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

How Big is Space?

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 95 posts

Re: How Big is Space?

#81

Post by mirimir »

ttrmw wrote: post #78
mirimir wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus, as in Egan's Diaspora , virtual entities can hibernate, or live at far lower clock frequency.

I've not read Diaspora (yet!), but this sounds more like Permutation City

I haven't read Permutation City yet, but virtualization in Diaspora is far more advanced. The default, as I recall, is ~800 times meatspace. I recommend reading Stephenson's Anathem first, however.

Edit: The Planck Dive is a follow-on.[0]

[0] http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/PLANCK/Complete/Pla...

Re: How Big is Space?

#83

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

Cookingboy wrote: post #7

One thing that bothers me is that charts/apps like this have to use logarithmic scale due to obvious reasons, but log scale is just not very effective for most people to comprehend on an intuitive level. In the last section each pixel is 1,000,000km, and the first section each pixel represents 1 meter, but experience wise it doesn't make the last section feel that much bigger, and I still have to keep looking at the…

One solution to help the user experience the scale would be if the spacecraft got continuously smaller pixelwise as the logarithmic scale gradually increased.

Re: How Big is Space?

#85

Post by gph »

mattkevan wrote: post #80
antimagic wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the reason he survived wasn't that he just had a huge ego, but because that universe really was just created for him. Or maybe I'm misremembering that part?

You're right - by crawling out of the wrecked building through the window he entered a pocket reality designed to help him discover the true ruler of the universe. Or something. I can't remember whether it happened that way in the radio series or the books as they're quite different (let's pretend the film never happened).

It was in the books because that's how I remember it and I never listened to the radio series (I also try to forget the film exists).

Re: How Big is Space?

#86

Post by pixl97 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #28
curiousjorge wrote: post #27

Kinda depressing just how small we are and that we can't get around places to explore space without some groundbreaking invention that will transfer information from the atoms to another location instantly (something like spooky action except that after you are finished copying the atom data, the old copy must be deleted to prevent endless dopplegangers appearing) by appending some complex 3d position information (mo…

> after you are finished copying the atom data, the old copy must be deleted to prevent endless dopp[el]gangers appearing Why would we need to prevent this?

The Agent Smith problem. Right now if an entity in meatspace wants to copy itself it has to breed, and for anything complex the copies are not the same and have to go through a growing process. With copy teleportation it's not really any different than Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V on your computer. As long as you have the energy you can build entire armies of yourself. There many be plenty of good scenarios for this to happen but I can think of far more downsides.

Re: How Big is Space?

#87

Post by coldpie »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #84
rashkov wrote: post #67

Was anyone else surprised to learn that the US tested a nuclear explosion (Argus III) at a distance comparable to somewhere between the International Space Station and the Hubble Telescope?

I was! Seems a bit irresponsible.

Son, lemme tell you about what we did in the 40s and 50s. You are in for some wild surprises. We took two halves of a supercritical core and held them separate with a screwdriver while wearing bluejeans and cowboy hats. Why? Because we could, dammit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core

Re: How Big is Space?

#88

Post by vollmond »

rashkov wrote: post #67

Was anyone else surprised to learn that the US tested a nuclear explosion (Argus III) at a distance comparable to somewhere between the International Space Station and the Hubble Telescope?

I had no idea there had been any nuclear explosions above the 100km line, let alone above ISS's orbit. How did I not know that?

Re: How Big is Space?

#89

Post by stcredzero »

antimagic wrote: post #77
stcredzero wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The median Silicon Valley techie ego surpassed 1000 millizaphods several years ago. Many of the Bay Area locals are already immune.

I thought the reason he survived wasn't that he just had a huge ego, but because that universe really was just created for him. Or maybe I'm misremembering that part?

I thought the reason he survived wasn't that he just had a huge ego, but because that universe really was just created for him.

Apparently, it's just as good to think the universe is created just for you.

Re: How Big is Space?

#90

Post by lgas »

markbnj wrote: post #8
lgas wrote: post #6

If they're going to make a full page take-over-the-scroll type of experience, why wouldn't they do this from the bottom going up? I was distracted by the "upside-downness" of it the whole time.

Because you scroll from top to bottom, duh ;).

They could start the scrollbar at the bottom.
Post reply on HN