I like Jeff, but I'm pretty sure he muted me because he doesn't like my views on a lot of things.
Thankfully, my block list and mute list are still empty.
Thankfully, my block list and mute list are still empty.
Man, considering the next 100 years is exciting, but considering the next trillion years is depressing. The solution to the Fermi paradox is probably that solar systems where life survives the death of its planet and particularly the death of its sun is the inevitable evolution away from intelligence.
I honestly don't know how geologists and astronomers can make this shit their day job. It's a bleak view of things, looking at geological or astronomical timescales.
If we send some extremophiles to the moons of Jupiter life will thrive for a trillion years, but sentient life really requires an energetic universe to work -- partially because sentience requires energy, but partially because sentience only makes sense in a complicated world. You don't need a big brain to float around in an ocean collecting energy from osmotic gradients or next to rocks picking up stray hydrogen molecules.
So for now I'll focus on the next 100 years where human thriving and partial extinction will coexist -- because I can't do anything about a trillion years from now, but I can definitely help with the next 100 years by focusing on the next 18.
I honestly don't know how geologists and astronomers can make this shit their day job. It's a bleak view of things, looking at geological or astronomical timescales.
If we send some extremophiles to the moons of Jupiter life will thrive for a trillion years, but sentient life really requires an energetic universe to work -- partially because sentience requires energy, but partially because sentience only makes sense in a complicated world. You don't need a big brain to float around in an ocean collecting energy from osmotic gradients or next to rocks picking up stray hydrogen molecules.
So for now I'll focus on the next 100 years where human thriving and partial extinction will coexist -- because I can't do anything about a trillion years from now, but I can definitely help with the next 100 years by focusing on the next 18.
I think one of the most important keys would be getting it spinning. It would take energy on an order of magnitude that the human race is incapable of imagining, but so is moving a whole planet into the habitable zone -- if you can do one, maybe you could do the other.
There's evidence that the core of Venus is still molten since one reason for all the SO2 seems to be volcanic eruptions, but there's only a very weak magnetic field that doesn't seem to be caused by the core. This seems to be because Venus has an insanely long day -- over 200 earth-days.
The lack of spin also could be the reason why Venus appears to lack plate tectonics, since the lack of spin results in a much more stagnant core.
Venus famously has quite a lot of Sulphuric Acid (H2SO4) in its upper atmosphere which does in fact deteriorate into SO3 and H2O, but the H2O is broken up into H and O by UV, and then whatever H and O arrive are basically stripped away by solar wind, keeping the planet super dry. Get a magnetic field, and you could start seeing water in the atmosphere again, which would also help reduce the greenhouse effect.
In the end, it might make more sense on a geographical timeframes scale to look at Europa instead. Mine through 40km of ice, and you find yourself in an endless ocean heated by orbital forces to just above 0C, leaving you with a temperature gradient you can use for energy generation, as well as a moon worth of water. As the sun expands into a red giant that region would even become part of the habitable zone for a few hundred million years before freezing once again and potentially remaining basically as it was until orbits go wonky. Having 40km of ice above you sounds claustrophobic, but given that you'll need to survive the radioactivity of space, it might not be such a bad deal.
I assume our form of underwater mining might be like a baleen whale, just purifying water and keeping whatever we find.
And since the crust is deep but also just water, you'd just need to send over something that makes heat consistently -- An RTG is one option, but also a small scale nuclear reactor, just melt melt melt and eventually you're underground.
It's not a very nice life, mind you. It's basically living in low gravity high pressure enclaves for a trillion years that are likely to be essentially pitch black. There's CO2 on that moon, however, and it's possible that there's ammonia, and if that's the case then you can have a hard life that can nonetheless exist without requiring solar system class levels of energy such as would be required for moving planets or kicking Venus into a spin (and unlike Venus, the Europa plan would survive the end of the Sun)
Over a trillion years of surviving on Europa, you could also have humans evolve or evolve themselves into something more suited to the environment -- After far less than a million years I'd suspect we'd have figured out far length IR vision, probably pressure proofed our bodies, maybe even given up on breathing gasses and just oxygenated water within our habitats. At that point, it's just a matter of conserving elemental carbon and nitrogen and producing oxygen and maintain the energy collection via the gradients between the surface and underground -- You might not even need to hit surface, presumably you could find a way to utilize temperature, pressure, or salinity gradients under the oceans to produce energy.
One thing is that the 40km ice wall means evolution would be slow down there I bet -- Even gamma rays don't like 40km of ice. It's probably radioactively dead as a doornail.
Crazy to think though, if life exists somewhere out there, is there another species that took this path?
There's evidence that the core of Venus is still molten since one reason for all the SO2 seems to be volcanic eruptions, but there's only a very weak magnetic field that doesn't seem to be caused by the core. This seems to be because Venus has an insanely long day -- over 200 earth-days.
The lack of spin also could be the reason why Venus appears to lack plate tectonics, since the lack of spin results in a much more stagnant core.
Venus famously has quite a lot of Sulphuric Acid (H2SO4) in its upper atmosphere which does in fact deteriorate into SO3 and H2O, but the H2O is broken up into H and O by UV, and then whatever H and O arrive are basically stripped away by solar wind, keeping the planet super dry. Get a magnetic field, and you could start seeing water in the atmosphere again, which would also help reduce the greenhouse effect.
In the end, it might make more sense on a geographical timeframes scale to look at Europa instead. Mine through 40km of ice, and you find yourself in an endless ocean heated by orbital forces to just above 0C, leaving you with a temperature gradient you can use for energy generation, as well as a moon worth of water. As the sun expands into a red giant that region would even become part of the habitable zone for a few hundred million years before freezing once again and potentially remaining basically as it was until orbits go wonky. Having 40km of ice above you sounds claustrophobic, but given that you'll need to survive the radioactivity of space, it might not be such a bad deal.
I assume our form of underwater mining might be like a baleen whale, just purifying water and keeping whatever we find.
And since the crust is deep but also just water, you'd just need to send over something that makes heat consistently -- An RTG is one option, but also a small scale nuclear reactor, just melt melt melt and eventually you're underground.
It's not a very nice life, mind you. It's basically living in low gravity high pressure enclaves for a trillion years that are likely to be essentially pitch black. There's CO2 on that moon, however, and it's possible that there's ammonia, and if that's the case then you can have a hard life that can nonetheless exist without requiring solar system class levels of energy such as would be required for moving planets or kicking Venus into a spin (and unlike Venus, the Europa plan would survive the end of the Sun)
Over a trillion years of surviving on Europa, you could also have humans evolve or evolve themselves into something more suited to the environment -- After far less than a million years I'd suspect we'd have figured out far length IR vision, probably pressure proofed our bodies, maybe even given up on breathing gasses and just oxygenated water within our habitats. At that point, it's just a matter of conserving elemental carbon and nitrogen and producing oxygen and maintain the energy collection via the gradients between the surface and underground -- You might not even need to hit surface, presumably you could find a way to utilize temperature, pressure, or salinity gradients under the oceans to produce energy.
One thing is that the 40km ice wall means evolution would be slow down there I bet -- Even gamma rays don't like 40km of ice. It's probably radioactively dead as a doornail.
Crazy to think though, if life exists somewhere out there, is there another species that took this path?
It's clearly still got a functioning core, but the atmosphere of sulphuric acid isn't really my jam.
Seems like if we have enough energy to move a planet into a habitable zone then having a sun might not be that big of a deal. I'm thinking that to move Mars into an orbit in the habitable zone for example might take so much energy you'd spend billions of years trying to break even.
Besides energy constraints, we would also have a big problem that suns give off a bunch of energy that is essentially destructive to all forms of life we know of.
The Earth is uniquely situated because we have a magnetic field due to the molten core, but that same core is also a taking time bomb -- the continent of Australia it's mostly desert, completely unlivable, and in about 250 million years a new supercontinent will form which will be a mass extinction event that could include humans -- supercontinents end up dry and hot like Australia, at least that's what the models tell us will happen. So you have the power of the sun on one hand which will toast our DNA without the ionosphere, and you have the power of seismic drift on the other which will toast us due to most of the surface of the Earth becoming a giant unlivable rock -- and that seismic activity is a necessity because you need the molten core to protect life on Earth. On the other hand, it's not the only thing that we have to worry about including core cooling, and solar brightening. A cosmic fist will eventually close around the planet Earth.
Really helps you understand how fragile life is, and how lucky we are to live in this particular moment in the history of our planet.
Within what I'm talking about, Mars will eventually enter the habitable zone, but it will remain impossible to live on because it has no core. I guess if we had enough time and unspeakable amounts of energy to reactivate Mars's core, but again you're probably talking about so much energy if you had it you might not need the Sun.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go cry in the corner for the rest of my life.
Besides energy constraints, we would also have a big problem that suns give off a bunch of energy that is essentially destructive to all forms of life we know of.
The Earth is uniquely situated because we have a magnetic field due to the molten core, but that same core is also a taking time bomb -- the continent of Australia it's mostly desert, completely unlivable, and in about 250 million years a new supercontinent will form which will be a mass extinction event that could include humans -- supercontinents end up dry and hot like Australia, at least that's what the models tell us will happen. So you have the power of the sun on one hand which will toast our DNA without the ionosphere, and you have the power of seismic drift on the other which will toast us due to most of the surface of the Earth becoming a giant unlivable rock -- and that seismic activity is a necessity because you need the molten core to protect life on Earth. On the other hand, it's not the only thing that we have to worry about including core cooling, and solar brightening. A cosmic fist will eventually close around the planet Earth.
Really helps you understand how fragile life is, and how lucky we are to live in this particular moment in the history of our planet.
Within what I'm talking about, Mars will eventually enter the habitable zone, but it will remain impossible to live on because it has no core. I guess if we had enough time and unspeakable amounts of energy to reactivate Mars's core, but again you're probably talking about so much energy if you had it you might not need the Sun.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go cry in the corner for the rest of my life.
Not to mention, most of the big orgs or NGOs that would want to use AI slop the most don't want to touch the cool parts of the fediverse because their AIs will start being too cool for school.
I used to think I'm special but eventually I realized I'm just retarded. My life got a lot better once the truth was out.
The collapse started 30 years ago, and at this point the die is cast, and it will be global.
It's one of the core themes in my next book Future Sepsis, the future will look much different than the past 70 years.
Who will remain in the future? The kids of people who had kids. Which isn't a lot of people, the statistics are absurd. It's a human mass-extinction event.
Will there even be a Russia in 50 years? I mean, they're sending an awful lot of their future to die off in a time where they don't have the birth rate to support sending a bunch of men off to die.
It's one of the core themes in my next book Future Sepsis, the future will look much different than the past 70 years.
Who will remain in the future? The kids of people who had kids. Which isn't a lot of people, the statistics are absurd. It's a human mass-extinction event.
Will there even be a Russia in 50 years? I mean, they're sending an awful lot of their future to die off in a time where they don't have the birth rate to support sending a bunch of men off to die.
Unfortunately the charter isn't worth the paper it's no longer written on since our culture doesn't hold it as sacrosanct the same way Americans do.
"don't you remember when Jesus said 'let he who is without sin cast the first stone'? That means nobody can be judged for anything ever. I haven't read the Bible of course, but I'm sure the next line was 'go, and commit adultery some more'"!