kaini Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 If we could stop killing each other and raping the environment that would be a real achievement. Not some fucking useless space program. one other thing, we really don't know jack shit about the environment, because it's a chaotic system that moves at a rather slow pace. the best possible chance we have at understanding to any degree is to study other, similar systems that have run out of control. we have two choices there - mars (dry, cold, fucked) or venus (hot, wet, fucked, but where surface pressure is similar to that at the bottom of the ocean, and it rains ammonia and sulphuric acid). i know which of the two i'd pick. i'd rather fire a million probes at mars in the hope of learning something than to sit at home and remain bewildered why my climate is running out of control. mars and venus are both examples of what could happen if we leave earth's climate to do what it does, perhaps due to us. that particular last statement definitely deserves the 'perhaps'; we just don't know. but i'd like to err on the side of safety and get as much information as i can. While I fully agree that sending probes and eventually manned flight to Mars is a worthy goal, I would have to disagree that the earth's environment would become like that on Mars or Venus. Simply because the path of our heliocentric orbit prevents us from being either too cold or too hot. When the sun dies, then yes, we're fucked - but all the technology and terraforming possible by then won't do jack shit to save us. We do understand quite a bit about our environment, and we're learning more all the time. We're also better equipped to create better hypotheses about what changes in the environement we might be causing. Bad Astronomy just did a piece (I love that blog) that's pretty darned informative: http://blogs.discove...year-on-record/ fully agree with that (and bad astronomer is one of my favourite blogs!) but 'learning more all the time' does not equate with 'understanding'. we literally have not a fucking clue what is going to happen, you can ask any of the top ten people in the field and the best they can do is respond with best guesses based on supercomputers that cannot predict more than five days in advance with any more than a delta three degree of accuracy. if we stand any hope of making sense of our crap, it's definitely in studying climate change on other planets, and we shoulda been doing this for a while now, really.but we haven't. and even with that i'm not so sure, sometimes i think climate just does what the fuck it wants. but i want an advantage in the game, fo shizzle. I have to say that video someone posted here a while back with that physicist talking about how the increasing expansion of the universe will mean at a distant point in the future we won't even be able to see other galaxies (presuming we still exist) because they will be moving away from us at faster than the speed of light, really blew my mind. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo krauss is my man. i could pretty much watch this every day and never get sick of it. it's like the physics equivalent of a REALLY good album. my girlfriend is studying sociology, heard krauss on NPR, and emailed me to exclaim HOLY SHIT THIS KRAUSS FELLA! he explains the big stuff with small terms. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lumpenprol Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 yeah that video really affected me...same with that scifi short story someone posted here about entropy and the last AI in the universe more-or-less becoming god and leading to "big bang 2"...those two predictions dovetail, we're either doomed to be perpetually alone a la Melancholia, or some crazy ass shit will happen that will allow us to penetrate or fold up space and time in some totally incredible way... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaini Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 we're either doomed to be perpetually alone a la Melancholia, or some crazy ass shit will happen that will allow us to penetrate or fold up space and time in some totally incredible way... what's cool is you don't have to worry about either. if we arrive at heat-death you'll be long dead. if we approach a proper singularity you'll be dead too. worry about taxes and death, man. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Lucy Faringold Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 i'd rather fire a million probes at mars in the hope of learning something than to sit at home and remain bewildered why my climate is running out of control. mars and venus are both examples of what could happen if we leave earth's climate to do what it does, perhaps due to us. This is the most astoundingly stupid thing I've read in forever. I mean, what the fuck? Mars and venus don't even have a goddamn magnetic field, and you think we can learn more from them than by examining our own environment? Jesus wept. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaini Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 i suppose what i'm trying to communicate is that these things happen on such SUPER INCREDIBLE LONNNNNNNG SCALE that there's ABSOLUTELY NO POINT in worrying about them. far as i'm concerned if you're a nice person in this 'HUGE AND OLD' (as per krauss) universe you probably won't make that much of a difference. if you're a total asshole, same. just be a nice person cos if you're not, you're just a big old asshole. so be nice just because it's better than not being an asshole. we are tiny tiny tiny. what have you to lose? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chenGOD Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 kaini - I think you might be underestimating just how much we do actually know. I was lucky enough to take a class with a guy here who works in climatology, and while he specializes in how climate change affects coral reef communities, he obviously works in broader areas as well (blog here). We might not be able to say for certain what the result of long-term trends are (5 day projections are meaningless - but weather is not climate), but we have a much better depth of study from which to base further research off. Again - I'm not saying we have definitve answers, but we are understanding more and more. Like I said - exploration of Mars is certainly a valuable mission (if not simply for the side-effects of knowledge gained) but I don't know how much we could learn about our climate from that of Mars, simply due to there being so much variance between the two. And yes - being nice is much better than being an asshole :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaini Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 i'd rather fire a million probes at mars in the hope of learning something than to sit at home and remain bewildered why my climate is running out of control. mars and venus are both examples of what could happen if we leave earth's climate to do what it does, perhaps due to us. This is the most astoundingly stupid thing I've read in forever. I mean, what the fuck? Mars and venus don't even have a goddamn magnetic field, and you think we can learn more from them than by examining our own environment? Jesus wept. mars and venus have magnetic fields, albeit weaker. what, you think a magnetic field is some sort of definition of life or some sort of... something? okay. what the fuck? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Lucy Faringold Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 Go to bed man! You sound absolutely wasted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YO303 Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 Goverments are being idiots, space colonization is the most important thing we should be trying to achieve. All those years of evolution and we gonna end the species as lazy fucks that did not fought back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaini Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 kaini - I think you might be underestimating just how much we do actually know. I was lucky enough to take a class with a guy here who works in climatology, and while he specializes in how climate change affects coral reef communities, he obviously works in broader areas as well (blog here). We might not be able to say for certain what the result of long-term trends are (5 day projections are meaningless - but weather is not climate), but we have a much better depth of study from which to base further research off. Again - I'm not saying we have definitve answers, but we are understanding more and more. Like I said - exploration of Mars is certainly a valuable mission (if not simply for the side-effects of knowledge gained) but I don't know how much we could learn about our climate from that of Mars, simply due to there being so much variance between the two. And yes - being nice is much better than being an asshole :) i suppose i am taking the traditional scientific approach, which is that if your sample size is small, increase your sample size. in this case, from a sample size of one to a sample size of three. if we had real data from three planets, well, it wouldn't be much better than one. but it would definitely be better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaini Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 Go to bed man! You sound absolutely wasted. i promise that i'm not. moreso an extremely interested amateur. my interest is moreso in astronomy than ecology but if you think that we can't learn from our planetary neighbours, i dunno. venus is an example of a greenhouse effect gone out of control. that is *completely* agreed by everyone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chenGOD Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 The problem is that the samples are radically different - the heliocentric orbital differences alone make for some pretty big differences. I would say that the merit in what you propose lies in that we would be creating a better understanding of understanding climates in general, not necessarily our own climate. (Does that parse ok? it does in my head...) Lucy - I don't think Kaini is saying we should stop scientific enquiry into our own climate, just that we'd benefit from additional research on Mars. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chaosmachine Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 [youtubehd]7zNuT4dbdjU[/youtubehd] http://en.wikipedia....%E2%80%93Levy_9 statistically, we're overdue for a world-ending asteroid strike. just one of those comet chunks would be enough, but jupiter was hit with dozens... so, yeah, pollution, climate change, etc, but, it's the indifferent universe you should really be scared of ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joseph Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 statistically, we're overdue for a world-ending asteroid strike. lol. and i'm due to win the jackpot soon if the doomsday argument is valid (not clear) then we do have reason to believe that the human species will undergo some drastic reduction in population size relatively soon. So I do actually agree that we should spend way more resources trying to identify potential extinction risks. Of course, the biggest risk is probably nuclear weapons.... It could, however, mean that humans are going to upload themselves, or some other radical change that will change who we are fundamentally. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest RadarJammer Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 If you guys will just have some patience about space colonizing! There are a couple important steps to think about: #1 invent some clever nano bots and send them out into space to manufacture space stations and space cities #2 perfect gene therapy to make the human body stable for long terms #3 organize a giant game of rollerball to see who gets a ticket to live in the awesome outer space #4 train thousands of helper monkeys to have violent orgies in the rollerball death pit these things take time, maybe centuries Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Adam Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 I have to say that video someone posted here a while back with that physicist talking about how the increasing expansion of the universe will mean at a distant point in the future we won't even be able to see other galaxies (presuming we still exist) because they will be moving away from us at faster than the speed of light, really blew my mind. I now believe the space race is really nothing more than a diversion, a really cool diversion to be sure, but I expect the major transformative "Childhood's End" moment will come from within rather than from without. Probably our AI will outgrow us and spread out into the universe, doing things we could never imagine...it wouldn't surprise me if mankind's last great moment is waving goodbye to our AI progeny I'd say there won't be difference between us and AI. Mind uploading will be possible, we will all be digital, many times faster and more powerfull and immortal. And shit like the big crunch or any other universe ending scenario won't be a threat for us since we'll be able to travel to other universes and do whatever we want with space and time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lumpenprol Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 um...I actually think the creation of true AI is more likely than the ability to "upload" ourselves. Uploading ourselves would mean being able to overcome the biological-tech barrier (or whatever you want to call it...basically it's trying to have two fundamentally different systems "talk" to each other), whereas the creation of AI doesn't need to involve troublesome biology at all. Not that uploading ourselves may not be possible at some point, but I see that as much further down the road than self-conscious AI creation. IMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Adam Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 Maybe. Though the most realistic way to create AI now is trough reverse engineering human brain, which is essentially, almost mind upload. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest yikes Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 we never really went to the moon ok we went to the moon and the aliens told us never come back ok we went to the moon and everything was ok but but not really because El_Chemso feels otherwise it's a test choose one oh shut the fuck up you waste of SQL space. see we really are evolving!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dale Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 sagan was always urging to get beyond low earth orbit. i think the day he died was the day the space program proper did. everything we have done since with the exception of a few things like hubble has been pissing about within low earth orbit, aka diet fucking coke space program. we need another sagan, another visionary who can rally public support using wonderful, poetic descriptions. sadly i do not think this is going to happen. neil degrasse tyson wants it to, but unless his revised version of cosmos is truly fucking amazing, it's not going to. and i think it's really sad because the planet is kinda fucked, and getting a man to step foot on mars regardless of the cost is exactly the kind of thing we need to inspire hope in the fact we can get shit done. but the only thing that could probably get that done is a second cold war. As much as I respect Sagan and a lot of his work, unfortunately he got it wrong when he said that we ought to try and communicate with extra-terrestrials. Can the Americans communicate with the Russians? Can North Korea communicate with South Korea? His priorities were jumbled a bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Gary C Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 How did they go from Wright Bro first flight in 1903 to landing man on the moon in 1969, 66 years thats within a persons lifetime? They didn't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soundwave Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 the space race was mainly a trophy of the cold war where capitalism cheated and won moon landing my arse Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redruth Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 wonderfully stated bread. our priorities are most commonly driven by selfishness and vanity. on the grander schema we've got serious work to do before we would attract the attention or acquire the respect of higher intelligence. human beings are so full of themselves and their little achievements, most of which have been attempts at solving the problems they have created to begin with. problems which often have solutions which stare them in the face, yet they remain imprisoned in their self-defeating systems of power and control. it is time we humble ourselves and first admit our mistakes instead of relishing in our merger successes. higher intellegents keeps its distance so as not to become impaled on our sword of ignorance Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redruth Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dese manz hatin Posted January 21, 2012 Share Posted January 21, 2012 breakthrews.... acheivements... concord apparently society is degenerating in other ways, too sup is back Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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