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Science fiction and the death of the sun

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Re: Science fiction and the death of the sun

#131

Post by strogonoff »

pixl97 wrote: post #120
strogonoff wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure such utilitarian math is the true solution, attempts to put a number on the value of human life seem all silly. I would rather say that the failure of a robotic mission costs an amount X, while the failure of a human mission intuitively has infinite price.

Conversely setting human life to infinity cost quickly breaks down with the trolley problem. Any problem where groups a or b are going to die then whatever group is bigger lives, even if it doesn't make sense, such as group b is all very old and group a is very young but slightly smaller.

Trolley problems are an exercise in utilitarianism and maybe generally consequentialism. If those are your views, then you can probably put a number on it. Other views are available, however. (See sibling mentioning deontology.)

Re: Science fiction and the death of the sun

#132

Post by Pigalowda »

hobs wrote: post #103
beAbU wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sunshine is one of my favourite sci-fi movies for all the wrong reasons. The premise and setting is total bullshit handwavium. But I absolutely loved the story, tension and slow boil. The cast as you say was brilliant. It's a B-Grade disaster movie /really/ well executed.

Let me just say that I fully disagree, the movie was plodding and preachy and boring up until the "twist" when it got TERRIBLE. I cannot believe the number of people who have said that its a good movie, the entire movie required a suspension of disbelief far and away of what I am willing to give.

I remember seeing reddit users recommend it as a great scifi film in 2012. I watched it and was horribly disappointed - it’s “the core” in space with a space zombie.

I guess people like sucking down wet farts for 2 hours. Who am I to stop them?

Re: Science fiction and the death of the sun

#133

Post by Reason077 »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #79
Reason077 wrote: post #18

Danny Boyle and Alex Garland's 2007 film Sunshine is another great example of this genre. Rather than abandoning a frozen earth due to the dying sun, they send a mission to deliver a bomb into it to "restart" it. A real all-star cast featuring not only a young Cillian Murphy, but a young Michelle Yeoh, Chris Evans, Hiroyuki Sanada, Benedict Wong, Cliff Curtis, and Rose Byrne! Highly recommended, despite never satisfa…

"adding humans to the mix" is not the most unrealistic thing by far, in that uneven film. The basic premise (suns do not forget to shine one day) and proposed fix (any human efforts would be of insignificant scale compared to a sun) take that honour. The third act of the film is a runner-up.

Most sci-fi films (heck, most films) require some level of suspension of disbelief. If you're unable to do that you'll find it hard to enjoy much at all. Do Marvel films seem realistic to you? Star Wars? Star Trek? Cartoons?

Re: Science fiction and the death of the sun

#134

Post by nunodonato »

PoignardAzur wrote: post #74
nunodonato wrote: post #64

Science compels us to explode the sun

Or wait for a few billion years. As an aside, I took a while to roll with the narrative about the heat death of the universe in Outer Wilds. It's too sudden: you go from a healthy yellow sun to a red star in the blink of an eye. Even if you accept that timeframes are accelerated in this game, same reason the planets are smaller, it should still happen in a timespan comparable to the sun's entire lifespan, not a singl…

glad to see that someone picked up the reference ::)

Re: Science fiction and the death of the sun

#135

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

Reason077 wrote: post #133
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"adding humans to the mix" is not the most unrealistic thing by far, in that uneven film. The basic premise (suns do not forget to shine one day) and proposed fix (any human efforts would be of insignificant scale compared to a sun) take that honour. The third act of the film is a runner-up.

Most sci-fi films (heck, most films ) require some level of suspension of disbelief. If you're unable to do that you'll find it hard to enjoy much at all. Do Marvel films seem realistic to you? Star Wars? Star Trek? Cartoons?

I watch a lot of sci-fi films and read a lot of sci-fi books - because I enjoy it when it's any good, so I don't need suspension of disbelief explained to me at all, thanks.

I personally found this specific film not deserving of being called a "great example" of anything. It's at best a plodding, uneven, middling example of something, IDK what. Yes, I know that your milage may vary, but this film's status baffles me and others https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39917027

If anything, calling parts of it "good" and other parts "original" is generous. Most of it is neither. Perhaps if you just haven't seen or read that much, then some of it appears novel and good?

It is not trying to be the same genre at all as Marvel or Star Wars fantasy films - some of which succeed on their own terms. Unlike "Sunshine". So that straw man distraction question is irrelevant.

Re: Science fiction and the death of the sun

#136

Post by obruchez »

Reason077 wrote: post #18

Danny Boyle and Alex Garland's 2007 film Sunshine is another great example of this genre. Rather than abandoning a frozen earth due to the dying sun, they send a mission to deliver a bomb into it to "restart" it. A real all-star cast featuring not only a young Cillian Murphy, but a young Michelle Yeoh, Chris Evans, Hiroyuki Sanada, Benedict Wong, Cliff Curtis, and Rose Byrne! Highly recommended, despite never satisfa…

"Beyond the Sea" (the Black Mirror episode) had a similar problem: 2 astronauts are working in a spaceship and they can regularly go back to their families using some very advanced technology (VR, humanoid robots, etc.). Why are they not using that technology to "work from home"?

Re: Science fiction and the death of the sun

#137

Post by perilunar »

bccdee wrote: post #121
perilunar wrote: post #59

I've never really understood the pessimism of the dying sun trope in SF. If humans are still around in billions of years then our descendants will either have spread throughout the galaxy, or will have the technology to either tweak the Sun to not go nova, or to move the Earth out of harm's way. Seems like a major failure of the imagination. (Also: the idea that we need to find other planets to live on if the Sun goe…

That's awfully optimistic. For one, why would we colonize the galaxy? We probably can't beat lightspeed. It'll take generations to get anywhere, plus a huge upfront investment, and for what? We can't send resources back, so it is not an investment. Terraforming would be extremely challenging, extremely slow, and would (if we were very, very lucky) still just get us a worse version of Earth. It just isn't a rational c…

> why would we colonize the galaxy?

To explore. Yes, it may take generations to get anywhere, and no, we probably won't be sending resources back.

> Terraforming would be extremely challenging

Yes. Terraforming is a bad idea. Much better to mine asteroids and build large habitats in orbit. When it gets too crowded, move to the next star. No need to terraform planets to spread out into the galaxy.

> "Tweaking the sun" is probably unfeasible

We've got millions of years to work out how. I doubt it would be something as crude as crashing planets into it.

> Similarly, adjusting Earth's orbit would require a colossal amount of energy and reaction mass

Yes, but you'd have a colossal amount of time to move it. Light sails maybe — they use energy/mass from the sun itself.

> Technological advancement has a ceiling determined by our resources and abilities, and that ceiling is almost certainly too low to accommodate a galactic civilization of stellar engineers.

I don't know how you can know that. It's only a couple of hundred years since the scientific revolution — how can you possibly know what the limits will be over millions or billions of years?

Re: Science fiction and the death of the sun

#138

Post by mmcdermott »

bccdee wrote: post #121
perilunar wrote: post #59

I've never really understood the pessimism of the dying sun trope in SF. If humans are still around in billions of years then our descendants will either have spread throughout the galaxy, or will have the technology to either tweak the Sun to not go nova, or to move the Earth out of harm's way. Seems like a major failure of the imagination. (Also: the idea that we need to find other planets to live on if the Sun goe…

That's awfully optimistic. For one, why would we colonize the galaxy? We probably can't beat lightspeed. It'll take generations to get anywhere, plus a huge upfront investment, and for what? We can't send resources back, so it is not an investment. Terraforming would be extremely challenging, extremely slow, and would (if we were very, very lucky) still just get us a worse version of Earth. It just isn't a rational c…

> For one, why would we colonize the galaxy? [...] It just isn't a rational choice.

If things are universally good on Earth, then sure. Bear in mind that many of the European colonies that would become the United States were built by people fleeing situations in their home country.

Of course, replicating that scenario still requires a lot of technological advancement and I agree that level of sophistication is not a given.

Re: Science fiction and the death of the sun

#139

Post by gwern »

Vecr wrote: post #126
gwern wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I think OP makes a good case that Lewis did not mean an expanding red giant in _Magician's Nephew_, even if he could have used the most recent science at the time to choose to do so: "“So big, so red, and so cold.” “It has always been so,” said Jadis. “At least, for hundreds of thousands of years. Have you a different sort of sun in your world?”" A red giant expanding to the point of taking up much of the sky wou…

How would it appear large in the sky though? Gravitational waves are out, maybe solar wind and light pressure were supposed to be keeping the planet orbiting higher? Or is the point that the planet was always close, but only cooled down enough for life after the star started cooling down?

> Initial estimates put the sun’s lifespan at around 20 million years. It could hardly be much younger than that, so its lifetime appeared to be mostly over. Soon it would burn out. What about the earth? It would freeze over, its orbit would decay, and it would draw closer to the husk of the sun, becoming tidally locked. Ultimately, it would fall into the remains of the sun and be destroyed, but not until long after all life went extinct.

Re: Science fiction and the death of the sun

#140

Post by Vecr »

gwern wrote: post #139
Vecr wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would it appear large in the sky though? Gravitational waves are out, maybe solar wind and light pressure were supposed to be keeping the planet orbiting higher? Or is the point that the planet was always close, but only cooled down enough for life after the star started cooling down?

> Initial estimates put the sun’s lifespan at around 20 million years. It could hardly be much younger than that, so its lifetime appeared to be mostly over. Soon it would burn out. What about the earth? It would freeze over, its orbit would decay, and it would draw closer to the husk of the sun, becoming tidally locked. Ultimately, it would fall into the remains of the sun and be destroyed, but not until long after…

Yeah, that's in the article. I should look at the emissions curve for various stages of red giant stars. Maybe it's a late phase red giant, and the planet was always far away? It would need increased emissions and then they would have to start going down again. It is kind of suspicious for life to start on a planet only after the star starts expanding into a red giant, but it might be a similar handwave to the characters being human like.
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