this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2024
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Showerthoughts
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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
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I’ll also offer that a reason we’ve never seen a real alien UFO is simply the energy requirements limiting speed of travel through the universe (barring some undiscovered loophole in the laws of physics). To go fast takes lots of energy. To carry enough energy to accelerate takes even more energy. We haven’t even gotten to the slowing down part, the power consumption enroute, and recycling everything and replacing losses (atmosphere, parts, the steady and potentially catastrophic rocks and dust that will be encountered at speed, etc) for the duration of the journey. To cross any relatively minor distance would require decades at minimum if you’re in a star-dense area (now you’ve got to deal with radiation issues assuming the alien biology hadn’t worked out to survive that) to centuries.
You could probably get around that by sending robotic AI of some sort which would eliminate needing conventional life supporting systems, but you’d have to wait potentially centuries to get anything back depending on if you hoped to get a signal or a self-replicating ship to return data.
Yeah. Even if there was quite a bit of life the sheer difficulty of crossing distances in space and the energy requirements make it prohibitive.
I'm pretty sure that it is very unlikely that we will find a "loophole" in the laws of physics.
I'm pretty sure we will! But then it's just new physics.
You can't break constants of the universe. It is a matter of general relativity.
The faster you go the slower time will move and if you hit the speed of light (impossible for other reasons) time will stop completely.
You are welcome to come back and tell me I told you so but I think the laws of physics are pretty safe.
Newtonian physics was universal until general relativity. I think it's a bit premature to declare we have fully unravelled how the universe operates.
EDIT: Posted too early due to child attack! That's the real universal law... whenever you're using your phone your kids jump you.
It really is 🤣. Especially when I'm playing chess and have less than 30 seconds on the clock