this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

"We know more about space than the oceans"

Bitch the stars are out in the open. All you have to do is look up. We've been doing it since the dawn of civilization.

Sorry, I hear that factoid too much from people don't know better.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

but that doesnt make the 'factoid' any less true...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's a factoid to me because it doesn't say much because what is "know better" any way? We've only sent people up to the moon and there are only ten people in orbit at this moment. Meanwhile, we likely send out more people underwater, everyday. The factoid suggests we know a lot about space even though we have no idea what 95% of space is.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

its referring to images and recordings of space. there are hundreds of pictures of other galaxies, in remarkable definition, but no images of most of the ocean floor. we know more about what is actually out there, as well as what the planets and stars are made of, how far away they are, how they interact with each other, etc. we can know about something without physically visiting it

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

How's Dagon these days? Haven't heard from him since that whole Innsmouth incident.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Is the gellar field active?

I love the W40K chaos vibe

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (3 children)

It is much more complicated and difficult to explore the depths of the ocean than going into space, given that in space there is no need for vehicles that must withstand these enormous pressures. In space they only have to withstand an air pressure of 1 atm and not a thousand atm in the depths of the seas. A simple crack in the hull and you're dead before you can say sh....

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago

Just like how we explore moon/mars, we been using remote controlled submarine for quite a while now

https://youtu.be/I1ozbgy5N-U?si=Z33ZZ0ij04uKl1le

The challenge of deepsea is not pressure, it's the limited visibility and range they can get with the submarine drone. On moon and mars, everything on the horizon is visible once the sun hit the surface, but deepsea doesn't have that perk, and water block any radiation so well the submarine need to be tethered in order to receive signal and send video feed.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Wait till we get far enough in space.

The voids will prove harder than the oceans.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

No, space is hard because of radiation and great distances, but a hole in the hull of the ship, for example due to a micro meteorite, can even be covered with a piece of duct tape. A hole in the hull of a submarine however is a catastrophe, if it does not directly cause the hull to implode, the water that enters has enough pressure to cut you in two.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The current "space" we go into, tends to have a tinny amount of atmosphere. (1.322×10^-11^ Pa according to some random top result on Google)
So if you want to keep inside conditions at around 1 atm for a human to stay, that's all the difference you need to keep, and a duct tape might work.

But the void I refer to, is very different.
Think:

  • Vaporising metals
  • Theoretical quantum bubble formation

Normal spacecrafts made for "space", might even have their outer surface constantly being diffused in the void.


Disclaimer: I'm not a space nerd. The above is just speculation

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Sure, but doesn't the outer surface diffusing apply to the friction of water against a submarine's hull too? No clue about theoretical quantum bubbles, but it doesn't seem like anything that would affect spaceships in particular.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

friction of water against a submarine’s hull

I can't say for sure, but I feel like the affect due to said friction would be much lower, considering we are managing solid-solid friction in a lot of places.

theoretical quantum bubbles

Yeah, that's not relevant. Just added that to clarify which "void" I'm talking about.


The vaporising metals problem, I think might be alleviated by covalent bonding materials, so polymers? But not sure about that either.

Anti Commercial-AI license

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago

I can see the moon from right here.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 5 months ago (1 children)

There isn't much to see on the moon. It's a giant piece of rock. You're been there once, you've seen it.

Deep ocean is a whole different story. Very many, very different ecosystems.

Tbh I've never been to the moon so I'm not sure actually

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

What about the theme park?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

🎵 We're whalers on the moon, we carry a harpoon. But there ain't no whales so we tell tall tales and sing a whaling tune. 🎵

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Never been there. Is it worth the trip?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Only if you like space whalers.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

Have you seen what's down there? It's terrifying.

You don't have to tell me. Deep down at the bottom of the ocean? The whole place is crawling with...capitalists.

Yeah, yeah. I know. Andrew Ryan gave us all the big, shiny speech, "sweat of your brow" and all that, but what's he got down there now? Just a buncha junkies and opportunists running guns and peeling off all of that pretty art deco veneer.

Thanks but no thanks, Ryan.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Wasn't Ryan a Libertarian?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

No, he was a "Libertarian"

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

No wonder they sank R'leyh to the bottom of the ocean.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The tired anti-capitalist's review of bioshock lmao

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, kinda hard to ignore those themes in a game whose antagonist is a deliberate gender-swap of Ayn Rand.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

How dare someone point out the anti-capitalist themes of fucking BioShock, LMAO

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

This is revisionist actually, we must Return To Sea

[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 months ago (2 children)

If Lovecraft has taught us anythig, it's that looking too closely into either one is a BAD idea.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

yeah I wanted to write "HP Lovecraft wrote this"

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

He was just too afraid of what was inside him, and that's what the abyss was reflecting to him, hence his quote.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

which quote?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago

You are just saying this cause you found out about the butt worm.

Don't let the idea of multi butts scare you. Come back to the oceans.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Also not true, we know much more about the oceans than the moon, because the moon isn't really that interesting.

We know pretty much all there is to know about the moon. The oceans are much more complex, so there is a lot more to learn. But we also know a whole lot about the oceans, way more than we could ever know about the moon. Sure there's still a lot of things more to find out about the oceans, so percentage wise we maybe know less than the we know about the moon. But again this is because there really isn't that much to know about the moon, so you can get up to a high percentage really quick.

Now people may say we have high res scans of the entire moon and not of the bottom of the ocean, but that isn't true either. We have scans with pretty decent resolution of the ocean floor, not as good as the moon, but still decent. There really isn't that much there. Everywhere we've seen something interesting we've focused in on and checked out. Most of the ocean bottom is pretty much a dark desert under water, so no we haven't "explored" it, there is nothing there.

People use this argument as a shortcut to maybe there's a whole lost civilization of Atlantis down there. Well no there isn't because humans haven't been around all that long let alone civilization, so the Earth isn't all that different in terms of land masses compared to when the first civilization started. Also something that big would definitely show up on scans and under water archeology is a thing. But maybe there's dinosaurs down there. Again no there really isn't, if something that big were there we would have come across it a long time ago. Even if we hadn't seen it directly, we would see signs of it being there. But scientists are discovering new species every day in the oceans! Yeah but have you met scientists? They go crazy for some kind of weird jellyfish which is exactly like most other jellyfish but is technically a different species. Most people wouldn't be able to tell those species apart, only people who really know their stuff can. All of the big stuff has been found.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

We know pretty much all there is to know about the moon. The oceans are much more complex, so there is a lot more to learn.

So you're saying we know more about the moon than the ocean.

Weird way to agree with the post but okay.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Well no, if you think that I've failed to communicate it properly. Sorry for that. I mean the exact opposite.

Say for example we have some unit of knowledge called T. The moon has in this hypothetical unit about 1000T of possible knowledge and humans know about 900T of things about the moon. In this case the oceans would have at least 1000000T of possibility knowledge and humans know about 800000T. We thus know much more about the oceans than we could even ever know about the moon.

You might argue that we know 90% about the moon and only 80% about the oceans and thus know less about the oceans than the moon. But this fails on three parts:

First of all, we can't know what we don't know. So whilst we might guess the moon has somewhere around 1000T of total knowledge, we can't know this for sure. This means talking about percentages makes no sense. We can only say with some certainty there is orders of magnitudes more to learn about the oceans than there is about the moon.

Second of all, we can estimate the total number of knowledge about the moon is a relatively low order of magnitude compared to the order of magnitude of total knowledge possible about the oceans. This means the percentage is meaningless as even relatively little knowledge leads to a high percentage.

Third of all, knowledge isn't linear. There is always low hanging fruit that can be learnt with little efforts and says a lot about what a thing is. Then as it is studied further, more details emerge which fill in the gaps. The gaps in knowledge get smaller and smaller, and the overall picture stays more and more the same. As I said we've studied the overall structure of the ocean and focused down where interesting stuff is.

Thus comparing knowledge based on percentages makes little sense.

These kinds of things are often used to justify things that aren't grounded in reality. Such as the lost civilization. It's in the same vain as something having a non zero chance of happening means it can happen. For example there is a non zero chance your atoms scatter within the next nanosecond. It's theoretically possible but can't happen in the real world.

Hope this makes more sense to you.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I feel bad that you went to such lengths to explain it (I appreciate the effort don't get me wrong) but I already knew what you meant.

I was just poking fun at the wording since technically if I know 100% about a pebble then technically I know more about that pebble than the ocean. Because I don't know 100% about the ocean.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You know there's more in space than just our moon, right?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yes, but the post was specifically about the moon?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

Shit I thought I had a chance to be snarky

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