Post #439,269
6/10/21 11:27:19 PM
6/10/21 11:27:19 PM
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Extra Terrestrial Intelligence
My article on Extra Terrestrial Intelligence hasn't been real popular, probably because it tromps on so many hopes and fantasies. It uses statistics of our own evolution to suggest the galaxy is not at all teeming with ETs. Now I've had to add a "And, It Gets Even Worse" section. It seems the "Billion or more" of life supporting planets in our galaxy is also a fantasy - based on the evolution of our own solar system, and the ease with which "hot Jupiter" solar systems are found in the galaxy, a fate our own solar system narrowly escaped. Extra Terrestrial Intelligence
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Post #439,270
6/11/21 8:39:41 AM
6/11/21 8:39:41 AM
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I want that narrated and animated
Is Samuel Jackson busy?
PS: astroid -> asteroid
Spell check wouldn't catch it because it's a geometric shape.
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Post #439,308
6/15/21 5:36:05 AM
6/15/21 5:36:05 AM
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He might be too expensive.
Youtubers Tom Scott or Derek Muller would do this justice.
Wade.
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Post #439,318
6/16/21 5:33:11 PM
6/16/21 5:33:11 PM
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Tom, yes, but who's Derek? Oh, so that's Veritasium's name.
Idunno, voice-wise I like Simon Whistler better. Or maybe even Nikolas "Lindybeige" Lloyd? --
Christian R. Conrad
The Man Who Apparently Still Knows Fucking EverythingMail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi
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Post #439,319
6/17/21 1:29:59 AM
6/17/21 1:29:59 AM
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Whistler used to be better.
I liked Simon Whistler's older videos better, so maybe it's the writing. But yeah, he sounds right.
I like Derek's sense of wonder as it comes tinged with experience about when the wonderful can turn to terrible. He did a TV series about Uranium a few years ago where that was very useful.
I haven't heard of Nikolas Lloyd. I'll go seek him out.
Wade.
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Post #439,324
6/17/21 12:49:00 PM
6/17/21 12:57:51 PM
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Whistler's enunciation grinds my gears.
He's got what probably sounds to non-native ears like well-spoken (almost RP) diction - but it's just off enough, with an ever-present hint of estuary, that I'd rather he spoke in a broad Birmingham accent.
YTers I prefer to listen to, over Whistler, and their accents:
Mike from ThatChapter (Dublin "turty tree")
Atomic Shrimp (English)
Kurzgesagt (very English)
Big Clive (Edinburgh)
Fran Blanche (Mild E. Coast merkin)
Caitlin from Ask a Mortician (Mild W. Coast Merkin)
The Shrouded Hand (Soft Liverpool)
Clint from LGR (soft Southern; think he's in Tennessee?)
Neil from RMC (soft/posh SW English)
Quinn from Snazzy Labs (generic California, I think)
And, of course, the one whose visual style Whistler has wholeheartedly copied:
Michael from Vsauce.
(Also, I'm not convinced about Whistler's fact-checking)
Edited by pwhysall
June 17, 2021, 12:57:51 PM EDT
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Post #439,326
6/17/21 1:05:33 PM
6/17/21 1:05:33 PM
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Then there's those who get on my tits a little bit, but I like their content anyway
Hank from SciShow (much prefer Olivia's presentation)
Dave from EEVBlog (too squeaky)
Linus from Linus Tech Tips (also too squeaky, should basically let Anthony do all the talking)
Justin from JustinGuitar (so unctuous and worthy, but you'll not find a better learn-to-play-the-guitar channel)
Dawid from Dawid Does Tech Stuff (wtf is that accent?)
Mehdi from ElectrBOOM (but let's face it, we only watch to see (a) him hurt himself and (b) his daughter laughing at (a))
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Post #439,330
6/18/21 6:32:15 AM
6/18/21 6:32:15 AM
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Ooh! Clint from LGR!
Yes, he has a nice presentation voice.
Wade.
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Post #439,332
6/18/21 9:20:58 AM
6/18/21 9:20:58 AM
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Holy shit, did I just forget or totally miss that those are different guys?
I'm not even sure any more which of them I really thought would be best for this; I suppose I knew at some time they're not one and the same, but I don't think I remembered that when I wrote the above. So I was probably thinking of an amalgam of both that I'd created in my mind; perhaps someone with Stevens' mannerisms and patterns of speech, but Whistler's voice and possibly accent. --
Christian R. Conrad
The Man Who Apparently Still Knows Fucking EverythingMail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi
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Post #439,333
6/18/21 9:45:33 AM
6/18/21 9:45:33 AM
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Re: Holy shit, did I just forget or totally miss that those are different guys?
Vsauce has 17M subscribers. All of Whistler's channels together...
...don't.
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Post #439,334
6/18/21 10:25:14 AM
6/18/21 10:25:14 AM
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So what? I'm equally many subscribers on both: Just one.
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Post #439,335
6/18/21 11:28:25 AM
6/18/21 11:28:25 AM
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It's about confusing a very famous person with a not very famous person
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Post #439,362
6/23/21 4:52:42 AM
6/23/21 4:52:42 AM
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Is that even a thing; are celebrities now gods, to not even *be confused for* mere mortals?
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Post #439,271
6/11/21 9:52:32 AM
6/11/21 9:52:32 AM
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Re: Extra Terrestrial Intelligence
There are approx 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe, each containing ~400 billion stars. That's ~8x10^23 stars (800,000,000,000,000,000,000,000), almost all of which have planetary systems. I think it stretches credibility to suggest that the homo sapiens situation is unique.
Let's say life of any kind is one in a million, and of those, it's another one in a million to get to sentience. That's still 800,000,000,000 stars with organisms sufficiently evolved to chat shit on social media.
However, the universe is so mind-meltingly vast that it's entirely unlikely that we will ever interact or even detect each other.
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Post #439,274
6/11/21 10:30:24 AM
6/11/21 10:30:24 AM
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The standard Sci-Fi solution
Posit an intelligent species with a much longer life span. If one coherent intelligence can exist long enough to cross interstellar distances at sub-light speed, then that species could colonize a galaxy. Of course, would that kind of intelligence even recognize us as intelligent, any more than we recognize ants? But then we're into thinking meat territory.
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Post #439,275
6/11/21 11:27:44 AM
6/11/21 11:27:44 AM
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Yes, that's the point.
Possible (as our existence demonstrates), even probable, given the vast numbers, but so sparse it's not anything we're likely to experience.
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Post #439,272
6/11/21 9:55:41 AM
6/11/21 9:55:41 AM
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Nice article
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Post #439,273
6/11/21 10:23:06 AM
6/11/21 10:23:06 AM
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Water bombardment sounded so implausible when I first heard it
Part of me wants to believe they've found a flaw in the theory just so I don't have to accept it.
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Post #439,283
6/12/21 12:40:22 PM
6/12/21 12:40:22 PM
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Same.
The idea of water coming from some vast bombardment of comets at just the right time sounded really implausible to me too. But the solar system is so old, who knows. Of course, one doesn't need comets or meteorites or whatever. One can get water from the solar wind. https://www.space.com/27377-moon-water-origin-solar-wind.htmlThe researchers expected to find water from chondrites in the interiors of the lunar dust grains and water from both chondrites and the solar wind in the exteriors or rims of these grains. Surprisingly, the water in both the interiors and exteriors of these dust grains apparently originated mainly from the solar wind.
"We do not find any chondritic signature," lead study author Alice Stephant, a cosmochemist at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, told Space.com.
These findings suggest that any water that cosmic impacts bring to the moon is not retained much. At most, an average of 15 percent of the hydrogen in lunar soil may come from chondritic water, the researchers said. The universe is very often richer and more interesting than we imagine. (Of course, the picture may change yet again as more is learned. ;-) Cheers, Scott.
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Post #439,284
6/12/21 1:12:04 PM
6/12/21 1:12:04 PM
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WTF is all this then? Sounded so to me too when I first heard -- i.e. just now.
Thanks for the links, guys, gotta go study. And re-read Andrew's page; if it was there I must have missed it, apparently read it too sloppily. (I blame the Internet, seems I have the attenrtion span of a kitten on crack nowadays.) --
Christian R. Conrad
The Man Who Apparently Still Knows Fucking EverythingMail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi
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Post #439,285
6/12/21 1:22:30 PM
6/12/21 1:22:30 PM
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I had that same exact feeling when I was around 8 years old
I was at the Franklin institute enjoying the planetarium show and that included a movie about the origins of the Earth. And part of that was the concept of this enormous deluge over millions of years of water just happening to fall in. I was totally what the f***. Hey Drook: check out this bass player. https://youtu.be/Tvr46uFfbMg
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Post #439,288
6/12/21 2:12:13 PM
6/12/21 2:12:13 PM
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I've gone down rabbit holes of his stuff before
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Post #439,292
6/12/21 3:57:08 PM
6/12/21 3:57:09 PM
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I love his challenges
He records a small piece and then invites other people to create complementary music. And then gives them free instruments.
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Post #439,295
6/13/21 1:16:23 AM
6/13/21 1:16:23 AM
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Yup, some of them I wish we full length and with full instrumentation
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Post #439,287
6/12/21 2:11:14 PM
6/12/21 2:11:14 PM
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I like this theory better
Something that accumulates slowly from a small but consistent process feels more plausible than from occasional impacts.
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Post #439,290
6/12/21 3:08:26 PM
6/12/21 3:08:26 PM
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The (non-bird) dinosaurs send their regards, wishing you were right.
--
Christian R. Conrad
The Man Who Apparently Still Knows Fucking EverythingMail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi
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Post #439,296
6/13/21 1:18:06 AM
6/13/21 1:18:06 AM
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Rare events are great at destruction, not as much for creation/accumulation
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Post #439,298
6/13/21 9:30:06 AM
6/13/21 9:30:06 AM
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True, didn't think of that distinction.
The resulting compensatory rise of the mammals is a) an indirect effect, and b) not exactly "creation/accumulation", so me trying to refer to that would be kind'a cheating. Or at least pointless.
Hmm... Maybe the creation of the Moon, if we accept one of the various "created as a result of the collision of..." hypotheses. But yeah, pretty much a black swan among creation events. --
Christian R. Conrad
The Man Who Apparently Still Knows Fucking EverythingMail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi
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Post #439,278
6/11/21 9:03:26 PM
6/11/21 9:03:26 PM
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Interesting thoughts!
s /Nice, in France,/Nice in France,/
Probabilities of key events are definitely damn hard to estimate. Alex
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
-- Isaac Asimov
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Post #439,281
6/12/21 9:04:33 AM
6/12/21 9:04:33 AM
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Same place where they had that big religious debate in the fourth century, right?
Nope. :-) I used to think (well, more blithely assume) so, back in ~high school... Turns out Nicaea is called İznik nowadays, and definitely not in the EU. Etymological footnote: The "prefixed with εἰς, meaning 'to' or 'into'" bit (and, apparently, "let's drop the last syllable from the original name in stead") seems to be common practice with ancient Greek cities in present-day Turkey; cf Smyrna --> İzmir. --
Christian R. Conrad
The Man Who Apparently Still Knows Fucking EverythingMail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi
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