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New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered at CERN

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Re: New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered at CERN

#101

Post by dylan604 »

cogman10 wrote: post #95
ASalazarMX wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Super spoiler below: Their tri-solar system was too unstable to terraform, they needed a stable solar system to migrate to. Of course ours was the nearest with an habitable planet (otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story), so they can immediately colonize Earth, and probably begin the centuries-long process of terraforming the neighboring planets.

Still doesn't make sense. Why limit our tech when they ultimately want to just eliminate us all together? Drop a super virus on us or irradiate the whole planet. Any species capable of disrupting our particle accelerators is more than capable of wiping us from existence.

It's kind of like nuclear warfare here on Earth. If you want to eliminate every living thing, then sure do some sort of scorched Earth type of thing. However, that leaves the planet in an un-inhabitable condition.

If you need to wipe out the inhabitants but leave everything else so you can now use it, you need to not destroy everything in the first place. Otherwise, you now have to terraform a planet that you chose because you didn't need to terraform it.

Re: New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered at CERN

#102

Post by saiya-jin »

wdwvt1 wrote: post #90
gizmo686 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoilers below: The Three Body Problem trilogy breaks down if you think about it too hard. The in-universe explanation was that the aliens did want to destroy us, and had an attack fleet heading towards us. However, the attack fleet was relativly slow, and they were concerned that by the time it reached us we would have advanced to the point where we might win in a fight. To prevent this, they sent smaller probes to…

Totally agree with this, the effort to retard development could have been better spent with a myriad of ecosystem destroying actions or geopolitical manipulations. Also just send the indestructible probe to kill every human... My bigger problem with this book was that the author seems to wholely confuse secrecy for strategy. The entire conceit behind the wallfacers seemed ridiculous to me. The best strategic plan nee…

They cared about our stable single sun more than planets. We were not on the level to destroy our sun, or the planets themselves

Re: New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered at CERN

#103

Post by gizmo686 »

wdwvt1 wrote: post #90
gizmo686 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoilers below: The Three Body Problem trilogy breaks down if you think about it too hard. The in-universe explanation was that the aliens did want to destroy us, and had an attack fleet heading towards us. However, the attack fleet was relativly slow, and they were concerned that by the time it reached us we would have advanced to the point where we might win in a fight. To prevent this, they sent smaller probes to…

Totally agree with this, the effort to retard development could have been better spent with a myriad of ecosystem destroying actions or geopolitical manipulations. Also just send the indestructible probe to kill every human... My bigger problem with this book was that the author seems to wholely confuse secrecy for strategy. The entire conceit behind the wallfacers seemed ridiculous to me. The best strategic plan nee…

More spoilers below:

They actualy did a fair amount of geopolitical manipulations. That formed most of the plot.

In the end, it turned out to be MAD that saved us, but setting up the MAD scenario involved secrecy from them (or else they would have stopped us before we could trigger it), and from the rest of humanity (because an official plan to destroy Earth would never have been approved).

Re: New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered at CERN

#104

Post by temporalparts »

cogman10 wrote: post #95
ASalazarMX wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Super spoiler below: Their tri-solar system was too unstable to terraform, they needed a stable solar system to migrate to. Of course ours was the nearest with an habitable planet (otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story), so they can immediately colonize Earth, and probably begin the centuries-long process of terraforming the neighboring planets.

Still doesn't make sense. Why limit our tech when they ultimately want to just eliminate us all together? Drop a super virus on us or irradiate the whole planet. Any species capable of disrupting our particle accelerators is more than capable of wiping us from existence.

More spoilers:

In the book, they were scared of humanity's technological growth rate. They were observing our technological advances and noticed that it was significantly faster than theirs. While they were, at the time, technologically superior, they were afraid that after the 250+ years it would take for them to get to Earth, humanity would have become technologically superior; too strong for them to overtake.

Re: New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered at CERN

#105

Post by renewiltord »

teknopaul wrote: post #36
MengerSponge wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: in the most general case, energy is not a conserved quantity. https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/02/22/energy-...

my friend that thinks if he plays the breaks properly on his EV he generates energy, will be happy very hear this.

All he has to do is push his Tesla to the top of the hill!

Re: New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered at CERN

#106

Post by numlocked »

cogman10 wrote: post #95
ASalazarMX wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Super spoiler below: Their tri-solar system was too unstable to terraform, they needed a stable solar system to migrate to. Of course ours was the nearest with an habitable planet (otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story), so they can immediately colonize Earth, and probably begin the centuries-long process of terraforming the neighboring planets.

Still doesn't make sense. Why limit our tech when they ultimately want to just eliminate us all together? Drop a super virus on us or irradiate the whole planet. Any species capable of disrupting our particle accelerators is more than capable of wiping us from existence.

That was probably the plan; but the “tech-blocking particle” gets here at the speed of light, ensuring that we are still sufficiently behind, technologically, by the time their e.g. virus or radiation gizmos arrive. It “freezes” development to ensure that they still have technological superiority when the much-slower, barely-relativistic, big guns arrive.

Re: New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered at CERN

#107

Post by dice »

coldacid wrote: post #80
shoto_io wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just for fun? Like riding horses even though you have a car.

Or trolling.

  “Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets that haven’t made interstellar contact yet and buzz them.”
  
  “Buzz them?” Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him.
  
  “Yeah,” said Ford, “they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor unsuspecting soul whom no one’s ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennas on their head and making beep beep noises.”
-- HHGTTG

Re: New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered at CERN

#108

Post by misiti3780 »

pseudobry wrote: post #42

I recently finished The Three-Body Problem and The Dark Forest, which explore the concept of aliens using their super advanced technology to mess with the results of Earth's particle accelerators, thereby stopping humanity's ability to develop technology based on new physics. Is this discovery exciting? Or are we living in The Three-Body Problem?

which book was better?

Re: New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered at CERN

#109

Post by SkyMarshal »

cogman10 wrote: post #95
ASalazarMX wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Super spoiler below: Their tri-solar system was too unstable to terraform, they needed a stable solar system to migrate to. Of course ours was the nearest with an habitable planet (otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story), so they can immediately colonize Earth, and probably begin the centuries-long process of terraforming the neighboring planets.

Still doesn't make sense. Why limit our tech when they ultimately want to just eliminate us all together? Drop a super virus on us or irradiate the whole planet. Any species capable of disrupting our particle accelerators is more than capable of wiping us from existence.

They could send the subatomic particles from Trisolaris to Earth at light speed, and then use the entangled pair of particles (one on earth, its mate on Trisolaris) to monitor events on earth in real-time.

As already said, that preserves the planet, prevents a potential enemy from further developing technologically, and enables real-time monitoring of and interference with that enemy's activities.

Re: New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered at CERN

#110

Post by efsavage »

majkinetor wrote: post #69
pseudobry wrote: post #42

I recently finished The Three-Body Problem and The Dark Forest, which explore the concept of aliens using their super advanced technology to mess with the results of Earth's particle accelerators, thereby stopping humanity's ability to develop technology based on new physics. Is this discovery exciting? Or are we living in The Three-Body Problem?

You spoiled it for me, I am on 1/4 of the first book :S

Rest easy, there is a lot more to the books than that.
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