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I love stories like this. A subtle reminder how inconsequential our actions are on this planet in the grand, unplanned scheme. I look forward to reading HN with
by owlninja 2mo ago
I love stories like this. A subtle reminder how inconsequential our actions are on this planet in the grand, unplanned scheme. I look forward to reading HN with my breakfast each morning then going to a job that helps me raise a family and have fun on the weekends. I read stories of war, corruption, sadistic leaders, and great suffering. I've learned to appreciate the joys of life and have come to terms that we are not here for a long time - just for a good time.
"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
-Bill Watterson
- im3w1l 2mo agoThere is a pretty significant chance that ours will be a starfaring civilization and that our children will reshape the very heavens.
- blightful 2mo agoVery doubtful when you really dig into what is involved. We probably will never make it out of the solar system. To another star is a pipe dream. We will wreck our planet soon enough and the likely outcome is our species will go extinct. This will probably happen in the next few thousand years or sooner.
- Bender 2mo agoI think the planet will do just fine without us but we will likely hit one of many great filters long before we colonize anything outside of Earth. The list of dumb things we do as a civilization are too long to list on HN. I am honestly very surprised we still exist and can still reproduce.
- none2585 2mo agoThis is my position as well - people say we need to do things for the planet. Planet will be just fine - it's us who will suffer and honestly it's for the best. Just end this shit
- bogota 2mo ago[dead]
- kibwen 2mo agoIf by "children" you mean self-replicating viral robot swarms, then maybe. Nothing biologically descended from humans will ever leave the heliosphere in any form that could be considered living.
- excalibur 2mo agoOur kids can't change a tire.
- eth0up 2mo agoOh come on man. That's just because they know we should be hovering by now ;)
- samplatt 2mo agoMy ex wife's parents couldn't change a tire. I had to do it for them, once.
- juggert8 2mo agoBoomer moment. That's your fault for not teaching them.
- foobar1962 2mo agoYou're off a generation. The boomer's kids have kids.
- dylan604 2mo agoThe boomers have great grand kids, so off by two generations.
- toast0 2mo agoMy kid is in drivers ed, and part of the curriculum is changing a tire with a parent (class is mostly on zoom). I don't know how many of the kids are going to retain the knowledge. That said, what good is changing a tire, when there's no tire to change.
- yongjik 2mo agoSounds fine to me. Why would you need tires in interstellar space?
- 7bit 2mo agoOkay Boomer
- stouset 2mo agoI suppose zero is a pretty significant number. Without new physics that isn’t even remotely visible on the horizon and that utterly contradicts most of what we believe to be true, this isn’t going to happen. Robotic AI probes sent to other star systems to send back telemetry? Sure, fine. Flesh bags sent to self-replicate on terraformed worlds out in the stars? Not a whisper of a microscopic chance.
- WalterBright 2mo agoIf you can sent probes to other star systems, you can include with it information of the DNA of life forms and a device to create terran life.
- joquarky 2mo agoIt takes far more than DNA to recreate a human.
- drannex 2mo agoimportant part: "and a device to create terran life". @WalterBright, I've always preferred the idea that to explore the stars the only chance we have at doing so is by bio-growing humans (cloned?), and somehow uploading and downloading a current humans consciousness into the form. basically 'seeding the universe' since we would just start sending little seeds of human life everywhere. :-)
- stouset 2mo ago> "and a device to create terran life“ … and all the devices and nutrition necessary to sustain that Terran life until it can become self sufficient—without the help of preexisting humans to teach them or impart physical skills—on a rock with either no life, inhospitable life, or nutritionally incompatible life. You might as well call that device a magic wand.
- WalterBright 2mo ago
- altmanaltman 2mo agoEven if you colonize the entire solar system or even the entire galaxy, you will still be insignificant in terms of the universe. Also there is a pretty significant chance we destroy ourselves before any of that happens.
- bellowsgulch 2mo ago> A subtle reminder how inconsequential our actions are on this planet in the grand, unplanned scheme. I don't like that our culture has developed statements like this. Every single action you make on planet Earth is more consequential and impactful than the countless parsecs of worthless unobtainable space dust that astrophysicists and science promoters like to glaze over. Space is nothing compared to the unfathomable amount of synaptic connections in your brain, or the impact you can have on someone's life by hugging them. Let's piss away all the small blue dot sentiments. They're old and pointless.
- Micrococonut 2mo agoWell said
- dylan604 2mo agoYou can think they are old and pointless, but that's you just brushing off the fact that the universe is much much older than however old you think these ideas are. The entirety of the human species from its beginning to its eventual ending is merely a blip of time for the universe. You can argue that makes it that much more special, but so what? To the universe, there very well could have been numerous other specials that have come and gone. Being unable to accept that is pointless.
- WalterBright 2mo agoIn the meantime, enjoy your life, and what a wonderful gift you have.
- Larrikin 2mo agoSo why bother posting?
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- altmanaltman 2mo ago[flagged]
- jmyeet 2mo agoOne of the first gravitational wave detections by LIGO was I think the merger of two black holes or maybe a black hole and a neutron star. It was over a billion light years away I think but was so energetic that it conveted approximately 5 Solar masses into energy in about one second. That's ~10^48 Joules. In 1 second that is ~10^48 Watts. For comparison, the Milky Way has an estimate of 5x10^36 Watts so we're talking about the energy output, very briefly, of roughly a trillion Milky Way galaxies. The other that gets me is amgnetars. These are neutron stars with an insane magnetic field. The strongest detected exceeds 1 billion Tesla, making is 30 trillion times stronger than Earth's magnetic field. Get too close and it would flatten atoms and ultimately break molecular bonds and rip electrons out of your body. Google seems to think that happens at ~1000km, which is pretty close to get to a neutron star but still, that's a magnetic field. These things are quite rare and quite unstable. If you think about it, they must have a lot of protons to generate a field so strong, which means that the gravity is overcoming the strong nuclear force but also the electric repulsion.
- pdonis 2mo ago> If you think about it, they must have a lot of protons to generate a field so strong Not necessarily. Neutrons have a magnetic moment. As I understand it, there is a magnetohydrodynamic model of how a magnetar's field gets generated, which would require protons, but it's not the only model and we don't have enough data to be able to rule out other models.
- robocat 2mo agoAside: Carbon-13 has one more neutron than Carbon-12, so the unpaired neutron gives it a magnetic moment which is what is used for C13 Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-13_nuclear_magnetic_resonance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-13_nuclear_magnetic_res...
- taneq 2mo ago> Neutrons have a magnetic moment. Wait, what? Huh, I have some reading to do. Thanks! :D I thought neutron stars generally had a shell or crust of iron, which generates a magnetic field (as metals do) if the neutron star is spinning.
- Waterluvian 2mo agoJust don’t think about all the suffering you or I could ease with the money we spend on a “good time.” We’re not the good guys. We rationalize the inescapable selfishness placed there by ages of evolution.
- bogota 2mo ago[dead]
- BuyMyBitcoins 2mo agoSome of the proceeds spent on having a good time will go towards reducing misery and suffering elsewhere. I see no malice in the decision to make peace with the fact that no mere mortal is capable of putting a dent into the level of suffering around the world as a whole. Living one’s life reasonably and not being a burden is remarkably beneficial to society. At the very least, it’s one less unhappy and broke individual.
- bigDinosaur 2mo agoIf having a 'good time' makes me a bad guy then I'm sorry to say but I'm okay with that. I, of course, don't actually agree that that's true.
- MichaelRo 2mo ago>> Just don’t think about all the suffering you or I could ease with the money we spend on a “good time.” Look man. I am not responsible for any random person or creature that suffers in this world. Lamentations like this ("ease all the suffering") originate in a primate brain that hasn't yet processed that we're no longer a tribe of 100 but there's 10 billion people in this world. Objectively you don't have resources to help more than a few people. And morally, you aren't obligated either. And btw, I actually do help a person in need, every month with a substantial amount of money. Unlike the occasional act of kindness, helping a complete stranger on a recurring basis is a much harder nut to swallow. Makes you progress really quickly from superficial platitudes like the one you said to the hard, cold reality of the fact that you're losing resources and resources are finite. And that on top of half my income that the state grabs and mostly hands out as welfare anyway. So don't tell me I'm not paying to ease suffering, want or not, I pay through my teeth.
- tartoran 2mo agoThings can be meaningless on a cosmic timescale and still matter a great deal on a human one. Most of us will never influence the universe, but we'll influence our families, friends, coworkers and even future generations, that's enough...
- Cider9986 2mo agoI'm reminded of: What It’s Like Being Married to Neil deGrasse Tyson - Key & Peele https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyZSBqQ813c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyZSBqQ813c
- gorgoiler 2mo agoI will show you fear in a handful of dust
- altmanaltman 2mo agoThe star is also pretty insignificant compared to the whole universe to be honest. Almost everything is at that scale. And I mean okay, alien intelligence life must be very smart and not contact us because we are so evil and petty and self involved etc. And every single living species we encounter is also the same. Why are we grandstanding these aliens? They are likley sipping coffee in their corner of universe and wondering man why do we keep doing all this nonsense when we are so insignificant etc. That is far more likely to me than aliens who know we exist but willingly stay away because we are humans.
- jjav 2mo ago> A subtle reminder how inconsequential our actions are on this planet in the grand, unplanned scheme. I don't find that to be useful at all. Yes of course, all the suffering on Earth is nothing but a footnote in 0.000000001 font size as far as the universe is concerned. But that's irrelevant. We live on Earth, so what happens here is actually 100% of what matters. Everything else is inconsequential.
- lenkite 2mo agoUntil we discover a Rogue Black Hole speeding towards our Solar System.
- jojogeo 2mo agoI'm not a religious person but this seems relevant to your comment; > So I commended the enjoyment of life, because there is nothing better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and be merry. As someone with autism and ADHD; I have spent my life trying to understand better ways to do things, optimisations, doing things "right" or "better" or "faster", and trying to come to terms with others who don't really give a shit about any of it. The conclusion I arrived at is that the snapshot of time I get in this form is best spent enjoying what this form has to offer, nothing more. - My sausage'y shaped fingers can't manipulate time or gravity; but they can tickle my children and make them laugh. - My heart can't fix anything; but it can help me to understand others suffering and guide my actions. - My eyes can't see the whole electromagnetic spectrum; but they can appreciate a beautiful vista and fill me with wonder. When TFA mentions that a star just ate a planet, I remember just how small and unimportant I am outside a tiny speck of the world; and rejoice that I'm not responsible for anything super important outside that little speck. \o/