Outer Space Thread

[Arthur Dent]

Without any exotic physics, you can imagine one day getting to the point where you could send probes that can make the journey in thousands of years. Given cosmic timescales (the Earth has on the order of a billion years left), that's actually plenty fast enough to explore the galaxy, though it's probably harder to imagine the equivalent of the ancient Egyptians building an exploration for us.

[wart57]

Worm holes.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Without any exotic physics, you can imagine one day getting to the point where you could send probes that can make the journey in thousands of years. Given cosmic timescales (the Earth has on the order of a billion years left), that's actually plenty fast enough to explore the galaxy, though it's probably harder to imagine the equivalent of the ancient Egyptians building an exploration for us.

You lost me here....

[Arthur Dent]

Just meant that the ancient Egyptians would have the same relationship to us that we would have to the future civilization waiting to hear back from our interstellar probe. Technological challenges of building such a thing aside, it's more or less impossible to image humans being willing to invest in such a long term project.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Just meant that the ancient Egyptians would have the same relationship to us that we would have to the future civilization waiting to hear back from our interstellar probe. Technological challenges of building such a thing aside, it's more or less impossible to image humans being willing to invest in such a long term project.

Makes sense. But the obvious difference is communication. It'd be pretty easy, I'd think, to keep a document. No telling what changes occur over the next couple thousand years, and no doubt they will be massive, but you'd think that with all the forms of communication today it'd be pretty easy to relay the message if not have an entire group of some form of government responsible for maintaining the program.

I thought you were getting into the dark conspiracy world of the pyramids being the product of an alternate life form put here for us to use to, well, explore space or something.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Not to derail the thread, but some of those documentaries about the pyramids are quite, uh, fascinating.

[Arthur Dent]

Whatever the advances in communication technology, the chances that we'd forget about this project after several thousand years seem pretty high to me. I think what you'd need is some kind of secret society charged with guarding the truth, like the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Ha. And, here I thought you had faith in humanity.

[Farewell Friends]

Not to derail the thread, but some of those documentaries about the pyramids are quite, uh, fascinating.

Now I'm intrigued. Explain.

Regarding the TRAPPIST-1 system, it would be mind-blowing to stand on the surface of a planet, look at the sky and see six other planets.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Not to derail the thread, but some of those documentaries about the pyramids are quite, uh, fascinating.

Now I'm intrigued. Explain.

Regarding the TRAPPIST-1 system, it would be mind-blowing to stand on the surface of a planet, look at the sky and see six other planets.

Oh my gosh, every which way you want to go with them there's a theory. First off, no one really knows how they were built. So, there's that. Of course this leads to aliens and/or a higher power doing it. There's also a guy claiming that they used water to 'float' all the blocks into place. Quotes from contractors saying they could not build them with today's technology in the timeframe the Egyptians did it which sounds made up but whatever... The claim leads back to aliens/gods. Then there's the fact that there are multiple pyramids built around the same time period all over the world despite no known communication between areas. Then there's the alignment of them all over the world being built in supposedly religous sites in a straight line... Then there's the dimensions that people theorize prove the Egyptians knew what a meter was and what pi was and what the golden number was and fibbonaci numbers were and blah blah blah. Being that the meter wasn't adopted until the 1700s or so, it is construed as proof that the Egyptians/other civilizations couldn't have built them. You could spend a month going through everything and be dumber for doing so.