Yeah, it totally could be.

That’s true, it does assume interstellar travel is physically possible, but at this point there are forms of interstellar travel that we know are possible.

Solar sails for instance, we know those work, we’ve tried it. Now if you wanted to travel to another star system with a solar sail, it’s just a matter of scaling that proven technology way up. We’re not ready to do that today, and we won’t be ready in the next 20 years, but to think that we wouldn’t be ready in 500 years, I find that idea far fetched.

But a much better technology would be fusion propulsion. With fusion drives you could get your cruising speed up to a meaningful fraction of the speed of light (perhaps 5-10%). At that rate you can make it to the closest stars in less than 100 years. And that technology is not at all far fetched. We truly are approaching working fusion power plants, it’s extremely likely that we can eventually develop fusion propulsion, or at the very least, fusion powered electrical propulsion (ion drive).

As for if it will ever be economically possible, I’m not at all worried about that. The fact is, there are a lot of resources and opportunities right here in our solar system, just waiting for people to utilize them. So people definitely will start mining and manufacturing in space eventually. And as we start to operate more in space, we will naturally continue to iterate and improve our methods of getting around. In short, over time it’s going to get cheaper and cheaper to make space ships and we’re going to get better and better at doing it. The economic factors are likely to fall into place eventually.

And finally, will interstellar travel ever be possible socially? Hey, your guess is as good as mine. I don’t think we have any way to answer that…

That’s definitely the right question! And honestly we don’t know, but it’s evident that we are first.

Given the age of the universe, statistically it should have already happened by now.

I’m not sure that’s true… I’m pretty sure that our sun is old for a main sequence yellow star in our galaxy. When you compare how long it takes for a star to get to the point ours is now, compared to the age of our galaxy, I believe it suggests that sol is part of a first wave of stars of its type. So if life really requires a star like this one to start up, then intelligent life starting just now could be right on time.

Now why is our start perfect for life? Again, we don’t know, but evidently it is. Sadly we only have this one data point, this is the only star where we know there’s life. So assuming that something about our type of star is perfect is about as sensible as assuming that life could start around any star. Is it that other kinds of stars produce too much radiation in the Goldilocks zone? Or is it that other kinds of stars are too variable in the amount of heat they produce? Or that other kinds of stars don’t tend to have rocky planets? We don’t know, but something about main sequence yellow stars could be special, and we have one of the first of those stars in this galaxy.

So declaring “we’re the first” requires some assumptions, but they aren’t crazy assumptions, and a lack of evidence of other older civilizations makes those assumptions stronger.

And to your point, the universe is much older than this our star, so I suspect intelligent life has developed many times before us, at least in older galaxies. But sadly I don’t expect us to ever meet life from another galaxy. While I think stars within a galaxy are close enough for travel between them, galaxies are very, very far apart. I don’t think life has much chance of traveling to other galaxies, at least not without some method of ftl travel (which I am also not optimistic about).

I don’t think there is a great filter. I think there’s an easy solution to the fermi paradox that doesn’t require great filters, we’re just the first intelligence in this galaxy.

Here’s my reasoning: intelligent species that manage to develop space travel probably do tend to expand out into their galaxy. When they achieve this level of technology they can settle most of all of their galaxy in a matter of 10,000 years or so. That time period is very brief on an evolutionary scale. It’s estimated that life began on earth 3.7 billion years ago. That means it took about 3.7 billion years for earth to produce intelligent life, and then from that point it would take a mere 10,000 years to reach modern day, and 10,000 more years to settle the whole galaxy. That expansion happens so quickly compared to how long it took the planet to develop intelligent life, that the chance of two civilizations rising at the same time becomes very small.

It all boils down to this: there are no intelligent aliens out there in our galaxy, because we are the first intelligent species in our galaxy. We know we’re the first because if we were second, then aliens would already have settled this star system.

Probably there are lots of alien civilizations out there in the universe, but they’re in different galaxies.

My son caught his first fish! A 3 inch bluegill, we have an incredibly adorable photo!

Also, to quote another poster in this thread…

And thank you for the question! I include this opportunity to share my joy as a good thing that is going on with my weekend.

Oh, you can finish it up pretty quickly when you decide to. Just make a b-line for where all the big dungeons obviously are. You don’t need much for gear.

Oh damn… You should try to finish it, the end is so satisfying!

The legend of Zelda Twilight princess.

I finished the last dungeon, collected all the extra stuff and every side quest I could find. I literally got right up to the lead up to the final Gannon fight… Then I was like “meh, I’m done”.

Yeah I dream, but mostly when I’m sleeping.

Humans are great computers, we’re just not digital. Our brains are definitely analogue computers, where closer neurons or stronger synapse connections can mean higher voltage signals from one cell to another. This is a very powerful and nuanced form of computing. It’s not great for exact calculation of numbers, but it is great for interpreting data, even extremely large data sets. Human brains (many animal brains really) are also really fantastic at image processing in particular.

If it’s worthwhile to have a dedicated video card in your pc, then likewise, it would probably be worthwhile to have human brains in your evil robot hivemind. It would make some kids of processing much more efficient.

Sounds like a fire hazard.

For the majority of applications you need data centers for, latency just doesn’t matter. Bandwidth, storage space, and energy costs for example are all generally far more important.

Jordan’s furniture imax in Reading ma.

• It’s one of the only 4k Lazer projection systems on the east coast, the picture is fantastic.

• It’s a furniture store so the seats are comfy

• Buttkickahs

• Fudruckers

Can you “predict” a storm when it’s already raining?

I mean… The apps are already single platform only. iOS apps are written in C#, Android apps are written in Java. They are not in any way compatible. If you want an app to work on both platforms you literally need to build it twice. It’s not twice as much work, but it’s nearly that. And if you only know how to develop in one of those platforms, it’s a lot more work to learn the other.

I think demanding something work on multiple platforms isn’t really a fair requirement, especially for smaller developers, and it would likely result in fewer apps existing at all.

I’m ready to reinstall 7, problem solved.

That seems like quite a leap.

How could this ever even work? Isn’t the cat out of the bag. China will make chips if it wants to… I don’t see how you could stop them.

I want robot body parts.

I want to live forever, or at least until I get lazy and flash some shady firmware to my robotic heart…

Well, you could always try twice…