Outpost Universe Forums
Off Topic => Test/Spam Forum => Topic started by: Zardox Xheonov on December 03, 2009, 04:56:31 PM
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I think:
No it will not; only stupid white people think that will ever happen.
Fact of the matter is, the mayan calender just needs to be replaced; as if we had a big party when it became 2000; the mayans will do the same just at 2012.
So really tis just going to be a big cellabration. :P
Agree(s)? Disagree(s)? Other side of story? Comments?
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Personally, I think the mayans were saying they couldn't predict any further...or the person in charge of making it got tired of working and just bs-ed an ending knowing he wouldn't be around for anyone to complain when it turned out wrong
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Pfft, what a load of nonsense.
From Wikipedia:
Misinterpretation of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar is the basis for a New Age belief that a cataclysm will take place on December 21, 2012. December 21, 2012 is simply the last day of the 13th b'ak'tun. But that is not the end of the Long Count because the 14th through 20th b'ak'tuns are still to come.
All good computer geeks know we won't be having a huge cataclysm until January 19, 2038. :P
Then your computer will blow up. ... unless maybe you're running Windows. ;) That's right Microsoft, you don't really have to worry about Linux. You just have to wait until 2038. :lol:
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only stupid white people think that will ever happen.
Way to be racist.
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now watch him claim that it isn't racism unless it's talking about non-white races :P
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it's true. raise your hand if your white and you give a dam. any one? i for sure dont care.
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i found it rather offensive...
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Was there even a point to say a race? People are people (so why should it be, you and i get along so awefully...), doesn't matter your race, social status, or anything else. Stupidity is a non-discriminatory problem.
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Does anyone believe any kind of leadership will announce a disaster before the last minute?
If anything, wait and see.
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I diside to read Hooman's post, and, well, could we expect him to say anything else? I bet his favorite comic is XKCD for that matter, seeing this (http://xkcd.com/607/).
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Was there even a point to say a race?
That was kinda my point...
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I was bringing it to more blunt words so the meaning couldn't be lost.
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Ah, okay.
The world ends when death will be UR DETH MORTL.
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Technically, he only said "the stupid white people", so only people from Holly Wood are really included :P
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You can't deny that different kinds of people have different predispositions that are either social or instinctual (inbuilt). The wrong part is limiting one's opinion to just that.
Also, how do you define "the world"? It could be the universe, it could be humanity, it could simply be the Earth. Only if the universe ended would our end be clear; the Earth needs to be hit hard to extinguish all human life. Studies predict that at least a small amount of humans will live on even after severe disasters (eg. big meteor)
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I always wonder, if we don't know that we are going to die, would we be still so aggressive and bad mannered as an entire human race? Also, if we knew that we would die for sure (100%) on 2012 (at what ever day and month), how would we react? Continue to live life as if it won't happening, or try to survive it, maybe even try to trick it and all die before hand to see what will happen. I think the idea of a dooms day is what cause an end, because there is no actually event, but our own thinking.
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Extinction is not an option
thought that had to be said.
also @Hooman
aint 64bit versions got plenty more years bevor they turn into nukes?
i dont remember if they used the 64bit system also on the clocking
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"War would end if the dead could return.”
- Stanley Baldwin
what do you think?
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The world will only end for the people that kill themselves in the mass hysteria leading up to this predicted "End of the world".
In other words, Its another Y2K. <_<
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A 64-bit counter would certain extend the range well beyond any immediate concern, or possibly even beyond the likely lifetime of the earth or perhaps even the universe. However, the problem stems from the fact that only 32 bits have traditionally been allocated. You can't store 64 bits worth of information in space that has previously only been allocated 32 bits. Sure, for new programs, you could simply extend the length of the fields being used, but for legacy programs you may have a problem. Any data in the older format would have to be converted. Couple that with the fact that a lot of source code has been lost over the years, combined with people generally not even being aware of if or when these old 32 time fields were used, and you basically have a somewhat impossible problem. Keep in mind that this problem stems from storage allocation size, not the CPU register capacity. You can easily deal with 64 bit quantities on a 32 bit CPU. It's just that you'd need to process it 32 bits at a time due to the more limited register capacity, which of course means it's slightly easier and lazier to only use 32 bit fields if you can get away with it... for another few years.
Mind you, in 2038 we're only going to run out of Unix time stamp seconds for signed counters. Remember that Unix time stamps were for file creation/modification times, and it was set to a time before Unix came into use, hence there could be no files with "negative" times. In such a system, it makes sense to treat those time stamps as unsigned, in which case, that extra bit buys you another 68 years. Of course, people have found these counters useful to represent dates before Jan 1, 1970, such as when recording historical information, particularly birthdates of people who are still alive. (You only get to the early 1900's though with 32 bits, so it can't be too historical).
@CK9: When there's something strange in the neighborhood....
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I'm probably vastly misunderstanding how it works, but why not just modify it not to use the time stamps except for backups?
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I'm not sure I even follow what you're getting at.
It's like how people only wrote 2 digits for the year. If you're only writing 2 digits, how do you differentiate between 1970 and 2070? Sure, there are 4 digit systems that can be used, but if you didn't use one to begin with, they're not helping you. Maybe only have space on your user interfacfe to display 2 digits for the year. Maybe you have files were everything is packed tightly, and it's understood that 2 digits are for the year, followed by two digits for the month, ..., and if you try to expand the year field, you overwrite the month field. Or maybe you try to expand in the other direction, and you overwrite something else that was stored before the year. The point is, you can't simply "insert" the extra bytes and expect things to still work. A lot of computer code is positional, and expects things to appear in a certain place. It generally assumes the size of fields are fixed, and their meaning is based on their position, rather than examining the data to see "what it looks like". If you have a text based file, it's perhaps more likely that you can arbitrarily expand fields, and have delimiters between fields (like "," or "-", or "/") but most binary formats use fixed widths.
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In essence if you can come up with a solution and patent / licence it now. You will be rich in ~20/25 years time when IT managers start to care about the problem.
I would hope that companies will have replaced their 40 year old code by then. But we do still have mainframe code written in the 1960's / 1970's running unmodified on modern mainframes, I imagine that most of the 40 year old code current in use now will still be running in 40 years time.
It is a very interesting problem. Given as Hooman has stated the majority of programs can't be tricked into using a new date field and all data will need to be converted, due to the fixed width data size, picked by the compiler at compile time. A program being dumb doesn't understand what a date field is, it just loads a 32bit value from an address in memory and then manipulates it and compares it against other values. The program has no idea what it is manipulating it is just following a set of rules and constraints.
There is a saying -> garbage in produces garbage out. If you put incorrect data into the machine, don't expect it to be correct when it comes out the other end.
If you don't have the source code you can't modify all the timestamp logic to use a 64bit value instead and therefore you get the problem where the program follows its set of rules and the output is wrong because the timestamp has looped back to 0;
So why doesn't everyone get the source code to their applications and pay someone to fix it now?
Well the biggest problem is that companies pay millions to an ISV (Independant Software Vendor) for their business management software. The ISV goes bust/source code get lost/no one understands it anymore. The business however will keep using the software and only panic when things go wrong.
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well, then why hasn't someone developed software that doesn't require source code to function?
What I mean is, it first bakcs up the data, then makes tweaks around the timestamp data. The user monitors it, and it shows them exactly what has changed and checks for any errors caused. This allows the user to determine how the timestamp works. Based on this data, the user then can tell it how to handle the needed changes (copy everything past a specific point and paste it after the change...um...whatever else...)
heh
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well, then why hasn't someone developed software that doesn't require source code to function?
Somewhere, a software engineer just died. And possibly Hooman as well.
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lol.
This isn't a problem that can be solved automatically for all cases, and probably not even a significant number of cases. It'd be like how we're modifying Outpost 2. It's a slow painful process. Plus, non-trivial changes to data sizes can have rather far reaching effects on a compiled binary. Think of the unit limit increase patch. That was by far the largest patch applied to the exe (that I know of). It was large mainly because we were trying to increase the size of a static buffer, which is the exact same problem with the time stamps.
Unless you have the source code to fix the problem, it's a really brutal problem to try and solve. That assumption about size ends up affecting all kinds of things. Not just memory usage, but also register allocation, and instruction sequences. Once you compile, you lose all sorts of high level information that would tell you where those assumptions have been made.
Also don't forget the cost of hiring a programmer analyse source code to fix date/time width issues. Most companies probably aren't very willing to pay that expense. Particularly not a small one that's concerned about surviving the next few years. They won't care much if there is a flaw that will break a system of theirs in 28 years time. They won't go broke worrying about it. Besides, if a system does break in 28 years time that they've sold to someone else, it's not really their problem. Unless fixing the problem will help them sell more copies, it's not in their financial interest to develop a patch for it. As many programs are past their market lifetime, they will never be fixed.
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Then I don't get why programers, who have to know this, don't make new applictions without this inherent problem and give companies some kind of incentive to update/upgrade. Something that sounds really big to the average CEO but is really rather small...
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Because not all programmers know this. In an ideal world, yes, they should, but the world is far from ideal. Plus, you may be using a tool that internally uses 32-bit timestamps but doesn't tell you that. It would generally be illegal to reverse engineer it to find out, as well as time comsuming and costly. It's not the kind of thing people stop to think about when they're busy trying to meet deadlines. Plus, sometimes they need to be backwards compatible with an older system that uses 32-bit timestamps.
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Can't newer systems that don't use 32-bit be backwards compatable in that way?
I just think that, if someone who can code really wanted to make money, they would make the small item that make a big difference to the CEO's.
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People that know how to code would just write it better in the first place. The problem is, there are lots of people out there that don't really know how to code.
For instance, I work at a small company with 6 people in it, including the owner/boss/"CEO". There isn't exactly a huge budget for a company that small so you can't waste too much time doing certain things. Now, at this company, I am the only computer scientist. The rest are all enginers. They have all taken a programming course or two, but they are, in their own minds, not programmers. They don't know much about issues like this, and generally can't be bothered to learn everything under the sun about programming, just because they occasionally have to write computer code. It is not the main focus of their job. When they have to write something, they take a look at my code, maybe some sample code on the web, read some docs if they really need to, and write something, maybe copied and pasted for the most part. If it works, they move on.
That's how a lot of code out there is written.
Btw, we don't sell code. It's all for internal use. So, if it breaks in 2038, it will only be our own problem. :P
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lol, no engineer would say they are a programmer, even if it was their minor. Seeing as you know about it, and it has a direct impact on you, I'm surprised you don't do something to fix it on your own time. Plus, if your contract with the company doesn't include anything about programs you create, you could sell it independantly for a little extra income.
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I'm not exatly sure what you're trying to say. I'm not saying there are problems with the code at the company I work for. I'm saying some of their code is developed in such a way that these sorts of problems could easily creep in. I'm also suggesting that many other companies will be developing code in a similar manner.
If you're talking about solving the 32 bit timestamp thing in general, then I consider it to be an impossible problem. There is no general way to patch up all existing code to suddenly start using 64 bit timestamps.
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aye, but there is a way to replace the programs/encoders and provide comapnies with incentives to
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To give a better understanding of the Mayan culture as it only seems fit after the discussion of race, allow me to elaborate on the misrepresentation of the "end of the world"
to begin in the understanding one must realize the reason behind the collapse or decline of Mayan culture.
The method by which a Mayan lord of king would be placed in power is the backing of the temple and the faith of the people. Maya legend explains a debt to be paid back to the gods. The Mayan world was created by blood of the gods, after year one the debt was to be repaid by Maya royalty by an offer of blood, either by piercing a hole in the tongue or genitals by which a rope with thorns was drawn through in order to draw the blood. The blood was than placed on leaves and 'parchment' and burned, so the blood may be offered up to the gods. (If this method was employed today we might see a more honest politicians) The blood offering was given so the sun would rise, the rain to fall and maize to grow... as explained in one of the few remaining Mayan books copied by Bishop de Landa (who later was responsible for burning the originals in a massive converting effort)
One of the jobs of the Mayan King was to make predictions of the future, one king name pronounced 18rabbit, seemed to be very adamant about being the best of all the lords, and made many adamant predictions one, that used the Maya calendar to predict the end of the world.
As we know the soils of Mesoamerica are anything but prime for farming, which would be required to feed the growing population of the Maya. Prior to over population the method for farming involved slash and burn, where by an area is stripped of the natural foliage than burned to replenish carbon into the soil, crops grown, than the land if left fallow and a new area is used in the meantime. This cycle usually replanted an area every 10-20 years, with over population however land was being used more frequently and with increased salt content from irrigation and natural depletion of nutrients from the soil, the cycle only becomes more frequent and less effective. Years of over population lead to famine in the area when natural drought set in, the source of the kings power is only upheld by the faith of the people, when those people see that the kings blood is not enough to allow for the necessities of life, the Maya culture began a natural decline and further abandonment of the small villages. (Note that large temples or monumental architecture such as the "pyramids" in castillo chichen Itza are religious and elite centers, plebe or common folks are not permitted unless to offer labor during a festival or to play the sacred ball game for sacrifice for the gods.)
The Maya State was run as a territorial state, no large walls of defense systems implemented, only forts in the country side that reached out along the valley, during the time of the Maya decline, the Spanish conquistadors, were moving in towards their location. Increased warfare, and famine saw the gradual end of the Maya.
I am sure we are all familiar with the Maya for their remarkable mathematics and astronomy. In fact they were so precise that their calculations today of the solar calendar is only off by .3% from the classic Maya period 900AD. Their solar calendar used 365 days with the equivalents of our leap year. With that said, the Maya calendar consisted of not 1 but 3 calendars, the solar or "Haab", the "Tzolkin" or Sacred calendar, and a third inside of the sacred calendar that listed significant events. Picture it as a Gear or Cog in a circle that listed the 365 days of a year, upon the outside of the circular gear is another circular gear that rotates along the outside rim of the solar calendar this is the sacred, and within the sacred is a small gear that rotates along with all three to give a specific date. The Maya calendar is unlike ours as it is cyclical, not linear, meaning for example, there can be many December 18, 2009, where as in our own calendar there can only be one Dec. 18, 2009. The cyclical nature of the Maya calendar repeats itself every 52 years.
The Maya, began what is called "the long count" which began August 13th 3114BC approximately 5000years ago. The date in Maya culture tells of "three stones planted" (referring to a harth, three stones to encircle a fire) this day the maize (corn) God resurrected and the sky rose, spinning to create "time".
It is only recently that with the help of linguist and archaeologist that the Maya Glyphs were fully deciphered. All this hocus-pocus about the world ending came from one date that was 8 glyphs long and only appeared once, on the side of a monolith at the bottom on the side. These monoliths often have the carving of a leader upon the front and the most pertinent information surrounds them, the less important information is etched into the thin sides of the monoliths. It is destroyed, but what is legible explains the date December 23 2012 and the translated meaning "Black will occur/descend". These words were among other outrageous predictions made by the King of the time, 18rabbit, as part of his job title.
Since the hype about the end of the world in 2012, many books have been published each with there own fix on the maya from aliens, to devil worshipers. A lot of the books talk about harmonic solar convergence or rare alignments such as the sun and earth being in the center of the galaxy, which has happened many times before. Others talk about solar storms, that will rip the planet apart, these solar storms happen every 11 years according to NASA, and so far, we are still here. Other say the magnetic poles will reverse, well… they do, the north pole 1.67 million years ago was really the south and this can be seen in paleomagnetic studies. Paleomagnetics, looks at the Iron in rocks of harth stones. The iron heats up and aligns to face magnetic north; the clock so to speak is set at the last time of extreme heating. (Paloemagnetics also helps in the understanding of the first controlled use of fire)
So while the Maya were excellent timekeepers, and astronomers, their culture has much to do with the influence of this so called end of the world. And for that matter their world consisted of Mesoamerica, they were not sea faring folks, their world was much smaller than how we often view our world today. As a part of the Kings obligations and faith within him certain predictions were made using the sacred calendar in conjunction with events of the past. The Kings line of Blood failed, why not their predictions? We must not forget that we often choose to see what does not exist in patterns, as through the power of wild imagination can make our own predictions that seem to be correct. The prediction was so vague and far away that who could doubt it? the locaion of this evanescent black was placed in neglected location, if it were to be the end of the world would thier be so little emphasis? rahter if it were true, perhapse we might learn from the maya in not worrying about our demise but rather living now, while we are free to do so. Now as it is only two years from now, one supposes that only time will tell, but more likely than not, it will be just another happy holiday.
Merry Christmas Everyone!
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Long post
Uhh, thanks I guess, but... You shouldn't devote that much effort to this kind of discussion (especially if we've already arrived at your conclusion and then moved on to discussing CK9's computer ineptitude :P )...
Edit: Used the word "already" way too much. Got rid of it a few times.
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The main problem is every time you access the data you need to tell the computer to read in more data. Lets assume this can be changed, and out of all the problems I will list it is arguable the easiest to patch. So now the program is reading in a number that is 64 bits, excellent. When we write the date we just tell the computer to write more, which is the same patch as the first effectively.
Now we have a major problem. Since we wrote 32 bits past what we were supposed to, some other value has been over written. Now if that value is changed, we also changed the date. To make room we have to move EVERYTHING in the program after the date. Now EVERYTHING that accesses the moved data must be changed. And if the programmer spent a lot of time making the code efficient, maybe intelligent use of memory pages or cache, that could be screwed up by the shifts. So after a ton of work, you actually made the program slower by breaking this optimizations.
well, then why hasn't someone developed software that doesn't require source code to function?
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/23821/ (http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/23821/)
That may be the closest thing. It is software that will run some other program, and monitor it for vulnerabilities. When it finds one, it attempts to patch it. Its quite brilliant how it works, you gotta read the article.
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HEY! I'm decent with a computer...most of the time...until a peice of hardware fries...but that's only happened to me twice! Neither time was really my fault! (first time: VERY old processor, it was bound to die anyway. Second time: my dad bought the wrong mobo for the processor)
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Even if nothing significant can be changed in today's applications which use time in the 32-bit system, can't work start on the 64-bit time system and then incorporating it in any future application?
Wooman, it's been a nice read, but, as Sirbomber said, we're already over it. Anyone risks death on a day-to-day basis, albeit on a small chance. We're still moving on, regardless.
Yes, the hidden message was to fear your power sockets. :P
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2012 seems like as good as time as any.
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Morbid. I think I'd like to live past the next two years.
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Get a DeLorean then. ;)
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I like the DaLorean mod in Crysis, very cool. If see your friend get killed, jump in the Dalorean and travel back in time to kill the killer. Any ways, I think the Mayan were like "in 1000 years, people are going to be pranked so bad". A motto can be, "Mayans, the first pranksters"
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but if you do that, you never would have had a reason to go back in time and kill that guy in the first place, therefore he'd die anyway
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Ahh yes, time travel paradoxes. Always fun.
So what if the end of the world is more of a Mayan cultural thing? After we're all still alive after 2012, what reason do we have left to remember anything about Mayan culture? ;) Or is that too insensitive. (Mostly, *I* don't know anything about Mayan culture).
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Ahh yes, time travel paradoxes. Always fun.
You'd be surprised. The first and second paradoxes I caused were fun. I guess the third one was okay but after that it got old.
By the way, in the original timeline, Sierra actually got bought by EA, not VU, and EA shut us down almost immediately afterwards.
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ACTUALLY, bomber, in the first timeline, I came into a large inheritence, bought the rights to the full Outpost serries, and had the original OP3 developed. Unfortunatly, you tried to steal the rights from me and I had to change things.
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Liar. I know you can't travel through time. But to prove I can, I'm going to push the release date of OP1 up from '95 to '94.
Edit: Done.
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pffft! You only *THINK* I can't, but there are many things you don't truely know!
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Yeah, like how CK9 blew up the Deathstar.... TWICE!
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anyway, back to topic...
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anyway, back to topic...
rite!
(and i have no time/desire to read all those posts!).
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Anyway; my view:
Since it's not just the maya calendar that points to these times, but also Malachi's list is to end soon, the Hopi's prophecies are coming to a conclusion soon, and there are others as well - all of them pointing at a date in the very near future.
It would be smallminded to think "the world will come to an end", but i do believe, considering the amount of prophecies pointing to this specific date, that indeed something will happen - if not on december 21st 2012, at some time in the next few years/decade.
I don't think the world will explode or armageddon/judgement day will happen, but some significant event is going to take place - good or bad i dont know.
- I've read reports about the chinese preparing a landing site somewhere in the himalayas for ETs to land,
- If you believe the writings of St. Malachi (the list of 112 popes), maybe Mount Vesuvius will explode and Rome will be destroyed, along with christianity & a large piece of Italy,
- maybe Art Bell and Whitley Strieber are right and a new ice age will begin with the halt of the Gulf Stream and the whole of Europe will be covered under a mile of ice,
- or maybe the magnetic pole shift that has been going on will disrupt the tectonic plates and cause a major continental shift,
- maybe there will be CME so big it'll throw our civilization back to the stone age,
- and of course there are those idiots that think Nibiru will crash into earth, which is ridiculous of course: a planetary body with an orbit of several 1000's of years!
So, my opinion: something will probably happen and my guts say it'll be a climate shift...
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~World Peace~
That's another possibility.
And lets not forget the death of the anti-christ.
But then again we have not located him yet...so no world peace at the moment :( .
(Please note that i have no strong religious what-nots upon my logic, but i do beleive in god...just no practices)
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World peace won't come about until the human population drops to a critical level.
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World peace won't come about until the human population drops to a critical level.
How may I be of service? :)
Anyways, I don't care what proof anyone has, I already live each day like it's my last, so, go figure, if the world ends it's that much less energy I have to use for my last day. :whistle:
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GLOBAL GENOCIDE! MUHAHAHA! ONLY ONE MILLION HUMANS ON EARTH WILL SURVIVE! MUHAHAHA!!!
*Launching Nukes to China* (Us)
*Kill america! Fire ze missiles!* (Russia)
*Bomb everyone and cause chaos!* (Terrorists)
*Let's kill our neigbor! it's what everyone else is doing!* (all of UN)
*The Us threatens us! we must haste! fire warheads!* (china)
*Fire every last damn nuke at every forsaken nuke holding threat!* (Us)
Is THAT critical enough for you?
~And that's how we'll probly die..in the long run.~
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I dont agree with world peace unless the planet is made completely lifeless. there is always a battle of some kind going on. There would never be peace.
So far i have heard for the end of the world 2012.
A super collider will make black holes that are just big enough to survive there decaying process to suck up mass and grow larger and larger till they consume the earth. Which in the scientific community there are always those who say this and those that say that and the one crack pot about big foot being real. you cant believe any thing untill its been done.
End of days all the biblical stuff. jesus and the anti christ fight he wins the world doesnt f***ing end. just alot of people are taken to heaven those left behind have to deal with a dictator for a while then jesus comes and kicks his ass. If you beleive it being fortold knowledge. then there is nothing to worry about jesus will save all those left behind. to be honest i rather be left behind then taken to another place on the whim of some unseen thus far person.
thermonuclearwar. Since we all have a mutual destruction policy. yes the world will end if some one launchs a nuke and any major land mass with people on it. sorry hawaii. This is more likely as humans are inherintly stupid.
Sudden Impact. yes the op2 story hurray. I doubt this will happen there are some that will come close in the future they might even become a new moon for earth they will come that close. how ever we are always looking for the holy object that will hit us. they have yet to find one. even so we will have enough time to stop it.
personally i believe the world will end once the core of the planet has cooled to a point where the magnetosphere is so weak it lets in cosmic radiation and every one will die a jiffy pop death.
Gamma ray bursts. Very unlikely but still a realm of possible. you would just have to find the right start that had one of its poles pointed right at our solar system. It will kill every one.
Black holes. Not worried about it.
Our star going Nova or super nova. Not worried about that either.
Some one launching nukes into saturn or jupiter. Eh i doubt any one will even tho it will make a ginormus explosion. that would be like a 2nd sun for a while.
global warming bah. turn on the ac.
Volcanos around the world all exploding at once. That will cancel out global warming.
Personally i think the only thing that will end the world is humans. bunch of pychotic apes on a primitive dirt ball super arogant and ignorant about themselves and there surroundings and each other.
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ROFLMDFAO!!!!!!!!!!! Jiffy pop death
I've got to agree, even though I know that there are two stars read to go nova with poles pointed at us (though, I think they are just slightly off).
The galactic collision forms another possibility, but with the exponential growth of human population, I think we'll die off before that happens.
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What if we're not confined to living on Earth at that point? I'd guess that currently we'd be able to establish some kind of colony on another planet, but I doubt it would last long on its own...
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I think NASA's still perfecting its design for a lunar base.
It is not unlikely that colonies will be founded on planets within our solar system within one generation. I guess it will take longer before we will go beyond the solar system, though.
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before we can go beyond our star, we need to solve the following issues:
1) propulsion: can we get a system that is as efficient as an ion engine with enough power behind it to reduce travel time. Nasa is looking into Warp technology, lol.
2) crew: can we design a cryogenic system that won't kill the crew as it takes them out? Can we reduce the travel time sufficiently so that they don't need to be put into stasis?
3) supplies: The further out we go, the more supplies we'll need to send out. The more weight we put on the ship, the more fuel we need to burn to get it off the planet. This last point, however, will be negated if the space tether is finally made (proposed design uses a red laser to drive its movement, not sure how that works though).
4) destination: NASA is devoting a lot of resources to finding an earth-like planet, but the current technology greatly limits the search. A lot of planets can only be detected by the effect they have on the veiw of their stars. Even when we find planets in the "goldilocks zone" there's no garuntee that it is hospitible enough for a colony to be founded.
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hm.. i totally forgot about the LHC @ CERN - there's people who really believe it'll open up some kind of black hole or whatever..
Guess they been watching too many episodes of "Sliders" -- they're not going to create an Einstein-Rosen bridge, just slamming some particles into each other.. Who knows, maybe they'll discover Lazar's magic element 115 (so far they haven't), but that's another topic to be discussed... come to think of it- i'll start it myself :)
There's one more thing to consider:
since the maya's had such extreme understanding of the galaxy and our solar system, it stands to believe they may have calculated an exact date many centuries into their future. But that would mean they "predicted" a galactic incident, one that they could calculate.
One of the bigger asteroids or comets slamming into earth, i doubt it very much they could've even seen those objects without any proof they had lenses or some other means to magnify parts of the sky.
So then the question remains: what else could be predicted almost 2 millenia into the future? or are we just interpreting it wrong and will there just be another era after 13 baktun?
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I still think that a fear like that is pointless, but if something were to happen, I would go for WW3 breaking out. I would like the world to see the out doors first thou, and not be cramped in such a confined area where you have corrupted politicians on one side, and commercialism on the other.
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Ahh yes, time travel paradoxes. Always fun.
So what if the end of the world is more of a Mayan cultural thing? After we're all still alive after 2012, what reason do we have left to remember anything about Mayan culture? ;) Or is that too insensitive. (Mostly, *I* don't know anything about Mayan culture).
I'll raise you one. I don't care about Mayan culture.
(:
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you have failed, our colony is doomed...
I stand by my previous post. The date is meaningless to our societies of now. There are so many more things one could perish from meanwhile... IE: Vitamine D defficencys from a lack of sunlight! :P
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IE: Vitamine D defficencys from a lack of sunlight!
I think that speaks all to well to the people of this forum.
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They actually are trying to create black holes but there microscopic. And the smaller a black hole is the faster it evaporates compared to its mass intake. so it would go poof and leave behind exotic particles. How ever some have said it will make a black hole that is just beyond that magical line where its mass intake will allow it to grow insize instead of evaporating.
As far as colonies on other planets/moons there are a couple places we could set up shop.
Mars Mercury The Moon (luna) Venus Gamamede Cylipso (sp) Titan I believe there is a moon around uranus or neptune to but I cant remember its name. Even then it would take years to set up.
Vitamen D isnt a issue because it can be put into any food to fortify them so we dont have to go outside to get it :P.
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As far as I know, they're first gonna try the moon, and then Mars, as the moon is great for a short distance test, and Mars is the closest real planet.
I'm actually designing a Mars base for school, and that is what we dug up, anyway.
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I've heard that they're getting complications that will force them to abandon the moon outpost project. It would be great for launching bigger expeditions, though.
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WHAT IF WALMART CLOSES ON 2012!?!?!?! WHERE WILL WE GET OR STUFF!??!?!?
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The Farmer's Market!
But gosh... what a non-smart way of adding to the current topic spike <_<
What kind of complications, CK9?
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Even when we find planets in the "goldilocks zone" there's no garuntee that it is hospitible enough for a colony to be founded.
If no Earth-like world could be found, how close was close enough? :P
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Personally, I'd say if it has liquid water and isn't too high in lethal radiation, it's close enough
Financial complications probably
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That was a quote from OP2, CK9...
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I don't remember that phrase in there....
"World after unsutable world was rejected. Their resources low, their situation desperate..."
"...It was cold, dry, nearly airless, but they saw possibility..."
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Pretty much you need two things to survive on any planet even if its out of the sweet zone. Fuel source of power and water. the rest would be prefab buildings mostlikely.
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"Our mission has failed - our civilization is doomed"
It's either that or "Our civilization is saved ...... until the next cataclismic disaster ... or WWIII"
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Pretty much you need two things to survive on any planet even if its out of the sweet zone. Fuel source of power and water. the rest would be prefab buildings mostlikely.
You need an air supply, adequate protection from the elements (such as major temperature variation or simply extreme temperatures), including radiation reduction/shielding. Food, sewage, a little bit of entertainment and so on.
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But note that water is at the base of most of these.
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air can be made from water hehe. and i said prefab buildings.
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They actually are trying to create black holes but there microscopic. And the smaller a black hole is the faster it evaporates compared to its mass intake. so it would go poof and leave behind exotic particles. How ever some have said it will make a black hole that is just beyond that magical line where its mass intake will allow it to grow insize instead of evaporating.
As far as colonies on other planets/moons there are a couple places we could set up shop.
Mars Mercury The Moon (luna) Venus Gamamede Cylipso (sp) Titan I believe there is a moon around uranus or neptune to but I cant remember its name. Even then it would take years to set up.
Vitamen D isnt a issue because it can be put into any food to fortify them so we dont have to go outside to get it :P.
Mercury and Venus...not likely. Venus is literally a giant acid-rain volcano (as far as I remember), so the technology wouldn't be worth it for the planet...
Mercury would be good for insta-baking of everything, so the "extreme temperature" protection would be...quite extreme.
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Mercury is where we'll send the criminals :P
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Actually yes mercury is a possiblity. there is a huge crater at the north pole that supposedly has ice in it. inside the walls of that crater a small colony would be safe from the heat and the solar radiation.
Venus is very possible but you would never have the colony on the surface. it would be floating above the area that would be filled with acid rain.
With every planet you are bound to have some difficulty to over come to have a colony.
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Venus also has the problem of ridiculously high pressure, although that wouldn't be a problem if you went up high enough
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exactly. How ever it wouldnt work on a planet like jupiter. to violent. even tho there would be alot of fuel.
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I hear that besides Mars, the other best candidate is Europa. It's one of the moons of Jupiter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon))
It's got some interesting stuff on Wiki.
I can't imagine Venus being very habitable. Way too many problems there. Mercury is probably a better bet than Venus, provided you choose a proper site. Still, the moon is probably better than Mercury, and much closer.
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I would think Mercury would be faster to get to based on gravitational pull
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did anyone else read Europa and think "we should be ther by now..."
for those of you who didn't 2001,2010,2064,3001...
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If Europa is the one with conditions they believe to be like early earth, I'm more curious to see if it will develope any further along that line.
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If Europa is the one with conditions they believe to be like early earth, I'm more curious to see if it will develope any further along that line.
Give it a few hundred thousand years.
It's ok, I've got time.
Anyways, I didn't know that about the crater on Mercury, so maybe that is a possibility. Still, I can't see much use for it beyond studying the sun. And no, the gas planets would not work beyond fuel collecting. But, we won't know til we try. (:
Also, CK9, to your post at the start of the page : It was written somewhere, or in a trailer, just not in the intro. I'll try to find it.
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we need a subspace gate before we can seriously colonize beyond Mars :P
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The reality is that us humans will not move from earth until we see imminent danger. we are a lazy race. haha
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That's not true. Well move if we see profit.
It's not like the Americas where colonized because Europe was going to sink or anything.
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I agree that, in general, humanity is lazy. However, there are the redeeming few who push progress forward. That is enough to have us colonizing Mars long before we are in danger of extinction :P