Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work? • Hacker News Board

Re: Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work?

#71

Post by jandrese » Fri, Jan 20, 2017, 3:33 PM UTC

avar wrote: post #22

jandrese wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using gravity as a propulsive force may be silly given its relative strength, but having a way of blocking gravity would make a tremendous difference in getting out of our gravity well. It's not so much help for achieving orbit, but if you want to go beyond the Earth or even beyond the Solar System it would be a whole new game.

If you can block gravity you can achieve orbit at walking speeds if you turn of your anti-gravity machine some tiny fraction of the time you're spending in orbit. Similarly with going outside the solar system, you could just jump on the planet Earth and press the "anti-grav" button, and in a few hundred thousand years you'd be outside the solar system.

Orbit isn't about getting 160km over the surface of the Earth, it's about accelerating to 7.8km/s so you don't fall back down to Earth. Your anti-gravity pump won't help you in that regard.

Getting to orbit isn't hard because you have to go so high, it's hard because you have to go so fast.

Re: Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work?

#72

Post by mustacheemperor » Fri, Jan 20, 2017, 4:14 PM UTC

wishinghand wrote: post #45

fuhrysteve wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please elaborate? What did we learn in 2016?

There is a star we've observed between 1400 and 1500 light years away with odd, non-cyclical light fluctuations. It may be indicative of a megastructure being built or falling apart around a star.

Unfortunately, I think a pulsar type situation is much more likely. There's many things that could potentially cause those fluctuations, especially considering our relative lack of knowledge about extrasolar space. In 1967 when we started detecting regular, precise bursts of EMR from deep space it looked a lot like aliens.

Re: Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work?

#73

Post by ASalazarMX » Fri, Jan 20, 2017, 4:54 PM UTC

jeff_petersen wrote: post #35

ansible wrote: post #15

The problem with interstellar travel in general is that it is so expensive, in terms of energy usage. I speculate that even for Kardashev type 3 civilizations, shipping matter around will be impractical. The future is software. For entities that live purely as software, and aren't so picky as us meatbags are about continuity of consciousness, "traveling" from place to place by sending data is the most practical metho…

> The future is software. For entities that live purely as software, and aren't so picky as us meatbags are about continuity of consciousness, "traveling" from place to place by sending data is the most practical method. Sure, but for entities that live purely as software the concept of "being" in a "place" is probably completely unimportant. There's no reason to assume that software entities would have any reason to…

They could colonize not to actually interact with the environment there, but for computing resources and redundancy.

Re: Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work?

#74

Post by jeff_petersen » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 1:39 AM UTC

jbpetersen wrote: post #55

jeff_petersen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The future is software. For entities that live purely as software, and aren't so picky as us meatbags are about continuity of consciousness, "traveling" from place to place by sending data is the most practical method. Sure, but for entities that live purely as software the concept of "being" in a "place" is probably completely unimportant. There's no reason to assume that software entities would have any reason to…

Once you've maxed out your abilities with the resources available in one place, then you'd probably start specializing for different abilities in different places to the extent you can gain additional value through comparative advantage. With that in mind sharing the unique results of the different specializations means location is still important in the absence of instantaneous communication over arbitrary distance.…

I'm the evolved-into-a-software-being version of you, of course

Re: Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work?

#75

Post by db48x » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 2:25 AM UTC

solipsism wrote: post #60

mynegation wrote: post #18

Asking someone with better understanding of physics. Wolfram talks about space as a network. But would not that mean that there is an absolute reference frame? Relativity theory does not need it (not sure if it disproves that there is no such thing), and from what I know no such frame was found. How does that reconcile?

Until some people for whom theoretical physics is more than just a hobby start to take seriously Wolfram's crazy theories, you and I would be well served to ignore them.

They mostly ignore them too.

Re: Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work?

#76

Post by true_religion » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 6:04 AM UTC

rayalez wrote: post #50

wernercd wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"if you could simulate anything, why would you simulate this?" I want to agree... but then... I look at Youtube and wonder why a large portion of that gets made. With the computing power we have NOW... look at all the stupid stuff that gets made. Imagine 50 years from now.

Well, making a silly youtube video for no reason is not the same as making a world where millions of sentient beings suffer/die for no reason.

Simulating a universe like your own except simpler would let you spot-test solutions to problems, and study analogous of issues in your universe to greater depth.

We do economic simulations all the time, with weak-minded agents.