How long do you think humans will be around?

Discussion in 'Astronomy, Exobiology, & Cosmology' started by Seattle, Dec 16, 2017.

  1. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    Unless you're solar powered or suck on a black smoker you're going to kill something to survive. Never bothered me. Killing for fun bothers me. I've offered to make it an even contest, but nobody's taken me up on that.
     
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  3. orcot Valued Senior Member

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    Meh not the attitude that would develop cultured meat but I think neither of us could claim to be scientists. I do hope you believe that cultured meat would in general be a positive thing.
    Killing without caring at all scares me more.
    That feels emotional and negative. I personally sepperate between beings that are purposfully bred to hunt and hunting in the free nature (even fishing). I wouldn't take a fish from the sea or shoot some lion or something.
    That said I hope humanity will eventually be able to do entire brain emulations in wich you find yourself in a digital world of your own of other peoples making. In there you can do what you want. Altough it's still something of a hobby.
    In such a world of illusions. You could actually fight a dragon on a unicorn. But you could also experience for example the first moon mission in great detail either as a independent figure that is ignored whilst the astronauts play their Original script, or more interactive where you either replace one of them. Or replace all of them with a couple of friends (altough fat change finding someone who want's to be collins). Also I wonder how far you could go with the rubber hand illusion in such a world. Then their is the option to sort of split yourself up interact with yourself and then join back together and have the weird experience. A interesting idea altough I'm afraid it would lead to isolationisme
     
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  5. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    I swung a pair of .50s in a power tub for just over two years. I could put ~182 pounds of lead in the air in a minute if I needed to abuse the barrels (and my loaders didn't pass out.) Hunting for "sport" isn't in that league.
     
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  7. orcot Valued Senior Member

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    Is this weightlifting? I'm afraid I'm a complete layman in the subject I don't know what .50s are, what a power tub is. And I do recognize 182 pounds is 82 kg.
    Or is this some type of military gun? I can't tell
    I can't imagen that that either of these compare to shooting some birds. Truth is even fishing is crueller
     
  8. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    Browning .5o cal. heavy machine gun.

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  9. orcot Valued Senior Member

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    That's a big gun. I never fired something like it (I susspect I never will) I bet it's quit loud.
     
  10. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    One ounce supersonic slugs. The US Army Air Force training manuals said it could kill at four miles. Obviously not an aimed shot, but when you can put 750 rounds a minute into the center of your attention it does make an impact. When they talk about millions of round expended for every enemy killed in WW2 they're talking about guns like these. A B-17 had 13 of them, and for "thousand plane raid" that's 13,000 guns expending 750 rpm. 9,750,000 rounds a minute, at theoretical max.

    And you can fire it, just google for "Ma Deuce rental."
     
  11. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    sculptor likes this.
  12. orcot Valued Senior Member

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    Always a sad thing when something like this happens. Still you should Always try to look at the big bicture. Unfortunatly the big picture isn't much better either. We have been the cause of extinction for a great many species and the situation is getting worse with little relief in sight. Still their is a silver lining in climate shifts. And that's the easiest way to reduce the temprature and regulate earths temprature would be by blocking parts of the sun with a Space sunshade.
    This with the potential for tourisme and what is hopefully the start of space acces getting cheaper (spece x). Might be the start of a lunar economy. Ones the infrastructure is up and abouth to make these shades people and they are produced. The same infrastructure could be used to make either O'Neill cylinders or/and space ships that settle the solar system. People like the dutch could propbably be persuaded to look for safer homes and that's a relative big economy but theres also cities like : 1) Guangzhou, 2) Miami, 3) New York, 4) New Orleans, 5) Mumbai, 6) Nagoya, 7) Tampa, 8) Boston, 9) Shenzen, and 10) Osaka.
    That gives you powers like the US, EU, china, japan, India.
    A o'neil cilinder is because of it's low tech certainly doable but inhibiting expensive because of it's high costs. Cheaper space acces and robotization might make it more doable altough I would say for the O neil cilinder perhaps in a 100 years maybe.
    I honnestly believe altough elon musk want's to go to mars, the ability to make a profit with space tourism and the ability to make a lunar factory that produces and launches sunshades will be to Obvious. I'm not saying we can't do mars but the moon and therefore earth should come in the first place terraforming mars would take way to long. There might also be other solutions to earths problems of climate change and over population but at this point the moon is one of them, mars is not.
     
  13. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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  14. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    twin 50s are awesome

    Hunting is hard work. I cannot understand doing it "for sport". (maybe I'm just lazy?)
     
  15. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    I hunted people, hunting anything less isn't "sport", it's target practice. I did go hunting a few years back with a lunatic, a bow hunter going after Arkansas razorback hogs. I was the guy behind him, with the BFG. (Big gun.) He got his boar.
     
  16. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    That suggestion stirred my imagination.
    Obviously we do not need to stop all incoming solar radiaton, just a part of it. I wonder if such a shield could be achieved by fields of solar nets in space, which would not only block part of the solar radiation but also convert the radiation it into electrical energy which could be beamed down to energy collectors on earth, providing an unlimited supply of energy, while shielding earth from full exposure of solar radiation and heat, especially over the tropical zones or ocean shallows. If we can lower the temperature of our ecosphere by just a few percent, it would stabilize climate change, while providing cheap energy collected above the ecosphere of earth itself.
     
  17. orcot Valued Senior Member

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    I'm guessing less then 1% preferebly at the south pole less people live in the Southern hemisphere, the big boys US, EU, china, japan, Russia etc are also in the northern hemisphere so they are somewhat shielded by unforseen consequences. The poles aren't the worst place if for example ozon would start to break down, and it's a easy sink to freeze water assuming the former nations are panicked by rising sea levels antartica aftherall already posses 61% of the fresh water on earth. So it's the spot I would choose to flash freeze as much water as possible ASAP whilst also "fixing" global warming.
    sure but it adds complecity, more factories are needed on the moon more personal and ballooning costs and time (construction) before you can become productive meaning other method (cloud seeding for example) become more interesting.
    What abouth the other way around? Earth beams power towards the moon, the moon base has it's own power source for life support but is depended on earth for enough energy to process the local minerals into solar shades and launching them in space using a mass driver. In time however +100 years space could become a net exporter for energy
    The big cost is still going to be sending things up. So everything that can be done on earth should be seriously considered.
    I'm still a firm believer in fusion. But perhaps your right
     
  18. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    Be careful what you wish for!

    Humans have suffered 2 or 3 near extinction events in the last 1.2 million years, and all were caused by cold!
     
  19. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    As far as is known, humans have suffered one such possible - not likely - event, and it was caused by volcanic explosion - sudden releases of particulates and gasses into the atmosphere. (The Toba volcano). It probably didn't happen (the near extinction - the volcano happened for sure).

    The current release of climate-changing particulates and gasses is by the humans themselves, and is building to be an order of magnitude more significant that that single explosion, in level and - especially - in duration. Fortunately, the species is far more resilient now than it was then.
     
    Last edited: Dec 31, 2017
  20. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    OTOH, in the tropical zones, especially desert environments, which marginally support life to begin with, a few degrees of additional warmth can make them totally uninhabitable. Global warming eventually will create "dead zones" where only insects and small burying animals can survive. Human settlement in such areas would be near impossible.
     
  21. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    Kalahari hunters will be shocked to hear that.
     
  22. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    Close Calls: Three Times When Humanity Barely Escaped Extinction
    https://io9.gizmodo.com/close-calls-three-times-when-the-human-race-barely-esc-1730998797

    Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2010-01-humans-endangered-species.html#jCp

    Professor Jorde said that humans and our ancestors have gone through cycles of large population size and also periods when we were endangered.
    They also came to the conclusion that there had been a catastrophic event around one million years ago that was at least as devastating as the Toba volcanic eruption, and which had almost wiped out the species.

    Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2010-01-humans-endangered-species.html#jCp

    New genetic findings suggest that early humans living about one million years ago were extremely close to extinction.
    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/early-human-population-size-genetic-diversity/
     
  23. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    They will indeed when there is nothing to hunt anymore.
     

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