Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Star Just Ate a Planet, and It's Not Done Yet

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 70 posts

Re: Star Just Ate a Planet, and It's Not Done Yet

#21

Post by none2585 »

Bender wrote: post #18
blightful wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very doubtful when you really dig into what is involved. We probably will never make it out of the solar system. To another star is a pipe dream. We will wreck our planet soon enough and the likely outcome is our species will go extinct. This will probably happen in the next few thousand years or sooner.

I think the planet will do just fine without us but we will likely hit one of many great filters long before we colonize anything outside of Earth. The list of dumb things we do as a civilization are too long to list on HN. I am honestly very surprised we still exist and can still reproduce.

This is my position as well - people say we need to do things for the planet. Planet will be just fine - it's us who will suffer and honestly it's for the best. Just end this shit

Re: Star Just Ate a Planet, and It's Not Done Yet

#22

Post by Waterluvian »

owlninja wrote: post #7

I love stories like this. A subtle reminder how inconsequential our actions are on this planet in the grand, unplanned scheme. I look forward to reading HN with my breakfast each morning then going to a job that helps me raise a family and have fun on the weekends. I read stories of war, corruption, sadistic leaders, and great suffering. I've learned to appreciate the joys of life and have come to terms that we are n…

Just don’t think about all the suffering you or I could ease with the money we spend on a “good time.”

We’re not the good guys. We rationalize the inescapable selfishness placed there by ages of evolution.

Re: Star Just Ate a Planet, and It's Not Done Yet

#24

Post by Micrococonut »

bellowsgulch wrote: post #15
owlninja wrote: post #7

I love stories like this. A subtle reminder how inconsequential our actions are on this planet in the grand, unplanned scheme. I look forward to reading HN with my breakfast each morning then going to a job that helps me raise a family and have fun on the weekends. I read stories of war, corruption, sadistic leaders, and great suffering. I've learned to appreciate the joys of life and have come to terms that we are n…

> A subtle reminder how inconsequential our actions are on this planet in the grand, unplanned scheme. I don't like that our culture has developed statements like this. Every single action you make on planet Earth is more consequential and impactful than the countless parsecs of worthless unobtainable space dust that astrophysicists and science promoters like to glaze over. Space is nothing compared to the unfathomab…

Well said

Re: Star Just Ate a Planet, and It's Not Done Yet

#25

Post by pdonis »

jmyeet wrote: post #17
owlninja wrote: post #7

I love stories like this. A subtle reminder how inconsequential our actions are on this planet in the grand, unplanned scheme. I look forward to reading HN with my breakfast each morning then going to a job that helps me raise a family and have fun on the weekends. I read stories of war, corruption, sadistic leaders, and great suffering. I've learned to appreciate the joys of life and have come to terms that we are n…

One of the first gravitational wave detections by LIGO was I think the merger of two black holes or maybe a black hole and a neutron star. It was over a billion light years away I think but was so energetic that it conveted approximately 5 Solar masses into energy in about one second . That's ~10^48 Joules. In 1 second that is ~10^48 Watts. For comparison, the Milky Way has an estimate of 5x10^36 Watts so we're talki…

> If you think about it, they must have a lot of protons to generate a field so strong

Not necessarily. Neutrons have a magnetic moment. As I understand it, there is a magnetohydrodynamic model of how a magnetar's field gets generated, which would require protons, but it's not the only model and we don't have enough data to be able to rule out other models.

Re: Star Just Ate a Planet, and It's Not Done Yet

#26

Post by juggert8 »

excalibur wrote: post #13
im3w1l wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a pretty significant chance that ours will be a starfaring civilization and that our children will reshape the very heavens.

Our kids can't change a tire.

Boomer moment. That's your fault for not teaching them.

Re: Star Just Ate a Planet, and It's Not Done Yet

#28

Post by dylan604 »

bellowsgulch wrote: post #15
owlninja wrote: post #7

I love stories like this. A subtle reminder how inconsequential our actions are on this planet in the grand, unplanned scheme. I look forward to reading HN with my breakfast each morning then going to a job that helps me raise a family and have fun on the weekends. I read stories of war, corruption, sadistic leaders, and great suffering. I've learned to appreciate the joys of life and have come to terms that we are n…

> A subtle reminder how inconsequential our actions are on this planet in the grand, unplanned scheme. I don't like that our culture has developed statements like this. Every single action you make on planet Earth is more consequential and impactful than the countless parsecs of worthless unobtainable space dust that astrophysicists and science promoters like to glaze over. Space is nothing compared to the unfathomab…

You can think they are old and pointless, but that's you just brushing off the fact that the universe is much much older than however old you think these ideas are. The entirety of the human species from its beginning to its eventual ending is merely a blip of time for the universe.

You can argue that makes it that much more special, but so what? To the universe, there very well could have been numerous other specials that have come and gone.

Being unable to accept that is pointless.

Re: Star Just Ate a Planet, and It's Not Done Yet

#29

Post by toast0 »

excalibur wrote: post #13
im3w1l wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a pretty significant chance that ours will be a starfaring civilization and that our children will reshape the very heavens.

Our kids can't change a tire.

My kid is in drivers ed, and part of the curriculum is changing a tire with a parent (class is mostly on zoom).

I don't know how many of the kids are going to retain the knowledge.

That said, what good is changing a tire, when there's no tire to change.

Post reply on HN