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Pharaoh RutinTutin

Story Friday August 30, 2019

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20 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

And then we have completely crazy options like Liz being part plant, ...

Which is, of course, probably true, in the sense of having a common ancestor. This would have been some time ago.

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3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

They, however, tend to not be a formation AROUND something. Ice and salt are known to make crystal formations around a core. Also, amber can form around something, but is not typical example of crystal formation, as it's first formed and only later crystallizes.

"Around" - mezzo, mezzo; color in gems is generally impurities, as are many other interesting optical properties, rock is mixtures of minerals, but I get what you are saying. It doesn't seem impossible, but not quite normal.

Ice and salt are minerals. Salt is mined, "sea salt" obtained via evaporation is different, has way more minor components and tastes different, also believed to be better or worse for you, depending on your source. Ice is not commonly viewed as a mineral in our day to day experience, but to an astrophysicist, it definitely is, and it's properties as a mineral are critical to understanding ice caps and glaciers.

Amber doesn't crystallize.

Anyway, you seem to be lobbying for the same conclusion I reached, the dewitchery diamond was likely constructed, not natural. It probably won't come up again, since it shattered, so probably doesn't matter.

 

3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I plan to NOT ingest poison. But there are poisons for which unicorn horn would be only option.

Good plan.

Plan B does not sound so good. Even as a D&D character, the source is elusive.

 

3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Well, sure, but that kind of flight tends to be quite short and ballistic. The option to just load the ponies into airplane also usually don't count (found example with horses). However, the ponies Adrian referred to probably fly using magic. Or friendship. Or is that OF friendship?

It works for cows, too.

Sorry, the closest I come to being a Brony is my Four Little Ponies of the Apocalypse shirt.

 

 

3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

You're welcome. :)

(Wasn't hard to find, actually. Shows on top for "dragon documentary".)

There were a couple of other interesting similar shows. One was a documentary of a probe to another world searching for life, and a similar one of a series of probes returning to earth at various far future times. Also one, "If man disappeared, how long would remnants of our being here last?" - it was surprisingly gloomy about our eventual legacy.

 

 

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12 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

There were a couple of other interesting similar shows. One was a documentary of a probe to another world searching for life, and a similar one of a series of probes returning to earth at various far future times. Also one, "If man disappeared, how long would remnants of our being here last?" - it was surprisingly gloomy about our eventual legacy.

Did the show mention the layer of plastic, glass, concrete, and other man-made materials that will likely mark our presence in the geologic record? Or the signs in the future fossil record of the mass-extinction we're currently in the middle of (and which would go on for a while even without us thanks to invasive species and continuing climate change from the carbon dioxide we've already pumped into the atmosphere)?

It's not a very pleasant legacy, but scientists of the future will definitely be able to tell we were here...

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14 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
19 hours ago, hkmaly said:

They, however, tend to not be a formation AROUND something. Ice and salt are known to make crystal formations around a core. Also, amber can form around something, but is not typical example of crystal formation, as it's first formed and only later crystallizes.

"Around" - mezzo, mezzo; color in gems is generally impurities, as are many other interesting optical properties, rock is mixtures of minerals, but I get what you are saying. It doesn't seem impossible, but not quite normal.

Ice and salt are minerals. Salt is mined, "sea salt" obtained via evaporation is different, has way more minor components and tastes different, also believed to be better or worse for you, depending on your source. Ice is not commonly viewed as a mineral in our day to day experience, but to an astrophysicist, it definitely is, and it's properties as a mineral are critical to understanding ice caps and glaciers.

Ice and salt are minerals and crystals, but NOT jewels.

I'm pretty sure the salt which is mined used to be sea salt few billions years ago.

14 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Amber doesn't crystallize.

Meanwhile, amber fossilizes into jewel. It becomes hard, although technically not crystal.

15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Anyway, you seem to be lobbying for the same conclusion I reached, the dewitchery diamond was likely constructed, not natural. It probably won't come up again, since it shattered, so probably doesn't matter.

Actually, I think that it was created BY the dragon scale, that dragon scales will naturally coat themselves with this kind of crystal, given enough time and possibly specific environment. Alternatively, it may be created in similar way as amber is ... or pearl.

All natural processes, but, like, not geologic ones.

15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
19 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I plan to NOT ingest poison. But there are poisons for which unicorn horn would be only option.

Good plan.

I also plan to not die in general. Sure, I suspect that not everything will go according to that plan, but I see no advantage in planning to die.

15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Plan B does not sound so good. Even as a D&D character, the source is elusive.

It's not plan B for most poisons. Plan B is get medical help. This would be plan C.

15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
19 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Well, sure, but that kind of flight tends to be quite short and ballistic. The option to just load the ponies into airplane also usually don't count (found example with horses). However, the ponies Adrian referred to probably fly using magic. Or friendship. Or is that OF friendship?

It works for cows, too.

Sorry, the closest I come to being a Brony is my Four Little Ponies of the Apocalypse shirt.

I suspect that to classify as Brony I would need to see more episodes ... or at least one without using fast forward. However, it's getting referenced in lot of comics, and some episode descriptions looks very interesting ... I can't help myself to obtain SOME second-hand knowledge of it ...

2 hours ago, ChronosCat said:
15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

There were a couple of other interesting similar shows. One was a documentary of a probe to another world searching for life, and a similar one of a series of probes returning to earth at various far future times. Also one, "If man disappeared, how long would remnants of our being here last?" - it was surprisingly gloomy about our eventual legacy.

Did the show mention the layer of plastic, glass, concrete, and other man-made materials that will likely mark our presence in the geologic record? Or the signs in the future fossil record of the mass-extinction we're currently in the middle of (and which would go on for a while even without us thanks to invasive species and continuing climate change from the carbon dioxide we've already pumped into the atmosphere)?

It's not a very pleasant legacy, but scientists of the future will definitely be able to tell we were here...

It's just question of time. In five billion years, whole Earth would be burned by Sun in way not leaving any trace of us. The buildings will likely stop being recognizable as buildings in few hundred years. Between those points, however, our legacy will gradually become less and less identifiable ; at some point, it would still be visible SOMETHING happened at this time, but it would be hard to say if it was civilization or big meteorite.

Note that Earth changes a lot, making lasting "legacy" hard to do. However, our legacy is not limited on Earth. The artifacts we left on Moon would likely be recognizable long after anything on Earth, because only thing which can happen to them are micrometeorites. And the probes we send in deep space, safely away from solar wind, flying through space which gets more and more empty? May be still obviously artificial when they hit another solar system millions years from now.

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25 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Earth changes a lot, making lasting "legacy" hard to do. However, our legacy is not limited on Earth

So in 1*10111 years when the last Black Hole has evaporated, the last Proton has decayed, the Microwave Background has cooled to nano-Kelvins, and there is at least a light year between any two object that might be recognizable as sub-atomic particles...

At that point, will Susan's "KITTY" picture still be the funniest artifact from humanity's time on Earth?

https://egscomics.com/comic/2003-01-28

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5 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

Did the show mention the layer of plastic, glass, concrete, and other man-made materials that will likely mark our presence in the geologic record? Or the signs in the future fossil record of the mass-extinction we're currently in the middle of (and which would go on for a while even without us thanks to invasive species and continuing climate change from the carbon dioxide we've already pumped into the atmosphere)?

It's not a very pleasant legacy, but scientists of the future will definitely be able to tell we were here...

I don't remember it all that well, but the gist was that plants would tear apart our legacy much faster than you'd think. It did not address our efforts to create a second Venus, however.

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2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I'm pretty sure the salt which is mined used to be sea salt few billions years ago.

That would make sense, but they taste distinctly different, though both are basically salty.

 

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Meanwhile, amber fossilizes into jewel. It becomes hard, although technically not crystal.

It is basically natural plastic, it gets hard enough to cut talc, and not much more. It is also a family, not just one thing, more so than a mineral with differing colors which is still pretty much one substance with minor impurity variations.

Technically is the best way to not be something. "I fit the criteria to not be something."

 

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Actually, I think that it was created BY the dragon scale, that dragon scales will naturally coat themselves with this kind of crystal, given enough time and possibly specific environment.

I'm guessing you are saying "After the scale is no longer attached to the dragon". Seems like if it was before, this would be counterproductive for the dragon.

Why would a loose dead scale coat itself with anything? Are you conjecturing that it somehow has resources of it's own, beyond having once been attached to a mythical magical creature? How does this benefit the scale or the dragon?

 

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

 Alternatively, it may be created in similar way as amber is ...

The natural processes that come to mind that in a sense resemble this are stalactites and stalagmites, which take forever to deposit, and would not resemble the dewitchery diamond, flow of mud and sediment that eventually becomes sedimentary rock and may contain fossils, again, not resembling the dewitchery diamond, and the flow of lava, which cools and hardens, and perhaps a dragon scale could survive, but does not resemble the dewitchery diamond. There could be some dissolved precursor that forms this mineral, I'm pretty sure you could create something like it artificially, so nature could probably do it as well. Seems like a stretch, but maybe.

I suppose that's no worse than "Created by some dude." Although, magic.

 

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

 ... or pearl.

Pearl is "A critter has an irritant, covers it with a shell material it is already prone to produce that reduces the irritation." And the environment has to lend itself to dissolving and manipulating the shell material. I'm not seeing how this would fit.

 

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I also plan to not die in general.

That was a Woody Allen joke, back in the day.

"Do you believe you will achieve immortality through your works?"

"I'd prefer to achieve immortality through not dying."

 

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

It's just question of time. In five billion years, whole Earth would be burned by Sun in way not leaving any trace of us.

The inevitable collision with the Andromeda Galaxy in the same time frame is perhaps more depressing. Much of our potential future galactic legacy is likely to be swallowed up.

 

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5 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
8 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I'm pretty sure the salt which is mined used to be sea salt few billions years ago.

That would make sense, but they taste distinctly different, though both are basically salty.

Well, billions years ago, the seas were different.

5 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
8 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Actually, I think that it was created BY the dragon scale, that dragon scales will naturally coat themselves with this kind of crystal, given enough time and possibly specific environment.

I'm guessing you are saying "After the scale is no longer attached to the dragon". Seems like if it was before, this would be counterproductive for the dragon.

Would it? Obviously, it will never make so big volume because of the wear and the dragon scratching it off. But it may be part of why dragon scales are so hard to penetrate.

5 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Why would a loose dead scale coat itself with anything? Are you conjecturing that it somehow has resources of it's own, beyond having once been attached to a mythical magical creature? How does this benefit the scale or the dragon?

The idea is that dragon is so magical that it takes long time before the magic completely leaves it's dead body.

5 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
8 hours ago, hkmaly said:

 ... or pearl.

Pearl is "A critter has an irritant, covers it with a shell material it is already prone to produce that reduces the irritation." And the environment has to lend itself to dissolving and manipulating the shell material. I'm not seeing how this would fit.

Yeah, I know. Now, try "The universe has an irritant, covers it with material ..."

... ok, it's not THAT much similar to how pearl is produced, but note that the shards DISSOLVED when no longer around the scale.

5 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
9 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I also plan to not die in general.

That was a Woody Allen joke, back in the day.

"Do you believe you will achieve immortality through your works?"

"I'd prefer to achieve immortality through not dying."

Considering how much time humanity spend thinking about death, I find unlikely noone before Woody Allen made similar comment.

5 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
9 hours ago, hkmaly said:

It's just question of time. In five billion years, whole Earth would be burned by Sun in way not leaving any trace of us.

The inevitable collision with the Andromeda Galaxy in the same time frame is perhaps more depressing. Much of our potential future galactic legacy is likely to be swallowed up.

Not really. Galaxies consists mostly of empty space. Collision with the Andromeda Galaxy may involve few if any collisions of stars and smaller objects like planets. The black holes in center will probably collide, but we are quite far from the center so we may not be affected by that either.

Also, at that point, Earth will have already become far too hot for liquid water to exist - even if we stop global warming now. Unless we would be still present and work hard on shielding Earth from Sun, which at that point would be 40% brighter.

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda–Milky_Way_collision

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1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Would it? Obviously, it will never make so big volume because of the wear and the dragon scratching it off. But it may be part of why dragon scales are so hard to penetrate.

Well, you obviously thought of the same objection I did, but I suppose it might even be a behavioral imperative to keep the layer thin, so [Myth Plausible].

 

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

The idea is that dragon is so magical that it takes long time before the magic completely leaves it's dead body.

Contained vs channeled, ... well, we already have hair as a magic battery, and the scales are supposed to be super strong, beyond normal biological material. Sounds reasonable.

 

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

... note that the shards DISSOLVED when no longer around the scale.

O\o?    You're right, they did. That implies the shards, and the crystal itself, were a material form of magic itself, not merely a container. Very weird. Might be "diamond" in the sense of having similar hardness properties. (Which does not contradict the shattering, diamond is brittle.)

 

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Considering how much time humanity spend thinking about death, I find unlikely no one before Woody Allen made similar comment.

That is a reasonable conjecture, but a quick Google search does not attribute the quote to anyone else.

 

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Yes, did you read the section on the central singularities? That is the gloomy part. While the stars will rarely collide, if at all, many will be consumed, and the energy released and tidal effects will destroy many more. Also, we don't know what being in the vicinity of a strong gravity wave source is like, but I doubt it's a good thing.

 

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16 hours ago, hkmaly said:

It's just question of time. In five billion years, whole Earth would be burned by Sun in way not leaving any trace of us. The buildings will likely stop being recognizable as buildings in few hundred years. Between those points, however, our legacy will gradually become less and less identifiable ; at some point, it would still be visible SOMETHING happened at this time, but it would be hard to say if it was civilization or big meteorite.

Note that Earth changes a lot, making lasting "legacy" hard to do. However, our legacy is not limited on Earth. The artifacts we left on Moon would likely be recognizable long after anything on Earth, because only thing which can happen to them are micrometeorites. And the probes we send in deep space, safely away from solar wind, flying through space which gets more and more empty? May be still obviously artificial when they hit another solar system millions years from now.

In a universe with a finite lifespan, a legacy that lasts forever is impossible; thinking on the largest possible scales, one must come to accept that in a sense everything is temporary. However, it is still possible to do things that have an effect on the world/universe for a very long time...

If a new scientifically-inclined species arises on Earth in the future, or aliens visit (or abandoning the conceit of humankind disappearing tomorrow, if our far-distant descendants decide to investigate this era) they might not be sure what caused this mass extinction - but I think the lack of iridium would suggest it was not an asteroid. As I understand it, our geologic layer will include pieces of cement/concrete/brick/etc, various chemicals we've made use of, radioactive materials (including fallout from nuclear bomb tests), and possibly particles of plastic (after reading a few articles, I'm less sure of that than I was when I made my previous post, but even if the plastics break down completely they'll still leave behind chemical traces). Millions of years in the future, they might not be able to tell much about our civilization, and they might not connect it with the big-brained apes that spread around the planet at the same time as all the other invasive species (assuming we even leave that many fossils) but I suspect they'd at least be able to figure out there was some sort of technological civilization present.

(Admittedly, if we're talking billions of years it gets a bit more questionable what they'd be able to figure out.)

As for our space probes, considering the vast distances of space, there's a good chance that even if they fly close to an inhabited system, no one will notice them. They probably will be the last surviving trace of our civilization (unless we start colonizing other worlds or otherwise shift to a more space-based civilization), but no one might ever find them to learn from them.

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18 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Why would a loose dead scale coat itself with anything? Are you conjecturing that it somehow has resources of it's own, beyond having once been attached to a mythical magical creature? How does this benefit the scale or the dragon?

What if the Dragons were inherently magical creatures in that they entire bodies held power, even a dropped scale or horn or bone would still radiate energy like Uranium, but in the case of the scale, the energy caused the minerals in the ground around it to bond to the scale as a crystalline structure, basically like fossilization but with magic.

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12 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
14 hours ago, hkmaly said:

... note that the shards DISSOLVED when no longer around the scale.

O\o?    You're right, they did. That implies the shards, and the crystal itself, were a material form of magic itself, not merely a container. Very weird. Might be "diamond" in the sense of having similar hardness properties. (Which does not contradict the shattering, diamond is brittle.)

Or, at least, their properties were heavily modified. I mean, I like the idea it was really solidified magic, but it could also be air or water turned solid by magic.

It definitely was much harder when around the scale. And I don't think you can shatter it so easily by, say, mallet: it only shattered because Magus messed up with the magical structure of it.

13 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
15 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Yes, did you read the section on the central singularities? That is the gloomy part. While the stars will rarely collide, if at all, many will be consumed, and the energy released and tidal effects will destroy many more.

I don't care about "many" stars and I think at this point we can't really predict if our sun will be one of them.

13 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Also, we don't know what being in the vicinity of a strong gravity wave source is like, but I doubt it's a good thing.

Unless the black hole will be close enough to destabilize orbits of some planets, I think we don't need to care.

6 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

In a universe with a finite lifespan, a legacy that lasts forever is impossible; thinking on the largest possible scales, one must come to accept that in a sense everything is temporary. However, it is still possible to do things that have an effect on the world/universe for a very long time...

You think small. So far, even our most advanced devices are weak compared to nature, but "impossible"? When we start to do things with universe instead of world, we can make stuff which will outlasts stars.

6 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

or abandoning the conceit of humankind disappearing tomorrow, if our far-distant descendants decide to investigate this era

Our far-distant descendants are in completely different position than other species: on one hand, Earth will be modified by all generations of humans between us ; nothing will destroy building as fast as the need to make another building at same place. On the other hand, all of those generations would spend effort to preserve history ; this effort may not be spend most wisely, but it will preserve something.

In past, preservation of something meant preserving physical object. That's no longer true. Literature and movies can be digitalized and and preserved independently of anything physical. Sure, every storage medium will last only limited amount of time ; but copying digital data is EASY. Any book which is part of Project Gutenberg will most likely be preserved as long as human civilization lasts. Wikipedia might, for legal reason, keep it's complete history as long as the project will run - which may ALSO be as long as human civilization.

Our far-distant descandants investigating this era would not look at physical objects: they will look at digital archives. They will be translating long lost languages like english to modern ones, distinguishing fiction from documentaries, filling gaps of things which were assumed to be obvious so noone written them. And, well, try to actually understand.

7 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

Millions of years in the future, they might not be able to tell much about our civilization, and they might not connect it with the big-brained apes that spread around the planet at the same time as all the other invasive species (assuming we even leave that many fossils) but I suspect they'd at least be able to figure out there was some sort of technological civilization present.

Yeah ... with cremation, I think we don't leave that many fossils. But yes, personally I think that while specific things might last less than expected, ultimately the existence of technological civilization will be apparent. However, I did not saw that documentary. Maybe they have really good arguments even for the radioactive waste, which I suspect will last quite a long time ...

7 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

As for our space probes, considering the vast distances of space, there's a good chance that even if they fly close to an inhabited system, no one will notice them. They probably will be the last surviving trace of our civilization (unless we start colonizing other worlds or otherwise shift to a more space-based civilization), but no one might ever find them to learn from them.

Space is quite empty, but that also means you can search lot of it relatively easily. And the risk of something coming very fast directly at you is good motivation. Other technological civilization may find our probes because their automatic systems searching for dangers would identify it as weird enough to report.

Also, I still hope that yes we will shift to more space-based civilization. If we don't completely destroy ourselves attempting to protect Earth. Live is not about being sustainable ; in nature, anything which stops to expand will go extinct.

1 hour ago, Scotty said:
21 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Why would a loose dead scale coat itself with anything? Are you conjecturing that it somehow has resources of it's own, beyond having once been attached to a mythical magical creature? How does this benefit the scale or the dragon?

What if the Dragons were inherently magical creatures in that they entire bodies held power, even a dropped scale or horn or bone would still radiate energy like Uranium, but in the case of the scale, the energy caused the minerals in the ground around it to bond to the scale as a crystalline structure, basically like fossilization but with magic.

There were no minerals around the scale. The whole "diamond" DISSOLVED. It must've been either pure magic or materials like air and water.

But yes about the magic radiation.

 

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18 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

There were no minerals around the scale. The whole "diamond" DISSOLVED. It must've been either pure magic or materials like air and water.

What if the mineral particles were on an atomic scale and so when the bonds holding them together broke, they became like a vapor?

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2 minutes ago, Scotty said:
24 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

There were no minerals around the scale. The whole "diamond" DISSOLVED. It must've been either pure magic or materials like air and water.

What if the mineral particles were on an atomic scale and so when the bonds holding them together broke, they became like a vapor?

More like dust than vapor, but ok, there couldn't be much of them.

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5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I don't care about "many" stars and I think at this point we can't really predict if our sun will be one of them.

Unless the black hole will be close enough to destabilize orbits of some planets, I think we don't need to care.

Many means that the likelihood of our sun being one of them is higher than with few. And bad things can happen, even if the sun is not consumed; you mention one yourself in your next statement.

We have only recently detected gravity waves, from very far away. We have no experience what it is like to be up close and personal with the source. I would conjecture, it can't be good.

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19 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:
6 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I don't care about "many" stars and I think at this point we can't really predict if our sun will be one of them.

Unless the black hole will be close enough to destabilize orbits of some planets, I think we don't need to care.

Many means that the likelihood of our sun being one of them is higher than with few. And bad things can happen, even if the sun is not consumed; you mention one yourself in your next statement.

We have only recently detected gravity waves, from very far away. We have no experience what it is like to be up close and personal with the source. I would conjecture, it can't be good.

The stars consumed by the black hole wouldn't be choosen randomly. They will be choosen based on their position in galaxy. And we are close to edge. If we don't happen to be near the way of Andromeda's core (which could take us in direction of center of galaxy) it will be ok.

The thing is gravity is weak. (Weaker than weak actually.) It would need to be quite close to affect us.

And yes we DO have experience. We can personally experience effects of gravity of Earth, Moon and Sun. There is also quite a lot of research regarding gravity of Jupiter and Saturn, mainly about how they affect comets.

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6 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Our far-distant descendants are in completely different position than other species: on one hand, Earth will be modified by all generations of humans between us ; nothing will destroy building as fast as the need to make another building at same place. On the other hand, all of those generations would spend effort to preserve history ; this effort may not be spend most wisely, but it will preserve something.

In past, preservation of something meant preserving physical object. That's no longer true. Literature and movies can be digitalized and and preserved independently of anything physical. Sure, every storage medium will last only limited amount of time ; but copying digital data is EASY. Any book which is part of Project Gutenberg will most likely be preserved as long as human civilization lasts. Wikipedia might, for legal reason, keep it's complete history as long as the project will run - which may ALSO be as long as human civilization.

Our far-distant descandants investigating this era would not look at physical objects: they will look at digital archives. They will be translating long lost languages like english to modern ones, distinguishing fiction from documentaries, filling gaps of things which were assumed to be obvious so noone written them. And, well, try to actually understand.

Yeah ... with cremation, I think we don't leave that many fossils. But yes, personally I think that while specific things might last less than expected, ultimately the existence of technological civilization will be apparent. However, I did not saw that documentary. Maybe they have really good arguments even for the radioactive waste, which I suspect will last quite a long time ...

 

Future generations being able to copy (or read) our digital data depends on them maintaining a knowledge level where they know what digital information is, and the knowledge of how to read it. A flash memory card is just a bit of plastic and metal to somebody who doesn't even know what a computer is. And could they necessarily reverse-engineer the knowledge of how to convert a .jpg file into an image if they know nothing of our software conventions?

As for signs of our civilization's existence that would persist for millions of years, another one would be that we have harvested all of the pristine near-surface deposits of many useful metals, minerals, and fossil fuels. It would take tens of millions of years for geological processes to replenish those to the degree that no future investigator would notice that they had been harvested. Also, we dump our metallic, glass, and plastic wastes in bit co-mingled deposits (i.e. landfills), so instead of seeing natural veins of ores of iron, zinc, copper, etc., future investigators are going to see deposits of thoroughly mixed material.

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11 minutes ago, ijuin said:

Also, we dump our metallic, glass, and plastic wastes in bit co-mingled deposits (i.e. landfills), so instead of seeing natural veins of ores of iron, zinc, copper, etc., future investigators are going to see deposits of thoroughly mixed material.

"Sheesh, our prospectors just found another seam of Garbagium. This planet is messed up." :danshiftyeyes:

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5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

The stars consumed by the black hole wouldn't be choosen randomly. They will be choosen based on their position in galaxy. And we are close to edge. If we don't happen to be near the way of Andromeda's core (which could take us in direction of center of galaxy) it will be ok.

The thing is gravity is weak. (Weaker than weak actually.) It would need to be quite close to affect us.

And yes we DO have experience. We can personally experience effects of gravity of Earth, Moon and Sun. There is also quite a lot of research regarding gravity of Jupiter and Saturn, mainly about how they affect comets.

All true, yet manages to skirt the salient points.

The distribution of stars is not actually random, nor will the result of our galaxies colliding be random in detail, yet probabilistic observations can be made about the eventual outcome. We do stuff like this every day. People's individual decisions of where to eat lunch is no random, they each have schedules and preferences that drive where they go. Yet you know you are more likely to be served in a timely manner if you avoid the rush at noon.

Gravity is weak, relative to other fundamental forces (although the rate of degradation over distance is less), and it takes a lot of mass for it to have the macro effects that we have come to expect, yet such masses exist, and we depend on this property. If a mere earth sized mass can hold a breathable mixture of gases in place, what do you suppose the alleged weakness of two galactic cores is going to mitigate?

Think, it wouldn't take much to screw up our harmonious environment. What would a mere 5%, 10%, 20% change in the eccentricity of our orbit do? How many slightly closer swings by the sun would it take to dessicate our world?

And no, we don't have experience. We can observe gravity, we can calculate orbits, but we have no direct experience with super massive objects; it is only within my lifetime that we have acknowledged that they even exist. One of the first steps to learning is figuring out what you don't know and making room for discovery. Well, good news, buddy, our ignorance is vast. We know all about gravity? We don't even know where most of it comes from, where most of the mass is hiding. (We've slapped a label on the darkness, but that's about it.)

Suffice to say, this future collision is going to be messy.

 

 

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Regarding the discussion on the merging of the Andromeda and Milky Way Galaxies, I'd like to point out that the light from the Sun will have increased so much by that point the surface of the Earth will be uninhabitable to life as we know it. So most likely either the human lineage will be long ended by then, or our descendants will have spread across multiple star systems (giving them a greater chance of surviving the merging, as well as presumably the resources to do something if one of the systems they live in is in danger, if only evacuate).

15 hours ago, hkmaly said:

You think small. So far, even our most advanced devices are weak compared to nature, but "impossible"? When we start to do things with universe instead of world, we can make stuff which will outlasts stars.

Well, of course we can build stuff that might outlast the stars, if we put our minds to it. But (assuming some other end-of-the-universe scenario doesn't happen first) eventually there's a far more difficult boundary to overcome: the heat death of the universe.

Are you suggesting that with advanced enough science it might be possible to prevent heat death, or to escape to another universe? I suppose time travel, if possible for macroscopic objects (or at least for information) might be another way to escape the heat death depending on what time travel rules turn out to be true... But otherwise, any legacy must eventually end.

15 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Our far-distant descendants are in completely different position than other species: on one hand, Earth will be modified by all generations of humans between us ; nothing will destroy building as fast as the need to make another building at same place. On the other hand, all of those generations would spend effort to preserve history ; this effort may not be spend most wisely, but it will preserve something.

In past, preservation of something meant preserving physical object. That's no longer true. Literature and movies can be digitalized and and preserved independently of anything physical. Sure, every storage medium will last only limited amount of time ; but copying digital data is EASY. Any book which is part of Project Gutenberg will most likely be preserved as long as human civilization lasts. Wikipedia might, for legal reason, keep it's complete history as long as the project will run - which may ALSO be as long as human civilization.

Our far-distant descandants investigating this era would not look at physical objects: they will look at digital archives. They will be translating long lost languages like english to modern ones, distinguishing fiction from documentaries, filling gaps of things which were assumed to be obvious so noone written them. And, well, try to actually understand.

Storing data takes space (digital data still takes up physical space in the form of whatever medium it's stored on), and maintaining it takes effort. As our digital libraries grow, there will likely come a time where people decide that it takes too much space and/or effort to keep all of it, and they may abandon much of what they don't consider important. There will also inevitably be unintentional data losses.

Fast forward several million years, to a time when our descendants are no longer homo sapiens and civilization bears little or no resemblance to what now exists, and it seems unlikely to me that very much information from the present day (or all of recorded history to this point) will have survived in an easily accessible form. Those who wish to learn about the distant past will need to do new archaeological and paleontological investigations. (For that matter, even if they do know a lot about our era, they probably will still want to confirm and expand upon things with archaeology/paleontology; there are archaeologists today who investigate things just a few centuries old, even only a century.)

Of course, all this assumes our civilization continues on without any major disasters. Climate change is starting to put major stresses on our civilization, and will keep getting worse for decades or more; lesser changes in climate have brought down civilizations in the past. While it's possible ours might be different, I'm not convinced that it will be. Even a relatively short and mild dark age would likely result in a lot of lost information, particularly that stored in digital form; worse and more extensive dark ages could result in the scenario ijuin mentions where even any digital storage device which somehow survived is indecipherable to them. And if the wars which would almost inevitably accompany the fall of civilization included too many nuclear weapons being used, things could get so bad that any survivors would have to more-or-less start civilization over from scratch...

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In the long run, our era’s geopolitics will be irrelevant to future society—World War Two will matter to them about as much as the Punic Wars matter to us, if not less. What they will care to remember of our era is the longest-reaching milestones that we had achieved—first automated computing, first nuclear energy, first understanding of genetics, first spaceflight, etc.

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17 hours ago, ijuin said:

Future generations being able to copy (or read) our digital data depends on them maintaining a knowledge level where they know what digital information is, and the knowledge of how to read it. A flash memory card is just a bit of plastic and metal to somebody who doesn't even know what a computer is. And could they necessarily reverse-engineer the knowledge of how to convert a .jpg file into an image if they know nothing of our software conventions?

Flash memory is unlikely to survive long enough for someone to forgot what's that is. NAND flash is not technology build to last.

My outlook to future is extremist: I don't think it's possible that we lose the knowledge about computers and remain same otherwise. I believe that either we will retain the computer knowledge ... or go through catastrophe serious enough the civilization appearing afterwards wouldn't be our civilization, and might not be our descendants either.

17 hours ago, ijuin said:

And could they necessarily reverse-engineer the knowledge of how to convert a .jpg file into an image if they know nothing of our software conventions?

Probably not. Reverse engineering format containing lossy-compressed data is extremely hard. However, converting images between formats is relatively easy process which can be made automatically. And I'm talking about "Hey, this terabyte archive contains some old formats, let's convert everything to something modern ... click click click ... done".

Remember: the data are not abandoned. Just put into big heap processed together for convenience.

6 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

Storing data takes space (digital data still takes up physical space in the form of whatever medium it's stored on), and maintaining it takes effort. As our digital libraries grow, there will likely come a time where people decide that it takes too much space and/or effort to keep all of it, and they may abandon much of what they don't consider important. There will also inevitably be unintentional data losses.

The amount of space important data takes is minimal compared to size of computer games. Today, single AAA game takes more space than all books of project Gutenberg. In century, single AAA game, with VR and true AIs, will take more space than whole library of congress including movies.

The effort to maintain archive of all data from previous centuries is much smaller than the effort necessary to decide which parts of that archive are important and which are not. When someone once decides that something is worth adding to The Archive, it will remain there forever. Future generations might not be sure why the library contains movie starring some governor of California and suspect political reasons, but they will not want to create precedent which might later be used against movies added by them.

6 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

Fast forward several million years, to a time when our descendants are no longer homo sapiens and civilization bears little or no resemblance to what now exists, and it seems unlikely to me that very much information from the present day (or all of recorded history to this point) will have survived in an easily accessible form. Those who wish to learn about the distant past will need to do new archaeological and paleontological investigations. (For that matter, even if they do know a lot about our era, they probably will still want to confirm and expand upon things with archaeology/paleontology; there are archaeologists today who investigate things just a few centuries old, even only a century.)

I believe searching in digital archives will still bring more information (including information forgotten for millions of years) than traditional archeology. As I said: nothing will destroy building as fast and as thoroughly as the need to build another building at same place.

6 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

Of course, all this assumes our civilization continues on without any major disasters. Climate change is starting to put major stresses on our civilization, and will keep getting worse for decades or more; lesser changes in climate have brought down civilizations in the past. While it's possible ours might be different, I'm not convinced that it will be. Even a relatively short and mild dark age would likely result in a lot of lost information, particularly that stored in digital form; worse and more extensive dark ages could result in the scenario ijuin mentions where even any digital storage device which somehow survived is indecipherable to them. And if the wars which would almost inevitably accompany the fall of civilization included too many nuclear weapons being used, things could get so bad that any survivors would have to more-or-less start civilization over from scratch...

There will be no starting from scratch in next million year. We used too much fossil fuels for that. Future civilization will find impossible to get from steam era. And their live will be too hard to care about past.

17 hours ago, ijuin said:

As for signs of our civilization's existence that would persist for millions of years, another one would be that we have harvested all of the pristine near-surface deposits of many useful metals, minerals, and fossil fuels. It would take tens of millions of years for geological processes to replenish those to the degree that no future investigator would notice that they had been harvested. Also, we dump our metallic, glass, and plastic wastes in bit co-mingled deposits (i.e. landfills), so instead of seeing natural veins of ores of iron, zinc, copper, etc., future investigators are going to see deposits of thoroughly mixed material.

Yes. For millions of years, the missing near-surface deposits will be sure sign of technological civilization ... and problem any new civilization will fight hard to overcome. However, in longer time periods, when the geological processes WILL replenish those deposits, it might not be recognizable that such gap existed.

4 hours ago, ijuin said:

In the long run, our era’s geopolitics will be irrelevant to future society—World War Two will matter to them about as much as the Punic Wars matter to us, if not less. What they will care to remember of our era is the longest-reaching milestones that we had achieved—first automated computing, first nuclear energy, first understanding of genetics, first spaceflight, etc.

Punic wars are still relevant to us. It's being taught in school (then promptly forgotten). Historians are arguing about those. There will be movies about them ... which might take dramatic license to alter some historical facts and only historians will complain.

Meanwhile, current president? Even the US one? Would need to make some REALLY big mistake to still be remembered.

12 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

The distribution of stars is not actually random, nor will the result of our galaxies colliding be random in detail, yet probabilistic observations can be made about the eventual outcome. We do stuff like this every day. People's individual decisions of where to eat lunch is no random, they each have schedules and preferences that drive where they go. Yet you know you are more likely to be served in a timely manner if you avoid the rush at noon.

Probabilistic observations are known to say little about individuals.

12 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Gravity is weak, relative to other fundamental forces (although the rate of degradation over distance is less), and it takes a lot of mass for it to have the macro effects that we have come to expect, yet such masses exist, and we depend on this property. If a mere earth sized mass can hold a breathable mixture of gases in place, what do you suppose the alleged weakness of two galactic cores is going to mitigate?

Think, it wouldn't take much to screw up our harmonious environment. What would a mere 5%, 10%, 20% change in the eccentricity of our orbit do? How many slightly closer swings by the sun would it take to dessicate our world?

Compared to what, another hundred years of global warming?

If our civilization survives those billions years to the collision, it will have necessary experience to adapt, even by altering Earth's orbit. If it won't survive, well, can't kill what's already dead.

12 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

And no, we don't have experience. We can observe gravity, we can calculate orbits, but we have no direct experience with super massive objects; it is only within my lifetime that we have acknowledged that they even exist. One of the first steps to learning is figuring out what you don't know and making room for discovery. Well, good news, buddy, our ignorance is vast. We know all about gravity? We don't even know where most of it comes from, where most of the mass is hiding. (We've slapped a label on the darkness, but that's about it.)

Suffice to say, this future collision is going to be messy.

True, our experience is about smaller objects like planets and Sun, not about gigantic black holes. Still, I think the black hole would need to be really VERY close to affect our planet in way we have no experience with. And I think the probability of getting so close is not so big.

Oh yes, messy it definitely will be. I just suspect it will also be the biggest over-hyped event in history after Y2K (not) destroying whole computer network. Our predictions of what will happen will get more and more precise with every million of years, and we WILL have plenty of time to prepare for anything, unless the preparation will need to go through major political body.

7 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

Regarding the discussion on the merging of the Andromeda and Milky Way Galaxies, I'd like to point out that the light from the Sun will have increased so much by that point the surface of the Earth will be uninhabitable to life as we know it. So most likely either the human lineage will be long ended by then, or our descendants will have spread across multiple star systems (giving them a greater chance of surviving the merging, as well as presumably the resources to do something if one of the systems they live in is in danger, if only evacuate).

Didn't I already mentioned that? Yes, before that happens, we will need to solve several other major problems ... or die.

It IS possible we will, at that point, still be on Earth - assuming we will alter it's orbit. But I consider more likely we will spread to more star system at that point.

7 hours ago, ChronosCat said:
On 9/7/2019 at 1:39 AM, hkmaly said:

You think small. So far, even our most advanced devices are weak compared to nature, but "impossible"? When we start to do things with universe instead of world, we can make stuff which will outlasts stars.

Well, of course we can build stuff that might outlast the stars, if we put our minds to it. But (assuming some other end-of-the-universe scenario doesn't happen first) eventually there's a far more difficult boundary to overcome: the heat death of the universe.

Are you suggesting that with advanced enough science it might be possible to prevent heat death, or to escape to another universe? I suppose time travel, if possible for macroscopic objects (or at least for information) might be another way to escape the heat death depending on what time travel rules turn out to be true... But otherwise, any legacy must eventually end.

Actually, I believe we will be able to escape to another universe, or to alter this one to prevent the heat death ... or to destroy it completely in attempt to.

Also, the concept of heat death is not entirely without controversies: there are lot of things we don't know about universe yet, and some of it has potential to affect the outcome.

However, assuming heat death: it's quite likely our legacy will be sort-of-preserved in such case. There will be no usable energy, but you don't need usable energy to preserve a monument. Maybe it wouldn't be from protons, if those are unstable ... maybe those ARE stable. It's quite likely the last recognizable structure in universe - or OF universe - will be of artificial origin, from our civilization or some other.

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1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Future generations might not be sure why the library contains movie starring some governor of California ...

Hopefully, they will not view Terminator as an instructional video.

 

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Probabilistic observations are known to say little about individuals.

Yes, that's the point, often you want to view effects in the aggregate, such as building a bridge, or a network, or a McDonalds. You don't care if Fred specifically uses your thing you are making, you want users per day.

 

 

 

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Forecasting how future civilization will deal with these issues is a bit problematic, as just a few thousand years will be enough for technology to go into “indistinguishable from magic” territory. Even some of today’s tech is incomprehensible to people from a few centuries ago. 

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