and unless you approach both with the humility of realizing that we (at least in our lifetimes) will never even come close to a complete understanding in either discipline.  That night was so fucking cool.  I'm still turning it all over in my head.

 

 

[Hagbard Celine 10864]

i was going to make a post on the eclipse thread to put a bow on it a couple of days after it happened and the drive-by traffic had settled down....

did you feel the moonburn on your face for a few minutes after the eclipse?  in the same way gravitational lensing effects the interstellar transmission of light, so does the moon "pull" the sun's energy around it and "target" that energy in to the path of totality, which results in the spontaneous "evaporation and reformation" of thin cloud cover in the moments just before and after totality....

this "feature" of an earth/moon lunar eclipse is spiritual and divine....   yes UV is part of the entire spectrum so the lensing makes sense, but it's still a unique feeling, unexpected.

the drake equation and fermi paradox probabilities fall away long before we approach the infinitesimal chance that a planet with a single moon has a satellite that is exactly 400 times smaller than it's distance to it's star which is 400 times as far away as the diameter of the satellite

maybe a similar planetary system is out there somewhere

maybe we will find it

but until then, the fact that we happen to be here on this planet with these parameters of our satellite, makes infinity look finite, and if the limit does not exist, then what's past that is holy