4 ms·

This is one of the thing which made my really sad about been a human - our lifespan is poorly short. See, if my lifespan is 4.5 billion years, then I can just

by nirui 6y ago

This is one of the thing which made my really sad about been a human - our lifespan is poorly short. See, if my lifespan is 4.5 billion years, then I can just sit here and wait until Andromeda become a daily light show when it finally got close enough. Look through a live telescope yourself will give you a very VERY different feeling when compare to look at a picture on NASA website. I have an amateur telescope, 130EQ. I still remember the feeling it give to me when the first time it brought Saturn into my view, and then again for Jupiter, stars and clusters ... For me, the best way to get over all the unhappiness, anger and depressions, is to sit down in the pitch dark of the night, setup the telescope and hunting for the stars. Sadly I managed to broke it's tripod few years back :(

mmazing 6y ago
I also remember the first time I managed to see Saturn through my own telescope. It took forever to get it in frame, and I wasn't even sure what I was looking for until I finally centered it. I knew it was brighter than the other stars and that it was probably a planet but not sure which one it was. Finally got it in frame and focused, saw the rings and jumped up and down exclaiming "it's Saturn, it's Saturn!". I was super excited and kept having to readjust the telescope because of Earth's rotation as it moved out of frame. It was great night with my family and they still remember it to this day.
- nirui 6y ago
  I know, right? All that aiming and panning is part of the experience which makes the fun. To someone who don't have it before, we're basically looking at a blur dot slightly larger than a peanut. But when you do it yourself, the memory you'll receive is priceless. I strongly recommend everybody try it out when they have chance.
- hoseja 6y ago
  It's kinda crazy to realize how annoyingly fast the Earth is actually spinning at the Saturn-viewing zoom level.
saagarjha 6y ago
> See, if my lifespan is 4.5 billion years, then I can just sit here and wait until Andromeda become a daily light show when it finally got close enough. Well, not quite. It’d be quite static as the merger would take a long time on the scale of a human lifetime.
CryptoPunk 6y ago
It's not outside the realm of possibility that many humans alive today will have a chance to live forever.
- Koshkin 6y ago
  In theory, anything is possible, sure. Problem is, in order to live forever one must be indestructible. This is because for the modern human the mean time to the death in an accident is way below one thousand years. (Indestructibility would bring with it its own issues.)
  - CryptoPunk 6y ago
    Effective indestructibility can emerge through sheltering the human body and interacting with the outside world through avatars, e.g. robots etc and extensive body monitoring to provide rapid responses in case of a medical emergency. With the exponential growth rate in technological sophistication, we could, in the forseeable future, have levels of personal safety and medical care that are many orders of magnitude greater than they are now. If the humans alive today make it to the point where the average life expectancy is pushed to, say, 1000 years, then they stand a decent chance of living to see technology advance to levels that provide extreme (e.g. billions of years) life extension.
Jack000 6y ago
I think it's technically possible to explore our own galaxy in a human lifetime by accelerating to an appreciable fraction of c, just need to develop fusion rockets.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  Fusion rockets are not nearly enough for that. You'd still need to carry an impossible amount of propellant, deal with friction and live through the months-long acceleration/deceleration cycles, most of which at non-relativistic speeds. If you got a ramscoop engine, maybe you'd be able to grab enough propellant to push you at 1g for years at a time while cleaning your path of particles that'd impact your shielding.
- close04 6y ago
  Even at the speed of light, taking into account acceleration and deceleration you could cover ~50 light years in a lifetime. The Milky Way is ~150000 light years across. In day to day terms it's like walking 10km relative to exploring the whole Earth.
  - phonypc 6y ago
    I'm sure someone better informed could weigh in with more details, but IIRC, taking time dilation into account, you could explore infinitely if you could somehow travel at the speed of light. Some large fraction of c would be sufficient to cross the galaxy in a lifetime, relative to you the traveller.
    - perl4ever 6y ago
      Yes, but taking into account any drive that uses mass you couldn't carry enough to accelerate for very long. There's been a lot of speculation about scooping up hydrogen from the interstellar medium as fuel, but I think it's mainly wishful thinking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau_Zero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau_Zero
    - 6y ago

by nirui 6y ago

mmazing 6y ago

I also remember the first time I managed to see Saturn through my own telescope. It took forever to get it in frame, and I wasn't even sure what I was looking for until I finally centered it. I knew it was brighter than the other stars and that it was probably a planet but not sure which one it was. Finally got it in frame and focused, saw the rings and jumped up and down exclaiming "it's Saturn, it's Saturn!". I was super excited and kept having to readjust the telescope because of Earth's rotation as it moved out of frame. It was great night with my family and they still remember it to this day.

nirui 6y ago
I know, right? All that aiming and panning is part of the experience which makes the fun. To someone who don't have it before, we're basically looking at a blur dot slightly larger than a peanut. But when you do it yourself, the memory you'll receive is priceless. I strongly recommend everybody try it out when they have chance.
hoseja 6y ago
It's kinda crazy to realize how annoyingly fast the Earth is actually spinning at the Saturn-viewing zoom level.

saagarjha 6y ago

> See, if my lifespan is 4.5 billion years, then I can just sit here and wait until Andromeda become a daily light show when it finally got close enough. Well, not quite. It’d be quite static as the merger would take a long time on the scale of a human lifetime.

CryptoPunk 6y ago

It's not outside the realm of possibility that many humans alive today will have a chance to live forever.

Koshkin 6y ago
In theory, anything is possible, sure. Problem is, in order to live forever one must be indestructible. This is because for the modern human the mean time to the death in an accident is way below one thousand years. (Indestructibility would bring with it its own issues.)
- CryptoPunk 6y ago
  Effective indestructibility can emerge through sheltering the human body and interacting with the outside world through avatars, e.g. robots etc and extensive body monitoring to provide rapid responses in case of a medical emergency. With the exponential growth rate in technological sophistication, we could, in the forseeable future, have levels of personal safety and medical care that are many orders of magnitude greater than they are now. If the humans alive today make it to the point where the average life expectancy is pushed to, say, 1000 years, then they stand a decent chance of living to see technology advance to levels that provide extreme (e.g. billions of years) life extension.

Jack000 6y ago

I think it's technically possible to explore our own galaxy in a human lifetime by accelerating to an appreciable fraction of c, just need to develop fusion rockets.

rbanffy 6y ago
Fusion rockets are not nearly enough for that. You'd still need to carry an impossible amount of propellant, deal with friction and live through the months-long acceleration/deceleration cycles, most of which at non-relativistic speeds. If you got a ramscoop engine, maybe you'd be able to grab enough propellant to push you at 1g for years at a time while cleaning your path of particles that'd impact your shielding.
close04 6y ago
Even at the speed of light, taking into account acceleration and deceleration you could cover ~50 light years in a lifetime. The Milky Way is ~150000 light years across. In day to day terms it's like walking 10km relative to exploring the whole Earth.
- phonypc 6y ago
  I'm sure someone better informed could weigh in with more details, but IIRC, taking time dilation into account, you could explore infinitely if you could somehow travel at the speed of light. Some large fraction of c would be sufficient to cross the galaxy in a lifetime, relative to you the traveller.
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    Yes, but taking into account any drive that uses mass you couldn't carry enough to accelerate for very long. There's been a lot of speculation about scooping up hydrogen from the interstellar medium as fuel, but I think it's mainly wishful thinking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau_Zero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau_Zero
  - 6y ago