Showerthoughts

30532 readers

910 users here now

A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted, clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts: 1

Rules

All posts must be showerthoughts
The entire showerthought must be in the title
No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- If you feel strongly that you want politics back, please volunteer as a mod.
Posts must be original/unique
Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct

If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.

Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report the message goes away and you never worry about it.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

167

Maybe we are late in the universe, perhaps universe used to be a lively and vibrant place homing millions of civilizations. Now, we stand as the last remnants, hence, possibly the most advanced. (lemmy.world)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

84 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

So all our evidence about life is from a sample of 1: 1 planet and it's development. Everything else is extrapolated from that. We don't know what rates of evolution should be or could be.

Also in terms of civilizations leaving junk everywhere, that is potentially true. But we also only have a sample of 1: 1 planet and 1 solar system which we have barely scratched the surface of.

The absence of evidence is not evidence in itself. We will have to go out in to the universe to see what is there.

In terms of travel to other systems - in theory self replicating ships could spread across the galaxy to every system in about 500 thousand years at sublight speed. Space travel is not doable in a humans life time, but it is doable on the scale of a stable civilizations efforts to spread into the galaxy.

There are also theoretical ways to travel faster than life. Whether they are pure fantasy or potential science only time will tell. We still can't even detect much of the universe, let alone begin to manipulate it.

We simply know too little to know what is going on in the galaxy. To say "there is nobody out there" is just a possibility, not a certainty.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

There are also theoretical ways to travel faster than [light].

There are?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

If you have an absolutely absurd amount of negative mass, you could create an Alcubierre warp drive that won't immediately tear your ship apart. Unfortunately there's no evidence that negative mass exists, and afaik current designs use amounts that are impossible to actually use (eg. the weight of a galaxy).

Tl;dr: Yes, but they may not be possible and may still be impractical if they were possible