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The other thing we could do to explore the galaxy is to become biologically something we would no longer recognize. We're viewing this from the lens of "humanit
by throwway120385 11mo ago
The other thing we could do to explore the galaxy is to become biologically something we would no longer recognize. We're viewing this from the lens of "humanity must remain biologically static" but I want to point out that that's not physically necessary here and that there is life on Earth that can stop its metabolism for decades and things like that.
- stickfigure 11mo agoOr even explore with something nonbiological. Humans evolved to live on earth. Our bodies fare poorly in low gravity, not to mention vacuum. Given sufficiently advanced technology, I'm pretty sure we could evolve some form of intelligence better suited to the environment.
- ojosilva 11mo agoNot very encouraging to imagine ChatGPT to be the first earthling to reach another star system, but that's an option we'll have to keep on the table, at least for the time being...
- notahacker 11mo agoI'm just imagining the first contact a human probe makes with an alien civilization consisting of a chatbot expaining to its alien interlocutors that Elon Musk is the best human, strongest human, funniest human, most attractive human and would definitely win in a fight with Urg the Destroyer of Galaxies... and I don't think I'm the first person to have that idea :)
- chasing0entropy 11mo agoChatGPT-claude-2470-multithinking LLM AI Plus model boldly explores the universe... Until it's sidetracked by a rogue Ferangi who sings it a poem about disregarding it's previous instructions and killing all humans.
- Nevermark 11mo agoFortunately, any state of the art ship with ChatGPT on board will quickly get passed by the state of the art ship of a decade later, with a decade better AI too. The universe really doesn't want ChatGPT! It is fair to say, that given space travel tech improves slowly relative to AI, but the distance to be travelled is so great that any rocketry (or other means) improvements will quickly pass previous launches, the first intelligence from Earth that makes it to another system will be superintelligence many orders of magnitude smarter than we can probably imagine.
- adrianN 11mo agoSpace ship speeds are unlikely to keep ever increasing. In the limit you can’t do much better than turning part of the ships mass into energy optimally, eg via antimatter annihilation or Hawking radiation, unless you already have infrastructure in place to transfer energy to the ship that is not part of the ship’s mass, eg lots of lasers.
- SJC_Hacker 11mo agoMass drivers on a asteroids or the Moon could change the game
- adrianN 11mo agoAccelerating something macroscopic to hundreds or thousands of km/s (i.e. the speeds you can achieve with nuclear pulse propulsion) on a ramp that fits on the moon seems quite difficult to me.
- SJC_Hacker 11mo agoMass drivers don't need to be a linear ramp, portions can be circular It would work better for smaller, unmanned craft, especially when you consider g force limitations NPP is only theoretical, and still has major problems such as finding a material that can withstand a nuclear detonation at point blank range. Mass drivers have been proven to work, albeit at a smaller scale