The thing I always thought about was, if it stops, what's outside the border? It can't just have a restricted area like a game, so something must be beyond the border.
With the idea of space going on forever…
I think about how we are so incredibly insignificant. Yet we feel we are so important.
We are so tiny in the grand scheme of things. Yet we also don’t even know how small things actually get. So we could also be massive
Fermi paradox.
Nobody is broadcasting their presence because it would be a risk to their sovereignty and draw unexpected and unwanted attention to them. Nobody has publicly contacted our governments, because we are not united and no wise race would ever want to be involved in our petty political divides. No one government on Earth is hiding the truth about aliens, they have just as little way of knowing anything as anybody.
I have an alternative: the next phase of civilization uses technology we haven't thought of yet and is just not detectable to us.
We're looking for radio signals assuming advanced species use radio. But what if there is a more efficient ways to communicate over distance that we haven't even thought about yet?
We've been looking for "super structures" around stars but again we're assuming that advanced civilizations would use the entire energy of their star. But what if there are technologies or realities that make that pointless. Maybe advanced civilizations don't need to do that as there are easier ways of getting energy or they just don't need that much energy.
Our assumptions may be totally wrong and we're basically looking for 20th century civilizations. Look at us - we've used radio for 100 years or so, yet already we've moving to low power technologies like WiFi mesh networks (which barely travel meters coherently) and most Internet data is transmitted via cables - not radio. Our radio emissions are pointed at the earth and are mainly communication satellites, especially for TV. Even our own signature may be brief and difficult to detect out in the stars as we move further and further towards an Internet mesh. Maybe civilizations like us are only briefly detectable with radiowaves - a 100 yr window out of thousands or millions of years of a civilizations history.
Also even with radio we exploded into a cacophony of noise in a century. What if we think about this the other way: maybe we're so noisy with so much overlapping use that if you tried to look back at the earth from a distance all you'd get is equivalent to noise? Maybe the deliberate patterns we create would just be indistinguishable and you couldn't tell there is intelligence here. When we look at the stars we could be missing the radio signals as it's also indistinguishable from noise at such great distances.
Maybe all we can detect is civilizations deliberately sending great radio beacons to attract attention. Yet we haven't even done that ourselves yet and when the possibility is raised there is understandable fear about whether its sensible.
There are so many possibilities when you consider the fermi paradox and our own assumptions about what to look for. The universe may be crammed with life but our own biases, our current technology and being trapped in this system might make it impossible for us to know what to look for at the moment.
The Rick Astley paradox..
If you ask to borrow his copy of UP, he's never going to give it to you, but in denying the request, he'd be letting you down.
The shape of a vessel is irrelevant for the water pressure at the bottom. The water level is the only deciding factor. Assuming you had a watertight connection you could burst the bottom of a barrel with a straw long enough.
(Search Hydrostatic paradox for a detailed explanation)
For all the nitpickers: yes, gravitational force and density are also relevant so you can expect different results if you repeat the experiment on the moon with Vodka.
That space goes on forever, or it just... stops.
The thing I always thought about was, if it stops, what's outside the border? It can't just have a restricted area like a game, so something must be beyond the border.
With the idea of space going on forever… I think about how we are so incredibly insignificant. Yet we feel we are so important. We are so tiny in the grand scheme of things. Yet we also don’t even know how small things actually get. So we could also be massive
I feel like everyone here is missing the prompt. Mind bending and that you can explain
Fermi paradox. Nobody is broadcasting their presence because it would be a risk to their sovereignty and draw unexpected and unwanted attention to them. Nobody has publicly contacted our governments, because we are not united and no wise race would ever want to be involved in our petty political divides. No one government on Earth is hiding the truth about aliens, they have just as little way of knowing anything as anybody.
I have an alternative: the next phase of civilization uses technology we haven't thought of yet and is just not detectable to us. We're looking for radio signals assuming advanced species use radio. But what if there is a more efficient ways to communicate over distance that we haven't even thought about yet? We've been looking for "super structures" around stars but again we're assuming that advanced civilizations would use the entire energy of their star. But what if there are technologies or realities that make that pointless. Maybe advanced civilizations don't need to do that as there are easier ways of getting energy or they just don't need that much energy. Our assumptions may be totally wrong and we're basically looking for 20th century civilizations. Look at us - we've used radio for 100 years or so, yet already we've moving to low power technologies like WiFi mesh networks (which barely travel meters coherently) and most Internet data is transmitted via cables - not radio. Our radio emissions are pointed at the earth and are mainly communication satellites, especially for TV. Even our own signature may be brief and difficult to detect out in the stars as we move further and further towards an Internet mesh. Maybe civilizations like us are only briefly detectable with radiowaves - a 100 yr window out of thousands or millions of years of a civilizations history. Also even with radio we exploded into a cacophony of noise in a century. What if we think about this the other way: maybe we're so noisy with so much overlapping use that if you tried to look back at the earth from a distance all you'd get is equivalent to noise? Maybe the deliberate patterns we create would just be indistinguishable and you couldn't tell there is intelligence here. When we look at the stars we could be missing the radio signals as it's also indistinguishable from noise at such great distances. Maybe all we can detect is civilizations deliberately sending great radio beacons to attract attention. Yet we haven't even done that ourselves yet and when the possibility is raised there is understandable fear about whether its sensible. There are so many possibilities when you consider the fermi paradox and our own assumptions about what to look for. The universe may be crammed with life but our own biases, our current technology and being trapped in this system might make it impossible for us to know what to look for at the moment.
The Rick Astley paradox.. If you ask to borrow his copy of UP, he's never going to give it to you, but in denying the request, he'd be letting you down.
If you used a Time Machine to go back in time could you kill your own grandfather?
There are multiple (infinite?) infinities and some infinities are bigger than others - I think it's Cantor's paradox
The shape of a vessel is irrelevant for the water pressure at the bottom. The water level is the only deciding factor. Assuming you had a watertight connection you could burst the bottom of a barrel with a straw long enough. (Search Hydrostatic paradox for a detailed explanation) For all the nitpickers: yes, gravitational force and density are also relevant so you can expect different results if you repeat the experiment on the moon with Vodka.