The Core

Why We Are Here => Water Cooler => Topic started by: ergophobe on December 21, 2025, 12:45:54 AM

Title: The scale of time
Post by: ergophobe on December 21, 2025, 12:45:54 AM
The Scale: Time (an art project)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOVvEbH2GC0 (2:40)

via Semi-Rad newsletter
Title: Re: The scale of time
Post by: rcjordan on December 21, 2025, 01:58:45 AM
I actually watched that.  Nice piece of work.

Sent this to the daughters earlier today.

"Watching Gremlins (1984) with the eldest. I hate to point this out but early in Gremlins, It's a Wonderful Life (1946) is on TV. We are now further away from Gremlins than Gremlins was from It's A Wonderful Life." --bsky
Title: Re: The scale of time
Post by: ergophobe on December 21, 2025, 09:08:27 PM
> now further away

I think I've shared this before. I collected a handful of "we are as far from X as X was from Y" examples. There's a lot of blah blah about space travel, which I've mentioned many times too, but about halfway? down you get to the N:X::X:Y

https://raisedbyturtles.org/past-tense

I added a couple today. We are now about at the midway point between when all the land on earth was a single continent and when all the land on earth will be a single continent again (according to one possible hypothesis/model of tectonic movement)
Title: Re: The scale of time
Post by: rcjordan on February 15, 2026, 11:59:57 PM
Ha! I used your vid to deepfake being artsy-sciency...  Thanks!

@weatherprof posted about this era (of climate change and/or politics) answering the Fermi Paradox but left the how open

RC:
IMO, the likely answer to the Fermi Paradox is that the lifetime of intelligent civilizations is short given the scale of time and the period where they might achieve warp-speed space travel even shorter. The chance that two blips in time might coexist and intersect is very, very small. 

Now take a tiny, infinitesimally small minute or two to watch this
It is stunning
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOVvEbH2GC0

@weatherprof: I agree

Title: Re: The scale of time
Post by: ergophobe on February 16, 2026, 12:08:44 AM
 :)

Just a few days ago, I heard someone talk about looking up at the sky and thinking, "Maybe there is someone out there on a planet orbiting one of those stars who is looking back at me."

And I thought, that star might be a billion lightyears away. If fact, the light you're seeing might be older than the earth.
Title: Re: The scale of time
Post by: rcjordan on February 16, 2026, 12:18:44 AM
>two blips in time

That was a rephrasing of the vid's "a lifetime is not even a hair's width"