I love stories like this. A subtle reminder how inconsequential our actions are on this planet in the grand, unplanned scheme. I look forward to reading HN with my breakfast each morning then going to a job that helps me raise a family and have fun on the weekends. I read stories of war, corruption, sadistic leaders, and great suffering. I've learned to appreciate the joys of life and have come to terms that we are not here for a long time - just for a good time.
"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
One of the first gravitational wave detections by LIGO was I think the merger of two black holes or maybe a black hole and a neutron star. It was over a billion light years away I think but was so energetic that it conveted approximately 5 Solar masses into energy in about one second. That's ~10^48 Joules. In 1 second that is ~10^48 Watts.
For comparison, the Milky Way has an estimate of 5x10^36 Watts so we're talking about the energy output, very briefly, of roughly a trillion Milky Way galaxies.
The other that gets me is amgnetars. These are neutron stars with an insane magnetic field. The strongest detected exceeds 1 billion Tesla, making is 30 trillion times stronger than Earth's magnetic field. Get too close and it would flatten atoms and ultimately break molecular bonds and rip electrons out of your body. Google seems to think that happens at ~1000km, which is pretty close to get to a neutron star but still, that's a magnetic field.
These things are quite rare and quite unstable. If you think about it, they must have a lot of protons to generate a field so strong, which means that the gravity is overcoming the strong nuclear force but also the electric repulsion.
> If you think about it, they must have a lot of protons to generate a field so strong
Not necessarily. Neutrons have a magnetic moment. As I understand it, there is a magnetohydrodynamic model of how a magnetar's field gets generated, which would require protons, but it's not the only model and we don't have enough data to be able to rule out other models.
> A subtle reminder how inconsequential our actions are on this planet in the grand, unplanned scheme.
I don't like that our culture has developed statements like this.
Every single action you make on planet Earth is more consequential and impactful than the countless parsecs of worthless unobtainable space dust that astrophysicists and science promoters like to glaze over.
Space is nothing compared to the unfathomable amount of synaptic connections in your brain, or the impact you can have on someone's life by hugging them.
Let's piss away all the small blue dot sentiments. They're old and pointless.
Very doubtful when you really dig into what is involved. We probably will never make it out of the solar system. To another star is a pipe dream. We will wreck our planet soon enough and the likely outcome is our species will go extinct. This will probably happen in the next few thousand years or sooner.
I think the planet will do just fine without us but we will likely hit one of many great filters long before we colonize anything outside of Earth. The list of dumb things we do as a civilization are too long to list on HN. I am honestly very surprised we still exist and can still reproduce.
This is my position as well - people say we need to do things for the planet. Planet will be just fine - it's us who will suffer and honestly it's for the best. Just end this shit
Without new physics that isn’t even remotely visible on the horizon and that utterly contradicts most of what we believe to be true, this isn’t going to happen. Robotic AI probes sent to other star systems to send back telemetry? Sure, fine. Flesh bags sent to self-replicate on terraformed worlds out in the stars? Not a whisper of a microscopic chance.
If by "children" you mean self-replicating viral robot swarms, then maybe. Nothing biologically descended from humans will ever leave the heliosphere in any form that could be considered living.
While the sun has nothing to the with the rest, >500g a week of red meat is linked to intestinal cancer[1][2] and the billionaires should be paying more taxes if you asked me
It's really the plastic straws that are the problem. That and avocado toast. And in 1-2 billion years when the Sun has heated up the Earth such that it's uninhabitable anyway (or 100 years at the rate we're going), we can at least feel comfort in all the shareholder value we've created along the way.
This is like your typical 2-story US house "eating" a baseball. Completely trivial occurrence, cosmologically speaking, unless you're specifically looking for it.
I love stories like this. A subtle reminder how inconsequential our actions are on this planet in the grand, unplanned scheme. I look forward to reading HN with my breakfast each morning then going to a job that helps me raise a family and have fun on the weekends. I read stories of war, corruption, sadistic leaders, and great suffering. I've learned to appreciate the joys of life and have come to terms that we are not here for a long time - just for a good time.
"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
-Bill Watterson
Just don’t think about all the suffering you or I could ease with the money we spend on a “good time.”
We’re not the good guys. We rationalize the inescapable selfishness placed there by ages of evolution.
One of the first gravitational wave detections by LIGO was I think the merger of two black holes or maybe a black hole and a neutron star. It was over a billion light years away I think but was so energetic that it conveted approximately 5 Solar masses into energy in about one second. That's ~10^48 Joules. In 1 second that is ~10^48 Watts.
For comparison, the Milky Way has an estimate of 5x10^36 Watts so we're talking about the energy output, very briefly, of roughly a trillion Milky Way galaxies.
The other that gets me is amgnetars. These are neutron stars with an insane magnetic field. The strongest detected exceeds 1 billion Tesla, making is 30 trillion times stronger than Earth's magnetic field. Get too close and it would flatten atoms and ultimately break molecular bonds and rip electrons out of your body. Google seems to think that happens at ~1000km, which is pretty close to get to a neutron star but still, that's a magnetic field.
These things are quite rare and quite unstable. If you think about it, they must have a lot of protons to generate a field so strong, which means that the gravity is overcoming the strong nuclear force but also the electric repulsion.
> If you think about it, they must have a lot of protons to generate a field so strong
Not necessarily. Neutrons have a magnetic moment. As I understand it, there is a magnetohydrodynamic model of how a magnetar's field gets generated, which would require protons, but it's not the only model and we don't have enough data to be able to rule out other models.
> A subtle reminder how inconsequential our actions are on this planet in the grand, unplanned scheme.
I don't like that our culture has developed statements like this.
Every single action you make on planet Earth is more consequential and impactful than the countless parsecs of worthless unobtainable space dust that astrophysicists and science promoters like to glaze over.
Space is nothing compared to the unfathomable amount of synaptic connections in your brain, or the impact you can have on someone's life by hugging them.
Let's piss away all the small blue dot sentiments. They're old and pointless.
Well said
There is a pretty significant chance that ours will be a starfaring civilization and that our children will reshape the very heavens.
Very doubtful when you really dig into what is involved. We probably will never make it out of the solar system. To another star is a pipe dream. We will wreck our planet soon enough and the likely outcome is our species will go extinct. This will probably happen in the next few thousand years or sooner.
I think the planet will do just fine without us but we will likely hit one of many great filters long before we colonize anything outside of Earth. The list of dumb things we do as a civilization are too long to list on HN. I am honestly very surprised we still exist and can still reproduce.
This is my position as well - people say we need to do things for the planet. Planet will be just fine - it's us who will suffer and honestly it's for the best. Just end this shit
I suppose zero is a pretty significant number.
Without new physics that isn’t even remotely visible on the horizon and that utterly contradicts most of what we believe to be true, this isn’t going to happen. Robotic AI probes sent to other star systems to send back telemetry? Sure, fine. Flesh bags sent to self-replicate on terraformed worlds out in the stars? Not a whisper of a microscopic chance.
If by "children" you mean self-replicating viral robot swarms, then maybe. Nothing biologically descended from humans will ever leave the heliosphere in any form that could be considered living.
Our kids can't change a tire.
My ex wife's parents couldn't change a tire. I had to do it for them, once.
Boomer moment. That's your fault for not teaching them.
Oh come on man. That's just because they know we should be hovering by now ;)
We must prevent our sun from doing this by eating less meat and paying more taxes.
While the sun has nothing to the with the rest, >500g a week of red meat is linked to intestinal cancer[1][2] and the billionaires should be paying more taxes if you asked me
[1]https://www.wcrf.org/preventing-cancer/topics/meat-and-cance... [2]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03088...
It's really the plastic straws that are the problem. That and avocado toast. And in 1-2 billion years when the Sun has heated up the Earth such that it's uninhabitable anyway (or 100 years at the rate we're going), we can at least feel comfort in all the shareholder value we've created along the way.
Good point, clearly a solar system with too many liberals and no second amendment.
This is like your typical 2-story US house "eating" a baseball. Completely trivial occurrence, cosmologically speaking, unless you're specifically looking for it.
Mogged
https://archive.md/CtsG6
"Just"