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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  2639 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Mystery cosmic radio bursts pinpointed

It's not aliens guys. :(





am_Unition  ·  2639 days ago  ·  link  ·  

If I was cool enough, I would come up with a way to strategically position huge amounts of matter falling towards a supermassive black hole such that it emitted a coherent signal perhaps not terribly dissimilar to this one.

So we don't know that it isn't aliens. But probably not, yeah, and a meaningful intergalactic exchange isn't really possible anyways.

kleinbl00  ·  2639 days ago  ·  link  ·  

One of my fever dreams inspired me to think of a truly unfathomable, unstoppable weapon - Gamma World Stage 5 tech shit.

it occurred to me that an antimatter shotgun with a wormhole sabot would pretty much do the trick - the antimatter pellets would obliterate whatever was in front of them, while the wormhole would suck up the energy behind it to power the next salvo. Once the antimatter was all used up the wormhole collapses and you're ready to fire again.

My sci fi weapons company is gonna be called Kardashev Arms.

am_Unition  ·  2639 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Nice! You could use the mass of your enemies to grow your favorite black holes. Fat enemies are now actually worth more points.

What is it about fever dreams that makes the brain torture itself so creatively? I hadn't had one until about a year ago. I've also had a few lucid dreams (though it's been years), and I think they're kind of the antithesis of fever dreams, and nightmares in general, but I don't get those.

Devac  ·  2639 days ago  ·  link  ·  
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kleinbl00  ·  2639 days ago  ·  link  ·  

In other words, a Kardashev II civilization.

am_Unition  ·  2639 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Actually, I think we've blown straight through the list to type III's, and I'm flirting with the image of a type IV. Maybe there are diners in orbit around galactic nuclei for when you're on the road.

am_Unition  ·  2639 days ago  ·  link  ·  

And we still haven't ruled out that some supermassive galactic nuclei could be wormholes.

Last I heard, we also haven't ruled out the possibility of a small spaceship and people being able to traverse the boundary of a supermassive black hole without undergoing spaghettification.

I just want to be Matthew McConaughey when I grow up. He was made to derive the Swarzchild metric in preparation for the movie role. (no he wasn't)

kleinbl00  ·  2638 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I had a lengthy conversation with Geoffrey Landis about exactly this several years back. We haven't ruled out the possibility, but we also theorize that the amount of energy necessary to expand the radius of the singularity beyond "singularity" is of the "consuming stars" variety and that differences in angular momentum between the ends creates energy deficits of a similar magnitude. Yeah, if you can mold black holes like Play-Doh you get to mess around with wormholes. If you don't even know how to contain one, spaghettification.

It's like Dyson Spheres - yeah, theoretically you could do that. Practically, when the denominator of your equation includes "neutron star material" the theory remains theoretical.

am_Unition  ·  2635 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Yeah, if you can mold black holes like Play-Doh you get to mess around with wormholes.

Not just that.

Sorry, favorite thread of mine in a while.

Devac  ·  2638 days ago  ·  link  ·  
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am_Unition  ·  2635 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    ...until we will get to test it in practice.

Actually, I believe it may be a futile thing to approach experimentally. We might try making successively large and larger treks into the gravity well, but at some point, I think the blueshifting of CMB alone might kill people. I'd have to do the calculation, but again, my instinct is that this would favor larger black holes being more survivable, as you'd get less CMB flux at the event horizon (for something of finite size, like the human body). Ya know? Plenty of other problems too, like time-dilation so extreme that the universe ends while you're down there poking around.

    They don't know it yet, but I'm going to pester some theorists next week about that. :D

I'm interested in hearing how this pans out.

    Joke about Contact or something else? I've never watched it. I can't put my finger on what it is, but there's something about Jodie Foster that made me unable to watch movies with her.

Haaaa! I forgot McConaughey was in Contact, as a priest. No, I was talking about "Interstellar", which I somehow managed to enjoy a little.

user-inactivated  ·  2639 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    a meaningful intergalactic exchange isn't really possible anyways

Continued, meaningful exchanges aside, a polite "hello" would be both welcome and profound.

am_Unition  ·  2639 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Oh yeah, I'd just broadcast about how cool my peeps and I are, among other things.

"CAN ANYONE ELSE DO THIS? NO! NO, THEY CAN'T! YOU STUPID, WE NOT."

This is the message that would play between the chapters of a grand unifying theory.

Existentialist  ·  2639 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Probably.

user-inactivated  ·  2639 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The OG "Day the Earth Stood Still" is on Netflix now. I should probably watch that.

kleinbl00  ·  2639 days ago  ·  link  ·  

...you haven't seen it yet? Considering your nostalgic bent, and considering that it's possibly one of the purest sci fi movies ever made, you should watch it ASAP. It's one of Robert Wise's finest, as well as one of his earliest; his last movie was Star Trek The Motion Picture.

user-inactivated  ·  2639 days ago  ·  link  ·  

To get back some cred, about 10 years ago I saw Metropolis and while I don't remember much of it, I found it absolutely mesmerizing at the time. Earth has always been a distant ping on my radar, like "I'll get to it someday, maybe." Knowing Netflix, I really should watch it ASAP. I was excited as hell when I saw Battleship Potemkin was on their streaming service, never got around to watching it, and now it's disappeared.

kleinbl00  ·  2639 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm just going to say it isn't entirely fair to compare foreign silent blockbusters with a cheap little b-movie from 1951. Day is in black'n'white 'cuz it's cheap not because it's crazy old. It's only two years older than War of the Worlds.

user-inactivated  ·  2639 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Oh yes. I'm aware they're two different kinds of movies. Though, to defend Earth, sometimes cheapness and camp ads an extra layer of charm to a film. There's a fine line and it's hard to tell where it's drawn, but it's definitely there. Since it's 60+ years later and people still talk about it, I bet Earth is on the right side of that line.

kleinbl00  ·  2639 days ago  ·  link  ·  

You do not need to defend Day the Earth Stood Still from me. I've never made it through Metropolis but I own DTESS.

user-inactivated  ·  2639 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Metropolis is on Netflix right now if you feel like giving it a second go. It's totally understandable if you don't want to though. Sometimes it seems that despite their charms, silent films take a bit of extra effort to watch.

The Day the Earth Stood Still was pretty good. It didn't feel cheap at all and it was kind of refreshing that the movie gets straight to the point without a lot of buildup, though on the flip side, that ending was abrupt as hell. It's kind of interesting as well that it's a very plot driven movie, and while a lot happens, and what happens is significant, it didn't really feel all that profound. It seems like there were quite a few times where they seemed more than ready to jump into some philosophical aspects, only to just scratch the surface and leave the viewer hanging a bit.

All in all though, it was pretty good. I might see if some of my friends would want to watch it with me.

kleinbl00  ·  2639 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It's based on a short story called Farewell to the Master which was effectively rewritten to build a metaphor around nuclear armageddon following the first Soviet tests. It wasn't made for a lot of money and it wasn't made in a lot of time; Wise deliberately chose actors that no one had ever heard of so that there would be no associations with existing stars.

Link vaguely related.

Sony wants me to watch Passengers. They gave me a screener. I haven't worked up the energy and it's been a week.

user-inactivated  ·  2639 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I just looked at the trailer for Passengers. It looks stupid.

Might I recommend two other movies, both on Netflix, that I found were quite good?

Flame and Citron is a wonderful spy/thriller/war movie. It's dark, compelling, and probably a bit formulaic but has a really good story at its core.

Dark Valley is just amazing. It's dark and messed up, but it's beautifully shot and paced.

kleinbl00  ·  2639 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It looks like the first 30 pages of Richard K Morgan's Thirt33n, published (and optioned) that same year. But then, Thirt33n then goes on for another 400 or so pages and becomes kind of interesting.

'round here we're dealing with the flu by reacquainting ourselves with base building in No Man's Sky.

user-inactivated  ·  2639 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Hmm. I can't seem to find that book. Could it be under a different title? I'd like to look up the synopsis and see how it's different.

Never mind. I think I found it.

OftenBen  ·  2639 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Passengers.

I read a synopsis and it killed any desire I had to watch the movie. If you get around to it, I'd be very interested in your thoughts.

kleinbl00  ·  2639 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It's a famous [Black List](zhttps://blcklst.com/) script - those being the spec screenplays that are passed around town and read but, back when the list started, never purchased for one reason or another. Now of course it's just another cock-sucking way for managers to brag about what a great job they're doing getting their client's names out there (so they can do one partial-pay doctoring step on the eighth remake of Lost in Space or some shit). Passengers was a big deal in 2007. Nine years ain't bad... but in the end, this is the bastardized story that made the guy who fucked up Prometheus with Damon Lindelof famous.

As with most famous spec scripts that suddenly end up with a bajillion dollars behind them, it ends up being a different movie entirely.

user-inactivated  ·  2639 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I literally just started it. I'll report back in about an hour and a half. :)