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Timeline of the far future

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Re: Timeline of the far future

#151

Post by christianbryant »

ansible wrote: post #129
christianbryant wrote: post #89

While I'm not totally on board with outlooks on a technological singularity a la Kurzweil and peers, what does it mean that there is no real representation of that idea here? For example, Kurzweil's "law of accelerating returns" where the speed of technological change increases exponentially has many flaws according to scientists I respect greatly, yet also has many hints at possible futures, ironically also accordin…

It is a controversial idea, and most people can only imagine a future for humanity where things look pretty much as they do now, but with slightly better technology (cf Star Trek, where meat bags are flying among the stars, mostly unchanged from present humanity). I'm fairly certain we're looking at the end of human civilization one way or the other within the next 100 years max. The Global Pollution Epidemic, robot…

Even Kurzweil's updated ideas and projections in The Singularity is Near from around 2005 still make assumptions of humanity having a longer technology maturation period than 100 years. I actually have the same opinion as you when it comes to our time left if we can't make some global changes; it bums me out, having two girls who are not even in High School yet.

Re: Timeline of the far future

#152

Post by contingencies »

jsdalton wrote: post #11

Amazing that the entirety of human civilization as we know it fits in a smaller time scale than the very first event on this timeline (10,000 years from now). So while these time spans are minuscule on an astronomical scale, they are enormous on a human scale.

the entirety of human civilization as we know it fits in a smaller time scale than the very first event on this timeline (10,000 years from now).

Well, it depends how you define civilization. Humans reached Australia 60,000 years ago. Many substantially complex settled civilizations existed 3,000 years ago. Ancient Egypt's dynastic period began 5,000 years ago.

So you could say it's 1/6th of Australia's habitation time, or merely two Egyptian stories.

Re: Timeline of the far future

#153

Post by smt88 »

supermdguy wrote: post #137
smt88 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how the duration of a second affects the metre?

Not OP, but "The metre is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299 792 458 second" - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre

But in that case, doesn't the "second" constant change (or the coefficient) and a metre remains the same length?

Re: Timeline of the far future

#154

Post by tpudlik »

Simon_says wrote: post #140
21 wrote: post #8

> The length of the day used for astronomical timekeeping reaches about 86,401 SI seconds. Under the present-day timekeeping system, either a leap second would need to be added to the clock every single day, or else by then, in order to compensate, the length of the day would have had to have been officially lengthened by one SI second. Can you just imagine the amount of legacy code with DAY_SECONDS=86400 out there 5…

They're missing a bunch of possibilities. Maybe a second is lengthened? Maybe we decouple timekeeping from the rotation of the Earth? Maybe we spin the Earth back up?

Lengthening the second is unlikely: for every physical phenomenon with a duration (from the rotational period of other planets to the frequency of atomic transitions), you would forever after have to wonder, is that value quoted in"new seconds" or "old seconds"?

Redefining units leads to ultimate backwards compatibility problems.

Re: Timeline of the far future

#155

Post by supermdguy »

smt88 wrote: post #153
supermdguy wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but "The metre is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299 792 458 second" - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre

But in that case, doesn't the "second" constant change (or the coefficient) and a metre remains the same length?

A meterstick would remain the same length, but the SI meter's length would change.

Re: Timeline of the far future

#156

Post by itsthecourier »

wruza wrote: post #111
mrighele wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would just change the duration of a second. It would be probably easier to change a few physics constants here and there than to fix all the broken code.

Unless these physics constants are, well, constants put in the same code. How many ballistical systems treat ‘standard g’ as a variable? (hint: it depends on seconds squared.)

We are so mad the developers made light speed a constant. Should be fixed in the next update.

Reboot may be required.

XD

Re: Timeline of the far future

#157

Post by itsthecourier »

OscarCunningham wrote: post #84
nemothekid wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they can also pray that their development environment still works on Linux 9.21

Maybe GNU Hurd will be on version 1 by then.

It would be easier to spin down the earth, than make that release happening

Even releasing half life 3 may happen before that

Re: Timeline of the far future

#158

Post by pupdogg »

21 wrote: post #8

> The length of the day used for astronomical timekeeping reaches about 86,401 SI seconds. Under the present-day timekeeping system, either a leap second would need to be added to the clock every single day, or else by then, in order to compensate, the length of the day would have had to have been officially lengthened by one SI second. Can you just imagine the amount of legacy code with DAY_SECONDS=86400 out there 5…

I'm pretty sure some nifty JavaScript code will come to save the day!

Re: Timeline of the far future

#160

Post by jersully72 »

mkempe wrote: post #146
24gttghh wrote: post #102

>Goldstein, Natalie (2009). Global Warming. Infobase Publishing. p. 53. "The last time acidification on this scale occurred (about 65 mya) it took more than 2 million years for corals and other marine organisms to recover; some scientists today believe, optimistically, that it could take tens of thousands of years for the ocean to regain the chemistry it had in preindustrial times." In my opinion, this is the greates…

One should maintain some perspective: Coral reefs have gone through enormous variations in extent and location, and near extinction, many times since 500 million years ago. Not even the last Ice Age or CO2 levels 10x higher than what we have today managed to cause the extinction of coral.

How does this near extinction compare to previous ones?
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