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Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
what are the exact numbers for the next Powerball drawing, in winning order?
...don't fuck with me, genie, I got problems.
Hey I can answer that 100% truthfully. I don't know :)
That TECHNICALLY doesnt answer the question because he didnt ask what you know, he asked what the next numbers are.
Where exactly is the closest alien civilization located?
What would be the scariest possible answer to this?
I feel like finding out either "disturbingly close" or "far enough away that we'd never reach it before the heat death of the universe" would both be pretty terrifying answers. Or even if the answer somehow turned out to be "there aren't any"
I feel like the scariest answer is very close by, within a hundred light-years or so. This would imply that alien civilizations are extremely common (because the average distance between civilizations depends on how rare they are, it's hypothetically possible I suppose for intelligent life to be very rare and yet have two examples very close by, but it's very unlikely). That would have implications for the Fermi paradox (for those unfamiliar, this is basically the question of "given the universe is so old and huge, why haven't we seen any aliens out there"). Namely, it would basically rule out the rare earth hypothesis, or versions of the great filter that occur before the development of civilization, and the next leading candidate for the answer would be versions of the great filter scenario that occur after civilization has developed, and before it gets space-fairing to a significant degree (because we'd probably be able to see signs of intelligence in a sufficiently developed solar system). That would imply that basically no civilization ever survives much past our current level, despite probably billions of tries (since civilizations are so incredibly common in this scenario).
Very far away implies the reverse, either life is very rare to begin with, or it rarely reaches civilization, in which case we're probably already past the great filter if there is one, and so have less to worry about. It is a bit frustrating in that we'd basically never know anything about aliens beyond the extremely vague notion of what corner of the universe they exist in, but nothing particularly scary in my opinion. It also means we have no reason to worry about if these or any other aliens are hostile or not, because hostilities over that distance are presumably impossible unless we're wrong about ftl travel not being possible.
None at all implies one of two things that I can think of: if the universe is finite (the question didn't just limit the answer to aliens within the observable universe and somehow we just magically get the answer, so if there is more universe beyond the cosmological event horizon, and the closest aliens exist there, we should still know), then it's basically the same as far away aliens, it just means civilizations are so incredibly rare that most universes don't contain one at any given time. If the universe is infinite, though, and none of that infinite universe contains aliens anywhere, then that means that the probability of intelligent life existing is zero (because given infinite tries, anything with a finite chance of occuring eventually occurs). The problem of course is that we exist, so in that scenario, it would pretty much imply that we are not naturally occurring, and are created by something else (presumably something that exists outside the universe). This could be a religious sort of scenario, like having some sort of creator god who only creates life once, or something like the simulation hypothesis (in which case I guess aliens would exist, but asking where would be useless because they'd be outside of our universe and spacetime).
“There are four to seven alien civilizations equidistant to Earth, depending on the phase of orbit between the various star systems.”
Reminds me of that article a bit ago where some dude mathed out a probability that the Milky Way had about 4 different Imperium of Man tier hostile space faring civilizations
Someone actually was once offered the opportunity to ask such a question. Here is the question that was asked:
Here is the answer received:
Considering the asker didn't get any benefit out of the answer to that question, this is definetly not "the best question" he could ask. So your proposed answer to this question is wrong. The question itself though, is the best one I've heard so far.
What is the ultimate answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything? Just so I can check Douglas Adams' work. There's just no other way.
"Contrary to Adams's attestation, the answer is actually 69, not 42."
Or perhaps it was off by an order of magnitude, and the correct answer is 420
What happens to us (our consciousness, soul, whatever) when we die?
Why don’t BMW drivers use their indicators?
You won't like the answer.
What's the optimal engineering solution for fusion energy.
To consign combustion to the past.
Why limit to fusion? Ask for the optimal energy production solution, period. Might be something we never thought of.
The answer might be impossible or impractical like a Dyson Sphere.
Or it might just be pretty straightforward: Use Solar panels to harvest the energy of the sun, that is there for free goddammit.
Who were the sea people and what really happened with the bronze age collapse?
Oh boy, one I can actually point to a legit answer to for someone in this thread.
It's way too long for a comment, but the TLDR is:
Ramses II captured twelve groups of Anatolian tribes following Kadesh, one for each son with him.
After Ramses II is dead, at least one of those tribes (the Lukka) are fighting in a one day war against his son Merneptah alongside other sea peoples (this is the first connection between these tribes and the sea) and Libya. Notably, a number of the sea peoples in this battle were oddly recorded as being without foreskins.
You actually see this event in Homer, when Odysseus tells about a one day battle immediately after Troy against Egypt where he is taken captive, parties in Egypt for seven years until a "certain Phrygian" shows up and tries to ransom him to Libya.
Seven years after that one day battle against Merneptah is when the usurper Amenmesse (referred to as Mose in Papyrus Salt 124) takes Egypt for 3 years.
Ramses III talks about the end of the 19th dynasty as having been characterized by the city governors making decisions and the gods having been made like men. Both fairly Phonecian features, given the city state governance and the euhemerism of the Phonecian mythos reported by Philo of Byblos from around the time of the Trojan War.
Ramses III later claims to have forcibly relocated the sea peoples into the Levant, though as can be seen in places like Ashkelon they'd already conquered and set a foothold there as well.
In particular, there was supposedly a commander named Mopsus/Muksus who had conquered Ashkelon, and who you later see the rulers of the Denyen sea peoples in Adana crediting their ancestry to in 8th century BCE bilinguals.
Do any of these features maybe ring some bells?
Twelve tribes? No foreskins? Captured into Egypt?
How about a bunch of pre-Greek peoples sailing around the Mediterranean on ships?
Part of the problem is that the surviving oral histories of this period seem to have underwent extensive reworking, with a particular focus on ethnocentrism such that the Argonautica is solely about Greeks and the Biblical Exodus is only about Israelites.
The two stores share surprising details, like how in the Argonautica the prophet Mopsus died as they wandered by foot back from a battle in North Africa, similar to how the prophet Moses died in the desert as they were wandering by foot back from North Africa. In fact, right after this happens in the Argonautica it tells of a local sheepherder killing one of their elite warriors with the cast of a stone, similar to the Biblical story of a sheepherder killing an elite sea peoples warrior with the cast of a stone (thought to be reappropriated into the Davidic story but not originally about him).
In fact, one of the two ways of Hellenizing the name Joshua is Jason.
A problem was Homer's combining the Mycenaean conquest of Anatolia with the later retaking of Wilusa from the Hittites screwed up all the later Greek chronologies (depending on the sources, Perseus is his own ancestor), so the Greeks thought their Argonautica period was before Troy.
But after the conquest of Alexander, when multiple cultural sources were all being considered together, you had scholars suddenly realizing they were looking at shared history, such as Atrapanus of Alexandria having Moses on the Argos teaching Orpheus the mysteries, or Hecataeus of Adbera's version of the Exodus story that had multiple different peoples all being exiled from Egypt, including the Phonecian Cadmus or Libyan Danaus.
Some of those stories have remarkable overlap to this period too, despite their late character. For example the story of Danaus, Lybian brother to the Pharoh with 50 sons who later becomes leader of the Greeks, is pretty interesting in light of Ramses II's forensic report describing him as appearing like a Lybian Berber given he had 48-50 recorded sons. You have oddities like Herodotus's crediting the multi-day women only Thesmophoria festival to the daughters of Danaus fleeing Egypt, and you have a reference to a multi-day women only ritual in Judges 11 where it's explained with what's effectively the story of Idomenus's return home from the Trojan War.
The problem is that even myth which contains kernels of truth also contains lots of kernels of BS, and between survivorship biases and anchoring biases, the picture of these periods is extremely muddied. Just look at how little attention the Greek and Egyptian accounts of the Exodus narrative get from scholars relative to the amount of attention the Biblical version gets.
Archeology may gradually help. For example, Yigael Yadin's theory that the Denyen sea peoples were the lost tribe of Dan given the reference of Dan "staying on their ships" in Judges 5 may be strengthened by the recent discovery of Aegean style pottery made with local clay in Tel Dan.
This theory is particularly interesting given the "House of Mopsus" of the Denyen relative to the story in Judges 18 where a descendant of Moses becomes the priest for the tribe of Dan contrary to all the stuff about how it needs to be a descendant of Aaron. As well, you can see in Ezekiel 27:19 where Greece and Dan are trading together with Tyre, with the goods mentioned as in line with Adana's relative geography. The Denyen and the neighboring Ahhiyawa might be a good fit for who was being referred to here, and given the exact same form for Dan as when mentioned as staying on their ships, the Denyen become a compelling match for the tribe.
Another interesting archeological detail is the imported bees from Anatolia in 10th-9th century BCE Tel Rehov.
My broad guess looking at the many different accounts was that the various peoples brought into Egypt under Ramses II had Merneptah either exile foreigners or deny previous land rights to them after he took power, which led to the Lybian war. After losing that, the surviving tribes (who had greater allegiance to each other and reclaiming a home in Egypt as opposed to individual countries of origin) went back and conquered much of their homelands in what were effectively populist uprisings (conveniently often at times of destabilization from famine and natural disaster) raising enough of an army doing so they were able to successfully take all of Egypt a few years later. They ultimately couldn't hold it, left and continued to conquer areas of the Mediterranean until finally becoming fractured enough a generation or two later that they were beaten by Ramses III and individual tribes kept extremely fractured and partial retellings of the events which took on increasingly mythical form as time went on and changed specifics as power dynamics shifted or the myths were absorbed into other cultures.
Give it another 20 years or so, and I think you'll have a lot more of an official answer to your question than you might have previously expected to end up with. There's enough there, particularly in light of recent archeology, that I doubt the status quo collective shrug will hold much longer.
If you could ask one question and get a 100% true answer, what would it be and why?
Is the universe deterministic or probabilistic?
I think this would have profound bearing on technological advancement and psychology, and would to answer many ither questions.
Unless it's Everettian, where the answer is effectively both, and you'd end up with a rather unsatisfying answer.
Correction - I would still be satisfied by that answer - ha!
“What causes someone to actually want to put their tongue into another persons poophole?”
Provide me the complete schema with detailed step-by-step manufacturing processes of a >98% energy efficient, functionning, space-time stable, user fine tuneable teleportation system or device pair made from material available on earth with overly detailed explanations of every aspects and mathematical proofs behind of all its functions.
(No requirements to perfectly preserve quantum states, nor to preserve life, just as a mean of transportation of raw materials/energy within and beyond our solar system)
What exact time is it?
The time it would take to answer would make the answer wrong, so in the end the world would explode
"Couldn't they just say, at the moment I finish speaking it will be: "
Did she love me?
At the time probably yes, now we don't know/probably not. Note that love is complicated and has different types like there is passionate love and companionate love. Passionate love rises quickly within 6 months to 1.5 years, it reaches its peak. Then it goes down hill and within 7 years it goes to its lowest point. This happens to everybody not just you, naturally this love converts into companionate love over this time and when that does not happen it needs to end. Companionate love is slow in rising but it is also more lasting. Two main components of companionate love are 1) emotional intimacy - ability to share anything 2) commitment - that feeling that it is YOUR responsibility to help them if they need something. Any action that violates these will result in losing love.
Some actions that hurt love: lying, hiding things, feeling you're the only one who cares etc.
Know this, true love or companionate love is something both people nurture and grow, you cannot do it all on your own. If it ended then something went wrong, maybe nobody was at fault.
Take your time and heal my friend.
What equation perfectly describes the fundamental physical force(s) of the universe?
where did mh370 end up?
