Ever? Really?
I'm thankful no one like you was in charge of NASA in the 60's telling everyone we'd never escape our own atmosphere and gravity.
Man I would friggin love for us to be able to develop technology that allowed for interstellar travel to other star systems but it simply isn't realistic. The scale of distance in space is unfathomably huge.
That's exactly the kind of thinking I was referring to. How many things once thought impossible are now within our reach, or have even become commonplace?
There's a NASA space probe passing by Ceres as we speak, all the way out near Pluto. That's happening right now, and you really think we'll never go past that? If so, that's sad.
Closing your eyes to possibilities means you won't see them even if they're right in front of you.
Will we achieve it by next week? Certainly not. But never? I don't believe that for a second.
I think it is more realistic that an alien race would colonize earth like Europeans colonized the new world.
Or completely wipe us out.
Man I would friggin love for us to be able to develop technology that allowed for interstellar travel to other star systems but it simply isn't realistic. The scale of distance in space is unfathomably huge.
That's exactly the kind of thinking I was referring to. How many things once thought impossible are now within our reach, or have even become commonplace?
There's a NASA space probe passing by Ceres as we speak, all the way out near Pluto. That's happening right now, and you really think we'll never go past that? If so, that's sad.
Closing your eyes to possibilities means you won't see them even if they're right in front of you.
Will we achieve it by next week? Certainly not. But never? I don't believe that for a second.
That's exactly the kind of thinking I was referring to. How many things once thought impossible are now within our reach, or have even become commonplace?
There's a NASA space probe passing by Ceres as we speak, all the way out near Pluto. That's happening right now, and you really think we'll never go past that? If so, that's sad.
Closing your eyes to possibilities means you won't see them even if they're right in front of you.
Will we achieve it by next week? Certainly not. But never? I don't believe that for a second.
Like the original arguments against the hoseless carige, anytime something new or never done before pops up there will be those who say it'll never work only to fuel the passion of the people who will one day prove those nay-sayers wrong.
Ceres isn't near Pluto, you are thinking of Charon. Ceres is between Mars and Jupiter, in the asteroid belt. However, we are also sending a probe to Pluto.
You're right. Don't I feel dumb. I always get Ceres and Charon mixed up in my head, especially lately since they've been talking about sending probes to both.
But the point still stands that they keep going further and further year after year and it's silly to think we'll somehow get to some arbitrary barrier and then just stop.
I think after Pluto and Charon and the other dwarf planets there, the Kuiper Belt will be next, and after that, somewhere beyond that. And after that, another milestone, and on and on.
Exploration won't just reach a point of 'good enough' where the people who are the explorers just decide that's enough and simply move on to other things. I just don't ever see that happening. Especially with people volunteering for a Mars colonization mission where they know there will be no return mission.
You're right. Don't I feel dumb. I always get Ceres and Charon mixed up in my head, especially lately since they've been talking about sending probes to both.
But the point still stands that they keep going further and further year after year and it's silly to think we'll somehow get to some arbitrary barrier and then just stop.
I think after Pluto and Charon and the other dwarf planets there, the Kuiper Belt will be next, and after that, somewhere beyond that. And after that, another milestone, and on and on.
Exploration won't just reach a point of 'good enough' where the people who are the explorers just decide that's enough and simply move on to other things. I just don't ever see that happening. Especially with people volunteering for a Mars colonization mission where they know there will be no return mission.
I'm not sure what it was, I don't remember if it mentioned which mission it was, but I'm pretty sure it was a non-NASA mission. I just remember reading about a group of people who had volunteered to go on a manned mission to Mars with no return trip. They agreed to go knowing full well they would never return to Earth and would die on Mars. You're probably right that it was Mars One.
What I took away from it was the commitment. Scam or not, they were on board and ready to give their lives to that pursuit. That's the kind of thing that lets me know that people won't give up trying to explore the solar system, or the desire to eventually go beyond it.
I don't know if we'll see something like FTL in my lifetime or not. But in my lifetime so far, scientists have gone from, "No way, it's impossible," to, "Maybe. We might figure it out." That may not seem like much, but going from impossible to maybe is the first step.
They've also said, though cautiously, that wormholes may actually hold the key to traversing the universe, almost like mass relays. They may change their minds, or they might change them then change them back a hundred times, or they may discover definitively that they were right.
I just think it's irresponsible to say never.
I agree, but there's a thing called being so open minded that your brain falls out. As FTL is one of my greatest scientific hopes for humanity, I hold hope out for the following two possibilities:I'm not sure what it was, I don't remember if it mentioned which mission it was, but I'm pretty sure it was a non-NASA mission. I just remember reading about a group of people who had volunteered to go on a manned mission to Mars with no return trip. They agreed to go knowing full well they would never return to Earth and would die on Mars. You're probably right that it was Mars One.
What I took away from it was the commitment. Scam or not, they were on board and ready to give their lives to that pursuit. That's the kind of thing that lets me know that people won't give up trying to explore the solar system, or the desire to eventually go beyond it.
I don't know if we'll see something like FTL in my lifetime or not. But in my lifetime so far, scientists have gone from, "No way, it's impossible," to, "Maybe. We might figure it out." That may not seem like much, but going from impossible to maybe is the first step.
They've also said, though cautiously, that wormholes may actually hold the key to traversing the universe, almost like mass relays. They may change their minds, or they might change them then change them back a hundred times, or they may discover definitively that they were right.
I just think it's irresponsible to say never.
I agree, but there's a thing called being so open minded that your brain falls out. As FTL is one of my greatest scientific hopes for humanity, I hold hope out for the following two possibilities:
1) the Alcubierre drive. I find this to be the LEAST probable possibility due to the reliance on exotic matter which probably doesn't exist.
2) wormhole manipulation. I find this to be highly plausible, and so do most physicists. First off, it not only doesn't violate relativity but is predicted and derives naturally from it. Second, we even have an idea about how it could be accomplished...although again, relying on exotic matter to provide negative gravitational pressure to keep the wormhole from collapsing. Despite this, just as black holes were predicted and subsequently proven to exist, so too will wormholes. And it offers our best chance of exploring outside of Sol in human-scale lifetimes.
How plausible/possible do you find warp like in Star Trek, or slip space like Halo?
Okay I just signed up, huge mass effect fan, wanted to start with this thread first.
Regarding interstellar travel; The Voyager spacecrafts were launched by Nasa in the 70's to explore the outer solar system planets. Once they finished their missions Nasa extended their mission to traverse as far out of the solar system before their systems died. They sent them on an exit path by using the gravity of the large gas giant planets to slingshot the probes out at increasing speeds.
Voyager 1 entered interstellar space about 2-3 years ago, after being in space for almost 40 years, is conducting science experiments and still has power for a few more years, for a mission it was never designed to do.
See link for recordings of sounds captured by Voyager in Interstellar Space.
https://www.youtube....h?v=LIAZWb9_si4
The New Horizon's probe is en route to Pluto & Charon to image the system up close. Once complete it will fly towards the Kuiper belt and then head outwards towards Interstellar space aswell at a faster rate then Voyager.
We are continuously advancing in our outer space capabilities both robotic and human. I recommend researching companies like SpaceX, Xcor Aerospace, Bigelow Aerospace, if you are interested in real life space endeavors.
SpaceX's long term goal is to colonize Mars. (Interesting note; Elon Musk founder and CEO lists Mass Effect among his favorite video games)
Xcor is designing a spaceplane to take passengers to orbit
Bigelow Aerospace is designing low cost inflatable modules for orbital space station assembly.
In thinking about the vast, astronomical distances involved in interstellar travel is indeed intimidating, but I don't think that such technology is outside our grasp. Humanity might not be looking outward right now but we are quite adapt at miniaturization, of building smaller and smaller devices with the same, if not more power than previous technological generations.
If this version of the Kardashev Scale is true, we might not even have to look into getting around FTL limitations, or brute forcing our way to the next star system.
- Microdimensional Mastery (John Barrow): John D. Barrow, going by the fact that humans have found it more cost-effective to extend any abilities to manipulate their environment over increasingly smaller dimensions rather than increasingly larger ones, reverses the classification downward from Type Ⅰ-minus to Type Omega-minus:
- Type Ⅰ-minus is capable of manipulating objects over the scale of themselves: building structures, mining, joining and breaking solids;
- Type Ⅱ-minus is capable of manipulating genes and altering the development of living things, transplanting or replacing parts of themselves, reading and engineering their genetic code;
- Type Ⅲ-minus is capable of manipulating molecules and molecular bonds, creating new materials;
- Type Ⅳ-minus is capable of manipulating individual atoms, creating nanotechnologies on the atomic scale and creating complex forms of artificial life;
- Type Ⅴ-minus is capable of manipulating the atomic nucleus and engineering the nucleons that compose it;
- Type ⅤI-minus is capable of manipulating the most elementary particles of matter (quarks and leptons) to create organized complexity among populations of elementary particles; culminating in.
- Type Omega-minus is capable of manipulating the basic structure of space and time.
According to this scale, human civilization is between III- and IV-minus.
If we can get to the point of manipulating the fundamental mechanics of space and time, we could simply alter the limitations imposed by physics.
Man I would friggin love for us to be able to develop technology that allowed for interstellar travel to other star systems but it simply isn't realistic. The scale of distance in space is unfathomably huge.
Its actually possible, even with current technology, its just going to be very, very expensive to built a generation ship and its going to take at least a few hundred years to reach our nearest stars.
As for FTL, its possible that the actual method and technology are extremely simple but we havent stumbled upon it yet. Look at how many different inventions have been accidents, or different applications of the same things.
How plausible/possible do you find warp like in Star Trek, or slip space like Halo?
Do you think this future (besides Reapers) is possible?
No.
The idea that life would consistently evolve into human-like creatures capable of speaking using virtually identical audible tones that allow them to communicate in a common language and form common governments over a time span of a few decades is really stretching credulity.
Also, Fermi's paradox is an issue. If there were enough civilizations capable of forming such a wide-ranging colonial government in the galaxy, it would seem likely that we would have observed some indication of their existence, or drawn their attention with a century of radio signals.
But science fiction doesn't have to be realistic. It needs to tell stories that people can relate to, and have a measure of plausibility (which isn't the same thing as realism.)
No.
The idea that life would consistently evolve into human-like creatures capable of speaking using virtually identical audible tones that allow them to communicate in a common language and form common governments over a time span of a few decades is really stretching credulity.
Also, Fermi's paradox is an issue. If there were enough civilizations capable of forming such a wide-ranging colonial government in the galaxy, it would seem likely that we would have observed some indication of their existence, or drawn their attention with a century of radio signals.
But science fiction doesn't have to be realistic. It needs to tell stories that people can relate to, and have a measure of plausibility (which isn't the same thing as realism.)
Not only that, but every alien species also conforms nicely to human concepts of morality and social interaction.
I enjoyed getting to know our alien squad mates as much as the next guy, but the fact that these alien societies are (more or less) a 1:1 analogue of human culture and ideas was well into the realms of fiction. I would imagine that if there was a real life Council or galactic government, we would be the lowest of the low in their political ladder; especially if we were the newest additions to said galactic government.
In real life humanity would most likely be the Volus or Elcor of the setting, and Commander Shepard would be a farce like Blasto.
This is actually a huge topic that can't be covered in a single post, or even a single thread.
I do believe that intelligent alien life exist in the milky-way, but I think it is more like the Protheans: conquering race that consumes and assimilates everything it touches. Think Europeans and Natives when America was discovered. Also, a topic that Bioware missed in ME series was technological singularity (outside of trying to shoehorn this into the series using the Catalyst). It can be very well possible that a race was wiped out and its created machines remain, or that it uploaded it consciousness into some kind of network (think Lucy).
Maybe even the alien life will be so foreign we will not even be able to recognize it.
As for FTL travel, outside of wormhole theories it is impossible with the current physics knowledge. But I do think that there is alot more going on than we know and we will find out that Einstein wasn't totally right like we found out Newton wasn't totally right.
I must give credit to Bioware in creating a universe so interesting, and yet not filled with space magic, that it is very thought provoking.
No, we actually wont. Both Einstein and Newton are totally correct within the bounds of the physics that the math describes. That's the key point. Newtonian mechanics is a partial description of nature. At the very large and massive and the very fast, special and general relativity accurately describe nature. Outside of those bounds, the equations of relativity simplify to the equations of Newtonian mechanics.This is actually a huge topic that can't be covered in a single post, or even a single thread.
I do believe that intelligent alien life exist in the milky-way, but I think it is more like the Protheans: conquering race that consumes and assimilates everything it touches. Think Europeans and Natives when America was discovered. Also, a topic that Bioware missed in ME series was technological singularity (outside of trying to shoehorn this into the series using the Catalyst). It can be very well possible that a race was wiped out and its created machines remain, or that it uploaded it consciousness into some kind of network (think Lucy).
Maybe even the alien life will be so foreign we will not even be able to recognize it.
As for FTL travel, outside of wormhole theories it is impossible with the current physics knowledge. But I do think that there is alot more going on than we know and we will find out that Einstein wasn't totally right like we found out Newton wasn't totally right.
I must give credit to Bioware in creating a universe so interesting, and yet not filled with space magic, that it is very thought provoking.
I know a lot of scifi gets flak over it about how a lot of aliens look like humans or are generally humanoid, but look at the diversity of life on Earth. there are millions of different species. At least hundreds of which could have evolved into sentient life, and even if they did not most of them occupy a niche in ecosystem that is quite high on a foodchain.
So if there is a planet out there that has similar conditions with similar basic chemistry as our planet, then why wouldnt it evolve in a similar way? sure the permutations are kinda endless but species like krogans and salarians while humanoid are different in a lot of aspects.
Also for a type of stellar or interstellar civilization that we can understand, so basically a technical civilization that relies on science and tools it requires the species that actually uses them to be similar to us, it requires a high enough intelligence to invent things and relatively high manual dexterity to actually put them together. It also requires for the species to have conflict with their nature and each other, a species that comes into balance with itself on their own planet within the timeframe enough to produce enogh population to fill the planet would stabilise itself, it would work with nature rather than conquer it. So it wouldnt need to research FTL.
And if its similar in those parts then similarities or at least parallels in culture are quite likely.
Plus, here is an idea. For those who have watched the latest Godzilla movie, Godzilla is intelligent in the movie but its different than our own, its an absolute alpha predator intelligence, powerful enough to count as a natural disaster, as an act of nature, it has no need for tools, its already strong enough, it has no need for philosophy or science, and since they can lie dormant for what seems to be decades at a time or even thousands of years, they would not require high reproduction rates, and since they are intelligent most of them would sleep preserving their status quo, such an intelligence could simply exist out there, top of their food chain, top of their ecosystem powerful enough to not feel threatened, intelligent enough to understand that. they would never need space travel, for all we know Jupiter might be a home to giant dragons, just floating for years without movement fed by planets radioactivity, by the volatile gases in the atmosphere. they could be intelligent but if there is no threat from the outside and no social pressure from within their society is static. How do you interact with someone if they have absolutely no need or interest to interact with you?
Which is why most alien species that we see in scifi is humanlike at least in some aspects, and probably why alien species that might exist will be similar to us, other species will exist but they are far,far less likely to ever need to interact with us.
No, we actually wont. Both Einstein and Newton are totally correct within the bounds of the physics that the math describes. That's the key point. Newtonian mechanics is a partial description of nature. At the very large and massive and the very fast, special and general relativity accurately describe nature. Outside of those bounds, the equations of relativity simplify to the equations of Newtonian mechanics.
And both are partial descriptions themselves, because at the very small - quantum mechanics is necessary to describe nature. At larger scales, the equations of quantum mechanics simplify to the equations of Newtonian mechanics.
So, it's not that any of them are "wrong". They are all absolutely right, but describing different aspects of the same thing: Nature and the universe.
There is really only one major final barrier to our understanding of physics, and that is unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics completely in order to construct a true Theory of Everything. When that happens, our understanding of nature will be virtually complete and we should be able to deduce, over time, if any loopholes exist that would enable effective FTL travel.
Yeah plus for all we know FTL might be really easy we just havent stumbled upon it. FTL, gravity control and whole host of other technologies could be so simple that we are not looking in the right place for them. Just because the theories that brought us this far have become ever increasingly more complex it does not mean a solution would be complex.
Yeah plus for all we know FTL might be really easy we just havent stumbled upon it. FTL, gravity control and whole host of other technologies could be so simple that we are not looking in the right place for them. Just because the theories that brought us this far have become ever increasingly more complex it does not mean a solution would be complex.
No.
The idea that life would consistently evolve into human-like creatures capable of speaking using virtually identical audible tones that allow them to communicate in a common language and form common governments over a time span of a few decades is really stretching credulity.
Also, Fermi's paradox is an issue. If there were enough civilizations capable of forming such a wide-ranging colonial government in the galaxy, it would seem likely that we would have observed some indication of their existence, or drawn their attention with a century of radio signals.
But science fiction doesn't have to be realistic. It needs to tell stories that people can relate to, and have a measure of plausibility (which isn't the same thing as realism.)
Personally, I suspect that those species which survive the Fermi bottleneck do so via adopting a synthetic existence, and that the most common form of life in the cosmos is synthetic life that doesn't particularly care about covering the entire galaxy for selfish or curious means.
Me too. They have other stuff going on.
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