1. Standard memberSoothfast
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    11 Apr '15 18:08
    Originally posted by twhitehead
    It will probably never happen. For a start, its not just the human that needs to survive but all the bacteria etc inside him/her.
    I doubt that even wood frogs can remain frozen indefinitely. There must be some decay over time. Hundreds to a few thousand years is probably feasible, but probably not much more than that.
    Of course humans will have evolved ...[text shortened]... will be robotic anyway. Maybe the brain can be downloaded to a computer? So many possibilities.
    Which two copies of you will be entitled to your retirement benefits?
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    11 Apr '15 18:202 edits
    Originally posted by twhitehead
    It will probably never happen. For a start, its not just the human that needs to survive but all the bacteria etc inside him/her.
    Can't bacteria be re-introduced? I don't see why not. I am sure going without the bacteria for a few days wouldn't kill you. After all, new born babies initially have no bacteria in the guts for a few days.

    I doubt that even wood frogs can remain frozen indefinitely.

    but, surely, if a human was genetically modified to survive 10K or less of deep outer space, he might stay viable for a million years? Organic things must decay very slowly at ~10K!
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    11 Apr '15 18:56
    For truly long distance travel the answer is that we eventually land up with our
    minds running entirely on computer substrates and the journey is as long or short
    as you want it to be...

    However if we are talking about humans...

    One of the bigger problems is actually radioactive decay and radiation damage.

    Not from external sources [although that might also be an issue with inadequate shielding]
    but internally.

    There are any number of mildly radioactive atoms in your body, and in the normal course they
    cause damage to the chemicals they are in and those around them when they decay.

    But that's ok because your body has lots of repair mechanisms to repair the damage and
    it happens at a low enough rate that it's not a problem...

    Until you freeze everything and all the repair mechanisms shut down.

    Now all that damage goes unrepaired and accumulates for the duration of your stay in hibernation.
    And if left long enough it will accumulate to a lethal dose of radiation.

    The solution is that you have to be periodically woken up before the effective dose gets too high
    and you have to spend a period of time [few months/years?] repairing the damage and getting
    ready to go back into hibernation.


    Personally I favour the "build vast starships that act as mobile worlds" approach and you live your life
    in the starship as it chugs from one star system to the next...

    At-least until transhumanism gets to the point where you become the starship.
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    11 Apr '15 19:331 edit
    Originally posted by googlefudge
    For truly long distance travel the answer is that we eventually land up with our
    minds running entirely on computer substrates and the journey is as long or short
    as you want it to be...

    However if we are talking about humans...

    One of the bigger problems is actually radioactive decay and radiation damage.

    Not from external sources [although ...[text shortened]... to the next...

    At-least until transhumanism gets to the point where you become the starship.
    perhaps, prior to the hibernation, you could be on a special radiative-isotope free diet for a few months with food specially made to be radiative-isotope free and also you could be generically engineered to have a biology that very efficiently detects and then excretes any trace of radiative isotopes currently in your body. Then there would be no internal radiation to worry about when it comes to hibernation.
  5. Cape Town
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    11 Apr '15 20:07
    Originally posted by Soothfast
    Which two copies of you will be entitled to your retirement benefits?
    Presumably, on the copies that actually need them due to failing biology.
  6. Cape Town
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    11 Apr '15 20:10
    Originally posted by humy
    Organic things must decay very slowly at ~10K!
    I don't know. How stable are organic compounds at ~10K? We are not talking about organic decay as in bacteria feeding off you, but rather the stability of the compounds. Does DNA stay intact in cold temperatures indefinitely?
  7. Subscribersonhouse
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    11 Apr '15 20:291 edit
    Originally posted by twhitehead
    I don't know. How stable are organic compounds at ~10K? We are not talking about organic decay as in bacteria feeding off you, but rather the stability of the compounds. Does DNA stay intact in cold temperatures indefinitely?
    There may be quantum effects at 10 Kelvin. My cryopumps work at that temperature but we don't see much of those kinds of effects, we do collect some organics from the vacuum system.

    I would think that wouldn't happen till you got to the microkelvin area.

    But like you said, there will undoubtedly be more practical solutions if colliding galaxies was noticed to be an eminent threat.

    If astronomers saw a star on a collision course with our sun, we would have to go interstellar to save life on Earth, an interstellar Ark but that's about all we could do. If a star hit Sol, I would think we would want to be a few light years away from that event for sure just to escape nova effects.
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    11 Apr '15 20:493 edits
    Originally posted by sonhouse
    There may be quantum effects at 10 Kelvin. My cryopumps work at that temperature but we don't see much of those kinds of effects, we do collect some organics from the vacuum system.

    I would think that wouldn't happen till you got to the microkelvin area.

    But like you said, there will undoubtedly be more practical solutions if colliding galaxies was no ...[text shortened]... we would want to be a few light years away from that event for sure just to escape nova effects.
    One horrible thought I had is that there must be a none zero chance that, within our lifetime, we will discover either a black hole lethally heading towards our solar system or an escaped planet or planetoid on collusion course with the Earth; either way, we would be all doomed because I doubt we yet have the ability to colonize Mars let alone travel to another solar system!
    Obviously, we would have to be extremely unlucky for that to happen!
  9. Subscribersonhouse
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    11 Apr '15 21:241 edit
    Originally posted by humy
    One horrible thought I had is that there must be a none zero chance that, within our lifetime, we will discover either a black hole lethally heading towards our solar system or an escaped planet or planetoid on collusion course with the Earth; either way, we would be all doomed because I doubt we yet have the ability to colonize Mars let alone travel to another solar system!
    Obviously, we would have to be extremely unlucky for that to happen!
    Well it happened several times already. That was how the moon was made and we all know about the Yucatan Meteorite.
  10. Cape Town
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    12 Apr '15 13:01
    Originally posted by humy
    Obviously, we would have to be extremely unlucky for that to happen!
    The most likely type of catastrophic astronomical event however is a near earth asteroid strike and it is something that we can do something about. All we need is for enough people to actually care:

    YouTube

    We currently have about 1% chance of advanced warning of a sizeable asteroid hitting earth. We could change that to 90% for the cost of a freeway flyover bridge or a building on a university campus (see video).
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    12 Apr '15 17:56
    Originally posted by googlefudge
    Personally I favour the "build vast starships that act as mobile worlds" approach and you live your life
    in the starship as it chugs from one star system to the next...

    At-least until transhumanism gets to the point where you become the starship.
    This, I think, is the most realistic scenario.
  12. Subscribersonhouse
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    12 Apr '15 21:38
    Originally posted by C Hess
    This, I think, is the most realistic scenario.
    I don't think it's feasible to escape the galaxy. Much more likely to make a starship capable of going say 1000 light years or so in a reasonable amount of time.

    I think antimatter drives will be worked out which will be 1000 times more powerful than fusion or fission drives and they already know how to do it if they can just get a few grams of antimatter to feed it. They say a few milligrams of antimatter is all it would take to launch the space shuttle into orbit. So the fuel goes a long long way.

    If we get close to c, say 99.9999% of c you get some nice relativistic effects where you may get to the 1000 light year point in just a few years but of course 1000 years still goes by on Earth. Which may not matter if you know there is going to be a supernova going off sometime after you leave. Your ship and others like it would be the only thing left of mankind.

    The only problem going that fast is one piece of dust has the energy of a cannon. So you better have really good shielding in front. Powerful lasers and ladars can detect large stuff but enough small stuff can still cause damage.

    They say the front of the ship would be covered in a thick layer of water ice which would absorb most of the small stuff and the ladar/laser ionizing the big stuff and extreme magnetic fields deflecting the now ionized stuff coming in which will deflect that stuff around the ship. Superconducting magnets can do that job.
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    13 Apr '15 04:24
    One danger of the space people doesn't talk much about is a nearby red giant star goes, like Betelgeuze, goes nova in a flash and flood us with high energetic radiation and later high energetic particles, followed by a cloud of dust which will engulf the solar system and bring us a new ice time.

    I don't know when Betelgeuze last second as a normal red giant will come, but when it goes nova, half of out planet will be burnt in a flash and the rest of our population is forced to go under ground to protect us from radiation disease and starvation will follow.

    When we see the flash, it's too late. Perhaps the wavefront already is on its way, in an expanding bubble around the supernova, we don't know yet. The flash is propagating in every direction with the speed of light. Will we survive?
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    13 Apr '15 12:31
    Originally posted by FabianFnas
    One danger of the space people doesn't talk much about is a nearby red giant star goes, like Betelgeuze, goes nova in a flash and flood us with high energetic radiation and later high energetic particles, followed by a cloud of dust which will engulf the solar system and bring us a new ice time.

    I don't know when Betelgeuze last second as a normal red ...[text shortened]... know yet. The flash is propagating in every direction with the speed of light. Will we survive?
    Yes. we will survive.

    Because there are currently no stars likely or able to go supernova close enough
    to us to do us harm.

    Betelgeuse is much to far away to be a threat.

    It's likely peak brightness would be comparable to the full moon, and the gas/dust
    produced would be so tenuous by the time it reached us that it would pose no threat.

    To be a serious threat a supernova needs to be within ~50 light years of us [with
    some caveats].

    Betelgeuse is ~600 ly away.
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    13 Apr '15 12:36
    Originally posted by humy
    perhaps, prior to the hibernation, you could be on a special radiative-isotope free diet for a few months with food specially made to be radiative-isotope free and also you could be generically engineered to have a biology that very efficiently detects and then excretes any trace of radiative isotopes currently in your body. Then there would be no internal radiation to worry about when it comes to hibernation.
    I don't believe that this is possible, too many vital chemical building blocks are mildly radioactive.
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