3 Body Problem

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Aldarion

Aldarion

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Mahes said:
I enjoyed the show well enough but it is not in the same category as Dark.

Dark has a better written story, better actors with well written dialogue, better music that enables the mood and it is just so much more interesting.

Lets not get carried away and compare this to Dark.
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Its not fair yet because we don't know if its gonna cop out with BS at the end like Dark or actually resolve something in a satisfying ending

But putting the ending aside its absolutely in the same tier as Dark. No other scifi in the last 10 years comes close.
 
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Aldarion

Aldarion

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Sylas said:
Much more probable is that faster than light / wormhole / warp speed travel is physically impossible and the universe is simply littered with the graves of single planet civilizations that all eventually die out without ever making or receiving contact with anyone else. Even if they manage to colonize what few rocks that are habitable in their local systems it is impossible to travel beyond that. As the universe increases the speed at which it inflates, forever expanding away from similar aged systems, it's literally impossible to ever make contact.
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This. Very well put.

We don't have to stress about the fact that humans havent developed FTL travel in our species lifetime. If it was possible and if intelligence life evolved repeatedly in the universe, someone would have colonized the galaxy with it.

Its a bit like time travel. Sure we havent invented it yet, but no one invents it in the future either, cause we'd have come across them by now.
 
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Khane

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Aldarion said:
Its not fair yet because we don't know if its gonna cop out with BS at the end like Dark or actually resolve something in a satisfying ending

But putting the ending aside its absolutely in the same tier as Dark. No other scifi in the last 10 years comes close.
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I feel like you missed some Sci fi series in the last 10 years.

Personal preferences and all that but to say Silo and For All Mankind aren't even close is... a take, I guess.
 
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Aldarion

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Silo was lame and unsatisfying. Interesting premise, terrible execution.

For all mankind was great. I will reconsider that. But to me it was also barely sci fi. More like alt-history. Still a fair point, its in the running.
 
Cybsled

Cybsled

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Aldarion said:
We don't have to stress about the fact that humans havent developed FTL travel in our species lifetime. If it was possible and if intelligence life evolved repeatedly in the universe, someone would have colonized the galaxy with it.

Its a bit like time travel. Sure we havent invented it yet, but no one invents it in the future either, cause we'd have come across them by now.
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Maybe. IMO, development of FTL wouldn't happen for species unless they had some ingrained biological imperative to create it. The Expanse books touched on this - The Builders had developed a means of FTL travel through the gates that routed travel through a "pocket universe". However, they were eventually wiped out by a more powerful race because their FTL solution was damaging to the realm said race lived in. They had expanded...then died out billions of years ago. Humans never saw any evidence of this because the method by which they propagated gates failed in our distant past in our solar system. They can't travel FTL without a gate in place.

Although the books also give us some insight into that race - they had, since their early development prior to sentience, had biological behavior which prompted them to use other types of life for their own purpose. Sort of like a giga parasite. So it tracks that a species driven to seek out and exploit life for its own gain and enrichment would focus its efforts on developing technology that would allow them to spread out and exploit life across the galaxy.

Humans want to develop FTL because we have a very strong genetic drive to explore the unknown and expand. Again, this is an early biological holdover because humans that expanded out and discovered new resources were rewarded with being able to continue their line. In fact, it is thought that when humans almost went extinct long ago and our species was down to a handful, they only survived because they pushed out into areas outside their range in an effort to survive.

So we haven't seen FTL evidence because a) other advanced species lack that "drive" to create it to begin with b) it was around and we missed it c) we're still too far away from said civilization for them to have reached us (either due to the speed of the FTL drive, the resources involved, or they use a sub-light means of putting in place the infrastucture that allows them to travel FTL) d) it is impossible. Any of those options are equally as likely given our current limited data and understanding of physics.

As for time travel, that is a harder nut to crack because we don't really know how hypothetical time travel would actually function in terms of timeline alteration, if alteration is even possible. From our perspective, we wouldn't know if time travelers had changed things with the timeline because we have no other point of reference.
 
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Sylas

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Aldarion said:
This. Very well put.

We don't have to stress about the fact that humans havent developed FTL travel in our species lifetime. If it was possible and if intelligence life evolved repeatedly in the universe, someone would have colonized the galaxy with it.

Its a bit like time travel. Sure we havent invented it yet, but no one invents it in the future either, cause we'd have come across them by now.
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This is just about as succinct as one can put it. FTL is exactly like time travel in that, if it were possible, it would have already happened.

To your point Cybsled, while the universe isn't actually infinity, it is close enough to infinity to consider both in terms of size and age that if FTL was possible then we wouldn't be talking about one or two instances of it occurring, it would have occurred/been achievable by millions upon millions intelligent lifeforms throughout the eons of existence, they would of spread and colonized the galaxy and even if they all happened to be dead at this exact moment in time they would of left evidence of it.

As far as a biological imperative being necessary the most basic biological imperative of all is that of survival of your species, and again, given enough life forms on a long enough time line, every single one of them capable of FTL travel would of come to the same basic realization:

Eventually their planet will die. Whether self inflicted through war or habitat destruction or external such as asteroids of even the death of their local star(s), any intelligent life form capable of FTL will realize that staying on one planet is putting all of your eggs in one basket and the surest method of ensuring your species survival is to colonize the stars.

Thus any life form capable of FTL will use it to colonize the galaxy and since the galaxy hasn't been colonized, FTL is impossible.
 
Cybsled

Cybsled

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That still doesn't evidence anything.

For an analogy, we have the technology and ability to send a lander probe to every single body in the solar system if we chose to. That means every shitty asteroid, proto moon, etc. It's possible that on a large enough time scale we might eventually, but the reason we don't right now is simple: Resources spent vs. gain for the investment. We could choose to spend trillions of dollars making thousands of landers, but we don't because we have other priorities besides sending out landers to every moon and asteroid. So instead we pick the most interesting objects and send our landers there periodically. We might do a flyby of the "less important" stuff, but usually it is an ancillary objective of a mission that doesn't just encompass taking a photograph of something like Rhea for example.

We assume Earth would be interesting, but it might not be to other species with FTL. For example, humans would presumably prioritize Earth like planets for any hypothetical FTL destination. But if you're a species where an Earth like planet is inhospitable to you, then you're no more likely to invest resources to go there and do anything there than humans would on a fiery super Earth orbiting a red dwarf. If FTL travel is expensive and a great drain on resources, then in theory your destinations of priority are a) planets that meet the needs of your species b) planets or systems that can provide resources you can't access anywhere else or are in such abundance that it is worth the expenditure of energy to get there. Original models of FTL required all the energy in the universe, then eventually they got it down to the energy in our sun. Presuming such energy density can be achieved by a species capable of FTL travel, it may come down to FTL being so expensive and in need of such advanced infrastructure that any expansion is effectively bottlenecked by that and thus travel is limited in quantity.
 
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Sylas

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Again you are operating under the "rare" FTL model. Like it's been discovered maybe once or twice across existence and thus it's possible that the one or two times it's been available, circumstance/happenstance is they didn't choose to go anywhere where we could see them.

The near infinity of the universe is so much bigger than what you are giving it credit for. 2 trillion galaxies within the observable universe. 200 billion trillion stars, all capable of having planets capable of having life no matter what flavor you can imagine, earth like or not, super gas giant, whatever form life can take.

If FTL travel is possible, it would have been discovered millions upon millions upon millions of time through the 15 billion years of existence and the galaxies would of been colonized over and over and over again millions upon millions upon millions of times. There would be undeniable unmistakable evidence of this everywhere we point our telescopes.

It can be really hard/really expensive resource-wise, exactly once. you use it that once to travel to a planet or solar system that fits your parameters. Once you do it once you've basically doubled your resources and now you can do it easier/cheaper, your technology will continue to advance and you will keep on doing this until its easy and cheap and you've colonized the stars.

All life capable of FTL will do this, and in a near infinity of possibilities one of the types of life with FTL travel would of come looking for carbon based, 30-100 Fahrenheit, liquid water, earth like worlds and found us.

edit: meant F not Celsius
 
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Cybsled

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I'm not sure what evidence you think we would be seeing in our telescopes - we can barely determine the location of large exoplanets and in some cases figure out if they have an atmosphere of some sort.

But FTL is still relative - it doesn't mean infinite speed as a guarantee or instant teleportation anywhere instantly. It could be limited to a specific multiple of C, which would be a massive limitation for travel between galaxies. Andromeda is over 2.5 million light years away.

Let's say you discover FTL and eventually you can push it to 100 times the speed of light. That still means to travel between Milky Way and Andromeda would take over 25,000 years at that maximum speed. Only a race that is either extremely long lived or has extraordinary long term goals overriding short term ones would embark on such a journey.

Also you make the presumption these aliens species would -want- to colonize other systems on a large scale, or would remain there permanently. Any hypothetical alien we can only guess what their needs are. We presume that developing FTL requires a prerequisite of the desire to expand in the developing race (otherwise they would be content to remain in their system) or they are forced to develop it to survive, but that says nothing about their desire to remain in a location. Billions of years is a long time - even a hyper advanced civilization may eventually fall, or suffer some internal issues that cause them to retract, or they may exhaust what they need there. It's also possible that humans, or any other alien, could not survive on another world with life without heavy genetic modification to themselves - it doesn't share the same DNA and you might literally be lethally allergic to everything there (Expanse touched on this to a degree - not so much the atmosphere, just the macro flora and fauna). You might be so heavily altered that you don't even register as what you originally were and are now effectively a "native" species. And if they were here in the distant past, there might not be traces left now (or at least nothing we recognize). They may not have even come here - if for example aliens visited our solar system billions of years ago, Mars may have been a more appealing spot than Earth.
 
Sylas

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listen man I enjoy the discussion but you do realize you are basically agreeing with me?

sure sure FTL is totally maybe possible but it's just such a massive undertaking and space is simply so fucking big that even with FTL travel we'd never ever run in to any other intelligent life and we'll all end up dying alone without ever making contact.

You are reaching the same conclusion, we'll never make contact with any other intelligent life. If we were going to we would of by now or we'd have seen it by now.

Your arguments are really coming from a different angle then the fermi paradox tho, which argues that life is so common we should of made contact by now, so why haven't we?

I mean there's 2 spectrums to consider:

Either Life is exceedingly rare, intelligent life even more so, so much so that even with FTL travel, the probability of two such technologically advanced intelligent species are able to make contact with one another is zero.

Or Life isn't all that rare (in the grand, universal scheme of things) but space is that fucking big, and FTL (or really anything even approaching FTL travel) is impossible, and thus the probability of two such technologically advanced intelligent species are able to make contact with one another is zero.

your arguments continue to lean towards the rare earth/life is extremely rare angle, which allows room for FTL to be a thing but also FTL is irrelevant since there's so little life to be found in the universe that we'll never find it.

regarding the biology, its a valid point, i mean human beings cant even really survive a trip to mars with our current tech (I mean we could live but break a hip upon stepping foot on the planet due to osteoporosis/bone density/mineral loss due to zero g)

Of course most scifi addresses this with the obvious, most sentient species who can develop FTL travel also develop the technology to upload their consciousness into machines/robots and that's how their species survives the vast expanse of space. But again converting living organisms into machines is just as much fiction as FTL is.
 
Cybsled

Cybsled

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Sylas said:
You are reaching the same conclusion, we'll never make contact with any other intelligent life. If we were going to we would of by now or we'd have seen it by now.
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On that part I disagree. Lack of contact in recorded history is not conclusive evidence that we'll never make contact or should have seen something by now. We've only been looking for maybe the past 50 years or so with limited technology - that is hardly a sufficient data point to draw hard conclusions from. We can't even locate Earth sized planets in systems similar to ours right now - that doesn't mean they don't exist. It just means our current instruments can't see them (on that note, in the next 15-20 years, a proposed space telescope designed to do just that is supposed to launch)
 
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V

velk

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Aldarion said:
This. Very well put.

We don't have to stress about the fact that humans havent developed FTL travel in our species lifetime. If it was possible and if intelligence life evolved repeatedly in the universe, someone would have colonized the galaxy with it.

Its a bit like time travel. Sure we havent invented it yet, but no one invents it in the future either, cause we'd have come across them by now.
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No, this is just repeating the central logical fallacy of the Fermi 'paradox'. I.e. infinity times any probability is 100%.

It isn't.
 
spronk

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FTL and time travel paradoxes can be answered with the origination solution. You can only FTL by dragging one end of an entangled wormhole out a distance and then you can instantly travel between the two points (Stargate). Similar with time travel, you can only start time traveling once you construct one interface in one period of time and only travel backwards to that portal from a future portal. The second someone invents a time portal it becomes real, but you can never time travel "before" that point in time.

anyways ratings seem to be growing so hopefully they announce a season 2 renewal soon, it would be nice if they would just up front say they are renewing for s2 & a final season 3. Would get around that whole rep Netflix has developed for cancelling shows too soon.

 
Burns

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Akshually, a wormhole is not FTL travel, so it's not solving it, just sidestepping it.
 
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Bodhy

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Burns said:
Akshually, a wormhole is not FTL travel, so it's not solving it, just sidestepping it.
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Indeed. It's not actually FTL, it transcends the situation. Just avoiding the issue is the best way to go about it, really. FTL travel being impossible is just writ into the fabric of the universe, really. It's not so much a speed limit per se, but rather is a constant embedded into physics and the fabric of existence itself.


FTL travel is impossible because of simple hypergeometry. Hawking said it's impossible in the sense that going further north than the north pole is impossible. But since space is a malleable fabric, why not just go that route, since it's all about traversing space?


EDIT: Although to be a hyper literal geek here I'm talking about accelerating to light speed.
 
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P

pwe

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Sylas said:
Much more probable is that faster than light / wormhole / warp speed travel is physically impossible and the universe is simply littered with the graves of single planet civilizations that all eventually die out without ever making or receiving contact with anyone else. Even if they manage to colonize what few rocks that are habitable in their local systems it is impossible to travel beyond that. As the universe increases the speed at which it inflates, forever expanding away from similar aged systems, it's literally impossible to ever make contact.

Imagine the beginning of the universe as a rock dropped in a pond and the ripples produced in the water is the expansion of the universe. If you assume technologically advanced intelligent life requires X number of billions of years to evolve, then all civilizations capable of communicating at the same time we can all inhabit the same "ring," the same circular ripple around the center of where that rock was dropped. Unlike a pond, however, we are expanding faster and faster as time goes on, not slowing down, so we will never be able to communicate with anything beyond our direct immediate celestial neighbors, that is systems at least the same age as ours within listening range, which we've been listening for what 30 years so 15 light years for 2 way communication to be achievable. And really "listening" is probably always limited to extremely small ranges like this, otherwise you're picking up radio waves from so long ago in the past its irrelevant. Without faster than light technology extremely local listening is all we are capable of doing. "Looking" further away than this, all light is always snap shots of the past, hundreds or millions or even billions of years into the past.

While the drake equation is pure junk science and nothing but a bunch of assumptions the truth is there's hardly any viable candidates in our neighborhood (both distance and age) and if faster than light travel is never possible then space is mostly fucking empty, 99% of planets that have life on them are simple bacterial life and the chances that any 2 planets with technologically advanced life existing at the same time happening to exist directly next to one another and thus being able to communicate with one another within their civilizations lifespans are virtually zero.

All science fiction, from space empires to aliens to star wars always involve the concept of faster than light travel, its so fucking common we must be kicking ourselves we haven't figured out how to do it yet. Yet the entirety of everything we know about the physics of the universe is one simple principle, nothing can travel faster than light.

So instead of having to come up with crazy convoluted scenarios to explain some "paradox" on why we can't detect any life when it should be super fucking abundant we should go with the obvious conclusion which is Einstein has a better understanding on how the universe works than George Lucas.
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If I had amazing super powerful technology I would go digital and orbit the sun for energy in a tiny undetectable box. As we all know, the real world sucks. In my world anything and everything is possible. I'm open for co-op but no PvP and griefing please.
 
Cybsled

Cybsled

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Bodhy said:
FTL travel is impossible because of simple hypergeometry. Hawking said it's impossible in the sense that going further north than the north pole is impossible. But since space is a malleable fabric, why not just go that route, since it's all about traversing space?
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It's generally understood that any reference to real life FTL involves manipulation of the fabric of space, not actually accelerating beyond light speed in the traditional sense.
 
Hateyou

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Cybsled said:
It's generally understood that any reference to real life FTL involves manipulation of the fabric of space, not actually accelerating beyond light speed in the traditional sense.
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IMG_3121.jpeg
 
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