Like, we’re destroying the one place we know is a sure bet on where we can prosper if we keep it healthy, but instead the world’s richest man is trying to expand to other planets while this one’s ability to sustain life is in jeopardy. IMO that makes us potentially a very stupid species compared to a species that doesn’t really care about meeting other aliens because they value the life on their own planet far more than we do.
The “great filter” is simply basic physics and chemistry, the Periodic Table of the Elements, the fundamental forces and engineering limits.
We’re not going there, they’re not coming here.
I think the universe being the same wall to wall means life is probably very common, and will follow pretty much the same rules and limits as here. We’re not special, neither are they.
I continue to read sci-fi under the lens that it represents our racial (as in human race) tendency to fear the other and enjoying war and destruction despite screaming that we’ve evolved beyond that. We’re a bunch of tribal war-like destructive plains apes with computers and guns.
Star Trek isn’t real, there will be no warp drives, transporters, Dyson spheres, Ringworlds, Space Elevators, or even just a basic flush toilet on the Moon.
Forget it. Build something worth living for here cuz out there is a deadly radiation-blasted nothing with nothing in it.
Warp drive is still possible with our current understanding, Fusion is right around the corner (at least if we look at the entire human existence) and while most mega structures are fictional, a Dyson swarm is fairly easy to do and completely possible.
Humanity could still go very far till physics and chemistry are the real limiters, but human greed will wipe us out first.
Thanks for the laugh!
100% agree that we should focus on fixing down here, but very bold of you to assume Fermi, Konopinski, Teller and York, as well as all of the other minds who’ve wrestled with this question have all overlooked basic physics, chemistry and engineering.
Yes, they must have. Space Nuttery is a religion for nerds. There is no future in space. The end.
Username does NOT check out
Did space hurt you, somehow?
Space is really, really big and the earth’s radio wave hasn’t hit all that many systems, so it’s no surprise that no one has contacted us, but why we don’t see the radio waves of the rest of the galaxy? Probably because we don’t have the tech to pick up a signal. We can barely see that stars have planet around them – I don’t think we can pick up a faint signal from one of those planets as different from the background.
Because the galaxy is fucking huge and signals attenuate
Yeah, in theory light signals shouldn’t attenuate in a vacuum, but in reality no vacuum is truly empty and the distances are literally astronomical. Then add that spherical signals necessarily drop with the square of distance, and all the interesting locations (stars) have a lot of background noise, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if communication between solar systems just isn’t possible – or requires extremely good tech for very narrowly optimized conditions (i.e. local stars only).
All speculative since this isn’t really my field, but points worth considering at least.
The galaxy isn’t a vacuum it has tons of shit and lots of background radiation.
I agree with you, but you fail to account for the absolutely insane people on earth who do dangerous and unpleasant things out of sheer boredom.
Maybe you and I won’t go to space, but Stockton Rush’s reincarnation will be living on mars in a fiberglass dome covered in their own shit. Given we make it past the global warming filter first.