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Oct 2024
15m 17s

Cheap Astronomy - Implausible Engineerin...

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Implausible Engineering – Episode 1a: The Relativity Vault

We’re all going to die. But let’s say you’re going to die from some incurable disease – or even just from ageing – and you’ve got some time to plan ahead. One option is to assume that future science could save you. A common strategy to access this option is to get yourself frozen – or even just get your head frozen – until medical science can find a cure for whatever ails you.

 

Implausible Engineering – Episode 1b: The welcome note

One solution to Fermi’s paradox – about why there’s a universe of potentially habitable worlds out there, but no-one’s talking - is that we are the first, or at least one of the first technology-exploiting species. After all, it’s unlikely much could have happened when the early Universe full of hydrogen, helium and a few trace elements – you need stellar nucleosynthesis to build more complex elements and supernovae to spread those elements out. Indeed, from our own experience you need several

generations of stars and a substantial degree of universal expansion to create a quiet corner of a galaxy where a stable G-type star with a complex chemical protoplanetary disk can persist for the billions of years required for evolution to do its thing.

 

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