Optimus Prime explains why you need to be excited about the James Webb Space Telescope

[Perspicuo]

http://www.sciencealert.com/video-o...-excited-about-the-james-webb-space-telescope

It's a transformer!

 

[Unbeatable]

The closest thing I've heard to an "exciting" case for this whole space exploration business has been the observation that the massive amount of research necessary to get these projects off the ground tends to yield technological innovations which can be repurposed for use in consumer electronics for which I might actually have some practical use. I don't know what to make of this "secrets about the cosmos" talk. How much further back in time do we need to look? Will there ever be a point at which we know enough about the universe to completely neuter the YECs?

 

[Kharakov]

The closest thing I've heard to an "exciting" case for this whole space exploration business has been the observation that the massive amount of research necessary to get these projects off the ground tends to yield technological innovations which can be repurposed for use in consumer electronics for which I might actually have some practical use.

Always good.

I don't know what to make of this "secrets about the cosmos" talk. How much further back in time do we need to look?

I think refined ability to observe should give us more physical information which is good, and more importantly, it is a step closer to the ability to observe whether or not we are the first race, or others have far surpassed our development.

One test is to look for tell tale signs of galaxy spanning civilizations by observing whether there are specific unnatural emission lines that indicate a specific type of material seeded throughout the galaxy.

We will discover a certain type of material that meets the following criteria:

1) it is unable to form in great quantities in interstellar space by natural processes
2) it has unique emission lines that are a specific distance from hydrogen's elines
3) it is easy and cheap for a civilization that achieves interstellar travel to produce and can be spread throughout galaxies by seed ships over time

So we look for its emission lines, and finding it, know of a galactic spanning civilization that has already made it through the time travel bottleneck.

Show

The time travel bottleneck applies to all civilizations. They achieve a certain level of physical knowledge and develop the ability to travel back in time. They develop this before intergalactic travel, and this has the potential to create time wars on their planet.

This level of physical knowledge is relatively easy to achieve once a civilization achieves a certain level of physical mastery, so there is a limited time for a civilization to develop before rogue groups without regard for the safety of others develop the ability to travel time.

Any first time civilization that develops time travel will probably have emerged from great wars and suffering, but understand that altering events may not lead to their development of time travel. They would know that the development of time travel might be achieved by others who may alter the timeline at various points, so the time race begins.

Perhaps they discover that they only develop branches in the multiverse, and must develop ways to travel between the branches of the multiverse- if this happens then there is no danger to any timeline, they just develop additional ones. In the multiverse scenario, it would be good to send someone with all of your technology back to a point in time that they could establish a way of bringing peace to enemies, so the multiverse is not littered with branches with many vengeful hate filled beings.

Civilizations that prepared for the knowledge of time travel would need to have a plan in place to go back in time and obfuscate the knowledge that leads to technology that leads to time travel. They would have to corner the discipline of physics in order to prevent anyone else from developing time travel, or else at any point in the timeline in which beings who are not part of the time lords begin developing physical theories that lead towards time travel, they would have to destroy those beings or limit their ability to advance in the direction of knowledge.

After several cycles, in which technology is brought to the past and developed further, the time travelers would hopefully develop technology to limit the development of time travel technology by other groups. They would want to increase the knowledge of other technology, but not lead to time travel tech, until they reached a point that people would never want to travel back in time to alter things, by instilling in people great value for beings that they grew up with, and the knowledge that time travel could destroy everything that everyone had worked for.

People must have a built in switch that does not allow them to time travel, so they do not ruin things, a switch that is only turned off if they have knowledge that they should do so for the good of the whole civilization.

I think I need to start watching Dr. Who again.

Will there ever be a point at which we know enough about the universe to completely neuter the YECs?

Not possible, especially since you can boot up a computer and play a video game in an immersive world within seconds. How do you know this universe wasn't booted up with certain characteristics intact?

Even if we get out of the solar system (so YECs are on another world), by that point in time we will almost definitely have direct mind stimulus gaming rigs that simulate "entire" universes, closely mirroring the rules of our own universe for "realism". So the size of simulated reality will appear to exceed the size of "real" reality, which calls into question the size and duration of the "real" universe: is it really as large as it appears, does it really extend back to the BB, or is it a simulation?