Recently Learned Science Facts and Theories

[Audiogen]

Post any Interesting Science Facts and Theories you learned recently...


A neutron star is about the size of a city but has the mass of over 1 million Earths.

[tumbling.dice]

New research says that 36 contactable alien civilizations are likely to exist in the Milky Way Galaxy.

[Din Djarin]

Lol That would be a theory, not a fact.

[tumbling.dice]

Key word is likely.

[Meliai]

New research says that 36 contactable alien civilizations are likely to exist in the Milky Way Galaxy.

I was just reading about this
God i hope at least a couple of them are more intelligent than humans

[WritersPanic]

If they are, we'll probably be eaten.

[Lynnbrown]

I hope so too...but that they have PITY on us and maybe intervene.

[tumbling.dice]

I was just reading about this
God i hope at least a couple of them are more intelligent than humans

I hope the first message they receive from us is not a picture of a dog sitting in front of a birthday cake with the caption "aaaawe".

[Undies]

I hope the first message they receive from us is not a picture of a dog sitting in front of a birthday cake with the caption "aaaawe".

hmm, maybe that's the first message we received from them?

[tumbling.dice]

If so I'd have a suggestion for who our first interplanetary astronaut should be.

[neonspectraltoast]

Has it occurred to anyone else here that one can't logically or scientifically deduce how many alien civilizations are in the galaxy? Could be 36, could be 10,000. They don't know these things.

[Din Djarin]

Indeed, it could also be zero.

[tumbling.dice]

I was reading about 'Murder Hornets', invasive Asian hornets that have moved into the Pacific Northwest. The queens are around 2" long and have wingspans of 2 3/4". The concerning thing (to me) is they use honeybees as a food source. They can destroy an entire honeybee hive in just a few hours. As if honeybees didn't have enough problems right now.

[Amerijuanican]

I've found a few dead honeybees around here recently. I was happy that they were getting more plentiful this year.

[Audiogen]

I was just reading about this
God i hope at least a couple of them are more intelligent than humans

I hope the first message they receive from us is not a picture of a dog sitting in front of a birthday cake with the caption "aaaawe".

I think it would behoove us to have backup names for exoplanets potentially hospitable to alien life. If a super advanced civilization made the interstellar trip to Earth, I'm not sure calling their home planet the name of one of our telescopes and/or some random alphanumeric data set characters would go over well.

[themnax]

I think it would behoove us to have backup names for exoplanets potentially hospitable to alien life. If a super advanced civilization made the interstellar trip to Earth, I'm not sure calling their home planet the name of one of our telescopes and/or some random alphanumeric data set characters would go over well.

why not, in that case, just ask them theirs and start using it?

and indeed, one number is as good as another for what is not known. 30 has a nice feel to it, for what is within the 'local' pie slice of our galaxy.
but we don't live in a universe that owes anything to what has a nice feel to us.

if we launch as 12 year olds, what lies withing the radius we could reach at 'the speed of light' before dying of old age?
we don't know what percentage of solar systems harbor at least one planet capable of supporting life.

of course we don't know the range of lifespans of non-human sapience either. the one thing we do know, is that its just as far from there to here,
as it is from here to there.

it is entirely possible, likely even, that the distances between are too far to be travelled within the span of a single lifetime. ours or theirs.
on the other paw, its entirely possible they're practicing non-interference and doing a good job of it.

[Undies]

Has it occurred to anyone else here that one can't logically or scientifically deduce how many alien civilizations are in the galaxy? Could be 36, could be 10,000. They don't know these things.

i've always been annoyed by the assumption that life can only exist in conditions identical to those on earth. i mean, look at how many different types of lifeforms there are here on earth. they survive under all kinds of different conditions. hell, there's lifeforms here on earth that shouldn't be able to exist in conditions that they have been proven to exist in, according to science. who's to say that some form of life can't happen in a hot, heavy atmosphere that's pure nitrogen? it's not like a scientist has created that condition and then monitored it for billions of years to see if something pops up; they just say "humans can't live there so nothing can."

i bet there's asshole scientists on venus saying "no life can possibly exist on earth, look at all that toxic oxygen they have there."

[Audiogen]

why not, in that case, just ask them theirs and start using it?

and indeed, one number is as good as another for what is not known. 30 has a nice feel to it, for what is within the 'local' pie slice of our galaxy.
but we don't live in a universe that owes anything to what has a nice feel to us.

I was taking into account a language barrier of some sort but numbers being the easiest sort of pattern recognition and the least thoughtful in terms of identification. It was mostly for a laugh or to say something absurd tho.

of course we don't know the range of lifespans of non-human sapience either. the one thing we do know, is that its just as far from there to here,
as it is from here to there.

it is entirely possible, likely even, that the distances between are too far to be travelled within the span of a single lifetime. ours or theirs.
on the other paw, its entirely possible they're practicing non-interference and doing a good job of it.

It's definitely too far to be travelled within the span of a lifetime for us. If we're going with the assumption that life develops in a relatively similar manner throughout the cosmos, I suppose we could imagine a planet that's been more stable, not subjected to as many asteroid bombardments, natural disasters and changes in the atmosphere/land to where the planet didn't go through as many different eras as Earth and thus alien life could have a significant head start on us and created technologies allowing them to exponentially extend their lifespans. Perhaps with such stability, they are less concerned with some of the trials and tribulations of Earth, or moreover our species, such as War, Famine, disease and eco destruction.

It is hard to fathom a species having the ability to endure the duration and possessing the energy output necessary to achieve interstellar travel however.

[Audiogen]

Asteroids that explode while in the air can potentially be just as or more destructive than asteroids that hit the ground.

[Irminsul]

But you must have known that the nukes dropped in WW2 were set to explode above the ground to maximise their intensity, yeah? ?

[Irminsul]

New research says that 36 contactable alien civilizations are likely to exist in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Ol' Irms Anunnaki nonsense is starting to feel a little more real me thinks. ?

It's all going to start feeling very real soon, few red faces me thinks.