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How held back might science be in an alternate history with one change: a permanently cloudy sky. Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, would
by progne 3y ago
How held back might science be in an alternate history with one change: a permanently cloudy sky. Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, would all have had so much less purchase on the shape of the universe to build their theories on. So much science depends on the fundamental insights from those models.
We would be a more inward focused civilization, and lesser for it.
- pphysch 3y agoCivilizational development would be radically different without celestial navigation.
- macintux 3y agoYour comment reminded me about one of Asimov's classics I'd long forgotten about: Nightfall. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightfall_(Asimov_novelette_and_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightfall_(Asimov_novelette_an...
- andytruett 3y agoIt reminded me of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy's third-of-five book Life, the Universe and Everything > Krikkiters > This race of quiet, polite, charming and rather whimsical humanoids caused the most devastating war in the history of the Galaxy (with over two "grillion" casualties). Their homeworld, Krikkit, is surrounded by a black cloud, so they had no knowledge of the universe outside their world. When a spaceship crashed on the surface of Krikkit, the inhabitants quickly stripped it of its secrets and used them to create their own "flimsy piece of near-junk" craft, Krikkit One. Upon reaching the outer edge of the dust cloud and seeing the galaxy for the first time, the people of Krikkit marveled at its beauty before being gripped with fear of it and casually deciding to destroy it, famously remarking "It'll have to go." The Earth game of cricket is a racial memory of the events of the Krikkit Wars. via https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_races_and_species_in_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Krikkiters https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_races_and_specie...
- cratermoon 3y agoAsimov also wrote The Caves of Steel, set in a future where Humans live on Earth in completely enclosed underground cities. Robots farm and mine on the surface.
- twic 3y agoA more recent echo of this is Greg Egan's Incandescence, in which space caterpillars discover general relativity without being able to see the sky: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescence_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescence_(novel)
- kridsdale3 3y agoThis is a significant plot element in Andy Wier's Project Hail Mary.