Re: Superhabitable planets - Bigger, better, more suited for biology

R Kym Horsell wrote on 6/3/22 10:03 am:
> In alt.astronomy Caselli Luigi <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Il 05/03/2022 14:16, Whisper ha scritto:
>>> All completely different.  Humans can't survive long term off the
>>> earth. We would be defeated by the effects of gravity/radiation
>>> and many other challenges etc.  Even if we could design
>>> transportation to get to an extra solar planet (100% impossible
>>> imo) we'd die before we got to 0.0001% of the journey. Journeys
>>> to extra solar planets and contacting aliens are *never* going to
>>> happen so let's frame the discussions here within realistic 
>>> boundaries.  This isn't a sci-fi group.
>> If you assume that the current physics is right you are right. The
>> only way to send something around the universe is using probes and 
>> robots like the Voyagers. Men are to weak for long travels in the
>> space. The only other possibility is a complete revolution in
>> physics. Maybe someone unifying Gravity and Quantistic Mechanic and
>> finding some way to radically shorten distances. But for now this
>> is sci-fi... Luigi Caselli
> 
> Even SF is too conservative compared with reality.
> 
> Larry Niven had a good argument about this. He likened the thinking
> of the "man in the street" to a graph with a horizontal line on it. 
> Things stayed pretty much the same in the future as they were in
> 1800.
> 
> Scientists were a small step up. Apart from a few realists their
> thinking was like a line on a graph with a modest slope on it. Like
> when you make a graph on the side of your wardrobe as a kid showing
> how many push-ups you can do each week.
> 
> SF writers were a bit more advanced. The slope on the line was a bit
> steeper.
> 
> Whereas history shows reality is an exponential, a curve that grows
> faster than any polynomial.
> 
> But even pedestrian thinking shows in this case nothing special is 
> required except some G.U.T.Z.
> 
> Space travel isnt for woosies like humans. Assume aliens are not 
> woosies. Every point in the galaxy is no more than 100kly from
> Earth. There are 10^11 stars. They've had 14 billion years. At 1% of
> C is only takes 1 million years to get anywhere in the galaxy. Think
> of a good reason 100k alien civilizations have not made it here
> already, all of them putting into the shade anything humans have
> accomplished in the last million years. Human thought over the past
> 10k years or science over the last 100 is nothing of consquence.
> Probably one of the reasons they dont say much.
> 
> You gotta imagine in the last 10 billion years a lot of them had
> cats. (Or nearest equivalent). Cats -- even if they can figure it out
> -- refuse to do the smart thing. If there's a dumb way to do
> somethign a cat will try that first. You can see a cat sit by the
> side of the road and seemingly want to cross. Waiting waiting
> waiting. When a car comes along THEN they will want to run across in
> front of it. Jump from the garage to the house over a distance of
> 3m? Sure. They will try it. You can shout yourself horse telling them
> to be reasonable. You cant make it, you might say. The cat wont
> listen. They dont understand distances.

Cats don't really understand English* (* Insert appropriate spoken 
language!!)

> They dont understand gravity.
> They cant see 10 seconds into the future or imagine what its like 
> falling 10m and landing on concrete on your head. Get out the shovel
> now.  You're gunna have to bury something in a few mins. (And sure,
> it tried to make the jump, fell the 10m and ended up hitting the
> concrete on its back and broke in half).

But aren't Cats supposed to always land on their feet/paws??

> In 10 billion years "they"'ve just given up on talking to anyone at
> less than 10m years of continuous development.  So-called smart
> species almost never make the 2nd million let alone 10.

Yeap! Could be!
-- 
Daniel