make me some tea: Wherever one turns up the soil, his crops grow back better and stronger.

Unless we've contaminated the soil, or the water is laced with chemicals.

malaktaus: The only way this could ever change is if we evolved to be less intelligent, which is in fact happening; the human brain has been gradually shrinking since the development of agriculture. By the time it starts making a real difference, however, it is very likely that we will have ways of countering the evolutionary trend, either through genetic engineering or through computer augmentation.

The human brain has been shrinking for the same reasons that car engines have shrank. They became more efficient and as such did not need to be as large. The brain takes up a quarter of our calorie intake. A smaller, more efficient brain will have an advantage against a larger and less efficient brain, assuming equal intelligence.

WelldeadLink: Blasphemous Knave: TheTeethoftheTiger: And as always innovation in the face of necessity will serve to save humanity.

I hope we're innovating mass sterilization or mass plague.

You first.

No, no, you first, I insist.

Pocket Ninja: fecundity

Yeah, seeing as how we're Romans 'n stuff...

/Latin, motherfarker! Do you speak it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck#Humans

People are oh so casual about climate but have an aneurysm if we rationalize health care.

Uh huh.

TheFredSavages: Pocket Ninja: fecundity

Yeah, seeing as how we're Romans 'n stuff...

/Latin, motherfarker! Do you speak it?

Well, it is Old French, really.., anyways, it ain't Murican!

Thorak:
The issue is timescale. You can't build a ship to run back and forth conducting trade like you read about in sci-fi. You could build an ark generational ship that'll take a hundred years or more to get there and have the tools to colonize and start over once they get there. It's a one-way trip, though, so we're probably only going to bother when we desperately need a way out.

I don't think I agree with you.

#1 - There will always be explorers; people who will cross the next hill just to see what's on the other side. Whenever we do get interstellar engines that can go 99% (or 99.999% or 99.999999%) of the speed of light, someone will want to be the first to go explore Alpha Centauri C. After that, who knows where someone will want to go.

#2 - There will always be people who think a better life is waiting for them at their destination. Think about the people who settled the "New World" in the 17th century. They were told it was a one-way trip and they would die there. They did but they also founded colonies and now trips from there to the homeland occur in hours, not months.

I'd like to think it's feasible one day but we'll see (or not).

malaktaus: It may turn out that interstellar travel is physically impossible

Virtually any engineering problem can be solved with brute force if you use enough of it. We worked out how to build an Orion Drive in the 60's, so propulsion isn't a problem. The main challenge to overcome in building a multi-generation interstellar ship is creating a self-sustaining closed ecosystem that will support the crew, but with adequate funding that problem could be solved in 10 years. Beyond that it's mostly just a matter using enough resources and money. A cheaper ground-to-orbit launch system would be very helpful but isn't essential.

Personally, I'm doing my part by being too physically and psychologically unattractive to mate.

TheTeethoftheTiger: haha, nvm, our prayers have been answered.

Please tell me that's a parody. Poe's law is in full effect with that one.

Coelacanth: malaktaus: Another stupid thing is this article. Humanity isn't going to go extinct any time soon, and comparing us to the dinosaurs is completely retarded.

We already almost went extinct once. We have genetic evidence that at one time there were fewer than 10,000 humans worldwide between 50 and 100 thousand years ago. The most likely reason was climate change brought on by a volcano.

We almost went extinct at a time when there weren't many of us in the first place and the bow was cutting edge technology. My point still stands.

malaktaus: someguy945: malaktaus: Shakespeare's Monkey: Did one of you guys get her preggers again?

/Great, just f*cking great.

I was going to, but I forgot my spelunking gear. Stupid mistake.

Another stupid thing is this article. Humanity isn't going to go extinct any time soon, and comparing us to the dinosaurs is completely retarded. Dinosaurs generally had brains the size of walnuts, and as hard as it is to believe sometimes, humans are pretty smart. Some of us are, anyway, and some is enough; a catastrophic drop in population is plausible, but total extinction is not. The only way this could ever change is if we evolved to be less intelligent, which is in fact happening; the human brain has been gradually shrinking since the development of agriculture. By the time it starts making a real difference, however, it is very likely that we will have ways of countering the evolutionary trend, either through genetic engineering or through computer augmentation. I'm convinced that anyone who really thinks humanity will go extinct is merely expressing their secret hope. They will be disappointed... well, not really, they'll just be dead, but you know what I mean.

Maybe we won't go extinct in 100 or 1000 or 10000 years, but it's silly to think that humans will continue on forever.

There is nothing that could conceivably kill us off until the sun expands and renders Earth uninhabitable. After that it really depends on whether or not we've colonized planets in other solar systems. It may turn out that interstellar travel is physically impossible, but if it is possible, and we master it, there is no reason that humanity would go extinct much before the eventual heat death of the universe. When I say 'humanity', I refer not only to our present species but also to any species it may evolve into; if Homo sapiens was replaced by its descendant, that might be extinction in the biological sense, but that would hardly matter in human terms.

this is ridonkulous. There are literally thousands, if not millions of things which could conceivable eradicate the human species. First thing that comes to mind is alien invasion. If another intelligent species has mastered space/time travel, then it is already established that they are far more advanced technologically than humans are. Since they see that we as a species are raping the planet, then they would look upon us like a virus and apply some antibiotic, plain and simple.

Even so, if you see someone walking down the street with a loaded gun pointed at their head, are you going to go up to them and start a conversation? Hell no, you wouldn't. That's exactly what humans are doing with nuclear weapons. We have the most destructive force known to man pointing at OURSELVES. There is no other planet in this solar system that has sentient life. Just that fact alone points to humans as a species being suicidal and batshiat crazy.

why, out of the millions of species that have been on this planet, do you even entertain the idea that humans are the ONE species which will outlive everything else? we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of a percentage of the length of time the dinosaurs have been around. Nobody can even CONCEPTUALIZE 65 million years, which is how long it's been since they've been EXTINCT.

What's that, you CAN conceptualize 65 million years? Really? When, in the best of circumstances, people live to be 100 years old? The earth is going to shake off humans like a case of bad fleas. No more, no less. That's all there is to it. Get used to it. To the planet, humans are no more important than the dodo bird.

RedEmily: malaktaus: RedEmily: malaktaus: RedEmily: uncletogie: jake3988: We're not going to kill the planet. No matter what we do or how epic we anally rape the Earth, it's going to be just fine. It'll end up causing us to go extinct (or close to it), but once we're gone (and at this rate, global warming will probably kill us in a couple hundred years)... it'll fix itself.

It'll take a long time depending on what we do to it, but it'll recover.

There are times where I wonder if that's not already happened once or twice.


This is kind of off subjects but I've often wondered if it is possible that civilizations lived on earth before us. I'm not talking about crazy alien theories. Could it be that there have been intelligent civiliztions that have lived and died out without us finding fossil evidence?

Anyone know what I mean?

No, that is completely implausible. Fossil evidence is occasionally found of jellyfish and other soft-bodied lifeforms; I'm pretty sure the prehuman equivalent of the Chrysler building would be much more likely to leave some sort of trace. You've been reading too much H.P. Lovecraft.

No, I have read Lovecraft. It was a serious question. Is it possible? The earth is billions of years old, isn't it.

I'm not saying it probable, I just wonder if it's at all possible?

The Earth is billions of years old, but multicellular life is considerably younger. There may be holes in the fossil record, but I don't think there are any big enough for your scenario.

I don't really have a scenario. I was just asking the question. I know that it most likely did not happen. Just wondering if maybe it could have happened.

It cannot absolutely be ruled out, but it seems, at best, to be an extreme longshot. There is a science fiction story (perhaps someone will remember the author and name) in which a long-lived alien reveals to humans that, prior to the Cambrian revolution, there was an anaerobic life form that achieved a high level of civilization, ultimately being rendered extinct by the atmospheric changes that led to our own evolution. When the narrator says that we never found any of their cities, the alien says, "After seven hundred million years? I should think not!"

Marginally more likely is the possibility that North American dinosaurs developed intelligence and created a civilization shortly before the Chicxulub bolide ended the Cretaceous period. The impact is thought to have destroyed all life in North America, and any evidence of cities is unlikely to have persisted.

So it is possible to create scenarios in which there were prehuman civilizations. However, they require heroically strained assumptions in the face of a total lack of evidence.

malaktaus: The resources needed, combined with the amount of radiation shielding necessary to maintain life in the void of space, might make the ship too massive to move a useful distance, no matter what we do.

The cool thing about a Nuclear Pulse Drive is that bigger is better -- more efficient and more reliable. You need a LOT of mass to handle the shock of having a string of nukes blowing up behind you,.

Yes, everyone agrees that the world needs a smaller population. But I'll be damned if people are ever going to stop biatching to death about how "opressive" and "human rights-hating" PRC's one child policy is.

/hypocrisy. add it to the list of things that will destroy man

Why come you don't have a tattoo?

mcsestretch: #1 - There will always be explorers; people who will cross the next hill just to see what's on the other side. Whenever we do get interstellar engines that can go 99% (or 99.999% or 99.999999%) of the speed of light,


There is one very huge, and not often discussed, problem with travelling at extremely high speeds - 0.1c and higher. Interstellar space is NOT empty. It has small "dust" particles in it - one bit of dust per 100 or 1000 cubic meters or so.. At the speeds you are discussing, an impact with a pin head sized dust grain will turn a large portion of your ship into plasma, and release a huge burst of x-rays (for anything that survived the initial impact). You will be hitting these particles fairly regularly, as a function of the cross-sectional area of your spacecraft.

It is a real world problem that is has never been addressed in all of the entirety of silly space flight science fiction (note: virtually all fiction to date involving interstellar flight falls into the category of silly.)

If you are going to a nearby star, you will not be doing it at 0.5c, guaranteed. Regardless of what propulsion system you envision.

This is great news. I will miss exactly none of you.

/the prophecy fulfilled, now my work begins.

Let's pause our contemplation of exterminating the planetary herpes that is the human race with this musical interlude, wherein a very large rock is used to press the global reboot button:



/Clicky image for SLYT not opening in a new window.

Just because we can destroy things, doesn't mean we should.

/poor Earth

ThrobblefootSpectre: It is a real world problem that is has never been addressed in all of the entirety of silly space flight science fiction (note: virtually all fiction to date involving interstellar flight falls into the category of silly.)

-sigh-

Defector dishes.... how do they work?

/yes, it's been covered.

Riotboy: Just because we can destroy things, doesn't mean we should.

Except us.

mcsestretch: I don't think I agree with you.

#1 - There will always be explorers; people who will cross the next hill just to see what's on the other side. Whenever we do get interstellar engines that can go 99% (or 99.999% or 99.999999%) of the speed of light, someone will want to be the first to go explore Alpha Centauri C. After that, who knows where someone will want to go.

The issue is time and acceleration.

We've got engines that would approach C, it's a matter of how fast they accelerate to that speed. Velocity in space is strictly a matter of time and acceleration. Any engine we've got now could hit 99.99999% of the speed of light, given enough fuel and time.

The issue is that it takes multiple human lifetimes of time to do so, and more fuel than is feasible to carry, because the reactions are relatively mass inefficient.

And even if you get that one mad rich dude, there's no reasonable way to follow him, nor is he likely to be able to return in his lifetime. If he can, then we've cracked the FTL conundrum, basically.

I am by no means saying it's impossible, but it takes a massive leap from our understanding of physics today. Trying to discuss FTL drives in the terms of current science would be like trying to explain personal computers to a guy from the Middle Ages in his own language. And without him wanting to burn you for witchcraft.


#2 - There will always be people who think a better life is waiting for them at their destination. Think about the people who settled the "New World" in the 17th century. They were told it was a one-way trip and they would die there. They did but they also founded colonies and now trips from there to the homeland occur in hours, not months.

I'd like to think it's feasible one day but we'll see (or not).

Those settlers were people with three entirely separate and distinct reasons for crossing the Atlantic. They were either so desperately poor or otherwise in trouble that they needed to escape, and were willing to grasp at any straw to do so. Or they were forced, some political exiles for instance. Or they were rich and saw opportunity for getting richer, in which case it wasn't a one-way trip for them anyway.


I'm just saying things would have to get that desperate again. People who were relatively comfortable and happy weren't selling all their worldly possessions to hop a ship to the New World.

It's also a difference of scale. The New World, even in 1492, was relatively easy to get to. You could make the northern trip without ever leaving sight of land; Scotland to the Orkneys to Iceland to Greenland to Newfoundland and south. Each of those individual trips is relatively easy; Norse explorers handled it at least 500 years earlier by that route, and there's evidence of others as well. It wasn't any more difficult than the known trading routes from Norway down to the Mediterranean, it's just that it was relatively unsettled and so there was little reason to make the trip at the turn of the millenium.

In 1492, there was a population boom that needed easing, which was fueling the expansionism of Europe as a whole. Which is the main reason it happened then, rather than earlier; it had nothing to do with Columbus, it had to do with the political and social atmosphere that Columbus saw and took advantage of.

That was a terrible article. Not sure if it was the Nobel prizewinner's fault or the author's, but that's three minutes I'll never get back.

Mykeru: Let's pause our contemplation of exterminating the planetary herpes that is the human race with this musical interlude, wherein a very large rock is used to press the global reboot button:



/Clicky image for SLYT not opening in a new window.

There is a special place in Hell for people who describe their own species as "planetary herpes." Please kill yourself, and take up residence there.

th0th: Sort of like a Total Perspective Vortex without the bothersome trouble of making a Fairy Cake.

Except for that giant aluminum sphere the last man will leave behind as a giant fark You to mother nature.

Population control and eugenics? Nobody?

Okay so here's an idea. What if some world power started implementing a voluntary eugenics and population control program using tax credits or federal grants and selecting for intelligence and physical health.

In a few generations I expect other world powers would want to start implementing similar models. That is of course unless we nuke ourselves back into the stone age first.

Thorak: Combine the two, and you've got the plot for Wyndham's The Chrysalids. Though admittedly, even there, NZ got off way better.

The Chrysalids was set in the Midlands of England, wasn't it?

This text is now purple: The Chrysalids was set in the Midlands of England, wasn't it?

Are you thinking of The Midwich Cuckoos, maybe?

Chrysalids was definitely in Newfoundland or Labrador. The entire point was that the two remaining bastions of humanity were these two places, NF and NZ, so far removed from any major power that the nukes didn't catch them.

The Midlands are way, way too close to London for that plot.

ThrobblefootSpectre: There is one very huge, and not often discussed, problem with travelling at extremely high speeds - 0.1c and higher. Interstellar space is NOT empty. It has small "dust" particles in it - one bit of dust per 100 or 1000 cubic meters or so.. At the speeds you are discussing, an impact with a pin head sized dust grain will turn a large portion of your ship into plasma, and release a huge burst of x-rays (for anything that survived the initial impact). You will be hitting these particles fairly regularly, as a function of the cross-sectional area of your spacecraft.

It is a real world problem that is has never been addressed in all of the entirety of silly space flight science fiction (note: virtually all fiction to date involving interstellar flight falls into the category of silly.)

The Orion system can deal with that. You need shielding anyway to save you from the giant nukes you're throwing out the back door.

But the nuclear reactions you're using can be used to generate a magnetic field to buffer at least the ionized particles out from your way.

Spread out over enough material and enough time, the energy of the remaining pinprick is tolerable. Hiroshima represented a couple of pounds of material reducing itself to energy. That's a lot of pinheads.

uncletogie: Defector dishes.... how do they work?

Yep, that's pretty much the pivotal question, and exactly my point. Even a trip the absolute nearest star requires technology fantastically more advanced than we currently have. All the people in here posting about how we simply built a big honking ship and slap an Orion drive on it using technology from 1960....nope. You will turn into an interesting to observe ball of sub-atomic plama milliseconds after getting up to speed.

Thorak: Chrysalids was definitely in Newfoundland or Labrador. The entire point was that the two remaining bastions of humanity were these two places, NF and NZ, so far removed from any major power that the nukes didn't catch them.

The Midlands are way, way too close to London for that plot.

But Chrysalids was set in a place that *had* been nuked. Just long ago. There was residual radioactivity. And I seem to recall the NZ contingent comes up the old American coast, as they describe the devastation. There's a definite sense that the blasted region is across the ocean. Labrador and NFL are too North American for that.

keypusher: There is a special place in Hell for people who describe their own species as "planetary herpes." Please kill yourself, and take up residence there.

No, you are not getting an upgrade to anal wart.

/Not yours.

Thorak: This text is now purple: The Chrysalids was set in the Midlands of England, wasn't it?

Are you thinking of The Midwich Cuckoos, maybe?

Chrysalids was definitely in Newfoundland or Labrador. The entire point was that the two remaining bastions of humanity were these two places, NF and NZ, so far removed from any major power that the nukes didn't catch them.

The Midlands are way, way too close to London for that plot.

And I was wrong -- it was Labrador.

I was ticked that he ripped off his own glue-gun designs from Kraken Wakes. It made *no sense* in Chrysalids.

The Cassandra wannabes are thick in this thread.

Lift the developing countries out of poverty and increase research into alternative energies (solar/fusion); that will solve any overpopulation issues and many environmental ones.

This text is now purple: But the nuclear reactions you're using can be used to generate a magnetic field to buffer at least the ionized particles out from your way.


Oh, I forgot to mention, the dust is silicates and carbon - won't be much affected by your magnetic field.

ThrobblefootSpectre: This text is now purple: But the nuclear reactions you're using can be used to generate a magnetic field to buffer at least the ionized particles out from your way.


Oh, I forgot to mention, the dust is silicates and carbon - won't be much affected by your magnetic field.

STFU geeks.

This text is now purple: Hiroshima represented a couple of pounds of material reducing itself to energy. That's a lot of pinheads.


Nope. About 1/2 a gram of mass was converted to energy in the Hiroshima bomb. The rest becomes particulate fallout. (That one single pinhead seems a lot more scary now doesn't it? :-)

Albertan: The Cassandra wannabes are thick in this thread.

Wow, you linked to the Wikipedia entry on Cassandra? Way to talk down, Santorum.

As Bill Bryson so elegantly put it;

1. Life wants to be.

2. Life doesn't always want to be much.

3. Life, from time to time, becomes extinct.

There is no "march towards complexity"- just our hubris as a species and short-sightedness as individuals.

It's not about the Earth. It'll recover from just about whatever we do within a couple million years. The problem is, I'll be dead by then. I'd rather that the next ~80 years be spent in a steadily-decaying toxic hell. I'm so sorry if that means some rich asshole somewhere makes slightly less money.

RanDomino: I'm so sorry if that means some rich asshole somewhere makes slightly less money.

Look on the bright side: Eventually rich assholes will take care of themselves.

/Oh wait...that's why we're in the schitter.

Come to the off world colonies.

Locovore me?