u/JustAvi2000

Orbital rings have been described as making platforms over planets or other massive objects that normally don't have solid surfaces (gas giants, stars, black holes), or surfaces that can't otherwise be accessed. How then would you anchor them in place over the planet to keep them from precessing, or otherwise drifting off course?

This short claims (without sources) of a study on human longevity- that the maximum human lifespan if all age-related diseases are eliminated would be in the range of 200. And if organ failures due to DNA copying errors can be eliminated, the range would be extended to around 650. Does anyone know who was behind the study, or can cite a paper published somewhere in legitimate scientific literature?

I've heard of people waking up from comas being different people, or remembering past lives, but this sounds more like the 'frame-jacking' described on this channel, where mental experiences spanning months or (in this case) years can be compressed into much shorter times. Is there any literature on how the brain does this?

Had one of those thoughts while walking through the park on a saturday afternoon...why do trees grow so tall? Trees evolved height to maximize capturing sunlight and maximize the area from which to aspire moisture from their leaves, and thus draw water from their roots. But other trees are growing around them, and can overcast them, or crowd out their roots- so they have to compete with them, and grow ever taller, and bigger. But growing that big has other dangers as well- damage due to wind and weather, and the limits Earth’s gravity puts on anything growing past a certain limit. There’s a reason why palm trees on tropical islands subject to hurricanes don’t grow as tall as redwoods, and why bristlecone pines are short and squat when they are the only trees for miles around. Also, growth takes effort, energy that can otherwise be used for maintaining where a system is and repairing what damage comes (as it inevitably does), so often it’s done only when necessary- that’s one reason why trees grow so slow, and why, eventually, they stop growing. It’s why a cheetah only needs to be faster than the slowest gazelle, and a gazelle only needs to be faster than the fastest cheetah- running that fast takes a toll on the body. And eventually the predator-prey dynamic evens out.

Consider political and social systems as well- why empires of the past reached their heights and never expanded beyond to, say, explore and colonize the Americas when it would have been technically possible. Well, for starters, they had competition from other empires to deal with- fighting off invasions (or internal rebellions, or collecting taxes) took priority over boldly going where no one had gone before. But where there was no pressure to expand, things were relatively stagnant. Medeival and Renaissance Europe was fragmented in constant warfare, looking for trade routes around the caliphates of the Middle East, as well as new revenue sources to fund those wars; otherwise they had no incentive to sail off in uncharted waters and stumble upon a new continent.

Why did the Space Race die out after the US reached the Moon, and why is is starting up again in a different way? Because we looked over our shoulder and saw the Soviets were way behind us, and we figured we had better things to do (like wage a war in Vietnam, or on poverty). Then China jumps into the race, and we’re off again.

Okay, now to the point I’m making: much of the speculation on solutions to the Fermi paradox rests on the assumption of ‘infinite growth’- of an inevitable, inexorable expansion to fill up as much space, grab as much resources, grow up your numbers- that in the absence of a pre-existing spacefaring civilization standing in the way, conquering the galaxy and beyond is but a few short steps, compared to the age of our galaxy, or the universe in general. After all, with the insane abundance of energy and matter in the visible universe, once you can tap into that (and we already can, on a primitive, miniscule level), it’s widely considered only a matter of time before every solar system is consumed, every star is surrounded by a Dyson swarm. But on what basis is this assumption made? Like the trees, growth needs to have a purpose and give a clear advantage over an alternative.

And if you use the argument that it doesn’t matter if a majority of a species/civilization chooses not to expand- all it takes is one or more outliers to set out on their own and eventually overwhelm the stay-at-homes. Well, why didn’t some rogue Roman general or Chinese eunuch start off across the Atlantic or Pacific to found colonies of their own? That is kind of how the Viking raiders got to Vinland, eventually. But there were specific pressures that got them going- climactic, demographic, political and social. And that’s on a single planet that’s already fuly settled and developed on some level. Outside of our planet, let alone our solar system, things are very different. Even if you can say that the new “space race” (or cold war) between the US and China spurs a new drive to reach and establish permanent settlement on the Moon, and demands for energy, data, and rare earths drive space development, does it stand that this competition must reach out to infinity? Like the gazelle and the cheetah, running faster than you have to doesn’t make sense, and can eventually hurt you.

I’ve noticed a lot of these types of models of interstellar colonization are conceived less by astronomers and astrophysicists, and more by economists who seem obsessed by the ‘number go up’ phenomenon of the stock market. The ‘grabby aliens’ hypothesis is one, but I remember reading an ANALOG magazine editorial in the 1980s by economist Warren Salomon (“Economics of Interstellar Commerce”, followed up by another article titled “The Wealth of Galaxies”), in which he argues that the answer to the ‘great silence’ of the Fermi Paradox is that humans are the only capitalists in the universe! He may have been saying this a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I sense this is the implicit assumption in a lot of Fermi paradox discussions- that any successful alien intelligence out there must be rapaciously grabbing anything not tied down screaming “mine, mine!”- or stealthily killing off any potential or actual competitors (Dark Forest, Beserker). Both of these are closer to projections of our own behavior than they are of what the evolution of biology can tell us of how life, and intelligence, finds a way (I mean intelligence in the animal world as a whole).

In the end, we may be the one lone, tall pine surrounded by squat, ancient bristlecones.

EDIT: I recall an interview JMG did on the "Event Horizon" podcast of David Brin, where Brin considered the importance of technologies like agriculture and animal husbandry, and all the environmental alteration and destruction that went with it- that it gave humanity an incentive to adapt, organize, and innovate enough to stay ahead of the curve, as it were. There may well be aliens out there as culturally advanced and complex as we are- but technologically never got past their Iron Age equivalent, and therefore be prone to repeated collapse and be silent to us in technosignatures, or even biosignatures.

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Years ago I came across a subway ad that was a plain text billboard mentioning a discount for some kind of service or product, I can't remember precisely what. But it ends with "And now that we have your attention, sex."

The joke apparently was that as you get older, the things that excite you change- like someone in their forties or fifties gets more excited at a Memorial Day sale at Kohl's than the prospect of getting it on (because the chances of the latter are slimmer than the former). Has anyone seen this ad, or any kind like it?

I remember watching an animated Jetsons movie based on a WWF wrestler waking up in the future to find out that wrestling is all done by robots. In light of the robot "marathons" just run in China, how soon will we see robotic teams doing either team sports like soccer or baseball, or one-on-one sports like tennis or fencing? Rules may have to be modified to accommodate the physical size or range of the machines, or battery lifetimes. And of course, just like some show up to Nascar events to see a car crash, people will show up to laugh as the clankers trip over themselves and spaz out, while human crews run on the field to pick up the pieces (this could even be a selling point to get initial ticket sales up).

Years ago I came across a subway ad that was a plain text billboard mentioning a discount for some kind of service or product, I can't remember precisely what. But it ends with "And now that we have your attention, sex."

The joke apparently was that as you get older, the things that excite you change- like someone in their forties or fifties gets more excited at a Memorial Day sale at Kohl's than the prospect of getting it on (because the chances of the latter are slimmer than the former). Has anyone seen this ad, or any kind like it?

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I have an idea for a short illustrated book- not a children's book, it has more adult-oriented themes but a bit of a parody of that genre (think Gary Larson's "There's A Hair In My Dirt!"). But I'm not an illustrator, and I don't have the money or connections to hire an artist.

I am open to using generative AI but I'm not familiar with the programs are out there, what they cost, and have some sense as to write prompts. And although I'm not so pearl-clutchy to cry "slop!" or "theft!" whenever someone brings up AI, if it turns out hiring a human is cheaper, I'll take it.

Note to mods: if this is not the place for this post, please PM me to direct me to a more appropriate group.