pilomotor
34972
731
8
Mar 6, 2025 2:19 PM
pilomotor
34972
731
8
mikeatike
Its no longer the early 2020s.
jattie
We're whalers on the moon, we carry a harpoon...
LucifersLoveSpuds
We're whalers on the moon,
We carry a harpoon,
For they ain't no whales
So we tell tall tales
And sing our whaling tune.
CrankyCook
They noticed on scientific equipment large amounts of gold and space oil
DrLOAC
There probably is life on Europa. If there is $5 it’s related to life on Earth.
If we can find meteorites from Mars on Earth caused by impacts on Mars I’m sure crap from Earth impacts have been flung all around the solar system.
Only takes a couple of extremophile microbes to survive and start replicating elsewhere in the solar system.
TiffanyKorta
Or it all comes from somewhere else, we practically share an oort cloud with Proxima...
ToSisPoS
Though are no whale we will spin tall tales and we’ll sing a whaling tune
DOcelot1
Fine SciFi movie
linkdude212
Just rewatched this with my parents. Really a good movie.
cjandstuff
Question: What's the plan to get through the roughly mile+ thick sheet of ice?
sweetfeetpete
ElbowDeepinaTinyOctopus
It's understandable that folks go straight to this game, but everyone sleeps on Barotrauma, which is literally set in the oceans of Europa.
jiminymacca
Was looking for someone mentioning Baro. It's got a much more niche appeal but I thrive on that shit. Plus any game that let's me make stuff with electronics and logic circuits is fun
TiffanyKorta
This isn't just sitting on the surface though, Europa has an ice crust about the same as that on our ocean floor (10km/6miles). So a space agency would have to drill deeper than we've ever managed remotely, with up to an hour time delay!
JNazey
We should start a go fund. me to help cover your bet.
EuropaEnceladusMissionCountdown
Username finally relevant!
ThomasTheWankEnglne
(but moon of jupiter)
clotholiver
Haha that was my exact thought!
jimmymcgoochie1
Plot twist: Europa IS a giant lifeform, the ice on the outside is the cell membrane and the ocean within is the cytoplasm.
Cthulhuonabike
I'd be very curious about what the underwater conditions would be like in such a place. On the one hand, 60 ft deep oceans you would think would amount to just enormous amounts of pressure, but on the other hand the gravitational pull of Europa is only 0.134 g so that might alleviate the pressure fairly significantly, but on a third note, the gravitational pull of Jupiter is almost 2.5 g, so I would suspect that would cause some really weird tidal forces
elbowdeepinawhateverthatis
“Early 2020s when tf was THIS all originally posted lol
readbackmonkey
*please have a Godzilla *, *please have a Godzilla*,
CorvidPrime
“We sent a probe, but it was destroyed by a direct radiation burst from the surface before it could send back much data. But we did get this image…”
IUpvoteFuturama
Sh1tMovieGroup
Nah, lock Ness monster is now a confirmed visiting europan
doppelfisch
That'd make for a fun story to read.
Rovylern
CPTBRUMBL3Z
Life on Europa? How exciting! I'm going to do my Excited Dance!
FluffykinsTheDestroyer
I'm so glad someone else also thought of Barotrauma
CPTBRUMBL3Z
Recorded this one myself lol
AngryViking32
What game is this? It looks cool.
CPTBRUMBL3Z
As another said, Barotrauma. Featured here is a very glitchy Mudraptor which we named Budraptor (because we had a mudraptor egg, hatched it, and then raised him to be our corpse garbage disposal). VERY HIGH learning curve, but some damn chaotic fun.
ArthurT
I am going to bet the same odds .Its a magnificant challenge to look there for anything.
QueefMalone
I love this sorta shit.
WaterUnderTheRocketAppliances
"early 2020s"
Colopty
Yeah they launched it October 14th last year.
Rovylern
Oh thank the makers! Now I just hope that there's someone who will receive the data when the probe gets there.
pilomotor
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/europa-clipper/
LincLoud
.
TheobromineAddict
Thank God they were able to launch that mission before trump and musk got their hands on NASA. But will the ongoing support it requires still be funded?
ps238principal
ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS, EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE. USE THEM TOGETHER. USE THEM IN PEACE.
BeaverOnFire
gablestout
seafox7
Doctor Chandra...will I dream?
ps238principal
If you've read the Arthur C. Clarke novels, it'd probably have been more effective to add: SERIOUSLY, THE THINGS UNDER THE ICE WILL ATTEMPT TO MATE WITH YOUR SPACESHIP AND YOU'LL DIE.
Doopapotamus
Humans: "...FUND OPERATION [BOOTY CALL]!"
PotatoPirateTheThird
Kif, set a course for Europa.
randomwalrus
While I am also mating with my spaceship, or afterwards? Like, am I dying 'cause I get squished between, or what?
Arcanum3000
I haven't read the novels but my stance has always been that "ATTEMPT NO LANDING HERE" without further explanation is practically an invitation for humans to go poking around. "YES THERE'S LIFE THERE, HERE'S SOME DATA ON IT, PLEASE DON'T BOTHER THEM" would be more effective.
Dagordae
Look into the project that’s attempting to figure out how to leave warnings for future humans(Because of nuclear waste).
The biggest issue they actually have is the reality that any grand ‘Do not come here’ display merely tells the future humans that there’s something there and they should go check it out. The more ominous and elaborate the more people will want to go there. After all, if the ancients put that much effort into it there’s got to be something good.
arajad
Wasn't it Jerry Pournelle who suggested we simply surround nuclear waste sites with a fence covered in signs that said, "IF YOU CROSS THIS FENCE YOU WILL DIE", and then sit back and let evolution take its course?
justfillingthespace
My favorite answer for this is the Ring method. On some sort of fixed interval every 'x' years, another ring of warnings is written surrounding the waste site. As language changes, so do the warning signs. And eventually, if society collapses, it will have the most recent languages in the outermost ring. And the languages just keep getting older and older as you get closer to the center...
Dagordae
Wow, they must have some really good shit if they went through all that trouble to mark it out. Let’s loot the place.
Dire warnings have never stopped people, hence why finding King Tut’s tomb was such a big deal. It hadn’t been looted yet, the dire warnings and curses were still intact(And promptly ignored because of course they were).
If you mark it, people will loot it. Doesn’t matter how many curses, pictograms, dramatic spikes, or portents of doom in any number of languages there are.
Dagordae
You mean telling people ‘THIS PLACE IS FORBIDDEN!’ is in fact a really fucking stupid way to keep people out and just telling them why they should stay away would be far more logical and effective?
maybeamonster
>threatening humans with a good time
>lands a kilometer long autonomous flying sexbot for 'research purposes'
>ship is covered in sponserships by redbull and various gambling websites
neithermenoryou
Slap a couple stereoscopic VR cameras on it that stream that shit and the macro furries alone will finance that entire operation in less than 24h after the kickstarter goes live.
Cornflakes91
[pornhub jingle plays when its video stream starts]
KingXizor
EndlingGer
*Europa-Rover taking its first dive*
Cthulhu: “Ḩ̴͙̲͇̺͙̤̮̪̜̇̉ē̴̡̼̭͓̰̹̣͔̥͂̏̕l̵̠͚͉̇ḽ̶̺͕̩̬̜͇̳̻̝͓̿̒̈́̀̎̔o̸̻̝̭̱̮͕͎̞̳͂̄̀̾̈́͛̉͛̇̕͜ ̴̡̨̟͈̲̳̬̖̱͋̉͊͋̃t̴̨̧̖̗̼̝̲̜̝̭̔͜ḥ̴̎͒͑̒̉͑̿͊͠͝ê̶̢̝̖͙͙͕͕̈̚r̸̞̝̉̈͌͜ë̴̼͇̗̲́͊́͋̾.̷̙̥̭͚̹̮͆”
Rovylern
General Clipper!
Badgerbadgerson3
"The Odds of Surviving An Encounter with An Apex Class Leviathan Are 3720 to 1. Are You Certain....
(Garbled)
Ÿoʻù àŕè ŕèàðÿ țø ðïè??"
chunkymasa
We Have Detected Gargantuan Leviathans It Has Been A Pleasure Working with You Captain
KileyBarker
"Detecting multiple leviathan class lifeforms in the region. Are you certain whatever you're doing is worth it?"
LupusLilium
Never made the connection to how the AI in Subnautica can give off heavy All-Mother vibes. Which when going to make sure the lines I was thinking of was correct I found out that Vaxis Act 3 is releasing in a few days, so I should thank you.
noReallyIamPrincessBob
NASA *was* working on their Europa mission.
cousteau
It'd be fitting if Europe were the ones going there instead
TiffanyKorta
Europa Clipper was launched last year and is a joint American / European mission, it is alas an orbital so no dips in the Europan seas!
spitfires2000
There was this report... a while ago.
ChloeRed
"Dr Floyd! Dr Floyd.... aiming my suit antenna.."?
OhIfIMust
Ooh, how'd it go??
HumanCats
I watched the documentary they filmed up there but I fell asleep halfway through so I assume everything went tickety - boo.
OhIfIMust
Kyzyl
Fermi Paradox: If life is easy and spontaneously arising, where are all the aliens?
One solution: The Great Filter - there is some big thing that is unique to Earth that makes us unique.
Sub-solution: Multi-Cellularity is weird. Most of life on Earth is still single-celled, so multi-cellular life is odd.
All I'm saying is that it's a big leap from "possible life" to huge ocean monsters on Europa.
evilspock
The solution is simple: we're boring. We clearly aren't ready for civilized discourse, still in the pissing-in-the-pool stage of evolution. If we survive and develop space travel, then they might bother to decide if we're a neighbor or just a pest.
When is the last time you visited the local anthill and tried to make contact and bring them into your social circles? Now imagine that anthill was a really really long way away. You need a reason to make the trip. We're boring.
SteveMND
Still, even evidence of ANY life would be a game-changer.
I mean, not so much anymore for America, our President doesn't understand that the letters 'trans' are used in many, many different words in the English language, and not all of them are just misspellings of "transgender."
But the other countries, yeah, that will be a game changer for THEIR scientific research and such, I'm sure.
DeserTimmy
Breaking news, Trump shuts down all ports of entry to the US, citing Doges discovery of the Dept. of Transportation.
“These Trans Ports are where all the woke is entering the United States. They sneak in through Trans Ports set up by the deep state and indoctrinate our poor kids on the gay.”
He stated.
Later, Trump is expected to sign an executive order ending all financial transactions, ending what he called ‘The danger of Trans Actionisim once and for all’.
SteveMND
"We have also discovered that the American Automakers Industry have been hoodwinked into unknowingly supporting a clandestine trans mission for decades now to secretly introduce woke ideology into our children's driving schools. "
denwerism
I don't think it's far fetched. Life has a tendency to want to get bigger if it can, the bigger you are the less you need to eat to sustain that mass. At a certain size you basically become immune to cancer. Not to mention the advantage you gain on predators. There are clear convergent evolutionary benefits that might give us something not unlike a whale.
Merdock
If we're going to dream about life on Europa, what's the harm in dreaming big. Don't get me wrong, if we found single cell life anywhere outside of this planet I would be incredibly excited, but I can still hope for giant alien monsters.
filiuspelei
It was the only recently we found evidence that life else where would even be protein based. The the Osirus Rex mission found amino acids on an astroid!
Mostlydeadpool
There's also a theory that most planets that tend to have life also tend to be super earths with substantially higher gravity. higher gravity makes getting into orbit much more difficult. which means there could be lots of aliens but very very few have the right stuff (ha!) to get into orbit and beyond.
cetinut
Fermi Paradox has at list 6 other possible answers, way believeble than Rare Earth.
in my opinion, einstein theory is the best bet. there is no FTL capacity in observable universe, and other means of transportation are not feasable, because time. and the expansion of universe is at FTL speed. we grow apart from others and they grow apart from us.
HiddenSanity
There's a few other things to consider, like maybe FTL travel is just... not physically possible, or at least feasible. That'd slow down the spread of any life, even if there's a dozen other sentient species in our galexy, visiting them and vice-versa may be one hell of a project.
ablamboo2
Yup. There might be simple life forms out there but as for multi-celled intelligent life, this is probably it.
kbryant414
I can't recall the name of it, but the theory that makes the most sense to me is that we're separated by time. The universe is close to 14 billion years old, Earth is 4.5 billion years old, humans have existed for 200-300k years. It's such a tiny speck of all time and life is so tenuous that other alien civilizations could have developed and died out a thousand times over but the likelihood of multiple existing in physical, technological, _and_ chronological proximity is almost nonexistent.
Tengenstein
A very big leap. It won't be as energy rich an environment as earth, so you looking at litho or chemotrophs, so hydrothermal vents, which don't last long on evolutionary timescales
SmeesNotVeryGoodTwin
Space aliens need to form unions!
redfeather1
Space is so huge that most people cannot wrap their arms around it. With current tech. It would take 10-12 years to get to Pluto. P/1
redfeather1
To get to Alpha Centauri. The closest other solar system. 40 THOUSAND years.
bfreeze01
I think Douglas Adams summed it up pretty nicely.
"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
SaintSleepyWeasel
Huge ocean monster level leap ;)
prettydumb
i agree, based on basic lack of evidence, but i always feel like time is left out of this equation. but then i realize it should only take one advanced species to leave evidence everywhere... i dunno man
Arcanum3000
I prefer the "Angry Monkey with Explosives" solution: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/monkey
Chair5768
Other solutions: 1) FTL travel just isn't possible. 2) Advanced alien life just isn't interested in us. 3) Advanced alien life has rules against contact, and the means to enforce those rules.* As for radio waves: If a civilization advances past the point of using them, what are the chances that we would be listening at the same (distance adjusted) time that they were sending them? Life on Earth is billions of years old and we've only been using radio for about 100.
knupauger
I find it hard to believe that all southern spice would abide to a prime directive for eons. The solution to the Fermi paradox has to be so solid, that there would be no exception. Something like interstellar (near) FTL travel is either impossible or easy - both would drastically change our science fiction concepts concerning spacefaring civilisations.
Chair5768
It's not really about abiding, you're assuming a level of freedom they might not have. A species integrated with advanced technology could be under 100% surveillance and straight up lack the ability to commit serious crimes. As for multiple species, imagine if humanity develops FTL and encounters a species that reached FTL 3 billion years ago, it doesn't matter if we agree with their rules or not, they could have to ability to enforce them without any errors.
Chair5768
Also, advanced technology also comes with advanced destructive capability. Imagine if every human on Earth had the ability to create WMDs in their own home, how long would our civilization last? It's possible that to achieve a certain level of advanced technology, a civilization is required to have some way of enforcing its laws without error. More benignly, perhaps advancements in mental health / neurology could create a society where no one would.
Geistbar
I like the solution of "space is fucking big."
Imagine if 1% of plausible life-hosting planets (not just solar distance but also water, weather, etc.) hosted life, and 1% of those had intelligent life. I see an estimate of 60 billion planets being in the "habitable zone" in the galaxy. Might work out to a small fraction of that having the other conditions. Call it 10m. That would work out to 1k intelligent life planets in the galaxy.
Milky Way is ~87k LY across. Distance between would be huge.
IrrelevantOutsideOfMyBubble
I remember reading an article talking about how an Ecumenopolis (a world covered by a city, like Coruscant in Star Wars) in the Centauri system (the star system closest to us) *might* be detectable by our newest telescopes. As Douglas Adams put it, "Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."
Hevach
We're also very limited in our detection range. A 1960's analog broadcast we might be able to detect within 20-40 light years. A modern digital signal probably not more than 5-10. We are starting to do spectral analysis on exoplanetary atmospheres but require specific conditions to get them that pretty much means most habitable planets we just can't do it on.
Mostlydeadpool
Also, life has been here for millions of years before there was anything going on that would broadcast loud enough to be seen from afar. radio signals are the first interstellar noise we've generated and that was 100 years ago....on a planet that's been around for 4.5 billion years.
Geistbar
Right. And those signals only travel at roughly the speed of light. Our first radio signals are only reaching 100 LY away from us. And radiated signals would suffer from signal attenuation. After a certain distance they would fade into background noise.
It's entirely possible that the galaxy is full of intelligent life, none capable of FTL or even significant fraction of C travel speeds. But we all exist so far from each other than we can never practically know of the others' existence.
Mostlydeadpool
Heh. would be funny if we find out later that the "background noise" is really just an entire galaxy worth of alien planets all sending out signals....it all blended together into this noise....
CoinedWatcher
Also, the Rare Earth theory. Since we are technically the only life we know about in the universe, maybe we are the only life. The complex set of circumstances that occurred for complex life to spring *may* be so rare that it's only happened once.
I don't particularly follow that mindset, but it is out there. I'm more of the belief that alien life might not be carbon-based. There could be a silicon-based life that has properties we aren't looking for currently...
SavageDrums
The universe is suuuuuuuuuper big.
PersonalityFire
We could also be among the earliest lifeforms in our galaxy/universe. Maybe it really does take 4.5bn years for hydrogen to get up to, y'know, an imgur app and stuff.
Nostradamuswaswrong
That's just our Solar system. The universe has been around for almost 3x that, the Milky Way is just a bit younger. There could have been civilizations that explored the galaxy billions of years before our sun even began to form. And that's just our one galaxy out of possibly trillions of currently extant galaxies. All we know is that life is possible, which means it's inevitable.
redsmerf
It's a big-ass universe, there's probably more life out there
Tengenstein
The silicon as an alternative to carbon idea is fun sci-fi, but falls flat once you realise silane, which is the silicon equivalent to methane and the most basic monomer in carbon chemistry tends to spontaneously ignite on contact with oxygen on a warm day, and that silicon dioxide the silicon equivalent of CO2 is quartz. And due to how elements form you always get lighter elements like carbon, before heavier elements like silicon
Orakia80
The reasons we expect carbon based life basically come down to chemical properties. There are certain very, very basics you need - the ability to make polymers in a liquid solution and a metabolic cycle that creates something that's soluble in that solution.
Silicon makes some silicone polymers. But it also oxidizes to silica. If it has to exhale / poop sand... That's difficult to deal with under conditions where those silicones exist.
CoinedWatcher
We always say life can't exist there cause there isn't _____. Usually water or oxygen. Just feels like very limiting considering we are only basing that on the life that developed on a planet that had plenty of both.
I like the silicon based idea because it could (theoretically) be a creature that gets bigger as it lives. In a basic sense you just need that can convert fuel to energy. Imagine a creature with an exoskeleton that grows with each "breath" it takes.
Santac99
Very unlikely we are the only life in the galaxy. 100 billion stars with 100+ billion planets are a lot of planets that could evolve life. Not to mention the universe. 200 billion trillion is a large number. Extremely unlikely that no life exist somewhere.
ablamboo2
This is wishful thinking. There is zero evidence of life outside earth. Plus the probability of life having started on an earth-like planet is not known, it could be infinitessimally smaller than required to offset the 200 billion trillion you mention. Plus none of the billions of species that evolved here, except one, had intelligence so intelligence is not the norm for survival, it's an abberation.
CoinedWatcher
I've also heard that what we understand as the current "known universe" would be comparable in size to a light bulb on Pluto.
Personally I believe intelligent life is out there, but I think the vast distances will keep us from ever finding it...
justfillingthespace
One of the most depressing things to ever happen to me was taking Astro 101 in college and getting some good visualizations of just how far apart everything actually *is*.
...
We're never gonna explore the stars. At least, not without com*pletely* breaking our current understanding of physics.
Lutki
Well it depends on what you consider exploration like if you mean having space Columbus, probably not, but with extremely high efficiency propulsion like solar sails and ion propulsion, combined with miniaturization we could probably get itty-bitty probes traveling at a decent % the speed of light. Or maybe the cryo peeps will successfully revive a frozen corpse. Or the Mormons will colonize other worlds inline with their doctrine using colony ships. It's not entirely impossible with sublight