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Progress in physics was much faster in the early 20th century when it wasn't so fascinated with deep space. Yes, you needed to observe eclipses to verify relat

Progress in physics was much faster in the early 20th century when it wasn't so fascinated with deep space. Yes, you needed to observe eclipses to verify relativity, but that was a tool, not the end in itself. Cosmology involves distances that are so great that it seems like it's pouring a whole bunch of smart people's efforts down the drain in an ultimately futile waste of brain power that will never amount to anything much at all. Besides, when we get faster than light travel we can just pick up exoplanet research where we left off and it will actually be practical and probably far more efficient with the computers and such we will have developed by then.

vermilingua 7y ago
> when we get faster than light travel FTL requires numerous things to be true about our universe, that all signs say are not.
- glup 7y ago
  ...crushing all my dreams of being a starship captain, thanks.
  - ddingus 7y ago
    I am reading big space operas right now. What we know of this reality is so limiting compared to what we can imagine. Good dreams. Many of us have them. I also like to dream the knowable remains much larger than the currently understood too.
    - SRTP 7y ago
      Any book in particular you'd recommend?
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - Jorge1o1 7y ago
        The Baen Free CD has always been a great source of free sci fi books for me
      - vermilingua 7y ago
        Anything in the Culture series by Iain M. Banks; The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey; The Commonwealth and Void trilogies by Peter F. Hamilton, and the Night’s Dawn trilogy also by Peter F. Hamilton; The Dune saga by Frank Herbert.
        ddeck 7y ago
        I'll add the Ancillary (Imperial Radch) series by Ann Leckie to these good suggestions.
        SirHound 7y ago
        Hamilton’s The Reality Dysfunction was the stupidest book I’ve ever read and took hundreds of pages to expose itself. Are his others any more grounded (like your other suggestions)?
        vermilingua 7y ago
        Yeah the Night’s dawn series was a bit out there compared to the genre average. The Commonwealth series is considerably closer to baseline, and his best books IMO. The void trilogy (and the newer trilogy whose name escapes me) follow on from the Commonwealth books, and while good, don’t hold up to the first three.
        SirHound 7y ago
        Thanks for the heads up! I liked his writing style so I’ll put them on the list.
        boznz 7y ago
        did you read the same book as me.. it was pretty awesome
        k_ 7y ago
        I'm a huge fan of Hamilton's books but I have to agree this one was.. different. I think I liked it in the end, though not as much as his other books, but can absolutely understand people would dislike it.
      - arethuza 7y ago
        "reality is so limiting compared to what we can imagine" This is actually a central theme of the Zones of Thought novels by Vernon Vinge where a character in the far future describes our current time as the "Age of Failed Dreams" (GAI, nanotech etc.) - turns out that he is wrong but for rather neat reasons.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky
    - de_watcher 7y ago
      Funny thing is that the imaginary worlds in books are way less weirder compared to what reality has to offer. Apparently because it's harder to develop the story.
  - TomMarius 7y ago
    IMHO we will still get a space opera-esque future, just within the Solar system, not outside of it. There is plenty of space, energy and material around for potentially trillions of people on billions of space stations and space ships.
    - bakuninsbart 7y ago
      And we can still spread out from there. It is a well-thought out element of the Hyperion Cantos (occult SciFi): They do have some kind of Stargate to insta-travel, but building those Stargates requires people to travel for decades if not hundreds of years. These guys are put into stasis for the duration of the trip, and get to go home every couple of decades to talk to their grandchildren/distant descendants. Leaving SciFi aside, our communication technology will be up to the task of relaying information comparatively quickly (light speed or faster), and parallel societies could be built in neighboring solar systems.
- gisely 7y ago
  The speed of light is just a compute constraint imposed on the physics simulation that is our universe. If we can just get the gods who are running that simulation to give us a little extra compute time in our neck of to woods then we can all be galactic explorers.
  - vermilingua 7y ago
    Just for the sake of argument, let's run with that. If we're in a physics simulation, we don't experience at the rate that the simulation is processed. One "tick" of the simulation could be processed in one second of the host universe, or one hour: and we wouldn't feel the difference. We are processed at the same tickrate as the rest of the universe, so we experience the passage of time at the same rate that the simulation flows. The speed of light isn't just the speed of light, it's the speed of causality. It just so happens that light moves pretty well at that "speed limit" (in a vacuum). We could ask our computational hosts to increase or decrease c, and we still wouldn't be able to travel any faster than it.
    - IggleSniggle 7y ago
      The short story “Dust” (1992) by Greg Egan explores these ideas in a pretty entertaining way. Here, I found a copy: https://emperybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Greg-Egan-Dust.pdf https://emperybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Greg-Egan...
    - username90 7y ago
      We could ask the host to update their algorithm to let c be a property of objects and then just do spaceship.c = 1000 * c. Would probably be a heck of a refactor to get it working without bugs though.
      - dkersten 7y ago
        Just leave the bugs in for the speedrunners to use.
        7y ago
_imba_ 7y ago
> Progress in physics was much faster in the early 20th century when it wasn't so fascinated with deep space. I don't think measuring progress is tivial enough to make that assumption. It's also unfair to blame a fascination with deep space for any slower progress, things are more complicated than that. Getting humans onto anther planet asap is one of the most important things one can pursuit for humanity. The earth is a giant single point of failure
privong 7y ago
> Cosmology involves distances that are so great that it seems like it's pouring a whole bunch of smart people's efforts down the drain in an ultimately futile waste of brain power that will never amount to anything much at all. I think it depends on what one wants to get out of the research. If the goal is a commercially realizable product on a shortish time horizon (say < 50 years), then cosmology may not be the best approach. But the justification for cosmology and much of astrophysics is typically that it is a probe of fundamental science and the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake. In which case whether we can ever travel to other planets or galaxies is moot, since it's the physical understanding and knowledge that's the goal. Many before me have used the example of relativity, which when proposed, seemed to have little practical value. But GPS wouldn't work without relativistic corrections. 100-120 years ago one could've made a similar statement about fundamental physics and work on relativity. But if we'd abandoned it because of a lack of immediate relevance then we wouldn't have workable GPS today. The benefits of fundamental research (in many areas, not just astrophysics) are often quite difficult to forecast.
amelius 7y ago
> it seems like it's pouring a whole bunch of smart people's efforts down the drain in an ultimately futile waste of brain power that will never amount to anything much at all. Well, at least they're not making people click ads ...
tripzilch 7y ago
> when we get faster than light travel we can just pick up exoplanet research where we left off if we get FTL, we'll be able to pick up that research before we left off ...
DoctorOetker 7y ago
we might some day discover that we are roughly coaxially located between 2 civilizations exchanging knowledge, and get up to speed with their knowledge. or observe civilizations broadcasting knowledge in a loop: motivation? perhaps the faster they can get others up to speed, the faster others might contribute knowledge back which may some day save their civilization.

vermilingua 7y ago

> when we get faster than light travel FTL requires numerous things to be true about our universe, that all signs say are not.

glup 7y ago
...crushing all my dreams of being a starship captain, thanks.
- ddingus 7y ago
  I am reading big space operas right now. What we know of this reality is so limiting compared to what we can imagine. Good dreams. Many of us have them. I also like to dream the knowable remains much larger than the currently understood too.
  - SRTP 7y ago
    Any book in particular you'd recommend?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - Jorge1o1 7y ago
      The Baen Free CD has always been a great source of free sci fi books for me
    - vermilingua 7y ago
      Anything in the Culture series by Iain M. Banks; The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey; The Commonwealth and Void trilogies by Peter F. Hamilton, and the Night’s Dawn trilogy also by Peter F. Hamilton; The Dune saga by Frank Herbert.
      - ddeck 7y ago
        I'll add the Ancillary (Imperial Radch) series by Ann Leckie to these good suggestions.
      - SirHound 7y ago
        Hamilton’s The Reality Dysfunction was the stupidest book I’ve ever read and took hundreds of pages to expose itself. Are his others any more grounded (like your other suggestions)?
        vermilingua 7y ago
        Yeah the Night’s dawn series was a bit out there compared to the genre average. The Commonwealth series is considerably closer to baseline, and his best books IMO. The void trilogy (and the newer trilogy whose name escapes me) follow on from the Commonwealth books, and while good, don’t hold up to the first three.
        SirHound 7y ago
        Thanks for the heads up! I liked his writing style so I’ll put them on the list.
        boznz 7y ago
        did you read the same book as me.. it was pretty awesome
        k_ 7y ago
        I'm a huge fan of Hamilton's books but I have to agree this one was.. different. I think I liked it in the end, though not as much as his other books, but can absolutely understand people would dislike it.
    - arethuza 7y ago
      "reality is so limiting compared to what we can imagine" This is actually a central theme of the Zones of Thought novels by Vernon Vinge where a character in the far future describes our current time as the "Age of Failed Dreams" (GAI, nanotech etc.) - turns out that he is wrong but for rather neat reasons.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky
  - de_watcher 7y ago
    Funny thing is that the imaginary worlds in books are way less weirder compared to what reality has to offer. Apparently because it's harder to develop the story.
- TomMarius 7y ago
  IMHO we will still get a space opera-esque future, just within the Solar system, not outside of it. There is plenty of space, energy and material around for potentially trillions of people on billions of space stations and space ships.
  - bakuninsbart 7y ago
    And we can still spread out from there. It is a well-thought out element of the Hyperion Cantos (occult SciFi): They do have some kind of Stargate to insta-travel, but building those Stargates requires people to travel for decades if not hundreds of years. These guys are put into stasis for the duration of the trip, and get to go home every couple of decades to talk to their grandchildren/distant descendants. Leaving SciFi aside, our communication technology will be up to the task of relaying information comparatively quickly (light speed or faster), and parallel societies could be built in neighboring solar systems.
gisely 7y ago
The speed of light is just a compute constraint imposed on the physics simulation that is our universe. If we can just get the gods who are running that simulation to give us a little extra compute time in our neck of to woods then we can all be galactic explorers.
- vermilingua 7y ago
  Just for the sake of argument, let's run with that. If we're in a physics simulation, we don't experience at the rate that the simulation is processed. One "tick" of the simulation could be processed in one second of the host universe, or one hour: and we wouldn't feel the difference. We are processed at the same tickrate as the rest of the universe, so we experience the passage of time at the same rate that the simulation flows. The speed of light isn't just the speed of light, it's the speed of causality. It just so happens that light moves pretty well at that "speed limit" (in a vacuum). We could ask our computational hosts to increase or decrease c, and we still wouldn't be able to travel any faster than it.
  - IggleSniggle 7y ago
    The short story “Dust” (1992) by Greg Egan explores these ideas in a pretty entertaining way. Here, I found a copy: https://emperybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Greg-Egan-Dust.pdf https://emperybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Greg-Egan...
  - username90 7y ago
    We could ask the host to update their algorithm to let c be a property of objects and then just do spaceship.c = 1000 * c. Would probably be a heck of a refactor to get it working without bugs though.
    - dkersten 7y ago
      Just leave the bugs in for the speedrunners to use.
      - 7y ago

_imba_ 7y ago

> Progress in physics was much faster in the early 20th century when it wasn't so fascinated with deep space. I don't think measuring progress is tivial enough to make that assumption. It's also unfair to blame a fascination with deep space for any slower progress, things are more complicated than that. Getting humans onto anther planet asap is one of the most important things one can pursuit for humanity. The earth is a giant single point of failure

privong 7y ago

> Cosmology involves distances that are so great that it seems like it's pouring a whole bunch of smart people's efforts down the drain in an ultimately futile waste of brain power that will never amount to anything much at all. I think it depends on what one wants to get out of the research. If the goal is a commercially realizable product on a shortish time horizon (say < 50 years), then cosmology may not be the best approach. But the justification for cosmology and much of astrophysics is typically that it is a probe of fundamental science and the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake. In which case whether we can ever travel to other planets or galaxies is moot, since it's the physical understanding and knowledge that's the goal. Many before me have used the example of relativity, which when proposed, seemed to have little practical value. But GPS wouldn't work without relativistic corrections. 100-120 years ago one could've made a similar statement about fundamental physics and work on relativity. But if we'd abandoned it because of a lack of immediate relevance then we wouldn't have workable GPS today. The benefits of fundamental research (in many areas, not just astrophysics) are often quite difficult to forecast.

amelius 7y ago

> it seems like it's pouring a whole bunch of smart people's efforts down the drain in an ultimately futile waste of brain power that will never amount to anything much at all. Well, at least they're not making people click ads ...

tripzilch 7y ago

> when we get faster than light travel we can just pick up exoplanet research where we left off if we get FTL, we'll be able to pick up that research before we left off ...

DoctorOetker 7y ago

we might some day discover that we are roughly coaxially located between 2 civilizations exchanging knowledge, and get up to speed with their knowledge. or observe civilizations broadcasting knowledge in a loop: motivation? perhaps the faster they can get others up to speed, the faster others might contribute knowledge back which may some day save their civilization.