An existential problem in the search for alien life
theatlantic.com
An existential problem in the search for alien life
1–10 of 81 posts
Re: An existential problem in the search for alien life
#2Re: An existential problem in the search for alien life
#3Almost all space news stories look for the “thrilling possibility of life” angle.
Despite the environment being -320 or +320 Celsius.
I don’t know what to make if it. It’s weird.
Re: An existential problem in the search for alien life
#4Almost all space news stories look for the “thrilling possibility of life” angle. Despite the environment being -320 or +320 Celsius. I don’t know what to make if it. It’s weird.
> Despite the environment being -320 or +320 Celsius
You do have a point - 47 degrees below absolute zero is probably too cold for life
Re: An existential problem in the search for alien life
#5Almost all space news stories look for the “thrilling possibility of life” angle. Despite the environment being -320 or +320 Celsius. I don’t know what to make if it. It’s weird.
> Despite the environment being -320 or +320 Celsius You do have a point - 47 degrees below absolute zero is probably too cold for life
Integer underflow flips it to trillions.
Re: An existential problem in the search for alien life
#6Re: An existential problem in the search for alien life
#7Re: An existential problem in the search for alien life
#8Once upon a time in the universe, there was an alien civilization, and they were very interested in figuring out the question, why, despite universe seeming so vast, there are no signs of other alien civilizations.
What could it be? Near-zero term in the Drake equation? The dark forest? A great filter?
To understand different possibilities, they decided to determine the cause using a computer simulation. However, due to hardware limitations, they were only able to simulate one civilization at a time.
We can only speculate what the final answer was.
Re: An existential problem in the search for alien life
#9Almost all space news stories look for the “thrilling possibility of life” angle. Despite the environment being -320 or +320 Celsius. I don’t know what to make if it. It’s weird.
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Re: An existential problem in the search for alien life
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Despite the environment being -320 or +320 Celsius You do have a point - 47 degrees below absolute zero is probably too cold for life
Integer underflow flips it to trillions.
Negative temperatures are a real phenomenon, and are indeed very hot, but calling it integer underflow is a new one.
It’s clearly floating-point.