3 ms·

> All this knowledge merely from our single planet by tiny variations of measurements in finely calibrated instruments as if you were able to map out the city o

> All this knowledge merely from our single planet by tiny variations of measurements in finely calibrated instruments as if you were able to map out the city of Paris confined to the observations from a single window. Indeed, but I like to wonder how much of it will turn out to be wrong when (if) we finally get to visit it in person. I mean, do you really want to believe that everything about something as practically infinite as the UNIVERSE could be learned from just a single planet in a few hundred years? Because that would be pretty boring. :)

doctorwho42 3y ago
Well as a physicist I think it's safe to say this, of course you can't know everything from a single solar system. Most of the stuff we see/measure is massive, and the smaller stuff like exoplanets is general. What we are doing now is like squinting while looking around a busy city street. You can get a sense of the cars, the people, etc. but you can't tell me exactly what the sign across the street says or what the hours for street parking are for that spot across the street and down two cars. And the real interesting thing to us as living beings is other living beings/organisms no matter how different. And no matter the quality of your telescope or detectors, you are never going to be able to resolve anything that far away nor with any degree of certainty. So from the limits of physics, we know we are going to eventually need to get down from our windowed apartment and start walking the streets of Paris. For no matter how long we stare, we will never truly know the smell of the bakery a few streets over until we walk through it's door. And to those that say robotic missions are the only true way, they are missing out on the truly human and sentient reason to go. Through individual experience we can create more than just new knowledge, we can expand upon the human experience as well as create new art to share those experiences.
kristopolous 3y ago
You know those pictures of a spiral galaxy that say "you are here?" pointing to the outer edge. You actually aren't. That's not our galaxy, we don't have pictures like that of our actual galaxy and don't have any idea how to get one. Also there's tons of other fundamental limits - galaxies that will likely forever be just faint pixels, the distribution of photons being too dispersed for any detector. Also there's the light horizon problem - we can only see to what the age of the universe allows, not necessarily to its extent. Beyond that let's say there's a 100% confidence of methane on a planet around one of the Alpha Centauri stars, say Proxima Centari B, a pretty solid indicator of life. Ok now what? Probes like Voyager would take 75,000 years to get there. If we had loaded a ship with neanderthals during paleolithic times, their descendants would just be arriving now. Even the much touted solar sails would take 25 years to get there and 4 years to send back any data. If magically launched tomorrow, it'd be 2052 before first byte. The distance is really wildly insurmountable and that's just our next door neighbor. If I could time travel say, 25,000 years hence and we somehow had not blown ourselves up, I could imagine even then asking "how much of space have you explored" and getting an answer like "well, the milky way is 100,000,000,000 stars and 100,000 light years across so about 0.001% of that." There's ballpark a trillion galaxies btw. At some point, the numbers become meaninglessly large, might as well just call it a zillion.
- teo_zero 3y ago
  You know those signs with the city map with an arrow saying "you are here"? Most of those are drawings, not photographs. So what? Just because we can't take a picture with a camera, shouldn't we build a model of something?
  - kristopolous 3y ago
    ceci n'est pas une pipe

doctorwho42 3y ago

Well as a physicist I think it's safe to say this, of course you can't know everything from a single solar system. Most of the stuff we see/measure is massive, and the smaller stuff like exoplanets is general. What we are doing now is like squinting while looking around a busy city street. You can get a sense of the cars, the people, etc. but you can't tell me exactly what the sign across the street says or what the hours for street parking are for that spot across the street and down two cars. And the real interesting thing to us as living beings is other living beings/organisms no matter how different. And no matter the quality of your telescope or detectors, you are never going to be able to resolve anything that far away nor with any degree of certainty. So from the limits of physics, we know we are going to eventually need to get down from our windowed apartment and start walking the streets of Paris. For no matter how long we stare, we will never truly know the smell of the bakery a few streets over until we walk through it's door. And to those that say robotic missions are the only true way, they are missing out on the truly human and sentient reason to go. Through individual experience we can create more than just new knowledge, we can expand upon the human experience as well as create new art to share those experiences.

kristopolous 3y ago

You know those pictures of a spiral galaxy that say "you are here?" pointing to the outer edge. You actually aren't. That's not our galaxy, we don't have pictures like that of our actual galaxy and don't have any idea how to get one. Also there's tons of other fundamental limits - galaxies that will likely forever be just faint pixels, the distribution of photons being too dispersed for any detector. Also there's the light horizon problem - we can only see to what the age of the universe allows, not necessarily to its extent. Beyond that let's say there's a 100% confidence of methane on a planet around one of the Alpha Centauri stars, say Proxima Centari B, a pretty solid indicator of life. Ok now what? Probes like Voyager would take 75,000 years to get there. If we had loaded a ship with neanderthals during paleolithic times, their descendants would just be arriving now. Even the much touted solar sails would take 25 years to get there and 4 years to send back any data. If magically launched tomorrow, it'd be 2052 before first byte. The distance is really wildly insurmountable and that's just our next door neighbor. If I could time travel say, 25,000 years hence and we somehow had not blown ourselves up, I could imagine even then asking "how much of space have you explored" and getting an answer like "well, the milky way is 100,000,000,000 stars and 100,000 light years across so about 0.001% of that." There's ballpark a trillion galaxies btw. At some point, the numbers become meaninglessly large, might as well just call it a zillion.

teo_zero 3y ago
You know those signs with the city map with an arrow saying "you are here"? Most of those are drawings, not photographs. So what? Just because we can't take a picture with a camera, shouldn't we build a model of something?
- kristopolous 3y ago
  ceci n'est pas une pipe