Dust cloud, or alien construction?

[BenBurch]

Would they be trained in their jobs?

If you were trained before they digitized you, yes.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

If you were trained before they digitized you, yes.

But nobody on the home planet would get to go. That would be sad.

 

[Craig B]

If we can manage the self-repairing robot starships in the first place, we won't have to send frozen humans - just the information needed for the nano constructors to build you from raw materials.

I think the designated crew should be dissolved in powerful chemicals and transported across the cosmos as buckets of sludge. Then the constructors would have the right amount and composition of material to work with.

 

[BenBurch]

I think the designated crew should be dissolved in powerful chemicals and transported across the cosmos as buckets of sludge. Then the constructors would have the right amount and composition of material to work with.

Pretty sure we would find the right stuff most anywhere, but I am reminded of Piers Anthony's "Macroscope" where the travelers have to get dissolved into still-alive jelly in a vat to stand the acceleration they had to endure.

 

[BenBurch]

But nobody on the home planet would get to go. That would be sad.

The copy of you they make at the destination would feel as though it had traveled there.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The copy of you they make at the destination would feel as though it had traveled there.

But that wouldn't be ME. Why should Zilla₂ have the fun?

 

[Daylightstar]

Maartenn100, could you attend to this unanswered question?

What you see through your telescope is one big Rorschach test. You see your own projections, but you can't really check your theory outthere.

^{Hilite by Daylightstar}
What do you mean by "big"?

 

[BenBurch]

But that wouldn't be ME. Why should Zilla₂ have the fun?

Well, HE would think he WAS you. If you want that effect to not be blunted by not experiencing the event, we could arrange to destroy you as you were being scanned. Then the only Zilla there is would make the trip.

 

[Craig B]

Well, HE would think he WAS you.

Not the point. There was a long thread about this years ago. He might think he was you, but the original YOU wouldn't think it was HE. If copies of ME are reconstituted from organic sludge on a distant planet, I don't give a hoot in hell WHO they think they are.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Not the point. There was a long thread about this years ago. He might think he was you, but the original YOU wouldn't think it was HE. If copies of ME are reconstituted from organic sludge on a distant planet, I don't give a hoot in hell WHO they think they are.

This.

 

[CapelDodger]

Not the point. There was a long thread about this years ago. He might think he was you, but the original YOU wouldn't think it was HE. If copies of ME are reconstituted from organic sludge on a distant planet, I don't give a hoot in hell WHO they think they are.

That.

 

[alexi_drago]

I'm on my tablet and just read on the BBC app about this but couldn't find the article on the BBC page in my browser so can't post a link.

NASA are saying its likely to be a family of comets although that's still not certain.

A question I have though, if a large planet causes a 2-3 percent drop in brightness, how many comets are they talking about to give the drop of over 20 percent and they'd all have to be orbiting roughly together, even though it was reckoned it's not dust as the system is too advanced for that, surely over time there wouldn't be large numbers of comets grouped together either?

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'm on my tablet and just read on the BBC app about this but couldn't find the article on the BBC page in my browser so can't post a link.

NASA are saying its likely to be a family of comets although that's still not certain.

A question I have though, if a large planet causes a 2-3 percent drop in brightness, how many comets are they talking about to give the drop of over 20 percent and they'd all have to be orbiting roughly together, even though it was reckoned it's not dust as the system is too advanced for that, surely over time there wouldn't be large numbers of comets grouped together either?

Don't forget the tails, they would account for most of any blockage if it's comets. (At one point the remains of a comet were the largest thing in the solar system besides the sun, over a million miles across. According to Mr. Kaku, that is.

 

[alexi_drago]

Don't forget the tails, they would account for most of any blockage if it's comets. (At one point the remains of a comet were the largest thing in the solar system besides the sun, over a million miles across. According to Mr. Kaku, that is.

Not forgetting the tails, just wondering how many comets would it take to completely obscure an area ten times that of the disc of Jupiter and how they would continue to orbit as one?

 

[Mark6]

Comet tails in the Solar System block very little light. They seems bright because they are so huge, but actually they reflect only a tiny fraction of the sunlight that falls on them. Here is an image of Comet Hale-Bopp: you can see just as many stars through the tail as outside it. Comet head saturates the photograph, but only due to reflected sunlight; if you were looking at it from the night side, it would be almost as transparent as the tail.

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2013/03/screenshot_3_21_13_2_42_pm_2.jpg

 

[Mark6]

Not forgetting the tails, just wondering how many comets would it take to completely obscure an area ten times that of the disc of Jupiter and how they would continue to orbit as one?

Here is one estimate:

http://scienceblogs.com/catdynamics/2015/10/19/kic-8462852-whence-the-fading-star/

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Not forgetting the tails, just wondering how many comets would it take to completely obscure an area ten times that of the disc of Jupiter and how they would continue to orbit as one?

Bunches.

 

[Davidm]

Bunches.

This is the scientific answer.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

This is the scientific answer.

I was original going to express that in pirate-ninjas, but that sounded to geeky.

 

[Davidm]

I was original going to express that in pirate-ninjas, but that sounded to geeky.

But, I believe, more precisely defined.