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#1 2003-12-27 12:10:48

Palomar
Member
From: USA
Registered: 2002-05-30
Posts: 9,734

Re: ExtraGalactic Migration

*I'm copying and pasting this very interesting post of Shaun's from the "Your Ethical Questions..." thread in the Terraforming folder.  We've touched on some of this information previously in the past, but not in great detail (IIRC):

"But I wonder if all of us here have a realistic grasp of how utterly 'immoral' and 'uncaring' this universe really is."

*Yep.  Nature is neither good nor evil:  It simply is. 

"In the New Scientist of Dec. 6th 2003, there's an interesting article which outlines the work of a Dr. Jeffrey Kargel, a planetary scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona. He's interested in the fate of our planet in the distant future and paints a fairly unpleasant picture of some of the events Earth can look forward to. The following is a summary of the main events as Dr. Kargel sees them unfolding in the coming eons:-

50 million yrs - Africa has rammed into Europe.
200 million yrs - The Americas have crashed into Euro-Africa.
250 million yrs - Pangaea Ultima forms.
500 million yrs - 95% of plants start dying.
900 million yrs - All plants die.
1.2 billion yrs - Oceans start boiling off.
1.5 to 2 billion yrs - Earth's spin axis starts to swing chaotically because the Moon drifts too far away to stabilise it."

*Our moon is drifting away from Earth at a rate of about an inch per year.  I believe I'm recalling that correctly.  I suppose the process could accelerate?

"3.5 to 6 billion yrs - Magma oceans form.
7 billion yrs - Sun has become a red giant star.
7.5 billion yrs - Magma oceans start to boil off.
7.6 billion yrs - Sun runs out of fuel and shrinks into a white dwarf.

   Notice how all life on Earth will be extinguished in roughly 1 billion years. There'll be no debate about it. This beautiful blue planet, which has sustained life for at least 3.5 billion years, is on notice and is approaching permanent retirement age. Where are mother nature's ethics; where is her morality?

   As Earth becomes uninhabitable, it's been estimated Mars will afford us as much as an extra 400 to 500 million years of life in the inner solar system before it too succumbs to the ever-inceasing solar energy output of our ageing star."

*Yep.  Stars have their life and death cycle too, etc.  Although I'm curious about that figure (400 - 500 million years).  Shaun, where does that figure fit in, precisely, with the list of figures Dr. Kargel gives?  I ask because Antares (the alpha star of Scorpius) is a red giant...and its diameter is wider than the diameter of the orbit of Mars, according to a book I own (the analogy to Mars' orbit is coincidental to this discussion; the book was published in the 1950s).  If you could slip Antares over our solar system and look down, Mars and all other planets sun-ward would be blocked from view (obliterated).  I don't know what size Antares was prior to its swell; perhaps just an "ordinary, run-of-the-mill" yellow star like our own.  Anyway, I'm curious as to the precise details of Kargel's estimates here, as I'm highly skeptical even life on Mars (human habitation) will be able to exist once our sun begins bloating into a red giant...but I haven't read Kargel's material and I don't want to make assumptions, thus my curiosity as to the finer details of Kargel's material.

You know, the Andromeda Galaxy and our Milky Way Galaxy are on a crash-course with each other.  If the human race is to ultimately survive (if it doesn't kill itself first...as stupid as we've been), we'll have to go the extra-galactic migration route.

Some folks here have previously (Phobos was one, if I recall correctly) mentioned humans possibly having other forms unlike the physical bodies we inhabit today -- and that technology assisting us in pushing out of the MWG.  But I'm not sure what has been meant, exactly, by those meanderings.

We've touched on the possibility of extra-galactic drives and migration in the past.  I'd like to see more input on this.  I know it's projecting far, far into the future, but it's tantalizing nonetheless.

--Cindy


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#2 2003-12-27 16:13:53

Byron
Member
From: Florida, USA
Registered: 2002-05-16
Posts: 844

Re: ExtraGalactic Migration

Very interesting thread, Cindy...the first thing that came to mind was the image of the five puppeteer worlds fleeing a surge of deadly radiation from the galatic core in Larry Niven's _Ringworld_.

Yes, stars live and die just like everything else...I'm just a bit surprised at the timeline for Earth's future...is it really going to get that toasty in a half billion years?

But Earth's "immediate" plight can easily be rectified by our (hopefully!) tech-savvy descendants, simply by slinging asteroids around Earth at regular intervals, shifting its orbit ever farther outward.  When the time comes, we'll be able to do it for Mars as well...and by the time the Sun turns into a red giant, humans will probably have both Earth and Mars in orbit around Jupiter...lol....and then when the sun finally bites the dust, we'll fire up Jupiter's core to make it into a mini-sun _2010_ style.

And yes, if technology progresses for just a couple thousand more years, not to mention millions of years, humans will have the capacity to flee our own solar system for greener pastures...a half billion years may not seem like a lot compared to how old the Earth is, but it sure is a heck of a long time for us mortal souls with our <100-year life spans...!

If you're looking for my personal idea of mounting a large-scale galactic migration...how's this to chew on:  Take a few of Saturn's moons, like Dione and Mimas, wrap them in a coating of super-high strength fiber webbing, hollow out the inside (at least a portion of it, anyhow), spin them up to provide some low-level gee on the inner surface, pump them up with air, mount some big ion motors at one of the poles and off you go.  So what if you can only accelerate at 1/10,000th gee or so....given enough time, you'll be moving pretty fast, heading to whatever safe haven that's been picked out for eventual settlement, like the risk-adverse puppeteer race of Niven's fertile imagination.

"But I wonder if all of us here have a realistic grasp of how utterly 'immoral' and 'uncaring' this universe really is."

I agree with Cindy on how she feels on this one.  Nature (minus "us") is just that...nature.  Stars and planets, galaxies and superclusters, with black holes thrown in for good measure.  I have nothing but pure and utter gratitude that nature has "seen fit" to include us in the picture as well.  When it comes down to brass tacks, we humans are just plain lucky to be running around on a "Goldilocks" planet that exists in a rare and delicate tapestry of circumstances (like the Moon serving as an anchor, Earth's stable orbit around a stable sun, not too many radiation storms in our neighborhood, etc, etc....)

Despite our incredibly tenous hold on life in a dangerous universe...we have one HUGE advantage against the cruelties of nature...our big, highly developed brains, which are still evolving even as we speak.  I'm just personally optimistic that we humans will eventually learn to stop hating each other and focus on settling the universe instead...lol...

B

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#3 2003-12-27 19:19:44

Palomar
Member
From: USA
Registered: 2002-05-30
Posts: 9,734

Re: ExtraGalactic Migration

*Um, I'm not sure about the following:

Byron:  "But Earth's "immediate" plight can easily be rectified by our (hopefully!) tech-savvy descendants, simply by slinging asteroids around Earth at regular intervals, shifting its orbit ever farther outward.  When the time comes, we'll be able to do it for Mars as well...

*If this were to be done -prior to- the sun's beginning to swell, we both know how quickly temperatures plummet the further away from the sun one goes.  Can they (meaning both Earth -and- Mars are inhabited by humans) manage to budge away from the sun in sync with its measured bloat, and thereby avoid freezing?  There's another factor:  Some red giants are not that stable -- they can blow (nova/supernova) rather abruptly.  Not all do, but...  I think their resources and $$$ would be better served finding the Exit Sign.

Byron:  "and by the time the Sun turns into a red giant, humans will probably have both Earth and Mars in orbit around Jupiter...lol....and then when the sun finally bites the dust, we'll fire up Jupiter's core to make it into a mini-sun _2010_ style."

*That's a very complex, interesting scenario.  There's Jupiters megalethal radiation belts prior to it being ignited...not to mention the big bloated sun (Antares-sized now) looming nearby.  Two stars so close to two tiny planets...I dunno...

I think humans had just better start preparing the ultimate
"exit strategy."  It's inevitable that our solar system will one day be toast.  Mars will be good training ground for hopping ahead.  And best of luck to them...what a task!

--Cindy


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#4 2003-12-27 19:34:25

Shaun Barrett
Member
From: Cairns, Queensland, Australia
Registered: 2001-12-28
Posts: 2,843

Re: ExtraGalactic Migration

Sorry Cindy!
    I've been less than clear in my explanation of the bit about Mars becoming a lifeboat for humanity.
                                         smile
    The part about Mars wasn't included in the New Scientist article; I read it on some obscure google site quite some time ago. (In retrospect, I can see that it would be easy to assume that factor came from the same article .. my apologies.)
    As far as where it fits in with Dr. Kargel's timetable of future events is concerned, I would be inclined to place it somewhere between the formation of Pangaea Ultima and the great dying of 95% of terrestrial plant life in 500 million years.
    Let's say that Earth is becoming very uncomfortable in about 400 million years. (Most of our plant life is still hanging on but the average daily temperature in Chicago in winter is about 40 deg.C!! i.e. 104 deg.F, with humidity constantly near 100% .. Don't even ask what summer in Florida is like! )
    At that point, as I understand it, Mars would still be colder than Earth is now, on average. And as the Sun gradually heats up, Mars would become more and more pleasant and become a balmy 'new Earth' for maybe 400 to 500 million years - until New Chicago in Cydonia gets just as bad as old Chicago in Illinois became!!   big_smile
    All this would take place while old Sol is still a main sequence star, long before the expansion into a red giant.

    Admittedly, all this is unlikely to bother us as a species, since most species don't survive in the same form for much more than an average of 4 million years. And, even if we are there for the 'big BBQ', as Byron points out we'll have technology beyond our wildest dreams today and should be able to survive the red giant phase our Sun will go through.
    If the manipulation of planetary orbits is routine by then, we could even wait out the red giant phase, avoid the out-puffing of stellar material as the Sun shrinks down to a white dwarf cinder, and manoeuvre our chosen planet into a close orbit around the ember of our once glorious star.
    A white dwarf star can go on radiating for hundreds of billions of years, much longer than its main sequence life span. As long as we're close in, we could keep comfortably warm for a very long time.
    When I said "our chosen planet" I meant that we might need something other than Earth, which by that time would have become geothermally dead. With no volcanism for mountain building, all the continents would have eroded into the seas and we'd live on a water world with no land masses. Without the volcanically-driven recycling of carbonate rocks to create CO2 in the atmosphere, we'd have trouble maintaining plant life too.
    I don't know where we'd get a 'fresher' planet to live on but I think we might need one!

    But, as Cindy says, galactic collisions and other long-term events will have had time to overtake us by then and we may have bigger problems to overcome than trivial things like moving planets around solar systems!!   tongue   :laugh:

    As for intergalactic migration, who knows? With the 'technology of the gods' in our hands, we may be able to circumvent Relativity with ease and travel the universe at will.


The word 'aerobics' came about when the gym instructors got together and said: If we're going to charge $10 an hour, we can't call it Jumping Up and Down.   - Rita Rudner

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#5 2003-12-27 19:57:58

Mad Grad Student
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From: Phoenix, Arizona, North Americ
Registered: 2003-11-09
Posts: 498
Website

Re: ExtraGalactic Migration

I wouldn't worry about the future of the human race for two reasons. 1) I'll most likely be dead some short time before or after the turn of the 22nd century, so it really doesn't matter to me or anyone I'm talking to right now. B) Humans are very creative, I'm confident my distant descendants will think of something, though we can already start now.

Keeping the neighborhood won't be too hard for the next three billion years. All we have to do is string out a huge sheet of opaque mylar at LaGrange point L1 to reduce the total amount of sunlight reaching the surface. This wouldn't be too hard, and also would be a heck of a lot cheaper than asteroid deceleration. We'll have the capibility to do this in 50-100 years, but won't need to for 300 million, in the meantime we can sit back in our hammocks bickering over oil in the Middle East (Though I'd rather not).  :laugh: 

However, this isn't a permanent solution. To preserve the human race after the sun goes Beatleguce on us we'll need to perform an exit-door procedure. I say we should send 2,000 people out to the nearest Earth-like planet/moon, there's gotta be one at least within 50 light years of here. We'll have the technology to do this in 200-300, and will have more pressing matters by the time we need to use it.

More urgent problem: Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are going to collide in about 1.2 billion years (I think). Presumably most stars from both will be pulled together by their gravity into a new supergalaxy, which is cool. smile  However, many of the stars are likely to condense into a thick cluster at the center exposing us to intense cosmic radition, not cool sad . In short, we have to get out, and go to another nearby galaxy, FAR easier said than done. I'm really not sure how we do that, but think of it this way: 1.5 million years ago the big new things were fire and hand axes. Today we have the internet, footprints on the moon, airplanes, deep-diving submersables, four spacecraft leaving the building, left tracks on Mars, and the Spice Girls. In another 1.5 billion years imagine where we'll be. I'm confident we'll solve the problem.


A mind is like a parachute- it works best when open.

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#6 2003-12-28 04:41:57

Gennaro
Member
From: Eta Cassiopeiae (no, Sweden re
Registered: 2003-03-25
Posts: 591

Re: ExtraGalactic Migration

Think Mad Grad drew the right conclusion. There's is no reason to reckon with only one Earth in coming times. I find that "fast" interstellar travel should be a couple of hundred years from now, especially if we begin to settle the solar system within the present century. With beam core antimatter drives, at least some 30% c should be attainable and with the photon drive, thought out by a German genius called Eugen S?nger already in the 1930's, I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually break the light barrier. Of course, fusion should be even closer. Perhaps at its peak, the age of fusion will design the first starships, capable of 5% lightspeed.
At the end of the present millenium I see no reason why humanity should not have settled a number of worlds within 25 light years or more. That's just a 1000 years people and you worry about events taking place hundreds of millions of years from now. A number of those solar systems will even be in a significantly more advanced state than Sol, but what does it matter?
They'll be home to their very own empire, race and brand of humanity for a lot longer than humanity has yet existed. In the post natural, post darwinian era that we now have entered, the problem I have is actually visualizing how we ever can grow extinct (provided of course we don't blow ourselves up before breaking out of the solar system).

Cindy, to return to your original post. Antares A is a red supergiant, meaning it was probably a white-bluish high-end type B star while still in the main sequence (think it has some 12 times the mass of Sol). Such stellar monsters don't last very long (maybe 30 million years), so Sol should not be able grow as large when it swells up. In fact a G-star in the range of our sun is estimated to grow to a maximum diameter of 1 AU, in other words stop swelling after it complacently has swallowed the Earth.
cool

Some notes on stars:
http://members.nova.org/~sol/chview/chv5.htm

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#7 2003-12-28 19:47:34

Palomar
Member
From: USA
Registered: 2002-05-30
Posts: 9,734

Re: ExtraGalactic Migration

Cindy, to return to your original post. Antares A is a red supergiant, meaning it was probably a white-bluish high-end type B star while still in the main sequence (think it has some 12 times the mass of Sol). Such stellar monsters don't last very long (maybe 30 million years), so Sol should not be able grow as large when it swells up. In fact a G-star in the range of our sun is estimated to grow to a maximum diameter of 1 AU, in other words stop swelling after it complacently has swallowed the Earth.
cool

Some notes on stars:
http://members.nova.org/~sol/chview/chv5.htm

*Thanks for the information, Gennaro.  smile  I should have Googled for it...guess I'm getting lazy!!  tongue  wink

Shaun:  "Admittedly, all this is unlikely to bother us as a species, since most species don't survive in the same form for much more than an average of 4 million years..."

*"In the same form"...care to speculate what other form homo sapiens may have evolved into by that time?  Some folks here have, in the past, made similar statements.  But they really haven't elucidated it.  I think Phobos mentioned the possibility of transferring personality and memory, etc., into androids/robots.  Is this what you have in mind?  Or that we grow big heads and evolve the ability to communicate telepathically like those zoo-keeping weirdos in the Star Trek pilot "The Menagerie"?  (ha ha)

Just curious...sincerely  smile

--Cindy


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#8 2003-12-31 15:44:14

jadeheart
Member
From: barrow ak
Registered: 2003-11-03
Posts: 134

Re: ExtraGalactic Migration

Cool thread... I was a big Niven fan in my younger days.

But there surely will be no Earth life that will be recognizable as even remotely human half a billion years from now.  If you look back at the timeline for evolution up to this point, there was not even life on land 500 million years ago.  Fish were the most evolved life form.  The only possible way there will be humans left is if, for some reason, we decide to maintain a static genome via biotechnical manipulation.  (Why would we do this?  We can't even look far enough into the future to decide where we want NASA to be let alone our own genome.)  I think the opposite condition will actually obtain-- we'll intentionally tinker with our own form and change it much faster than evolution would have.  (I'm thinking of Arthur Clarke's ideas from "2001" here.) 

Note also that the changes listed in Cindy's first post happen slowly enough to be compatible with evolutionary timescales.  Life will have time to adapt to the changing conditions up until life starts to die off due to increased solar output.  So, whatever intelligent life that remains may not WANT to change anything until the last possible moment, when conditions have become inimical to any kind of life.  I'm guessing that the only thing that will save the Earth that far down the road is sentimental attachment on the part of whatever intelligence resides in the neighborhood at that time.  (Assuming that something like sentimentality even exists that far down the road.  Emotions are the interaction of chemicals in the brain, and these chemicals & brains will likely evolve into higher levels of complexity over time.  500 million years from now the current human emotional spectrum will probably be viewed as being on the level at which we now view fish.)

Besides, humans will have left Earth to its own devices long before any of this starts to happen.  I'd imagine there are greener pastures out there in the unimaginable expanse of the Milky Way; we'll have left for them long before Sol starts swelling.


You can stand on a mountaintop with your mouth open for a very long time before a roast duck flies into it.  -Chinese Proverb

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#9 2003-12-31 23:28:18

Aetius
Member
From: New England USA
Registered: 2002-01-20
Posts: 173

Re: ExtraGalactic Migration

If humans could transfer their identities to android bodies, travelling between the galaxies wouldn't be as much of a problem. The Milky Way's core has so much energy, that perhaps a colony built near the core could harness it. Humans as we are could never travel for 30,000 light-years to the core, but perhaps androids could. The androids could establish a colony near the edge of the Milky Way's supermassive black hole, using local resources.

Converting the titanic amount of cosmic rays present into electricity might allow the androids to power an impressive array of neutral particle beam (NPB) generators.

The NPBs could propel a starship to relativistic speeds. The starship would ionize the incoming particle streams with its lasers, then deflect them off the backside of its magnetic sail.

Alternatively, the energy thus converted could also be used to create large quantities of anti-matter. A photon rocket could hypothetically reach something like 50% the speed of light.

Hopefully, our imaginary androids have acheived enough velocity to generate massive time dilation effects. If that's the case, then travelling for millions of light-years might really be doable in my opinion.

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#10 2004-01-01 05:10:53

Shaun Barrett
Member
From: Cairns, Queensland, Australia
Registered: 2001-12-28
Posts: 2,843

Re: ExtraGalactic Migration

Hi Cindy!
    Sorry I didn't see your most recent question about what might happen to humans over millions of years. Basically, I haven't a clue!
    But Jadeheart's response is logical and well-expressed (as usual) and covers some of the potentially huge number of possibilities that might eventuate.

    All I was trying to say with that "4 million year" thing was that species are really very transient things and it probably doesn't make much sense to ask what humans might do about such-and-such a problem in x million years.

    I'm not really losing any sleep over these events in the far future but I do find it vaguely disturbing that the only cradle of life we know of so far in the universe, and such a beautiful one that it may have no equal anywhere, is 'only a paltry billion years' away from sterility.
    It just seems unconscionable, that's all, and shakes one out of one's petty ethics about microbes on Mars. It seems to me, in the presence of such amorally cruel indifference on the part of Mother Nature to the fate of a whole planet-full of abundant life, that perhaps a bit of selfish species-specific imperialism on our part is quite justifiable.
                                                ???


The word 'aerobics' came about when the gym instructors got together and said: If we're going to charge $10 an hour, we can't call it Jumping Up and Down.   - Rita Rudner

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#11 2004-01-01 10:45:48

Aetius
Member
From: New England USA
Registered: 2002-01-20
Posts: 173

Re: ExtraGalactic Migration

There was a fascinating astrobiology lecture on one of the satellite channels, by the author of a new book about the fate of Earth-like worlds. It ties in nicely with this discussion.

The lecturer's point? Finding a living world like the Earth isn't just a matter of finding the right planet, it's also a matter of finding it at the right time in its natural evolution.

The part about the oceans being either boiled off, or completely subducted, was amazing. He said that if the oceans are lost to space without a runaway greenhouse effect, the Earth will become a bright pink desert planet.

He also envisioned the complete extinction of all plant species on Earth. It's gonna be a weird world.

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#12 2004-01-01 11:01:28

Palomar
Member
From: USA
Registered: 2002-05-30
Posts: 9,734

Re: ExtraGalactic Migration

*Aetius, if you can recall the name of the author, I'd like to know.  I'd like to either read the book, or get in on that lecture (fascinating flash-forward).

"...it's also a matter of finding it at the right time in its natural evolution."

I'd say.  smile

Earth is destined to become a bright PINK desert planet, huh?  Ugh (pink).

--Cindy


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#13 2004-01-16 20:28:00

Mad Grad Student
Member
From: Phoenix, Arizona, North Americ
Registered: 2003-11-09
Posts: 498
Website

Re: ExtraGalactic Migration

*"In the same form"...care to speculate what other form homo sapiens may have evolved into by that time?

I think what he was saying is that most animals by that point in time have evolved into some improved form. This will almost assuridly happen to humans, but in some odd ways that have never appeared before. For example, no other species before us has had the power to keep so many of the less medically fortunate alive for so long, compounding natural selection. Like it or not, all of the bad genes for stuff like diabetes, cancers, and sensory problems at birth are being passed down at a much higher rate than usual. This will mean that a lot of routes that ordinarily would be dead ends will be followed a little too far.

So you might anticipate that the end result will be that humans quickly degenerate into blind, alcoholic, cancer-ridden dead ends, but there's another factor, our ability for genetic modification. Already we have modified many other species, mice, fish, corals. In fact, there's a new type of fish you might have seen on the shelves of pet stores recently called GloFish. They are genetically modified zebra fish that glow flourescent red, and can be aquarium pets for about $5 (I suggest you buy some just to support genetic engineering).  Anyway, the point is that it's only a matter of time until we start modifying ourselves for our own purposes.

The first result will probably to weed out all genetically-tied cancers and disabilities, once all the religious groups get over their problem with technology. So that gives us a race of very good humans, genetically anyway. Next we'll start modifiying ourselves to suit our needs, different frames for various gravity levels on different planets, ability to withstand extremes depending on your preferences, and so on. We'll probably become several different "breeds" (Probably is the best word), each best suited to a specific environment. From there, who knows.

In any case, whoever my ancestors are have to leave by the tiem the Andromeda Galaxy gets here. Otherwise they're toast.


A mind is like a parachute- it works best when open.

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#14 2004-01-21 14:02:19

Gennaro
Member
From: Eta Cassiopeiae (no, Sweden re
Registered: 2003-03-25
Posts: 591

Re: ExtraGalactic Migration

Alternatively, the energy thus converted could also be used to create large quantities of anti-matter. A photon rocket could hypothetically reach something like 50% the speed of light.

- I'd like to add something here. The exhaust of a photon rocket, like the name implies, is light. This means that the optimum speed of the starship would actually be about twice the speed of light, since rocket ships can generally double their exhaust velocity!
Now, what happens is of course that the thrust directing mirror system can't make use of even the majority of the energy produced. Much already escapes in the form of uncharged particles, just like in a beam core antimatter rocket.
However, since the share of utilized energy might perhaps be something that can be improved upon in ways of which we have currently no idea - just like any team of racers want to max their engine's performance - perhaps one shouldn't rule out that the projected end velocity might eventually be substantially altered?
That's why I wrote the thing above about the photon rocket potentially even breaking the light barrier.

Hopefully, our imaginary androids have acheived enough velocity to generate massive time dilation effects. If that's the case, then travelling for millions of light-years might really be doable in my opinion.

- Provided of course that the theory in question is verily in accord with reality. smile

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#15 2004-01-21 15:46:47

Josh Cryer
Moderator
Registered: 2001-09-29
Posts: 3,830

Re: ExtraGalactic Migration

I think Kurzweil has it right when he says that... humans won't be... human. We'll evolve into little super-computers. Minds. It's easier to transport a coke-can sized mind (which can hold trillions of trillions of bits of data) with super-duper technology that can do self-replication and stuff like that than it is to build a space ship that will support a human.

This does not mean that humans wouldn't be travelling, though. You get descrutively scanned into a machine, that machine uploads your data into a mind, the mind shoots off to the nearest solar system (mind you its mass is extremely small, so we can effortlessly get it up to the speed of light), and you're rebuilt when you get there.

Not to say that there wouldn't be humans who would want to travel without the assistance of a mind (and prefer to use Battle-star Galactica type ships), but I think this is the most logical route we'll be taking.

To think, we can populate the galaxy in 10k years. That's a blink of an eye on the time scales of the universe.


Some useful links while MER are active. [url=http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html]Offical site[/url] [url=http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/MM_NTV_Web.html]NASA TV[/url] [url=http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mer2004/]JPL MER2004[/url] [url=http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/statustextonly.html]Text feed[/url]
--------
The amount of solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth totals some 3.9 million exajoules a year.

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#16 2004-01-21 20:16:17

Palomar
Member
From: USA
Registered: 2002-05-30
Posts: 9,734

Re: ExtraGalactic Migration

I think Kurzweil has it right when he says that... humans won't be... human. We'll evolve into little super-computers. Minds. It's easier to transport a coke-can sized mind (which can hold trillions of trillions of bits of data) with super-duper technology that can do self-replication...

*Erm...I have a feeling hard-core hedonists would reject this idea totally. 

Sharing files isn't quite the same as...oh, never mind (ahem).

No warm fresh-baked cookies to nibble on..no hot chocolate...no fizzy cold sodas to sip on...or ice cream cones to hurry up and slurp before the ice cream melts down your hand...no sunshine on your face...no puppy wiggling at your ankles...no hugs or kisses...

I don't want to be a computer chip, so there!  tongue  I said it.

--Cindy

(Thanks to the influence of Cobra Commander, I am becoming more boldly outspoken!)  wink


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#17 2004-01-21 23:46:05

Josh Cryer
Moderator
Registered: 2001-09-29
Posts: 3,830

Re: ExtraGalactic Migration

Hey, me either. Were I to live to this period (Kurzweil says we have about 30 years to go), I'd probably prefer to be human and live in some big sophisticated ship designed to keep my human body alive (though I wouldn't mind the ocassional mind backup).

But it's hard to argue against... virtual reality... as a place where people wouldn't mind wind up... being.

Consider online gaming. Many millions of people participate in 3D FPS and other MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing games; see Everquest for an example). These people do not find it bad that they 'waste' many hours a day in these worlds playing their little games. I myself have found myself playing Quake until late hours of the night. Lately I've been obsessing over Homeworld.

I don't mean to hijack this thread, though, I really don't. I was just trying to throw out the idea that humans could continue to evolve into creatures that aren't really human in any sense of the currently used word. And that this idea really does make sense as far as long term transportation is concerned.

We are, after all, the bits that make us up. A human body after compression is about 30 megs. The soul would be another quarter terabyte or something along those lines. Easier to transmitt that and a bit of tech than it is to transmitt the actual human.


Some useful links while MER are active. [url=http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html]Offical site[/url] [url=http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/MM_NTV_Web.html]NASA TV[/url] [url=http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mer2004/]JPL MER2004[/url] [url=http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/statustextonly.html]Text feed[/url]
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The amount of solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth totals some 3.9 million exajoules a year.

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