Bank of England Warned to Prepare for Aliens

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Then we move further out. When Sol goes Red Giant half a billion years from now and turns Earth into a orbiting charcoal briquet, the Galilean moons and Titan should be far enough away.

The red giant phase won't happen for another five billion years, so plenty of time to implement stellar lifting to put that date off, move the Earth, build megastructures and Dyson swarms etc. We've only been a technological civilisation for an eye-blink, cosmically speaking.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

stellar uplifting

We probably shouldn't fuck that up, if we try it.

FWIW, Wikipedia calls it star lifting.

Star lifting - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[BillJ]

The Earth might become uninhabitable in a few hundred million years time...

Humanity: "Hold our beer."

 

[FredH]

What about all these planets they keep finding that are described as "earth like" is there some set criteria for such a description?

Whenever I hear that my eyes roll and I keep wondering do they mean lush, thriving world with plants and native fauna or is it just a nice planet that's now a dead world but full of plant life?

I’m pretty sure they generally just mean it’s round.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Wikipedia calls it star lifting.

Both names refer to the same thing depending on which literature you consult. I prefer "stellar" as it's an adjective rather than a noun. "Lifting" is a gerund and so functions as a noun. Kind of a silly thing to worry about given it's well beyond our technological level.

 

[Toril Toran]

I just read the article. Very interesting.
If you could start the process, it would become self-sustaining.

 

[The Salt Umpire]

The red giant phase won't happen for another five billion years, so plenty of time to implement stellar lifting to put that date off, move the Earth, build megastructures and Dyson swarms etc. We've only been a technological civilisation for an eye-blink, cosmically speaking.

Oops, meant to type "four and a" before 'half' there. Mea Quapla' (strikes chest three times)

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Oops, meant to type "four and a" before 'half' there. Mea Quapla' (strikes chest three times)

Not like it's going to make any difference to any of us personally.

 

[The Salt Umpire]

Not like it's going to make any difference to any of us personally.

I'm just disappointed I won't see the merging of our Galaxy and Andromeda. Imagine a big-assed spiral Galaxy (Andromeda is bigger than our Galaxy) filling up the sky and looming closer every year.

File:Andromeda and Milky Way collision.ogv - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I'm just disappointed I won't see the merging of our Galaxy and Andromeda. Imagine a big-assed spiral Galaxy (Andromeda is bigger than our Galaxy) filling up the sky and looming closer every year.

File:Andromeda and Milky Way collision.ogv - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I'm not sure it'd be very bright - despite what is shown in sci-fi. Galaxies don't appear that bright even when you're in them. The Milky Way only averages magnitude 5 across the night sky and is easily washed out by light pollution. The collision of gas clouds will trigger increased star formation, so there will be more type 2 supernovae certainly. The probability of the two galaxies colliding is now put at evens (50%) last I read.

https://www.science.org/content/article/milky-way-may-escape-fated-collision-andromeda-galaxy

 

[BillJ]

I'm just disappointed I won't see the merging of our Galaxy and Andromeda. Imagine a big-assed spiral Galaxy (Andromeda is bigger than our Galaxy) filling up the sky and looming closer every year.

I plan to live forever.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I plan to live forever.

Good luck on that.
If you figure out the secret to Immortality, you'd become wealthy beyond your wildest dreams.

 

[BillJ]

Good luck on that.
If you figure out the secret to Immortality, you'd become wealthy beyond your wildest dreams.

No secret. Just plan to live forever.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Live forever? I rewatched Groundhog Day last Monday. Seemed like Bill Murray was in a special kind of Hell. The quantum immortality hypothesis would have us believe all consciousnesses experience it.

 

[BillJ]

Seemed like Bill Murray was in a special kind of Hell.

Just got to be creative.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Just got to be creative.

Never really understood why his character was fascinated by Andie MacDowell's. Boredom, perhaps? How it got him out of the perception of the loop, I never really understood. That he had to become a "better man" seemed annoyingly judgmental of the universe just to single him out. Perhaps she was a Q and dumped him straight afterwards for a lark.

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

Never really understood why his character was fascinated by Andie MacDowell's. Boredom, perhaps? How it got him out of the perception of the loop, I never really understood. That he had to become a "better man" seemed annoyingly judgmental of the universe just to single him out. Perhaps she was a Q and dumped him straight afterwards for a lark.

Eh, I guess everyone is different I love Andie Macdowell in that time period, she was a classical beauty, and still is really

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Eh, I guess everyone is different I love Andie Macdowell in that time period, she was a classical beauty, and still is really

I was speaking to what was portrayed onscreen in the story and not some predeliction that a random audience member might have for a real-life actor.

Why was the character played by Murray apparently selected for prolonged torture so that he spent years altering himself to end up with a woman he barely knew originally?

If you think some standard of perceived beauty sanctions such a horrific act, perhaps question that. If the actor playing her character had been plain or ugly in your eyes, how would you have felt? (Rhetorical question)

It's a good job that the story is merely fiction and we don't experience the multiverse (if one exists) that way.

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

I was speaking to what was portrayed onscreen in the story and not some predeliction that a random audience member might have for a real-life actor.

Why was the character played by Murray apparently selected for prolonged torture so that he spent years altering himself to end up with a woman he barely knew originally?

We don't know. You'd have to ask the writers why it had to be him and her. It was a hellish torture but maybe that was the universe trying to make him a better person, via comedic hellish torture. The movie at its heart was a comedy and the time loop was secondary.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

We don't know. You'd have to ask the writers why it had to be him and her. It was a hellish torture but maybe that was the universe trying to make him a better person, via comedic hellish torture. The movie at its heart was a comedy and the time loop was secondary.

It's a comedy whose premise doesn't bear close scrutiny or it becomes an existential horror flick.

Why would the universe care that some random dude is a douchebag who needs to end up in a relationship with a particular character? In some branches of a multiverse, a version of him does, but making him experience all the branches to be able to ratchet his way to a very arbitrary goal by exploiting memory seems like the behaviour of a cruel godlike entity, similar to the Ancient Greek ones.

Isn't this sort of behavioural reprogramming the sort of thing the Chinese Communist Party used to do?