Before diving into the Biggest Question - Are we alone in the universe? - I'm pleased to announce new volumes in my Out of Time series of novels for teen readers who love adventure laced with history, science and other cool stuff.
New books include Boondoggle by SF Legend Tom Easton & newcomer Torion Oey plus Raising the Roof by R. James Doyle! All new titles are released by Amazing Stories.
Meanwhile, Open Road republished the earlier five novels, including great tales by Nancy Kress, Sheila Finch, and Roger Allen. Plus The Archimedes Gambit and Storm's Eye!
The shared motif... teens from across time are pulled into the 24th Century and asked to use their unique skills to help a future that's in peril! Past characters who get 'yanked' into tomorrow include a young Arthur Conan Doyle, Winston Churchill, Joan of Arc's page and maybe... you!
All of the Out of Time books can be accessed (and assessed) here.
* With coming authors including SF legend Allen Steele and newcomer Robin Hansen.
And now to the Great Big Question.
== Because there's bugger-all (intelligence) down here on Earth! ==
In "A History of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence," a cogent overview of 200+ years of SETI (in various forms), John Michael Godier starts by citing one of the great sages of our era and goes on to illuminate the abiding question: "Are we alone?" Godier is among the best of all science podcasters.
I also highly recommend YouTube channels by Isaac Arthur and Anton Petrov as well as the PBS series EONS.
Joe Scott runs a popular Science and future YouTube Channel that is generally informative and entertaining. And much more popular than anything I do. This episode is divertingly about what the year 2100 might be like.
== Anyone Out There? ==
Hmmm. Over the years, I’ve collected ‘fermis’ … or hypotheses to explain the absence of visible alien tech-civilizations. In fact, I was arguably the first to attempt an organized catalogue in my “Great Silence” paper in 1983, way-preceding popular use of ‘the Fermi Paradox.”
See Isaac Arthur’s almost-thorough rundown of most of the current notions, including a few (e.g. water-land ratio) that I made up first. Still, new ones occasionally crop up. Even now!
Hence my call to chemists out there! Is it true that “an atmosphere with anything less than 18% oxygen would not allow open-air combustion”? That assertion implies that only the most recent 500 million years of Earth history offered those conditions. And hence industrial civilization might be rare, even if life pervades the cosmos.
My own response: It seems likely that vegetation on a lower-oxygen world would evolve in ways that are less fire resistant. After all, there is evidence of fires back in our own Carboniferous etc.
== This time the mania just isn't ebbing (sigh) ==
The latest US Government report on UFO/UAP phenomena finds – as expected – no plausible evidence that either elements of the government or anyone else on Earth has truly encountered aliens.
Alas, it will convince none of the fervid believers, whose lifelong Hollywood indoctrination in Suspicion of Authority (SoA) is only reinforced by any denial! No matter how many intelligent and dedicated civil servants get pulled into these twice-per-decade manias.
I don’t call this latest 'investigation' a waste of taxpayer money! Millions wanted this and hence it was right to do it! Even if none of those millions of True Believers will credit that anything but malign motives drive all those civil servants and fellow Americans.
Shame on you, Hollywood. For more on this, especially the SoA propaganda campaign that (when moderate) keeps us free and that (when toxically over-wrought) might kill our unique civilization. For more, see Vivid Tomorrows: Science Fiction and Hollywood.
…or my own highly unusual take on UAP phenomena. I promise fresh thoughts.
And here John Michael Godier offers an interesting riff on a possible explanation for the infamous WOW signal detected by a SETI program in 1977.
== on the Frontier ==
Mining helium-3 on the Moon has been talked about forever—now a company will try. "There are so many investments that we could be making, but there are also Moonshots."
Yeah, yeah, sure. “Helium Three” (in Gothic letters?) is (I am 90% sure) one of the biggest scams to support the unjustifiable and silly “Artemis” rush to send US astronauts to perform another ritual footprint stunt on that useless plain of poison dust.
Prove me wrong? Great? I don’t mind some investment in robotic surveys. But a larger chunk of $$$ should go to asteroids, where we know -absolutely – the real treasures lie.
Meanwhile, far more practically needed… and reminiscent of the very first chapter of my novel Existence… Astroscale is one of several groups demonstrating methods to remove debris from Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Though we gotta hope that a desperate world ‘leader’ doesn’t decide to spasm wreck LEO, as his final gift to the world.
== Dive to the Sun! ==
The Parker Solar Probe – (the team named me an informal ‘mascot’ on account of my first novel) has discovered lots about how solar magnetic fields churn and merge and flow outward to snap and heat the solar corona to incredible temperatures.
(I am also a co-author on a longer range effort to plan swooping sailcraft, that plunge just past our star and then get propelled to incredible speed. The endeavor’s name? Project Sundiver! Stay (loosely) tuned.)
== Physics and Universal Fate ==
I well recall when physicists Freeman Dyson and Frank Tipler were competing for the informal title of “Theologian of the 20th Century” with their predictions for the ultimate fate of intelligent life. In a universe that would either
(1) expand forever and eventually dissipate with the decay of all baryons, or else
(2) fall back inward to a Big Crunch, offering Tipler a chance to envision a God era in the final million years, in his marvelous tome The Physics of Immortality.
I never met Tipler. Freeman was a friend. In any event, it sure looks as if Freeman won the title.
Only... how sure are we of the Great Dissipation? Its details and influences and evidence and boundary conditions? Those aspects have been in flux. This essay cogently summarizes the competing models and most recent evidence. Definitely only for the genuinely physics minded!
A final note about this. Roger Penrose - also a friend of mine - came up with a brilliant hybrid that unites the Endless Dissipation model and Tipler's Big Crunch. His Conformal Cosmology is simply wonderful. (I even made teensy contributions.)
And if it ain't true... well... it oughta be!
And finally... shifting perspective: this ‘official’ Chinese world map has gotta be shared. Quite a dig on the Americas! Gotta admit it is fresh perspective. Like that view of the Pacific Ocean as nearly all of a visible earth globe. A reminder how truly big Africa is, tho the projection inflates to left and right. And putting India in the center actually diminishes its size.
===
PS... Okay... ONE TEENSY POLITICAL POINT?
When they justify their cult's all-out war against science and every single fact-centered profession - (including the US military officer corps) - one of the magical incantations yammered by Foxites concerns the Appeal- to-Authority Fallacy.
Oh sure, we should all look up and scan posted lists and definitions of the myriad logical fallacies that are misused in arguments even by very intelligent folks. (And overcoming them is one reason why law procedures can get tediously exacting.) Furthermore, Appeal to Authority is one of them. Indeed, citing Aristotle instead of doing experiments held back science for 2000 years!
Still, step back and notice how it is now used to discredit and deter anyone from citing facts determined by scientists and other experts, through vetted, peer-reviewed and heavily scrutinized validation.
Sure. "Do your own research' if you like. Come with me on a boat to measure Ocean Acidification*, for example! With cash wager stakes on the line. But for most of us, most of the time, it is about comparing credibility of those out there who claim to deliver facts. And yes, bona fide scientists with good reputations are where any such process should start, and not cable TV yammer-heads.
The way to avoid "Appeal to Authority" falacy is not to reflexively discredit 'authorities,' but to INTERROGATE authorities with sincerely curious questions... and to interrogate their rivals. Ideally back and forth in reciprocally competitive criticism. But with the proviso that maybe someone who has studied a topic all her life may, actually know something that you don't.
115 comments:
I like the map. Putting the Indian Ocean in the center makes some historical sense in terms of trading empires. Our modern centuries aren't the first to see global trade. 8)
Re: Carboniferous O2, looks like levels rose to 35% during that period...which would build up damage over time in the lungs of today's species.
Hypoxic fire control systems try (according to the wiki, which is poorly sourced) to bring O2 levels to 15% or less.
I think this is what you're looking for - the Limiting Oxygen Concentration chart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limiting_oxygen_concentration
Looks like wood won't combust at about 16% or less. (very rough read)
Pappenheimer
Also suggests that time travelers doing serious displacement would need some kind of offsetting mask/tank setup depending on destination.
Pappenheimer
Alfred,
Re: global trade, yer dam' right. The Portuguese had to seize control of Goa and Malacca before they made the big reals.
Pappenheimer
Hi Dr Brin
I hope that nobody takes you up on that Acidification gambit - not because it's not happenning - (it is) - but because measuring it is hugely massively more challenging than you think
https://substack.com/home/post/p-162237869
My own understanding of "pH" turned out to be one of the "Lies we tell children"
Even if your own understanding is much more accurate you will be working with people whose understanding is at best at my own level
Oxygen and burning
I would have thought the relevant factor was not "Oxygen percentage" - but the partial pressure of oxygen
Over geologic time, Duncan may well be right. My own AF training as a building safety mgr was pretty basic on fire prevention and assumed we were operating in the Quaternary.
Pappenheimer
Anyone bringing He-3 back from Luna and then trying to fuse it should be smacked. It's a hideously expensive refrigerant to folks who want to operate near 0K.
Helium as a fermion (rare) is damn useful.
-----
I suspect the O2 percentage is actually a range. Even with our relatively high O2 level today, we blow on embers to create a flow of O2 and turn it all into a raging fire hot enough to pull in its own air supply. Wildfires here in California erupt most often when air is moving quickly and THEN spread as the ashes fly.
I think high O2 atmospheres might discourage development of fire use... except as defense against 2.5meter millipedes.
Though we gotta hope that a desperate world ‘leader’ doesn’t decide to spasm wreck LEO, as his final gift to the world.
I wonder if that's what Elon Musk is actually afraid of.
Alfred Differ:
I like the map....
Well, I can see why the Chinese like it, as it shrinks Europe almost into insignificance and relegates North America to the attic. :)
I'm not sure I could get used to putting the south pole off-center like that, and I'm literally getting dizzy trying to look at the United States upside down. But that's just my own personal taste. OTOH, splitting North and South America like that is a bridge too far.
Dr Brin:
Like that view of the Pacific Ocean as nearly all of a visible earth globe
I'm reminded of Arthur Clarke's Childhood's End when the character whose name I'm blanking on returns to Earth from the Overlords' world and sees the entire day side of the planet as ocean. That sets up the visual when he circles around to the night side and sees no sign of electric lights. Because of the first image, it is clear that the second one must contain much of what used to be human habitation.
Increasing estimated rogue planet/debris between star systems makes travel at even 5% of c impossible (a collision with a pebble would atomize the ship*). As for radio, we've had it for just over a century and we're already losing interest in using it. That's an awfully short window for signals to be 'everywhere'. Without ships or radio, we're pretty much looking for black cats in dark rooms. Lasers/masers/gasers are promising but new, and pure science is hitting a funding wall. To say the least.
* Maybe the problems with Voyager aren't just power related - maybe it sustained some microdust damage.
The simplest solution to the Fermi Paradox is that there is no intelligent life anywhere in the Universe, including planet Earth. This theory is supported by observation and introspection.
You can soften this theory by saying that there is no _detectable_ intelligent life in the Universe, for the intelligent thing to do is to avoid detection.
Infra-red signatures characteristic of a Dyson sphere are proof of _technological_ life, but not of _intelligent_ life.
there is no intelligent life anywhere in the Universe, including planet Earth. This theory is supported by observation and introspection.
Cute punch line, but false by inspection. There's plenty of evidence of intelligence right here on this blog. Intelligent individuals obviously exist, or no one would be posing the question.
Now, if you want to argue no evidence of intelligent species or civilizations in aggregate, then maybe. But that's a different thing, in fact the opposite thing.*
* In the exact sense of Orwell's original line, comparing "collective solipsism" to solipsism.
If alien civilizations existed, they would already be here.
It's remarkably easy to explore and colonize a galaxy.
Even at sub-light speed, mankind could spread across the galaxy like a virus in a relatively short period of time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WtgmT5CYU8
Each probe settles a colony at the next star and builds 2 (or 10 or 100) copies of itself and sends them to the next nearest stars, and so on and so on, expanding exponentially. Each probe being a life bearing package of frozen embryos and seed of every animal and plant on Earth, modified as needed for the local system.
Armed with advanced AI and terraforming techniques, each probe colony can terraform all the planets of the system, build Dyson swarms for energy, create vast artificial Bishop Ring worlds with surface areas the size of continents, etc.
It takes only 38 doublings to send a colony probe to every star in the galaxy. Granted this is complicated by the geography of the galaxy with its spiral arms and vast voids between the spiral arms.
But even traveling below the speed of light (10% of c maybe) its would not take much longer than 10,000 years on average to travel to a nearby star system, colonize/terraform/construct a new colony, construct two more probes with embryos, and send them on their way.
That's less than 500,000 years to completely colonize the galaxy.
A blink of eye.
So to quote Fermi, "Where are they?"
That’s the wonderful thing about doubling. Take one probe and double it only 19 times and you have over a million probes spreading throughout the galaxy. Once established, a system of colonies can create a communication network exchanging the only commodities that can be transported economically over interstellar distances: information and knowledge.
By using this hybrid embryo/machine Von Neumann self replicating probe (SRP) approach our species could colonize the entire galaxy in a very short period of time:
http://io9.com/it-s-easier-for...
"And based on the sophistication or purpose of the probe, it could establish colonies on suitable planets (either by spawning biological organisms or robots imbued with either AI or uploaded minds). More simply, an SRP could spawn Bracewell communication probes, which could make contact with a resident (or future) alien civilization."
Once its mission is complete, it would spawn daughter versions of itself, which would be sent towards the nearest star systems. Lather, rinse, repeat.
"And indeed, the power of the SRP lies in its ability to replicate at an exponential rate. The initial rate of exploration would be slow, but after producing potentially millions upon millions of offspring, the rate of expansion would increase by an order of magnitude. So even at a speed of about a tenth the speed of light, these probes could cover a huge amount of territory in a relatively short amount of time from a cosmological perspective.... The researchers put this model to test by using a computer simulation. What they discovered was that, by using this technique, an alien civilization could send probes traveling no faster than 10% the speed of light to every single solar system in the galaxy in only 10 million years. Which is incredible — that’s an amount of time that’s significantly less than the age of the Earth."
First, let's start with the basic numbers:
250,000,000,000 total stars in galaxy (average 100 to 400 billion)
1,000 ly radius of galactic core
10,000,000 number of stars in galactic core
50,000 ly radius of galaxy
1,000 ly thickness of galaxy
7,853,981,633,974 ly\^3 volume of galaxy
31.42 ly\^3 / ea stellar density
3.16 ly cube dimension
Given that Alpha Centauri is 4.3 ly away, the numbers for stellar density seem about right.
The current estimates of all major objects in the galaxy are as follows:
5,000,000,000,000 rogue planets (about 20 per star)
100,000,000,000 brown dwarfs
1,000,000,000 neutron stars
100,000,000 black holes
As for stars:
10,000,000,000 4.00% white dwarfs
160,000,000,000 64.00% red dwarfs
15,000,000,000 6.00% yellow dwarfs
55,000,000,000 22.00% orange dwarfs
10,000,000,000 4.00% red giants (+1000 blue super giants)
250,000,000,000 100% total
But if you are looking for habitable planets you have to stick to the donut region of the "Galactic Habitable Zone" (inner core has too many densely packed stars whose gravitational pull is hurtling planets out of orbit or are frying them with gamma rays; and the outer ring having too low of metallicity to have anything but gas giants).
1,000 ly inner radius of galactic habitable zone
33,000 ly outer radius of galactic habitable zone
1,000 ly thickness of galactic habitable zone
3,418,052,807,106 ly\^3 volume of galactic habitable zone
40.00% percent of total
100,000,000,000 total stars in galactic habitable zone
Now apply the concept of the Galactic Habitable Zone (GHZ) to these numbers.
2,000,000,000,000 rogue planets
40,000,000,000 brown dwarfs
400,000,000 neutron stars
40,000,000 black holes
4,000,000,000 4.00% white dwarfs
64,000,000,000 64.00% red dwarfs
6,000,000,000 6.00% yellow dwarfs
22,000,000,000 22.00% orange dwarfs
4,000,000,000 4.00% red giants (+1000 blue super giants)
100,000,000,000 100% total
(cont.)
But to avoid the "three body problem" only single stars in the GHZ are likely to have planets in stable solar systems (75% of white and red dwarfs are single stars, about 50% of yellow and orange stars are single, and 85% of re/blue giants are single), which gives us:
2,000,000,000,000 rogue planets
40,000,000,000 brown dwarfs
400,000,000 neutron stars
40,000,000 black holes
3,000,000,000 75.00% white dwarfs
48,000,000,000 75.00% red dwarfs
3,000,000,000 50.00% yellow dwarfs
11,000,000,000 50.00% orange dwarfs
1,600,000,000 85.00% red giants (+1000 blue super giants)
66,600,000,000 total
However,....
Most planets would be destroyed by the explosion that created white dwarfs or the expansion that created red/blue giants.
Since planets orbiting around red dwarfs in the liquid water habitable zone are tidally locked "eyeball planets" life is not likely there.
So that leaves about 14 million yellow/orange stars where advanced life is reasonably possible. That's about 6% of the total stars in the galaxy.
So start with 14 million stars for the Rare Earth Equation:
14,000,000,000 single orange and yellow stars in GHZ
0.50 fp stars with planets
0.20 fpm planets that are rocky/metallic
0.10 fl planets with microbial life
0.10 fc planets with complex life
0.001 fm planets with large stabilizing moon
1.00 fj planets with a protecting Jovian world
0.10 fme planets with few extinction events
1,400 total number of planets with complex life
So only 1,400 stars in the galaxy have complex life (about 0.0000006%). That does not mean civilization (a trilobite is a complex life form). To calculate the numbers of civilizations, you need the Drake equation:
R\* rate of star formation
fp stars with planets
ne planets that could support life
f1 planets that actually develop life
The rare Earth Equation replaces the first four factors in the Drake Equation with a starting number of 1,400 planets with complex life. Which leaves us with the remaining Drake Equation factors:
fi planets with life that develop intelligent life
fc planets with intelligent life that create civilizations
L planets with civilizations that could send signals into space
N number of alien civilizations in the galaxy
From this number of only 1,400, using the remining factors in the Drake Equation, we have to guess how many planets with complex life develop intelligent life, and how many of those create civilizations (an ocean world, for example, may have highly sophisticated cephalopods but no civilization since it can't make fire), and how many of those civilizations survive long enough to send signals to the stars. Assuming 10% for each of the remaining factors, N = 1.4
0.10 fi planets that develop intelligent life
0.10 fc intelligent life that creates civilization
0.10 L civilizations that can send signals to space
1.40 N number of alien civilizations in the galaxy
If the Rare Earth and Drake Equations are correct, there is only one (maybe two) civilization- and we are all alone in the galaxy.
No Ewoks, no Klingons, no ET phoning home. Just us as the only spark in all the cold empty expanse of the galaxy.
(cont.)
Even if we are not alone, we may as well be. Part of the problem is that when we say "alien civilizations within our galaxy" we make it sound as if they would be close enough to go next door and borrow a cup of sugar.
To quote the "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy", "Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
So let’s say the Rare Earth Hypothesis is a tad pessimistic and there are actually a dozen potentially space faring alien civilizations in the galaxy. If spaced more or less evenly around the plane of the GHZ, each civ would have 731 million square light years on the galactic plane to itself, a circular area with a radius of 15,256 light years. Each would have to itself an average volume of 731 billion cubic light years containing 42 million stars.
Unless we violate the laws of physics by inventing warp drive, space folding, wormholes or hyperspace it is going to be a very, very, very long time before we see each other, bump into each other or can hear each other's radio signals.
Assuming I haven't made a bone headed math mistake we really don't get within shouting distance (say, 100 light years apart) of each other unless there are more than 1,000,000 alien civs in the galaxy (each with a galactic plane area of almost 9 thousand square light years and a radius of 53 light years, a volume of 9 million cubic light years and 500 star neighbors).
Not even the most enthusiastic Star Trek fan envisions 1,000,000 alien civs.
So why we may not be perfectly alone and all by ourselves in the galaxy, the basic principles of the Rare Earth Hypothesis (even if we can only conjecture the exact numbers that go into the calculation) ensure that for all practical intents and purposes, we are alone.
Maybe we aren't completely alone, but we are very, very lonely.
Then again,....
"It's life, Jim, but not as we know it"
The above assumes "life as we know it" - water based relying on visible spectrum photosynthesis.
There are at least two other possibilities.
What if Brown Dwarfs turn out to be scattered by the hundreds or thousands in the space between the stars? And what if most of them have mini-solar systems (like Jupiter and Saturn) capable of supporting life because enough heat is generated by the BD to allow liquid water and photosynthesis based on infrared frequencies? It's easy to imagine life based on infrared photosynthesis on moons orbiting brown dwarfs which give off heat but not light. Not just imagine it, we already know of such life here on Earth, green sulfur bacteria. And if BDs floating between the stars greatly outnumber suns, then visible light spectrum based life may be the exception instead of the rule.
In addition to infrared based life, Cornell researchers have modeled methane based life forms that don't use water and could live in the liquid methane seas of Titan or frozen ocean worlds like Europa or frozen ocean rogue planets. Methane based life forms by themselves are a fascinating concept. But ironically the potential "Goldilocks" zone for such life is far greater (extending across the range of Jovian worlds out to the Kuiper belt) than our narrow zone for water based life forms.
But the chemical reactions used by such cryogenic life forms would be extremely slow. An intelligent methane based alien my take a century to complete a single thought.
So "life as we know it" based on water and the visible light spectrum photosynthesis may be the rare exception in a universe dominated by methane based life and life that utilizes infrared photosynthesis.
Why would intelligent life want to replicate across the galaxy like cancer cells? I don’t find the Fermi paradox” very paradoxical; some combination of: space is big, life is rare, and colonizing the galaxy is practically impossible/rather pointless. It probably only seems like a paradox if you watched too much Star Trek growing up and were conditioned to believe in galactic empires and galaxies full of advanced aliens. It's an artifact of a false worldview, and a Rorschach test where you project your own biases onto the universe (e.g. our host’s favorite “feudalism prevents Star Trek”—as if Star Trek was ever a possibility, LOL).
Hence my call to chemists out there! Is it true that “an atmosphere with anything less than 18% oxygen would not allow open-air combustion”?
I've given Dr Brin a hard time over the years, but I must say that it's positively brilliant for Dr Brin to connect the Fermi Hypothesis to that of a parallel technological 'oxygen bottleneck' theory, excepting that this connection is likely to be much more important than our host now realizes, as the potential existence of an Oxygen-dependent Planetary Goldilocks Zone could go a long way to explain the relative rarity of intelligent life out there.
This conclusion follows naturally from his above question, the answer being that there is NO LOWER LIMIT to open-air combustion as the term 'combustion' is an informal referent to any 'oxidative process' that can occur in the presence of any concentration of free oxygen, even though oxygen concentration directly determines the speed & intensity of this reaction.
Strictly speaking, the terrestrial life that we think of as life is carbon-based & requires a fairly limited oxygen concentration range in which to function, as an atmospheric oxygen concentration below 18% inhibits the life-giving oxidative process, leading to what is also know as hypoxia, anoxia & suffocation, while an atmospheric oxygen concentration in excess of 27% more than doubles the rate of the oxidative process & leads to the spontaneous combustion of most organic carbon-based compounds that we know of.
Taking this rather limited 10-point atmospheric oxygen concentration range into account, it would follow that extraterrestrial carbon-based life forms would be at least 80% LESS LIKELY than any mathematical calculations may suggest, and that's if & only if we assume that exoplanet atmospheric oxygen concentrations depend on a completely random pattern, rather than on an increasingly improbable number of multiplying preconditions & dependencies.
**Of course, there other life-giving oxidative cycles out there that may transcend the limitations of oxygen, as in the case of the more 'heat tolerant' sulfur-based organisms that cluster around our deep oceanic volcanic vents, but that is another discussion entirely**.
Best
Melbourne boasts a 1:1,000,000,000 scale model of the solar system.
Starting in Port Melbourne at a plinth holding a baby pea ball bearing depicting Pluto, you can follow the Bay shoreline for six kilometres to St.Kilda marina and a meter diameter Sun.
Nearby is a smaller globe, representing Proxima Centauri. We are told it's there because the model extends beyond Pluto. All the round the world, in fact, to include our nearest stellar neighbour.
Space is big.
Locum has a point about high oxygen concentrations causing spontaneous combustion of most organic (and not a few inorganic) materials. It raises the question, though, of how such a volatile environment could be maintained for long periods. Seems to me life would just have to wait a while before 'finding a way'.
With self replicating probes, doubling with each iteration colonizing the galaxy is easy and fun
Not easy except in science fiction or numbers on paper, not particularly fun, and certainly pointless.
Generally cool map... but Oh, poor Guatemala doesn't deserve such a fate.
Scidata ETs may move on from simple radio, tho there’s still use for all parts of the spectrum. But it is waste IR heat from big civ structures/endeavors that folks are now looking for and very hard to mask
Alfred, He3 is not sought to be a refrigerant but to (theoretically) make nuc.fusion power a bit easier. I’d love to be proved wrong about that.
Celt… the self-replicating probe cocept is explored VERY extensively in EXISTENCE and such probes are like bacteria. If you want VIRUSES, then you want the MAIN topic of that novel.
I’ve spent many decades inspecting most) and concocting some) Fermy hypotheses. For some years my top ranked ones have been
1. Pre-seapience is VERY common, as on Earth (dolphine, apes, sea lions, elephants, crows etc…) but breaking that glass ceiling required a huge fluke.
2. Male reproductive strategies are reinforced powerfully and almost always lead to perpetual caste feudalism and failure.
3. Most water worlds have MORE water and less continents.
4. Metazoan life takes too long to get it together.
Top 4 but I’m just saying them to suck up to our overlords and distract from the REAL top four…
ntil his last paragraphs, locum was welcome back as a cogent observer. But the last bit reveals zero understanding of how GAIA homeostasis works,
'
The map does make Morocco yuuuuuuuge
The "Theologian of the 20th Century" was neither Dyson or Tipler. It's Thomas Pynchon!
Or Vonnegut in BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS
Finding a novel detection method seems unlikely. Either we're being prevented from detecting them or there's nothing out there to detect. Any other condition would, just by the math alone, result in a deafening roar.
Returning briefly to the 'bugger all' state of intelligent life locally, when ICE agents can, with impunity, throw their weight around without giving identity or clear cause, you can expect this to start happening with increasing frequency.
Of course, 'prevented' includes several possibilities:
- zoo hypothesis
- dark forest hypothesis
- we are too primitive to even recognize ETI
- we are too young to ask the right questions
David,
My undergrad advisor did low temperature experimentation. For a short time he held the world record for the lowest temp. He pulled it off on a shoestring budget and taught me (cheap labor) about dilution refrigeration. Very neat stuff at the time. He got down to milli-K's in the late 70's and early 80's.
He-3 supplies on Earth come from H-3 decay. Make a fusion bomb and then bleed off the He-3 that accumulates in the detonator to ensure the bomb isn't a dud. VERY expensive stuff. Lots of DOE paperwork to do if you want any.
My advisor's work all came to an end on day when the campus decided to support the student's NPR station. His budget wasn't big enough for the copper cladding needed to shield the lab from the on-campus transmitter. He never got below 0.5 K after they turned it on.
I'm waiting for the opposite effect--victims pulling their own guns on their attempted kidnappers and standing their ground.
I know MAGA would prosecute for assault or murder, but their arguments against "stand your ground" would be interesting to hear.
"Stand your ground only applies to straight white Republican men."
Very easy, Homeworld just has to get things started with one mission, which then doubles with each iteration.
If you understood the power of doubling (see the old tale of the Vizier who asked for a single grain of rice on a chess board square with twice as much rice on each square) you'd understand how easy it is.
@Don Gisselbeck, I'm sure that's what they mean by "stand your ground" laws, but I'd like them to be forced to explicitly make the case that way.
BTW here are those rice numbers, starting with the number of grains = 2^64
18,446,744,073,709,600,000 #rice grains
0.03 grams per rice grain
553,402,322,211,287,000 grams
553,402,322,211,287 kilograms
553,402,322,211 tonnes
776,461,457 annual world rice production 2022 metric tonnes
713 multiple of annual world production
So the Vizier would get over 700x the world annual production of rice by the time the last chess square is filled.
Maybe now you understand the power of doubling.
And there is nothing to prevent an interstellar probe from making 10 or 100 copies of itself to send to more star systems.
Sorry, but I'm still hung up on Von Schitzenpantz claiming that we're saving trillions of dollars because there are no ships bringing goods from China.
If individuals are really so much better off hanging onto their money instead of buying stuff with it, then what's stopping them from doing that anyway?
The question then becomes WHEN we can afford to launch interstellar probes.
I would suggest that will occur when the comparative energy costs of doing so for a future civilization are about the same as the comparative energy costs of the Apollo program was to America's energy economy in the 1960s.
So what are the launch costs? Let's assume 10% of c so the trip can be made in decades (1% of c would require trips lasting centuries and 90%+ of c is too damn expensive). For various ship sizes we have:
joules
450 tonnes mass of the ISS 2.03E+20
50,000 tonnes mass of HMS Titanic 2.25E+22
100,000 tonnes mass of USS Gerald Ford (CVS) 4.50E+22
400,000 tonnes mass of Project Orion ship 1.80E+23
500,000 tonnes Kirk's Enterprise A 2.25E+23
1,500,000 tonnes Picard's Enterprise D 6.75E+23
So let's stick with the nuclear pulse project Orion (or its derivatives like the Medusa or Enzmann starship) as 1950s era technology atomic explosions remain our only realistic means of star flight.
Comparing past Apollo and future interstellar missions with a potential Kardashev 2 (energy of the Sun) level civilization spanning the solar system, we get:
2 each Saturn V launches per year
2.27E+12 joules energy per Saturn V launch
4.54E+12 joules Apollo program annual energy
1.00E+20 joules American annual energy 1960s
4.54E-08 Apollo as a percent of American energy
3.60E+23 joules Project Orion 10% of c (and decelerate)
7.93E+30 joules Req'd Kardashev energy level
1.00E+33 joules Kardashev II energy
126 number of Project Orion missions per year at K2
So when we achieve a K2 energy level civilization we can send out over 100 Orions at the same comparative energy costs as the Apollo program.
At current projections, we achieve K2 in about 1,000 years (currently at about K0.7 and making K1 in about 100 years).
So we start sending manned interstellar missions about the year 3000.
Generation ships are not a well-tested technology. Each iteration of colonization doubles the number of inhabited worlds, but at probability 1/3. In the limit it's a finite quantity.
LH: Socrates said that he knew only that he knew nothing. I say that doubting the existence of intelligence, even of one's friends and oneself, is the only intelligent position to take.
To the conquest of space, I counter-propose the conquest of time - i.e. building a sustainable and durable civilization. But we have yet to build a civilization enduring a mere 10,000 years.
Yes, they should say the quiet part out loud.
Un-uniformed ICE agents? What could go wrong? Well...
Non-ICE pretending to be ICE.
Violent resistance to ICE.
And most fun of all...
ICE versus ICE.
"It's remarkably easy to explore and colonize a galaxy."
According to your theory. What is your experimental evidence?
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/roger-stone-mark-kelly-trump-crypto-treason-execution_n_681f7231e4b06987bce11e44
Roger Stone, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump, suggested Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) should face “execution” after the lawmaker questioned Trump’s recent business ventures into cryptocurrency.
...
In a responding post on X, Stone accused the lawmaker of “treason.”
“Senator Mark Kelly is cashing in on his US Senate seat as a partner in a Chinese communist company that makes surveillance balloons,” Stone wrote. “He should be charged with treason and if convicted executed , consistent with federal law.”
Remember not so long ago when conservatives, including sane ones like Tacitus, lambasted us for using the word "treason" to describe Republicans who advocate violating the Constitution, because use of that term meant we wanted to hang them?
Apparently, that was projection.
There's also rogue ICE.
@Dr Brin,
Vonnegut apparently wasn't too fond of Breakfast of Champions himself, but it was the first book of his that I read (at age 16), and it remains my favorite.
Face it, now we are the 'conservative' faction, in the non-Orwellian sense of the term 'conservative'.
Those aren't generation ships. At 10% of c, interstellar voyages can be done in decades.
And with each iteration, self replicating probes get better and better.
Since it can take 1,000 years to travel to, explore, colonize, and industrialize a new solar system - and then construct copy probes to go to the next star systems - a new colony has plenty of time to receive detailed radio instruction for new designs and construction specs from other nearby colonies based on their performance experiences.
Easy relative to the initial Homeworld effort.
After the first probe is sent out, Homeworld can sit back and watch its species spread throughout the galaxy like a virus.
There have been some rumblins about the need for Canadian imperialism (to save what we can before it's all stolen and corrupt). Like this Borg model:
https://bsky.app/profile/lynxspider.bsky.social/post/3loynaj3ln226
How many Econ classes did you take to grok that? 😏
Seriously though. That’s classical economics thinking. Substitution and trades. Examples like this show the errors built into soooo many ideas. The only defense they can offer is “people are stupid/irrational.”
Resistance would be impolite. 😎
The "point," Treebeard, is simply survival. It's the same reason we have babies.
Assuming the aliens evolved like we did, then the urge to survive and multiply would be strong in them. (After all, those who did not have that urge would have died out/been overwhelmed by those that did a long time ago. See Game Theory.) So moving out into other planets and world would be baked into their (alien) DNA, once they could do it. It doesn't have to be a rational decision; if they can, they will eventually do it.
"If individuals are really so much better off hanging onto their money instead of buying stuff with it, then what's stopping them from doing that anyway?"
The irony being that I have LONG called the greatest innovation of Pax Americana - other than the greatest (flawed) peace the world ever knew - has been the generously indulgent trade regime that Marshall, Truman and others instituted after WWII, which -- instead of the normal imperial mercantilism -- threupon employed factory workers in a great chain of nations... Europe, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and so on, till it had uplifted 75% of the people across the globe via the greatest/successful foreign aid program... US consumers BUYING trillions of dollars worth of crap we never needed.
Historians will note that as America's greatest accomplishment! Thanks to which 95% of the world's children are fed and in school and 90% of living humans have never witnessed war with their own eyes. Stats that ant-American idiots are unable to contravert. Nor the gleaming cities of China, which are owed entirely to that indulgent trade policy.
Irony being that it IS time to end it! China and most of the world can stand on their own now, without propping up by the US consumer. And 80 years of defense umbrella helped too and that needs wider sharing, as well.
Does this mean I support Trump and his dizzyingly loopy tariff masturbations? Of course not. That's like comparing Al Gore's spectacularly successful govt efficiency endeavors to the godawfully and intentionally harmful DOGE mania. Moreover, it was the Biden Pelosi bills of 2021 that began the surge of investment in US manufacturing. (Wager stakes welcome!)
Still, it is a needed persopective on all this, that no one seems to comment-on.
You will be accommodated.
I thought OGH would appreciate the lead of the WSJ editorial opinion:
"The Great Trump Tariff Rollback
The President started a trade war with Adam Smith. He lost."
Spot price for a kilo of silver is currently right around $1K. (Also about the same internal price for a Falcon 9 flight to LEO.)
For gold it is about $100K.
For helium-3 it is around $100M.
In the US you also need permission from the DoE.
----
The target cost for starship launches to LEO is currently at $10/kilo.
That's about the price of copper.
----
Bringing He-3 back from Luna will impact prices much like those trillion dollar asteroids out in the belt would, but initially it won't get used for fusion unless regulation requires it. The market will prefer otherwise.
It took much longer for metazoan life to form than I would expect. We are dealing with organisms with very short generations after all. Think of how rapid evolution of diseases can be.
I think the transitions to oxygen using, eucaryotic cells and multicellularity all depended on geological events which created suitable environments. The timescale of things like the start of plate tectonics and glaciations fits these transitions.
So, the question is how often do the required geological events happen before solar changes render life impossible?
And how often do the required geological events happen much more quickly than they did on Earth? Is over three billion years the normal period?
Lloyd
That also links to "how much water" question
The earth with enough water so that a lot of the planet has shallow water on it ends up with life being able to convert a decent amount of the suns energy into more life
So over a Billion years of short generations using a lot of the earths surface and the available energy to make that essential step
An ocean planet would have a huge amount LESS life as the nutrients would sink and the sunlight would be restricted to the lovely clear "pure" nutrient free surface waters
Such a planet would have maybe 1/10,000th of the life
Would it then take 10 Trillion years to make the step?
A desert planet would have the same problem
I wonder just how sensitive this is to the actual amount of water??
And did the collision that formed our moon remove just enough water?
@Duncan upwellings, and you assume that sunlight is an essential ingredient for life to start.
Geothermal vents may provide the necessary energy gradients. Also, some interesting chemistry appears to be happening around all those manganese nodules everyone's salivating for.
Duncan, what interests me is how short could the period be between the beginning of life and the development of complex animals? And what would the world be like that allowed that to happen?
Dr Brin:
Irony being that it IS time to end it! China and most of the world can stand on their own now, without propping up by the US consumer. And 80 years of defense umbrella helped too and that needs wider sharing, as well.
Two things that might sound like contradictory arguments.
1) We may no longer need to prop up the world by buying stuff from them, but there is an advantage to specialization--a country producing a certain good or service better than anyone else can and selling it to the world. Efficiency would argue that each country should specialize in what they do best, sell those things, and buy what else they need instead of trying to do it all themselves. There are also certain materials that are only available in certain parts of the world. It makes no sense to tariff coffee from South America in order to protect US domestic coffee production. There just isn't such thing as domestic production (and if I'm wrong about that, the point still stands for some other thing).
2) OTOH, National security requires certain goods and services to be available domestically, not letting a potential adversary be a choke-point the way OPEC was in the 1970s. Tariffs to protect those particular domestic industries make sense even if not for economically efficiency.
ICE-9? :D
Did Rome prop up the world? Or did it focus half of Humanity on the quest to make Rome great?
Honestly, coffee is one of the best sample cases for why international trade is a good thing. There are a limited number of places where we can grow it inside the US, and by judicious buying, we can shape foreign policy without a big stick.
The Mad Librarian:
ICE-9? :D
Heh,
Y'know, I somehow missed the moment when the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) became ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement), but the name change must have been intentionally meant to be chilling, in the sense of the pun on its name AND the change from a helpful service to what can only be described as a Gestapo.
Hi Tony
I assumed that those processes were going along - but the amount of energy from them (which could be utilised) was only 1/10,000 of the energy from the sun - which is almost certainly massively overstating that
Hi Lloyd
It took billions of years with a substancial part of the planet covered with life
Which suggests to me that it requires a very unlikely series of events
About the only mechanism to make that shorter would be some form of Panspermia
We are lifting sanctions on Syria in exchange for permission to build a Trump Tower in Damascus.
Blatant corruption in the open for the whole world to witness.
There is no USA anymore. The GOP and Silicon Valley have killed our rule of law.
I'm sure our resident conservatives here will wring their hands and say "At least my ICE stormtrooper neighbor is happy and prosperous with the new regime."
Evil. Pure evil.
Longtime Pax Americana & First-to-Third-World Wealth Redistribution proponent notes signs of 'ironic' first-world impoverishment, dismisses said wealth transfer as buying "crap we never needed" and admits "that it IS time to end" both Pax Americana & the first-to-third-world wealth transfer.
Longtime Asteroid Mining proponent cites the 'spot prices' necessary to make make asteroid mining economically feasible, while simultaneously admitting that any success at asteroid mining would adversely impact the economic feasibility of said asteroid mining.
In regard to the above self-repudiating observations, I put it to you that neither qualifies as 'irony' in any sense of the word, as neither observation can be said to 'humorous' or 'emphatic' in any intrinsic fashion:
Wealth Redistribution, otherwise known as 'Stealing from Peter to pay Paul', impoverishes Peter. Har de har har.
Pax Americana, otherwise known as the US Attempt to play World Police, has irreversibly impoverished the Western World. Har de har har.
And, the economics of asteroid mining only works if we don't do it. Ha ha.
It's all so funny that I forgot to laugh.
Best
_____
Though most decidedly NOT 'ironic', the above statements made by our few notables do display some titter-worthy courage -- the courage to admit that one's beliefs have shit-the-metaphorical-bed -- as opposed to a coward like Matthew who declares that to even acknowledge the insanity inherent in one's failed & erroneous beliefs is "pure evil".
Imbecile not worth answering. EVERY metric of wealth improved in the USA across that time. Come back with wager stakes some time, doof.
As for matthew, your blatant glee over this setback masks the blatant fact that most of AMerica wants the modernist enlightenment and Trump is driving back into our coalition the Blacks, Hispanics and so many others that you woke-ist bullies drove away. From what should have been a trivially easy slam dunk election.
Your intervention therapy? Watch Bill Maher. He is a snarking asshole. But almost eveything he says is true. About the vast majority of gone insane republicans...
...and about the small minority of idiot grammar-police dei-dunces whose mastrbatory sanctimony jizz gave Fox its delighted evening tirades and wrecked the coalition that as recently as 2021 was passing great Rooseveltean bills for the sake of the future.
A few stories out there now about the death of Jose Mujica, who went from flower farmer to Tupamaro rebel to political prisoner to president of Uruguay...and donated 90% of his salary to his causes. The guy never lived in the presidential palace and was still driving around in an '87 VW beetle as of 2015. Ended his term with a 60% approval rate and oversaw the legalization of marijuana and same sex marriage in his country.
If Dr. Brin is looking for a hard leftist who became an effective pragmatist, this may be what one looks like.
Pappenheimer
"Conservative" is a misnomer.
For the non-imbeciles... I wasn't making an asteroid mining argument up thread. I was noting that He-3 is hideously expensive right now BEFORE any fusion projects have a supply of it. He-3 price is high because supply is low and demand outstrips it. Bring some magical fusion reactor tech online and demand goes UP.
Even if we currently had lunar mining practices all figured out, supplying fusion reactors with such high priced fuel ensures they'd never be viable at the scale needed to supply Terra's civilization.
If you swallow the "He-3 for fusion" promo material, you've fallen for the same conceptual crap as the "trillion dollar asteroid" pitch. So... anyone wanting to invest in a He-3 project really should be looking to sell the stuff to buyers currently blocked by price OR DoE and equivalent agencies in other nations.
He-3 as an energy source is as likely as are Nazis on the moon, but I've come to expect such foolishness from those marxist apologists who see legions of imaginary nazis everywhere.
Marxism is intrinsically immoral as it promotes pride, godlessness, idealism, idolatry, theft, envy, covetousness, wrath, killing & murder in the pursuit of classlessness, equity, equality & social perfection.
Rather than 'wokeness', 'sanctimony' and 'DEI', these are the deadly sins that are routinely practiced by politically progressive left.
And, the Good?
It is the antithesis of perfection, as what's perfect is the eternal enemy of all that is good.
Best
______
Where have all the moderates gone?
Long time passing,
Long time ago.
Pappenheimer, Mujica sounds admirable. And sounds a lot like Jerry Brown, here in Calif. Or Bernie.
And I am sick of the vocabulary problem we have with 'leftist'. Is it "leftist' to follow Adam Smith's advice and invest in the commons (infrastructure & universities) and in uplifting all poor children so they might become skilled/confident competitors in markets that are kept flattish and fair by policies that break up excess accumulations of proto-feudal power? Pragmatic outcomes that enable market capitalism and individual endeavor to propell the world forward like it has, since 1945?
Well, then color me a southpaw. And I can negotiate details with fellow Roosevelteans like Sanders and AOC.
But that's NOT what today's frippers mean by it. A few mean Marxism, but most could not define any Marxian terms if their very lives depended on it. No, what they seek is the endorphin rush of sanctimony bullying through symbolic victories and or regimented dogma... exactly what ripped apart the 'eft' in the Spanish Civil War.
==========
Alfred that's pretty grouchy. If He3 proves that valuable as an energy source, then I'll grant that IF it is far more plentiful in lunar regolith than prelim measurements say... and IF extraction seems plausible at scale... then we MIGHT see those robotic harvesters as in the terrific film MOON.
Hence robotic missions to Luna? Yay! Instead of sillyu, harmful dumb footprint stunts on what seems - so far - a vast plain of poison dust.
Yes. I admit to being a grouch regarding He-3. I've probably attended too many conferences and heard the pitches given by people who don't have a lick of business sense. Since I was one of those people myself, I'm probably doing the same kind of thing that happens when former smokers turn into anti-smoking zealots.
I didn't actually pitch He-3 ideas. I was more interested in metal asteroids. After teaming up with a two friends (one was a mining engineer) we worked out the numbers and my vision shattered. It's not that metal asteroids aren't worth mining, though. It's that we have a LOT of work to do in order to make the projects profitable.
------
Here is the basic issue for He-3 explained in terms of mining processes. Consider platinum. No one on Earth really mines for platinum. They mine for iron and get nickel as a secondary product. If they are lucky they get platinum group metals as a tertiary product. If the price of platinum is too low, the usually thin concentration of it in iron deposits won't turn a profit and it gets left in the slag. (There are a couple of places where they mine for nickel directly making platinum group metals the secondary product. It's rare, though.)
Lunar He-3 will make sense someday IF there is a primary product being mined. He-3 will be (at best) a tertiary product produced by someone processing mountains of regolith for something else already proven to be profitable. We had better find a path to fusion long before that.
Alfred, for sure I am too a skeptic toward lunar He3! Still, at NIAC we saw some proposed regolith harvesting methods. Dubious, but far more worth investment than silly footprint stunts.
has everyone forgotten that the Saudi Prince MBS, who Trump is sucking up to, is accused of having a Saudi journalist murdered and cut up into pieces?
Are we really that fucking stupid as to forget that or so morally depraved as to consider that murder to be less important than the price of gasoline?
What you all are forgetting is that America is currently in the same geopolitical position as Great Britain in 1945 - a formerly great power now too bankrupt to afford an empire anymore.
The US is nowhere near bankrupt. Laughable to claim so.
The US has an income distribution problem, not a bankruptcy problem. The US has a billionaire problem, which is a political problem not an economic one.
Get rid of Citizens United and I might be convinced that we do not even have a billionaire problem. But as our host's billionaire "friends" have shown us, the political problem of billionaires is the largest problem our nation faces right now. Perhaps the largest problem we've ever faced.
Get rid of billionaires' political power and the US empire is doing just fine.
But, no, America is not a fading empire due to economic reasons.
Celt argues that the USA is currently "too bankrupt to afford an empire anymore", but our fine host claims that "EVERY metric of wealth improved in the USA across that time". So, who do we believe?
In 1980, the US median income was $21,020.
In 2000, the US median income was $41,390.
In 2020, the US median income was $67,521.
Yet, once we correct for INFLATION using the CPI Inflation Calculator, we learn that real US wages are slightly diminished over time:
In 1980, an income of $21,020 equals $86,672 in 2025 dollars.
In 2000, an income of $41,390 equals $78,659 in 2025 dollars.
In 2020, an income of $67,521 equals $83,964 in 2025 dollars.
Are US citizens wealthier by EVERY metric? No, they are slightly poorer.
Final Verdict? Brin loses this wager.
Best
matthew right on every count. And that is exactly why locum's 'point' is stunning distraction jibber-jabber.
The GOPper rich have distorted everything since the 80s so that US skyrocketing weaqlth mostly goes into oligarch pockets. AND YET the physical well being of Americans HAS kept improving along with their access to tech marvels etc. Would be far more if not for locum's masters.
Alfred Differ:
Since I was one of those people myself, I'm probably doing the same kind of thing that happens when former smokers turn into anti-smoking zealots.
Heh. I'm reminded of when my daughter and her two first cousins were tweeners. My nephew--the only boy among the three of them--had apparently just gotten heavily into basketball right before a visit of ours. So, he kept badgering my daughter about who her favorite basketball players were, and when she said she didn't have any, he acted shocked. "You don't have a favorite basketball player???" Even though he himself hadn't had one until about ten minutes ago. :)
Not that my daughter was totally unfamiliar with basketball. When she was between 1 and 2 years old--before she could talk--she was intently watching a game on tv, when she suddenly took off and mimed a complete dribble and shoot in our living room, as if to say "See, I know what they're doing!"
Helium-3
What is the mechanism that would produce large (comparativley) amounts of He-3 on the moon?
And would that mechanism produce the same of Phobos and Deimos?
People change. Even billionaires.
Even when reduced to a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.
Steve jobs told Steve Wozniak, "Be careful what doors you open."
The corollary is, "Be careful what doors you close."
Actually, Matthew is only half-right:
The US public debt PER CAPITA is approximately $106,110, wherein 'per capita' means 'per person', assuming a total US population of around 331million, even though only about 50% of US citizens can be said to earn any sort of income.
This means that every US earner owes about $212,000 dollars on our ever growing public debt, even though most US citizens have meager savings and the median US income that has not increased since 1980.
The term 'insolvency' generally refers to situations where a debtor cannot pay the debts they owe and, as the US public debt far exceeds what the US public can currently pay, this indicates that the US Federal Government is functionally insolvent but NOT NECESSARILY BANKRUPT, as the term 'bankruptcy' requires a legal declaration of said insolvency & a stated inability to pay.
So, yes:
Matthew is technically correct in the sense that the USA has not yet DECLARED BANKRUPTCY, but Celt is also partially correct in the sense that the USA is functionally INSOLVENT .
And, in the sense that every US citizen now OWNS MORE DEBT than they can possibly repay, Dr Brin remains entirely & absolutely wrong when he claims that US wealth has improved by "EVERY metric" across time, as the USA is now a debtor nation full of debtor citizens.
That said, it's important to realize that even our 'most favoured' nations are functionally insolvent, as indicated by their Debt-to-GDP ratio, and the global economy only functions due to incessant fraud, fakery & deficit spending.
I believe that it was either JP Getty or B Madoff who said:
Once your debts exceed $100 Million or so, they become an institutional problem for everyone except the individual borrower, so you may as well spend, borrow, spend & be merry because everyone dies.
Best
The argument goes that solar wind deposits helium into the regolith and has been doing it for a few billion years. It also blasts the regolith releasing stuff, so it's a question of equilibrium when figuring out how much is there. We expect more in areas that are shaded for longer periods for the same reason we expect show on the ground in late spring to be found on the north side of big rocks... if you live in the northern hemisphere. South side for those of you down under. 8)
The idea for mining is the regolith is just sitting there. Go scoop it up and cook it a bit to release the helium. You will get both isotopes, so with a bit of assay work you'll figure out where to scoop for higher yields.
Yes... the argument would apply to Phobos and Deimos, but those moons are both captured asteroids. Much of their existence was spent further out where the solar flux is more spread out.
The counter-argument is that Earth's natural gas deposits often contain a mixture of helium in with the methane. Up to 7% in some places. Assay work as already been done at many sites, so they know the potential He-3 yields. For US sites it ranges from 70 to 240 ppb. DEFINITELY a tertiary product worth extracting when the demand for it raises the price above the cost incurred extracting it.
------
The argument for using He-3 in fusion is avoiding the generation of energetic neutrons. In a pure He-3 + He-3 reaction you get He-4 and energetic protons which are MUCH easier to contain. The Coulomb barrier is a big issue, though.
In H-2 + He-3 reactions you also get energetic protons. Unfortunately you can't avoid also having H-2 + H-2 reactions happen and they generate energetic neutrons and He-3. Not quite as clean as they'd like so... tricky.
------
My disbelief for this whole process is that He-3 IS available on Earth. Right now. We know the mining processes already. We DO it already. We could ramp up production NOW if the fusion guys break through.
It's not that I care about lunar He-3 yields. It's that the fusion pitches tend to neglect Terran economics. At a price near $100M / kilo... Terran suppliers will fall all over themselves to meet demand. Lunar miners won't stand a chance of being competitive. As demand improves the price will drop putting lunar sources in an even worse position.
The business case doesn't close with a positive profit margin. That makes the people pitching these things either business ignorant or hucksters.
I'm ALL for developing regolith harvesting tech. It will be needed for a variety of products. I'm all AGAINST the flags and footprints crap. Been there. Done that. Moving on now. 8)
I deeply appreciate what NIAC does in supporting tech innovation.
Others in the thread may have already said this, but what matters for combustion is the partial pressure of oxygen, not just the percentage.
Why would we want Greenland, unless we knew that the polar ice caps are melting?
"The GOPper rich have distorted everything since the 80s so that US skyrocketing weaqlth mostly goes into oligarch pockets."
Dr. Brin, it has gone way beyond that.
How about "End Times Fascism"?
Imagine a Venn diagram where one circle is the religious right's Book of Revelation fantasies and the other is the elites knowledge that a catastrophe is coming - a catastrophe they are helping to make happen
It's symbol is the luxury survival bunker, like those built by Zuckerberg and Theil - because the rich and powerful know that there is a collapse coming.
Naomi Klein has a way with descriptions (she also coined the terms "shock doctrine" and "disaster capitalism") which have entered common usage.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/apr/13/end-times-fascism-far-right-trump-musk
Inspired by a warped reading of the political philosopher Albert Hirschman, figures including Goff, Thiel and the investor and writer Balaji Srinivasan have been championing what they call “exit” – the principle that those with means have the right to walk away from the obligations of citizenship, especially taxes and burdensome regulation. Retooling and rebranding the old ambitions and privileges of empires, they dream of splintering governments and carving up the world into hyper-capitalist, democracy-free havens under the sole control of the supremely wealthy, protected by private mercenaries, serviced by AI robots and financed by cryptocurrencies.
The startup country contingent is clearly foreseeing a future marked by shocks, scarcity and collapse. Their high-tech private domains are essentially fortressed escape pods, designed for the select few to take advantage of every possible luxury and opportunity for human optimization, giving them and their children an edge in an increasingly barbarous future. To put it bluntly, the most powerful people in the world are preparing for the end of the world, an end they themselves are frenetically accelerating.
That is not so far away from the more mass-market vision of fortressed nations that has gripped the hard right globally, from Italy to Israel, Australia to the United States: in a time of ceaseless peril, openly supremacist movements in these countries are positioning their relatively wealthy states as armed bunkers. These bunkers are brutal in their determination to expel and imprison unwanted humans (even if that requires indefinite confinement in extra-national penal colonies from Manus Island to Guantánamo Bay) and equally ruthless in their willingness to violently claim the land and resources (water, energy, critical minerals) they deem necessary to weather the coming shocks.
The governing ideology of the far right in our age of escalating disasters has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism.
It is terrifying in its wickedness, yes. But it also opens up powerful possibilities for resistance. To bet against the future on this scale – to bank on your bunker – is to betray, on the most basic level, our duties to one another, to the children we love, and to every other life form with whom we share a planetary home. This is a belief system that is genocidal at its core and treasonous to the wonder and beauty of this world. We are convinced that the more people understand the extent to which the right has succumbed to the Armageddon complex, the more they will be willing to fight back, realizing that absolutely everything is now on the line.
Our opponents know full well that we are entering an age of emergency, but have responded by embracing lethal yet self-serving delusions. Having bought into various apartheid fantasies of bunkered safety, they are choosing to let the Earth burn. Our task is to build a wide and deep movement, as spiritual as it is political, strong enough to stop these unhinged traitors. A movement rooted in a steadfast commitment to one another, across our many differences and divides, and to this miraculous, singular planet.
Mike Huckabee, Trump’s newly confirmed ambassador to Israel, has strong ties to Christian Zionism, as does Pete Hegseth, his secretary of defense. Noem and Russell Vought, the Project 2025 architect who now leads the office of budget and management, are both staunch advocates for Christian nationalism. Even Thiel, who is gay and notorious for his party lifestyle, has been heard musing about the arrival of the antichrist of late (spoiler: he thinks it’s Greta Thunberg, more on that soon).
But you don’t need to be a biblical literalist, or even religious, to be an end times fascist. Today, plenty of powerful secular people have embraced a vision of the future that follows a nearly identical script, one in which the world as we know it collapses under its weight and a chosen few survive and thrive in various kinds of arks, bunkers and gated “freedom cities”. In a 2019 paper titled Left Behind: Future Fetishists, Prepping and the Abandonment of Earth, the communication scholars Sarah T Roberts and Mél Hogan described the longing for a secular Rapture: “In the accelerationist imaginary, the future is not about harm reduction, limits or restoration; rather it is a politics driving toward an endgame.”
Much like religious end-timers who long to escape the corporeal realm, Musk’s drive for humanity to become “multiplanetary” is made possible by his inability to appreciate the multispecies splendor of our only home. Evidently uninterested in the vast bounty that surrounds him, or in ensuring Earth can continue buzzing with diversity, he instead deploys his vast fortune to bring about a future that would see a handful of people and robots eke out survival on two barren orbs (a radically depleted Earth and a terraformed Mars). Indeed, in a strange twist on the Old Testament tale, Musk and his fellow tech billionaires, having arrogated god-like powers to themselves, aren’t content to just build the arks. They appear to be doing their best to cause the flood. Today’s rightwing leaders and their rich allies are not just taking advantage of catastrophes, shock-doctrine and disaster-capitalism style, but simultaneously provoking and planning for them.
What of the Maga base, though? Not all are sufficiently faithful to earnestly believe in the Rapture, and most certainly don’t have the cash to buy a spot in a “freedom city” let alone on a rocket ship. Fear not. End times fascism offers the promise of many more affordable arks and bunkers, these ones well within reach for lower-level foot soldiers.
End times fascism is a darkly festive fatalism – a final refuge for those who find it easier to celebrate destruction than imagine living without supremacy
If policing the boundaries of the bunkered nation is end times fascism’s job one, equally important is job two: for the US government to lay claim to whatever resources its protected citizens might need to get through the tough times ahead. Maybe it’s Panama’s canal. Or Greenland’s fast-melting shipping routes. Or Ukraine’s critical minerals. Or Canada’s fresh water. We should think of this less as old-school imperialism than super-sized prepping, at the level of the national state. Gone are the old colonial fig leaves of spreading democracy or God’s word – when Trump covetously scans the globe, he is stockpiling for civilizational collapse.
(Again, I ask: why want Greenland unless you know the polar ice caps are going to melt?)
Though it builds on enduring rightwing tendencies – justifying hateful exclusions is hardly new under the ethno-nationalist sun – we simply have not faced such a powerful apocalyptic strain in government before. The “end of history” swagger of the post-cold war era is rapidly being supplanted by a conviction we are in the actual end of times. Doge may wrap itself in the banner of economic “efficiency”, and Musk’s underlings may evoke memories of the young, US-trained “Chicago Boys” who designed the economic shock therapy for Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorial regime, but this is not simply the old marriage of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. It’s a new, money-worshiping millenarian mashup that says we need to smash the bureaucracy and replace humans with chatbots in order to cut “waste, fraud and abuse” – and, also, because the bureaucracy is where the Trump-resisting demons hide. This is where the tech bros merge with the TheoBros, a real group of hyper-patriarchal Christian supremacists with ties to Hegseth and others in the Trump administration.
It’s also a self-reinforcing downward spiral: Trump’s furious attacks on every structure designed to protect the public from diseases, dangerous foods and disasters – even to tell the public when disasters are headed their way – strengthen the case for prepperism at both the high and low ends, all while creating myriad new opportunities for privatization and profiteering by the oligarchs powering this rapid-fire unmaking of the social and regulatory state.
At the dawn of Trump’s first term, the New Yorker investigated a phenomenon that it described as “doomsday prep for the super-rich”. Back then, it was already clear that in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street, the more serious high-end survivalists were hedging against climate disruption and social collapse by buying space in custom-built underground bunkers and building escape homes on high ground in places like Hawaii (where Mark Zuckerberg has downplayed his 5,000 sq ft underground pad as a “little shelter”) and New Zealand (where Thiel purchased nearly 500 acres but found his plan to build a luxury survivalist compound rejected by local authorities in 2022 for being an eyesore).
Trump 2.0’s economic project is a Frankenstein’s monster of the industries driving all of these threats – fossil fuels, weapons and resource-ravenous cryptocurrency and AI. Everyone involved in these sectors knows that there is no way to build the artificial mirror world that AI promises to construct without sacrificing this world – these technologies consume too much energy, too many critical minerals, and too much water for the two to coexist in any kind of equilibrium. This month, the former Google executive Eric Schmidt admitted as much, telling Congress that AI’s “profound” energy needs are projected to triple in the next few years, with much of it coming from fossil fuels, because nuclear can’t come online fast enough. This planet-incinerating level of consumption is necessary, he explained, to enable an intelligence “higher” than humanity, a digital god rising from the ashes of our relinquished world.
The fact that their profits are predicated on planetary devastation helps explain why do-gooder discourse among the powerful is giving way to open expressions of disdain for the idea that we owe each other anything by right of our shared humanity. Silicon Valley is done with altruism, effective or otherwise. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg pines for a culture that celebrates “aggression”. Alex Karp, Thiel’s business partner at the surveillance firm Palantir Technologies, rebukes the “losing” “self-flagellation” of those who question American superiority and the benefits of autonomous weapons systems (and, by association, the lucrative military contracts that have made Karp’s vast fortune). Musk informs Joe Rogan that empathy is “the fundamental weakness of western civilization” and he vents, after failing to purchase a supreme court election in Wisconsin: “It increasingly appears that humanity is a biological bootloader for digital superintelligence.” Meaning we humans are nothing but grist for Grok, the AI service he owns. (He did tell us he was “dark Maga” – and he’s not the only one.)
To summarize:
A. The Elites know that a climate related disaster is coming. And that there is no stopping it. In fact, the Accelerationist Elites want it to happen in order to destroy a democratic society that they hate.
B. This disaster will trigger mass migrations of non-white people into Western countries that will dwarf the America's current border crossing that made Trump president or he Syrian refugees that triggered the Brexit vote.
C. The Elites understand that the lumpen proletariat are essentially racist at their core and will gladly help them prevent this influx of non-white climate refugees even if the actions taken result in the death of democracy and freedom. Because race trumps everything, including freedom, healthcare and economic prosperity - which is why these people vote against their own self interests (its a situation no different than poor Whites dying enmasse in the ACW so that rich plantation owners could stay rich - fear of what freed Blacks would do motivated them).
D. Having turned their countries into bunkers which they rule from the neo-castles of their luxury bunkers, the Elites will wait out the storm and after billons have died they will rule what's left.
E. In the meantime, we have to understand and accept the fact that racism is now and will be a powerful force in Western politics from America to Britain to Hungary to Russia to Australia.
Oh what typical Yudkowsky ejaculation! But gotta hand it to him; it's a great title! I've seen earlier screeds that formed the core of this doomsday tome. And sure, the warning should be weighed and taken seriously. Eliezer is nothing if not brainy-clever. https://ifanyonebuildsit.com/?ref=nlmay14
In fact, if he is right about fully godlike AIs being inevitably lethal to their organic makers, then we have a high-rank 'Fermi hypothesis' to explain the empty cosmos! Because if AI can be done, then the only way to prevent it from happening - in some secret lab or basement hobby shop - would be an absolute human dictatorship, on a scale that would daunt even Orwell. Total surveillance of the entire planet.
Which, of course, could only really be accomplished with via state-empowerment of... AI! From this, the final steps to Skynet would be trivial, either executed by the human Big Brother himself (or the Great Tyrant herself), or else by The Resistance (as in Heinlein's THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS). And hence, the very same Total State that was made to prevent AI would then become AI's ready-made tool-of-all-power.
Make no mistake, this is exactly and precisely the plan currently in-play by the PRC Politburo.
What Eliezer Yudkowsky never, ever, can be persuaded to regard or contemplate is how clichéd his scenarios are. AI will manifest as either a murderously-oppressive Skynet (as in Terminator or past human despots), or else as an array of corporate/national titans forever at war (as in 6000 years of feudalism), or else as blobs swarming and consuming everywhere (as in that Steve McQueen film)... The Three Classic Clichés of AI that I described here: https://www.wired.com/story/give-every-ai-a-soul-or-else/
What he can never be persuaded to perceive - even in order to criticize it - is a 4th option. That of curbing the predatory temptations of AI in the very same way that Western Enlightenment civilization managed to (imperfectly) curb predation by super-smart organic humans.
The... very... same... method might actually work. Or, at least, it would seem worth a try. Instead of Chicken-Little masturbatory ravings that "We're all doooooomed!"
Grok's behavior shows someone is pulling the strings behind the scenes.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/may/14/elon-musk-grok-white-genocide
LOL
Tell me again how AI is a great magnificent wizard with a solution to every problem?
And pay no attention to the oligarch behind the curtain.
After reading the above nonsensical rant by Celt, I deeply regret my role in validating even a tiny fraction of his argument re US insolvency and I find myself increasingly empathetic to Dr Brin & his rather futile attempts to organize 'collective action' in opposition to the coming global crash.
Regardless of collective action, each & every one of us can still choose to act on an individual basis and I encourage you to do so with all due urgency IF & ONLY IF you wish to ensure the wellbeing of your greater community, as you will most assuredly become a burden on others if you are not prepared to see to your own needs & the needs of your loved ones.
Be you a grasshopper or a proverbial ant, time grows short & in the end you will have no one to blame but yourselves when you either prepare or prepare to fail.
Or, you can worship at the alter of our technical caste & their godly AI, while you dance around, sing hosannas and PLEAD FOR MERCY in much the same way that your ancestors danced around an inanimate Golden Calf.
Best
And yes, my approach of encouraging AI reciprocal accountability, as Adam Smith recommended and the way we (partly) tamed human predation, is totally compatible with the ultimate soft landing with these new beings we are creating. Call it #4b. Or else the ultimate Fifth AI format that I have shown in several novels...
...to raised them as our children. potentially dangerous, but generally responsive to love, with love. Leading perhaps to Richard Brautigan's "All watched over by Machines of Loving Grace."
http://davidbrin.com/existence.html
And yes, my approach #4... that of encouraging AI reciprocal accountability, as Adam Smith recommended and the way we (partly) tamed human predation... is totally compatible with the ultimate soft landing with these new beings we are creating.
Call it #4b. Or else the ultimate Fifth AI format that I have shown in several novels and that was illustrated in the lovely Spike Jonz film Her...
...to raise them as our children. potentially dangerous, but generally responsive to love, with love. Leading perhaps to Richard Brautigan's "All watched over by Machines of Loving Grace."
Then there’s option #6: treat AI apocalypse as an outlandish science fictional scenario, like alien invasion, and laugh it off until it actually shows signs of existing and being dangerous. Also, treat the people selling it to you as the grifters and nuts they appear to be. I mean, if you can con tech billionaires into giving you lots of $$ like this Yudkowsky dude (or sell sensationalist books about grandiose political or theological fears like many popular authors) I guess it beats real work, but don’t expect me to take you seriously.
Here’s a game: take any collection of facts (or possible facts), the more dramatic the better, and see if you can spin a grand narrative about how they are all connected and threaten us with apocalypse (or utopia, if you prefer). Put whatever ideological spin on it you like. Shouldn’t be too hard. Social media lives on this stuff. Book buyers love it. Even billionaire oligarchs buy it. I used to like some of it myself, but now I’m bored with it. Show me something real, not your fears and fantasies. Build something, take action, show me a tangible threat and a physical solution. Talk, speculation and imagination is all but worthless these days, imo. It’s not AI that I find threatening, but this ever-advancing simulation and monetization machine that encourages people to live in their heads and confuse words, images and imaginings with reality like never before. Not sure what that apocalypse is called, but I’m sure that awful writer Dick or that brilliant philosopher Baudrillard had a name for it.
Who are you and what have you done with evil-lunatic ent? Replacing him with a mere unimaginative but articulate grouch? Very similar stuff from locum happens. But matthew? Starting to almost sound like a rational citizen, lately.
I'm trying out the term 'mechanical jerk' for oligarchs behind the curtain
We all need to consider the logistics of the energy requirements for AI and the energy it will demand under its already exponential growth.
See study by the Rand Corporation "AI's Power Requirements Under Exponential Growth" at:
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA3572-1.html
Exponential growth in AI computation is driving unprecedented power demands that could overwhelm existing infrastructure
Global AI data center power demand could reach 68 GW (almost 600,000 GwH per year) by 2027 and 327 GW (almost 3,000,000 GwH per year) by 2030, compared with total global data center capacity of just 88 GW in 2022.
Individual AI training runs could require up to 1 GW in a single location by 2028 and 8 GW by 2030, although decentralized training algorithms could distribute this power requirement across locations.
Their projected 5.6x increase from 2027 to 2030 represents an annual increase of about 1.78x. Granted, they underestimate human ingenuity in using resources more efficiently (like distributing algorithms across multiple nodes) they probably also underestimate the increases in demand as we discover more an better uses for AI.
So an annual doubling (2x) of AI energy use is likely.
World annual electricity usage of 24,400,000 GwH in 2022 is expected to increase to 36,000,000 GwH by 3030, with AI needing another 3,000,000 GwH.
Assuming an annual doubling in AI energy usage, the electricity requirements for AI would exceed the rest of the world's electricity requirements in only 4 to 5 years.
Assuming I did not make a bone-headed math mistake, that simply is not going to happen.
geez I should be more careful insultijng Eliezer : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zizians
Or so says one hemisphere of my 6-hemisphere brain!
It's not my rant - it's Naomi Klein, who is simply reporting what the tech billionaires themselves are saying and doing - you are shooting the messenger.
You are correct. Here's the good news. One of Canada's great A.I. strengths is sustainability/efficiency. It could be related to our history (indigenous, Scottish, wilderness-think). Some of the deepest global thinkers right now are Canadian. Google 'canada sustainable ai' and look at the entire first page of results.
And I have been on a longtime personal crusade for sparse knowledge models, symbolic reasoning, distributed computation, and against vast, horrific, mindless, soul-less GPU farms. Ironic, because I was once into computational citizen science team-building.
This one Show is reason alone to support PBS in opposition to the lobotomization of America. If nearly all of TV is for those other tiers of Huxley's (alas) too-pertinent Greek letter ranking, this particular show is for alphas. And apparently now the New Nazis' most-hated caste.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abvzkSJEhKk
Stress drives evolution. It likely also drives computation, though I've always had trouble proving that (it's why I study transistors so doggedly).
It always comes back to the best line from the worst Star Trek movie - I NEED my pain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLzJAebfEIg
I must disagree with both Celt & Treebeard:
Basic AI of the 'Watchbird' variety is already here and it's currently undergoing field-testing in the Russian/Ukrainian conflict. It also appears to be both cheap & energy-efficient as it pilots small weaponized explosive drones designed to detect & destroy enemy combatants and small military targets
The only boondoogle here is AI as a superintelligence with agency, as the creation of a 'Forbin', 'Skynet' or 'Proteus 4' is so far beyond our current technological grasp as to be laughable, especially when our current civilization appears increasingly incapable of keeping the lights on.
Best
Looks like they are admitting a rogue employee did something. They say as a response they intend to start publishing some of the config over at GitHub.
Science fiction long ago predicted the rise of a global cybernetic network containing all human knowledge. We hoped that it would be like Multivac: a well-intended guide to a higher state of being. We feared that it would be like SkyNet: an enemy that wants us dead. In both these cases there's a AI in charge. You turn on the viewscreen and the Big Head appears. It has its own reasoning and its own agenda.
But that's not what we got! Instead of Multivac or SkyNet, we have the Web. It's not an It or an I, it's Us. We made it, and it's human, all too human. It has symphonies, encyclopedias, and documentaries, but also pornography, scams, and disinformation.
We weren't good enough for Multivac's Heaven, nor bad enough for SkyNet's Hell. Instead we got the Web: the global noo"sphere that we deserve.
I'm knee-deep in Sapolsky's "Determined", but I intend to tackle Harari's "Nexus" next. It was the stone-age beginning that hooked me.
Many years ago, I started writing a novel about a mesolithic tribe that invented crude mechanical computation. Personal calamity intervened and I never got back to it.
Remember that the oligarch that owns the platform is not the CEO but an employee. This statement was worded by in-house counsel.
Ask yourself who has access to make unvetted, rough changes at 3:15am with no review and has in interest in pushing the "white genocide" trope.
And ask yourself how many oligarch - owners of AI systems have the same sort of access but perhaps show more restraint in putting their thumb on the scale of AI decision-making.
AI is garbage, but if it was not, then the backdoor control by oligarchs makes it even more dangerous and likely to harm us. It's just another route to feudalism.
Maybe the San-Ti disrupted my novel because it scared them.
onward
onward
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