Furry
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The Astronomy Thread
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
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Found this when looking around,
"Launched 2016, this was Intelsat 33e, planned service life of 15 years, was in service just over 8 years. This bird did have thruster issues during commissioning that delayed it entering service by 3 months, and another sat of the same batch (Intelsat 29e) was a total loss in 2019 after being in service for 3 years. Both used the Boeing 702MP bus as part of the EpicNG program. There are 4 remaining EpicNG satellites in operation with the most recent being launched on F9 Heavy in April 2023. 33e was not insured."
The top theory is micro meteors or debris impact.
"Launched 2016, this was Intelsat 33e, planned service life of 15 years, was in service just over 8 years. This bird did have thruster issues during commissioning that delayed it entering service by 3 months, and another sat of the same batch (Intelsat 29e) was a total loss in 2019 after being in service for 3 years. Both used the Boeing 702MP bus as part of the EpicNG program. There are 4 remaining EpicNG satellites in operation with the most recent being launched on F9 Heavy in April 2023. 33e was not insured."
The top theory is micro meteors or debris impact.
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Lambourne
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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In respect to life elsewhere, the Coolworlds channel has bunch of videos on this and it's run by an actual astronomer. The basic scientific answer is always "no data, we don't know" but there is a bunch more analysis that can be done with statistics. Probably already known to most people that are interested in this stuff but if you haven't checked it out before I really recommend doing so because his videos are top notch.
www.youtube.com
Cool Worlds
Space, astronomy, exoplanets, astroengineering and the search for extraterrestrial life & intelligence. The Cool Worlds Lab (http://coolworldslab.com), based at the Department of Astronomy, Columbia University, is a team of astronomers seeking to discover and understand alien worlds...
www.youtube.com
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Chris
Potato del Grande
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Aaron
Goonsquad Officer
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I just remember that Carl Sagan was considered to be a bit cooky in his views that there was a good chance that there might be life somewhere out there, and that he was wasting his time contemplating what form that might take (remember that episode of his Cosmos series). So it's good to know that it has become more mainstream. I remember biology classes in the 90s where you learned about the conditions for life being that, amongst others, you needed light, a temperature in the range of 0-100°C, oxygen, running water and some more. Since then we've found life exists on this planet in places that break all these rules, deep in dark caves, in underground lakes in Antarctica, bacteria growing both in sub-zero glaciers and in boiling hot springs, even in space on the outside of the Space Station.
I think, at this point, it would be odd to not find some remnants of microbial life on Mars, and possibly even living microbes on Europa, maybe Titan too. And if you take a very conservative estimate that only one advanced form of life has a chance of emerging per average galaxy (100 billion stars), then that still means that in a universe of some 100b-2t galaxies, which seems to be the running number at the moment, then you're talking a shit ton of life. Hell, even if only 1 in a thousand galaxies could hold some form of life, and of those, 1 in a thousand could support advanced or technological life, we're still talking about between 100 thousand and 2 million advanced civilisations out there.
The sheer scale of the Universe is such now that even if life were just random chance, the winning lottery numbers would come up quite a few times.
Or, let's put it another way, imagine if, out of the entire fucking universe, 100b-2t galaxies, 100b stars on average in each, and life, including advanced life has only - and will only - ever evolve here. We are the conciseness of the universe. And here we are, using the most precious and rare resource in the universe, to build an entire system dedicated to one purpose, one goal: to serve fried chicken to joggers, and when they eat themselves into obesity and body failure, to find ways to keep them going so they can eat more fried chicken. God bless us all!
I think, at this point, it would be odd to not find some remnants of microbial life on Mars, and possibly even living microbes on Europa, maybe Titan too. And if you take a very conservative estimate that only one advanced form of life has a chance of emerging per average galaxy (100 billion stars), then that still means that in a universe of some 100b-2t galaxies, which seems to be the running number at the moment, then you're talking a shit ton of life. Hell, even if only 1 in a thousand galaxies could hold some form of life, and of those, 1 in a thousand could support advanced or technological life, we're still talking about between 100 thousand and 2 million advanced civilisations out there.
The sheer scale of the Universe is such now that even if life were just random chance, the winning lottery numbers would come up quite a few times.
Or, let's put it another way, imagine if, out of the entire fucking universe, 100b-2t galaxies, 100b stars on average in each, and life, including advanced life has only - and will only - ever evolve here. We are the conciseness of the universe. And here we are, using the most precious and rare resource in the universe, to build an entire system dedicated to one purpose, one goal: to serve fried chicken to joggers, and when they eat themselves into obesity and body failure, to find ways to keep them going so they can eat more fried chicken. God bless us all!
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Big Phoenix
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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I generally think intelligent life is extremely rare even in the grand scheme of the universe. Seems like you have to get so many things just right. The right star. Not too close to the star or you end up like Venus, not too far away or too small or you end up like Mars. Not too large or you end up like Neptune/Uranus. Need a decent sized satellite to stabilize your rotation etc.
Basic life? Likely littered throughout the cosmos. Only a matter of time til we find some bacteria or slime molds on Mars or Europa.
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Sanrith Descartes
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I just started watching 3 Body Problem this week. On episode 3 or 4. About halfway through this they mention some China chick name and I thought that sounds like the chick in 3 Body Problem. Kept reading and yep.Dark forest hypothesis - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
Sanrith Descartes
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But isn't this just a human-centric view. All those factors are in terms of life to human standards. What about a race if living fire people, or gaseous people. Intelligent life can take any form.
Furry
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Dark forest hypothesis - Wikipedia
The biggest fundamental problem is that the logic doesn't align with the purpose. Even if an alien race had these fears and goals, the more sensible thing to do is lay traps and observe an alien species.
My personal pet theory is that technologically advanced biological life is a short-lived step on the grand scale. Given the exponential rate at which technology progresses, I think life that passes a threshold just a bit beyond where we are now ends up becoming computational and lives in simulations. Meat sacks are terribly fragile, and any life capable of transitioning to a more durable substrate for consciousness should want to do so. It seems reasonable that such life would neither need to reproduce at scale nor leave much of a footprint, so they grab a white dwarf or other effectively infinite power supply and are quietly and invisibly sitting out in the void playing EverQuest until proton decay kills everything.
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Cybsled
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Even if you were some hyper advanced civilization that lasted a million years, that is a blip on the cosmic timescale. It might not be that advanced civilizations are ultra rare, but the probability of two advanced civilizations existing at the same time in reliatively close proximity is the true ultra rare thing.
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Of all the possibilities out there the dark forest hypothesis is perhaps the dumbest of the lot.
As Cybsled mentions, one option is Intelligent life is rare enough and short lived enough that no two civilizations exist simultaneously anywhere close enough for it to ever matter. This is far more likely than the dark forest because for all we know from our observation of earth, life is pretty much immediately possible on any planet capable of supporting it. Takes a few hundred million years for life to happen. but that life is single cell life. It takes over 3 billion years of single cell life just existing continuously minding its own business for lightning in a bottle to happen where one microbe eats another microbe but instead of digesting it they cohabitate and figure out how to make multicellular life. Then its a quick little 500million or so years before intelligent life. And intelligent life is measured in thousands of years not millions (at least so far)
Or the far more likely scenario, e=mc^2 is the correct formula, not just a close proximation. Holy shit scientists are better at science than science fiction writers????
Meaning that faster than light travel is impossible, always, and forever. You can't just plug in random assumptions into a drake equation and add in "well if we assume eventually they become space faring and develop faster than light travel" like that's just a little blip that we'll eventually overcome. If E=MC^2 is true then we will never achieve faster than light travel, it is physically impossible.
Meaning that there could be billions of intelligent civilizations out there throughout every galaxy, or there could be none. it's irrelevant because "space faring" never becomes a thing, we're all just too far away from one another for it ever to be anything more than hypothetical mental masturbation.
There is no great filter, simply a great speed limit, that prevents life from becoming truly interstellar.
As Cybsled mentions, one option is Intelligent life is rare enough and short lived enough that no two civilizations exist simultaneously anywhere close enough for it to ever matter. This is far more likely than the dark forest because for all we know from our observation of earth, life is pretty much immediately possible on any planet capable of supporting it. Takes a few hundred million years for life to happen. but that life is single cell life. It takes over 3 billion years of single cell life just existing continuously minding its own business for lightning in a bottle to happen where one microbe eats another microbe but instead of digesting it they cohabitate and figure out how to make multicellular life. Then its a quick little 500million or so years before intelligent life. And intelligent life is measured in thousands of years not millions (at least so far)
Or the far more likely scenario, e=mc^2 is the correct formula, not just a close proximation. Holy shit scientists are better at science than science fiction writers????
Meaning that faster than light travel is impossible, always, and forever. You can't just plug in random assumptions into a drake equation and add in "well if we assume eventually they become space faring and develop faster than light travel" like that's just a little blip that we'll eventually overcome. If E=MC^2 is true then we will never achieve faster than light travel, it is physically impossible.
Meaning that there could be billions of intelligent civilizations out there throughout every galaxy, or there could be none. it's irrelevant because "space faring" never becomes a thing, we're all just too far away from one another for it ever to be anything more than hypothetical mental masturbation.
There is no great filter, simply a great speed limit, that prevents life from becoming truly interstellar.
Cybsled
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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We know space can warp due to gravity/mass, so in theory if you could develop some type of advanced technology that could fold/warp space, then you could potentially bypass the cosmic speed limit in terms of distance traveled vs. time taken.
Of course, theoretical vs. practical are two different things: Such an endeavor would be (no pun intended) astronomical in terms of costs. You're dealing with material and energy technologies that don't exist that would depend on other technologies and sciences developing.
They sort of touch on it in the 3 Body Problem books - they undertake some massive project that turns one of Jupiter's moons into a tiny blackhole and they build a containment structure around it and attempt to study it in the hopes it will reveal the secrets of FTL travel. 3 Body Problem and even The Expanse also touch on the issues that means of traveling FTL might also be damaging to space-time (like that one TNG episode that mentioned that warp travel was fucking up space-time in heavily traveled regions, implying that strong warp fields increased the rate of degradation)
I think the real issue with interstellar travel is as follows:
1) If you cannot develop FTL, then any trip (even if it is 99.99999999999c) is going to take a fucking long ass time. Unless the system is pretty much "next door" like the Centauri system, economically there isn't any trade or resource benefit since transit times would be measured in decades or centuries - far too long for the current human lifespan
2) Even with FTL, you can't live on other planets potentially, at least not without technology - even if we found a planet that was more or less Earth 2.0, the chemical and biological composition of the planet would still be alien. We would effectively be allergic - kind of like War of the Worlds alien invasion was undone because the alien's bodies got fucked up by micro-organisms on Earth. The same could happen on another planet - even if they weren't biologically similar enough to act in the same ways Earth bacteria or viruses are, it could be something as simple as "warm + lots of water = massive growth". The human immune system wouldn't know wtf to do. Plants we grow for food wouldn't have the soil dwelling organisms they need. To live on an alien planet, even an Earth-like one, would require technology to survive. Suits to prevent exposure, or new classifications of drugs, or even genetic modification that might mean they can't live on Earth anymore. The Expanse sort of touched on this in parts
Of course, theoretical vs. practical are two different things: Such an endeavor would be (no pun intended) astronomical in terms of costs. You're dealing with material and energy technologies that don't exist that would depend on other technologies and sciences developing.
They sort of touch on it in the 3 Body Problem books - they undertake some massive project that turns one of Jupiter's moons into a tiny blackhole and they build a containment structure around it and attempt to study it in the hopes it will reveal the secrets of FTL travel. 3 Body Problem and even The Expanse also touch on the issues that means of traveling FTL might also be damaging to space-time (like that one TNG episode that mentioned that warp travel was fucking up space-time in heavily traveled regions, implying that strong warp fields increased the rate of degradation)
I think the real issue with interstellar travel is as follows:
1) If you cannot develop FTL, then any trip (even if it is 99.99999999999c) is going to take a fucking long ass time. Unless the system is pretty much "next door" like the Centauri system, economically there isn't any trade or resource benefit since transit times would be measured in decades or centuries - far too long for the current human lifespan
2) Even with FTL, you can't live on other planets potentially, at least not without technology - even if we found a planet that was more or less Earth 2.0, the chemical and biological composition of the planet would still be alien. We would effectively be allergic - kind of like War of the Worlds alien invasion was undone because the alien's bodies got fucked up by micro-organisms on Earth. The same could happen on another planet - even if they weren't biologically similar enough to act in the same ways Earth bacteria or viruses are, it could be something as simple as "warm + lots of water = massive growth". The human immune system wouldn't know wtf to do. Plants we grow for food wouldn't have the soil dwelling organisms they need. To live on an alien planet, even an Earth-like one, would require technology to survive. Suits to prevent exposure, or new classifications of drugs, or even genetic modification that might mean they can't live on Earth anymore. The Expanse sort of touched on this in parts
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Yeah it's always "oh ok well we'll just make blackholes so we can create wormholes or fold space to get around the speed of light problem" then you realize that's even worse and requires more energy or is even more absurd than than trying to accelerate something to near the speed of light. "Ok so as mass increases the energy required to accelerate it towards the speed of light increases exponentially. Well we can't possibly get ahold of that much energy as energy required approaches infinity, so normal light speed travel is out..... I know! we'll just figure out a way to create matter out of nothing instead!, that way our space ships can create wormholes on demand!
but the energy required to create matter is a larger infinity than the energy required to accelerate mass towards the speed of light...
Ok but lets just pretend that it isn't so we can have warpfields or whatever fucking magical non-sense we're going with this week."
Even ignoring the absurdity of FTL travel the dark forest hypothesis fails on logic alone.
Ok so there exists multitudes of advanced intelligent civilizations out there all of whom have mastered FTL travel and other far greater technological feats. They all have logically deducted that first contact with any unknown civilization ends up bad more often than not so they've all decided to hide from one another. Game theory, whatever.
Perhaps most intelligent species evolve from prey animals rather than predators, so they naturally are secretive and lack curiosity so hiding comes natural to them. Every once in a while a civilization which lacks that fear does accidentally reveal themselves to the galaxy and they are immediately set upon by some more advanced civilization, either some super predator/locust-like civilization that consumes them, or perhaps even a peaceful yet more advanced civilization takes them out out of an abundance of caution, afraid that they will become a threat in the future if allowed to advance. Perhaps the only intelligent life that announces itself is the type of life that evolves from predator species so the prey species are just acting in their own self interest to take out the warlike predator species before they become space faring.
Looking at our own timeline, from the time we first accidently sent radio waves out beyond our atmosphere (in 1934) until the time when we harnessed the power of the atom (1944) was 10 years. within another 25 we had rockets large enough to send people off of our planet (traveling to the moon.) technological advancement has continued to accelerate from there. We don't yet know how long it takes to become a true space faring civilization but if its possible it can happen much faster than we think.
about these other more advanced civilizations, we also must assume:
More advanced species than us are smarter than us, or perhaps developed faster than us, or both.
They know how long it took them to advance from basic radio towers to FTL space faring civilizations, and thus must assume that other species will evolve at the same rate or faster.
They know how limited a window that is, so they must be using their FTL capabilities to set up relay stations and listening posts on asteroids, lifeless moons, whatever, around the galaxy, to monitor for potential signs of life, so that they can act on it immediately before they become too dangerous.
We've been broadcasting into the void for nearly 100 years. That means if there was any advanced civilizations out there, all hiding from one another, they've heard us, and they've had time to get here and end us. But they haven't.
So either nobody is listening....
or the act of broadcasting your location, first accidently but we've since we've been doing so very, very intentionally, is an act of such bravado that it is terrifying to any species out there listening. To intentionally broadcast your location and challenge the universe to do something about it takes such a massive set of balls that they cannot comprehend how crazy insane powerful we must be. They are afraid of us and will never come knocking.
but the energy required to create matter is a larger infinity than the energy required to accelerate mass towards the speed of light...
Ok but lets just pretend that it isn't so we can have warpfields or whatever fucking magical non-sense we're going with this week."
Even ignoring the absurdity of FTL travel the dark forest hypothesis fails on logic alone.
Ok so there exists multitudes of advanced intelligent civilizations out there all of whom have mastered FTL travel and other far greater technological feats. They all have logically deducted that first contact with any unknown civilization ends up bad more often than not so they've all decided to hide from one another. Game theory, whatever.
Perhaps most intelligent species evolve from prey animals rather than predators, so they naturally are secretive and lack curiosity so hiding comes natural to them. Every once in a while a civilization which lacks that fear does accidentally reveal themselves to the galaxy and they are immediately set upon by some more advanced civilization, either some super predator/locust-like civilization that consumes them, or perhaps even a peaceful yet more advanced civilization takes them out out of an abundance of caution, afraid that they will become a threat in the future if allowed to advance. Perhaps the only intelligent life that announces itself is the type of life that evolves from predator species so the prey species are just acting in their own self interest to take out the warlike predator species before they become space faring.
Looking at our own timeline, from the time we first accidently sent radio waves out beyond our atmosphere (in 1934) until the time when we harnessed the power of the atom (1944) was 10 years. within another 25 we had rockets large enough to send people off of our planet (traveling to the moon.) technological advancement has continued to accelerate from there. We don't yet know how long it takes to become a true space faring civilization but if its possible it can happen much faster than we think.
about these other more advanced civilizations, we also must assume:
More advanced species than us are smarter than us, or perhaps developed faster than us, or both.
They know how long it took them to advance from basic radio towers to FTL space faring civilizations, and thus must assume that other species will evolve at the same rate or faster.
They know how limited a window that is, so they must be using their FTL capabilities to set up relay stations and listening posts on asteroids, lifeless moons, whatever, around the galaxy, to monitor for potential signs of life, so that they can act on it immediately before they become too dangerous.
We've been broadcasting into the void for nearly 100 years. That means if there was any advanced civilizations out there, all hiding from one another, they've heard us, and they've had time to get here and end us. But they haven't.
So either nobody is listening....
or the act of broadcasting your location, first accidently but we've since we've been doing so very, very intentionally, is an act of such bravado that it is terrifying to any species out there listening. To intentionally broadcast your location and challenge the universe to do something about it takes such a massive set of balls that they cannot comprehend how crazy insane powerful we must be. They are afraid of us and will never come knocking.
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Big Phoenix
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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I would think at a minimum there are certain conditions any life needs to thrive and evolve significantly. What need is there for life to evolve significantly if its on Venus and every square inch possible is the same 850 degree hell hole?
Compare that to Earth where you have the water from rivers lakes to ocean all with significantly different attributes. Then in between water and dry land you tide pools swamps marshes etc Then you have land itself which itself is going to have pretty variable climates, combined with variable weather patterns and numerous geological phenomena. Endless lightning rods to drive evolution.
Furry
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Liquid water is considered the most important element to life evolving. While other chemistries are theoretically viable nothing evolved from them to our knowledge on earth, and all of the competing chemistries are at a fundamental mathematical level less likely, viable and stable. That’s not to say they don’t exist anyways. The universe is huge and I’m sure all sorts of weird shit is out there.
That’s why earth like planets and ocean worlds are considered best candidates for developing life. A planet like Venus likely never would develop its own life, while a planet like mars, which probably was much warmer, had liquid water and more atmosphere in the past probably could. I strongly suspect it had rudimentary life at some point, and there likely will still be life that slowly moved underground and into the crust as the surface itself became too hostile to support life, much like you can find life on earth very deep underground.
The problem with the limited conditions for life is that the conditions on planets can change. Mars has no magnetic poles, so its atmosphere got boiled away over billions of years. This is probably a much more likely outcome to any planet with life supporting conditions than what has happened to earth, that a planets peak condition for life is just a transitional window.
Cybsled
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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In about 500-600 million years or so, it is theorized that photosynthesis (as it exists today) will be impossible due to the sun's shift towards becoming a red giant. In a billion years, life might not be possible at all.
Granted that is a really long time from our perspective - 600 million years virtually encompasses all multicellular animal life with a complexity greater than worms and shit. Yet out of those 600 million years since stuff like sea bugs and stuff evolved, technologically advanced life (as far as we know) has only developed once. We've only been farming since about 10k years ago. We very easily (as a species) could still be stuck living in huts in the forest in small hunter-gathering tribes had there not been some populations that expanded and developed beyond that. You can be a smart species, but it doesn't guaranteed you ever develop to the level needed for interstellar travel or even looking deep into the cosmos.
Granted that is a really long time from our perspective - 600 million years virtually encompasses all multicellular animal life with a complexity greater than worms and shit. Yet out of those 600 million years since stuff like sea bugs and stuff evolved, technologically advanced life (as far as we know) has only developed once. We've only been farming since about 10k years ago. We very easily (as a species) could still be stuck living in huts in the forest in small hunter-gathering tribes had there not been some populations that expanded and developed beyond that. You can be a smart species, but it doesn't guaranteed you ever develop to the level needed for interstellar travel or even looking deep into the cosmos.
True but evolution will counteract the shifting sun colors and keep on transforming light to food in plants. 98 plants die of starvation 2_survive able to convert a bit of 'red' sun...next gen...more 'red' etc until all can do it.
Is there life out there. Definately. Is it hard to find..probably extremely hard. There are billions of stars in just THIS galaxy..each most likely with planets...and there are million upon millions of galaxies similar in star density to us. Life Finds a way...the hard part for us will be...finding it.
Is there life out there. Definately. Is it hard to find..probably extremely hard. There are billions of stars in just THIS galaxy..each most likely with planets...and there are million upon millions of galaxies similar in star density to us. Life Finds a way...the hard part for us will be...finding it.
Ukerric
Bearded Ape
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It's not the shifting of the color that causes problem. It's the increasing luminosity, which creates heavy rainfall, which... drains carbon dioxyde from the atmosphere.
Based on models, atmospheric CO2 could fall to 10PPM (we're at 420PPM) by 600-1200M years. At that point, there is not enough CO2 to sustain photosynthesis, O2 disappears and complex life dies out. You still get non-O2 lifeforms, but forget any form of evolved life.
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