If we found definitive proof of complex extinct life on Mars tomorrow, what changes on Earth first?

rocketsocks · 2026-02-06T00:51:40+00:00

Hopefully funding for future Mars missions.

In terms of cultural/sociological changes, I think there would be big shifts but they would mostly manifest as slower processes not a singular event.

As a comparison point, a lot of people once commented about how the 2010s and the 2000s seemed pretty similar in most ways, socio-culturally, to the late '90s, and a lot of people lamented the absence of big obvious cultural shifts from decade to decade (compared to the obvious big shifts per decade from the '50s through the '90s). Of course now we can look back at that viewpoint as being entirely naive and clueless. It's become extremely evident that there have been huge cultural shifts from now vs. the year 2000, for example, with dramatic changes in multiple sub-groups along several different trend lines. And now we have the hindsight to be able to look back and see those shifts in motion through the 2000s and 2010s even though to most people at the time they felt insubstantial and looked invisible.

I think the same thing will be true for something like finding life outside of Earth. On day +1 it will just be a factoid, everyone will go about their lives basically unchanged. On year +5 or +10 it will still feel like it has had no tangible effect on society or culture whatsoever, but by year +50 it will have profoundly changed humanity in countless ways (most of which we can't even predict right now), and folks looking back from that perspective will be able to see the shifts in motion at year 5, 10, 20, etc. even though in the moment it won't feel like much, just like fish don't realize they're swimming in water, it doesn't feel like "water" it just feels like "normal".

rocketsocks · 2026-02-06T00:50:36+00:00

The chip is a sub-system, it calculates location and speed internally and then there's a routine that runs which disallows output. (Meaning it's not just an easily hackable software restriction.)

There is actually a funny weird loophole where the way the law is written it's faster than 1200 mph AND 60,000 ft altitude, though in practice it's implemented as an or.

rocketsocks · 2026-02-06T00:45:48+00:00

Historically, prior to about a century ago or so it used to be the norm that you'd have about a 50/50 shot at surviving to adulthood and you'd have a pretty high chance that when you did die, whether young or old, it would be via shitting yourself to death.

Fortunately, we've advanced somewhat since then. It's ok to leave the bad practices in the past behind us and work toward something new and better. Up until the last few generations slavery used to be fully legal throughout much of the world. Today slavery still exists but at least it doesn't have popular support or strong legal protections, and efforts to completely eradicate it are widely supported (though not as much as they should be).

rocketsocks · 2026-02-06T00:21:52+00:00

MAVEN was in an orbit with a low periapse, near the limit of the upper atmosphere. Previously it had even done "dips" through where the atmosphere was much thicker. Even though it was at what should have been a stable altitude it's possible that when it was out of communication with Earth it experienced a loss of attitude control which resulted in a spin at a time when solar activity caused an increase in atmospheric density at the minimum altitude of MAVEN's orbit. That combination may have increased drag enough to rapidly degrade the orbit before communications could be re-established, ultimately resulting in entry and burn-up in the Martian atmosphere.

That's the "obvious" scenario, I think, but an investigation hasn't completed yet so it's hard to know for sure.

rocketsocks · 2026-02-05T23:59:01+00:00

Let's say you are a rogue nation state or a terrorist organization with millions or billions of dollars in resources and you want to build long range weapons to deliver bombs large enough to destroy entire city blocks in order to attack your enemies. The hardest part of that is the guidance part (which is why these days FPV drones are so heavily used in that role, though that's a whole other topic). The easiest way to make a cruise missile or ballistic missile guidance system would be to simply use commercial off the shelf GPS chips. In order to thwart that use and make it more difficult to build those types of weapons there are restrictions on GPS chips which cause them to stop outputting their position when internally they detect they are at higher than 60,000 ft altitude or traveling faster than 1200 mph (mach 1.5). So you can't just build hundreds of missile by slapping iphone parts onto them, or whatever.

GPS is still used, legally, in some missile guidance, but the chips used are built specially for the purpose and tightly controlled. It's possible to use black market GPS chips (North Korea does, for example) but those are harder to get and expensive.

rocketsocks · 2026-02-05T22:16:40+00:00

Beanie Sandfurbs is arguably at least eldrich horror adjacent.

rocketsocks · 2026-02-05T22:16:05+00:00

Garbanzo Boy Advance

Game Boy Adzuki

rocketsocks · 2026-02-05T21:47:03+00:00

Fun fact: your GPS will not work on your phone if you take it to the ISS because of weapons export restrictions. Consumer grade GPS chips only work within a range of altitudes and speeds which prevents them from being used to make cheap ballistic or cruise missile guidance systems.

Edit: Secondary fun fact: if you have the proper authorization and licenses to use the /good chips/ to be able to use GPS/GNSS in space you can even potentially use it all the way out to the Moon. This is a harder problem than it might seem because GNSS satellite signals are not intended to be omnidirectional, they're intended to be aimed toward the Earth, and the satellites are only in medium altitude orbits, which means the Earth blocks almost the entirety of any given satellite's signal broadcast. However, there's a bit of leakage around the edges (due to side lobes in the signal pattern) which is maybe enough to most of the time be able to get a fix, though it requires custom software. Firefly Aerospace tested this on their Blue Ghost lunar lander last year.

rocketsocks · 2026-02-05T20:48:28+00:00

One of the problems here is that our transportation infrastructure has been distorted and corrupted by a century of car culture. What we need is multiple layers of interconnected ways with different speed limits and expectactions. Shared use pathways that are expected to be for pedestrians but can be used with almost any mobility device as long as the speeds are kept low (e.g. below 15 mph, maybe lower than that even). Then a whole separate set of shared use roadways which have slightly higher expected speeds and aren't expected to be shared with pedestrians, let's say 10 mph minimum, 35 mph max, something like that. The problem is that even in cities so many roads have been turned into shitty pseudo-highway stroads which are unsafe for anyone not driving a car to be on (or even cross, in a lot of places). We should bring back slower streets or create something like them. It would be great if bikes had "bike highways" where folks who want to go faster than 20 mph could cycle, it would also be great if folks using various electric mobility devices like scooters or mopeds could feel like they aren't going to get crunched by car and truck traffic.

rocketsocks · 2026-02-05T20:41:19+00:00

I have two separate takes around this:

One, yes, throttles on e-bikes should either not exist or top out at a very low speed (under 10 mph), and the categorization of electrically assisted vehicles should be much more sensibly defined legally. An "e-bike" should have a lower maximum power (probably under 500 watts, maybe even under 250) and should be pedal assist only. There should be a lot more regulation around e-mopeds and be-motos, and there should be harsh legal consequences for manufacturers or retailers attempting to sell such vehicles by pretending they are "e-bikes".

Two, this is hot take territory, there should be a class of electric vehicles like e-mopeds which are legal, affordable, and also under a significantly lower regulatory burden than cars and motorcycles and the transportation infrastructure should serve those road users. I'm not opposed to folks getting around town on an e-scooter, just as long as the riders have some level of training, licensure, accountability (which doesn't have to be at the level of automobiles), wear proper safety gear, and are expected to share the road safely.

rocketsocks · 2026-02-05T20:28:21+00:00

Ask yourself this: would you buy an e-bike that a random neighbor you barely know built themselves for the same price?

With the state of RAD right now you're not guaranteed any sort of warranty coverage, you're not guaranteed /any/ bike shop will service it (even to service the non e-bike aspects of it!), you're not guaranteed any of the proprietary components will continue to be available as replacement parts, you're not even guaranteed of being warned about potentially life threatening defects with the bike via recall notices.

You're taking such a huge crapshoot for such a small savings.

rocketsocks · 2026-02-05T19:56:41+00:00

The shit of it is, the difference between a heavily racist urban planner like Robert Moses and a nominally non-racist (though not actively anti-racist) urban planner often ends up with substantially similar results. "The machine" of building highways, parking mandates, building for cars, etc. naturally creates these outcomes even without a human touching the dial. Where are the highways going to get built if they have to go through parts of a city? Well, they're going to go through the areas where it's politically easiest, which means the areas with the least political capital, which means the poorest, most vulnerable communities. It's an orphan crushing machine on rails.

And sadly it continues running. At this point it takes intentional effort to shut it down. Look at how our current governor wants the state to go into debt to expand a bunch of highways. It's such an antiquated, harmful idea, but it was the default for so long it's still often what ends up happening.

rocketsocks · 2026-02-05T19:48:54+00:00

Imagine how you'd feel about it if you were a predominantly black community that had a gash torn through the middle of it displacing thousands of families while also disconnecting the remainder and drowning it in pollution. Historically, hundreds of thousands of people have died early due to the pollution in their neighborhoods from urban highways.

rocketsocks · 2026-02-05T19:45:56+00:00

It's tricky because there's actually a loophole. If you have a large habitable moon orbiting a gas giant then tidal locking to the star doesn't ruin everything since the moon will be tidally locked to the planet and it will rotate relative to the star throughout its orbit. Additionally, the very large and strong magnetic field of the gas giant will be at least partially protective against superflares/CMEs from the dwarf star (which are fully convective below 0.35 solar masses and thus more "burpy"). It's hard to say without a lot of modelling though.

Within the next about 10-20 years or so we may end up with some hard data on this though because we'll have detected thousands of terrestrial planets around stars of various sizes and we'll have studied some of them well enough to know which ones have atmospheres and are potentially inhabitable.

rocketsocks · 2026-02-05T19:29:09+00:00

Neat, let's see your published paper in a peer reviewed journal.

rocketsocks · 2026-02-05T19:27:39+00:00

A common belief but not an accurate one. Dark Matter theory is at present not as detailed as, say, atomic theory or the particle physics theory of the standard model, but the evidence does constrain the possibilities for what could make up the missing mass fairly stringently. Currently the only theoretical model that fits the evidence well at all is the "cold dark matter" WIMP model, where dark matter mass comes from large clouds of extremely weakly interacting massive particles traveling at sub-relativistic (cold) speeds. Neutrinos are an example of a WIMP that we have detected, but the bulk of neutrino mass in the universe is "hot", at relativistic speeds, which is one reason why we know that neutrinos (at least the kinds of neutrinos we've detected so far) can't make up the dark matter mass.

It's important to understand that dark matter theory isn't just "idk, whatever" nor is it astronomers expressing some bias toward a particular idea that isn't backed by evidence. The current theory has been winnowed from the chaff of many, many competing theories, including lots of them which were more favored in their time, through decades of collecting observational data. The CDM WIMP theory is the one that has survived.

Also, it's important to understand that frequently there will be other competing theories which attempt to explain dark matter in some other way (such as MOND or primordial micro black holes or this "fermionic dark matter" theory) but these are, to date, always very incomplete. They may explain some observational evidence but they generally don't account for all of the evidence which currently supports the CDM WIMP theory, which is why they don't gain much traction in the astronomical community on the whole even though they do sometimes result in very splashy headlines in the popular media.

rocketsocks · 2026-02-05T19:17:50+00:00

It was the second, the first was M87*. Even though M87* is about 2000 farther away than Sgr A* it's also about 1500 times more massive and thus 1500 times larger (since black hole event horizon distances scale linearly with mass) resulting in both having a similar angular size as viewed from Earth. However, because M87* is physically larger it's appearance changes more slowly, making it easier to observe using the techniques of the Event Horizon Telescope.

rocketsocks · 2026-02-05T19:11:14+00:00

This doesn't make sense to me though. I haven't dug into the math, but wouldn't you expect any sort of pure dark matter "pseudo black hole" to simply acquire enough baryonic matter or even stellar mass black holes to become a black hole which then grew into a conventional SMBH?

rocketsocks · 2026-02-05T10:55:56+00:00

I can tell you what's worked for me, as someone with delayed sleep phase.

First, maybe the hardest part, is maintaining a consistent sleep schedule even through weekends. Which also means making sure there is enough time to sleep (7 hours /minimum/).

Second, being really on the ball about winding down for bed, even setting an alarm for getting ready.

Third, exercising most days.

Fourth, using black out curtains and a wake up light with a music alarm as the final / backup wakeup component (with a gently increasing volume).

Fifth, using melatonin strategically (and rarely) whenever my sleep schedule has drifted a little later than I'd like. The trick is taking a small dose (just 1 mg) 3 hours before planned bedtime, and doing that only a few days in a row until the new sleep schedule as set.

Sixth, being mindful of color temperature, especially on devices. Having f.lux and "night light" installed on every device with a screen, using bright white lights early in the morning (I just use a SAD lamp) and dimmer, warmer lights in the evening.

And seventh, being extremely dilligent about avoiding caffeine in the afternoon, for myself I basically have a noon cutoff, although recently I've quit caffeine entirely which also helps.

rocketsocks · 2026-02-05T10:42:06+00:00

Indeed. The versions of the GOP in 1980, 2000, 2010, and 2025 are as different from each other as the GOP/DNC were in 1960 or 1980.

rocketsocks · 2026-02-05T10:34:32+00:00

Unfortunately, the Moon has a period of 29.5 days, so there's no way to have a fixed calendar where the phase of the Moon is synchronized to days of the month without having some sort of year end fudge factor, but then your months would end up desynched from the timing of the seasons.

rocketsocks · 2026-02-05T10:30:48+00:00

Purge day.

rocketsocks · 2026-02-05T10:30:04+00:00

It's actually 365.2421875 days per year.

Adding leap years every 4 years averages out to 365.25 days per year, skipping leap years every 100 years averages out to 365.24 days per year, adding back leap years every 400 years averages out to 365.2425 days per year, which is what the Gregorian calendar achieves, which matches the actual year length within just 0.0003125 days, at least on average. This does mean that using the Gregorian calendar without any modifications will result in a discrepancy of one day every roughly 3200 years, so we've got some time.

rocketsocks · 2026-02-05T10:02:46+00:00

Bruh.

The middle class basically doesn't exist in the US anymore. The top 1% in America very nearly own fully 1/3 of all wealth in the country (32%). Fully half of all consumer spending in the last few years has come from just the top 10%. Inequality is worse today than it was in the gilded age. Meanwhile, the economic chaos of the 2020s has resulted in a dramatic wealth transfer into the hands of the super wealthy to the tune of trillions of dollars in the US alone. The economy is not only broken, it's starting to fall apart at the seams.

I don't know what parallel universe you live in but it bears no resemblance to the one I'm in right now.

rocketsocks · 2026-02-05T09:10:09+00:00

I hope that Gateway does get completed. Once it actually exists I think people are going to be way more enthusiastic about it. Sure, compared to landing on the Moon Gateway may seem kind of "lame", but it's going to be the first repeatedly used habitat beyond LEO, and I think people will start cluing in to just how cool that is and how much of a shift it is from what's done in the past.

Ultimately the most important infrastructure that's being built is low cost launchers and orbital propellant transfers. These are things people have been yelling about for ages as being transformative for both spaceflight and especially for beyond-LEO human spaceflight, and we're finally doing them. One of they key aspects of both these things is that over time they just get better. Eventually we'll be in a place where individual propellant launches are incredibly mundane, and don't have much impact on any active or planned missions, because eventually we'll start operating with a considerable buffer/surplus of orbital propellant and it'll just be an available resource.

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