Von Neumann machines are fully automated, which is still too hard to do. A seed factory allows some human labor where needed. It just turns the output into self-expansion rather than cars or washing machines like a regular factory.

Also Von Neumann machines make an exact copy of themselves. That's "direct replication". They have to start with a full set of machines needed. Seed factories work like plant seeds. They start with the minimum set of equipment to allow growth, then eventually can make new starter sets. But the new starter sets are not identical to the grown factories.

Social progress is being held back by fear. Rural white people are afraid of losing their position on top of the "natural order of things" (their view, not mine). Having grown up in New York City in an immigrant family, I'm not afraid of people who are different than me. They are just people.

But if everyone is well enough off through productive means, you don't have to be afraid of losing out.

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I don't wanna talk tech. The people are what need therapy and help.

Edit consider the pace of technology advancement versus the pace of social progress.

Edit yes I understand Von Neumann Machines.

Have you seen my book on Seed Factories? That's the idea of a starter set of machines that are used to make more machines for itself until you have a full range of industry. Using "smart tools" (automation, robotics, software, and AI) it should mostly run itself. A member cooperative can split the cost and make it affordable.

The real magic happens when a mature factory starts spitting out new starter sets. Then it can grow exponentially.

I love these photos but man do they freak me out a bit. The universe is enormous.

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I don't know about that. I'm pushing 50 years old and I'm tired. I'm very fortunate career wise and economically, but still the drum of unending responsibility marches on. There is already more to explore than I will ever possibly have time for. Things getting even faster sounds even more stressful.

We are trying to process endless news, 600 new TV shows and movies a year, and constant alerts on digital devices through a brain designed 250,000 years ago.

Even when things are generally enjoyable feeling like you are always behind and missing out is hard enough for 80 years let alone 500!

Its early universe so probably no life back then

I wasn't expecting to be able to zoom in that much on the zoomable link. Its amazing.

There are probably intelligent life forms out there, we might already have seen planets that have them but they're just way too far and we're probably seeing millions/billions of years in the past.

Hello u/Country_Royal, your submission "If someone were to hypothetically put a sun next to ours as a binary system, would this increase the length of the habitable zone radius of the system?" has been removed from r/space because:

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Hello u/Negative-Fan8460, your submission "Shouldn't the universe be a hollow sphere ?" has been removed from r/space because:

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Possible when we can harvest galactic Amounts of resources and the notion of Terraforming is less fiction.

> But matter can't be created nor destroyed right?

Sure it can, nuclear reactors turn mass into energy - or is it even matter if the released energy is actually the binding energy of a nucleus which appears as mass?

Energy can't be created or destroyed though (except by the big bang apparently), only transformed from one form to another.

> How did small atoms expand themselves to become size of galaxies.

They didn't start off as atoms, the Universe was far too hot for atoms to form for about 380,000 years - and the CMB is the remains of the light that was flying around at the moment when things were cool enough that atoms could form and the universe became transparent.

If you're wondering why it didn't all collapse into black holes at that density, we think that might be where the black holes at the center of galaxies came from…

Also, the expansion doesn't have a border or edge, it's more useful to imagine new empty space being injected everywhere all at once, like infinite raisin bread rising.

> I thought big bang was like a supernova where a massive amount of matter exploded

Nope, it's a time-like surface from which energy and spacetime poured forth, and could reasonably be described as a white hole - you can draw a ray in literally any direction you like, and it'll eventually intersect the big bang at the moment of our universe's creation.

> which external force was applied on universe to stretch it?

We have no compelling evidence for anything outside our 3+1 perceivable dimensions, and what we can see is same-ish in every direction for as far as we can see, so why not an internal force?

It's called dark energy fwiw, and it's an ongoing field of study since we know almost nothing about it

*dark energy not dark matter

The short answer is, we don’t know.

I highly recommend you watch this lecture by Lawrence Krauss, “A Universe From Nothing”

I understand quite a lot now thanks. But i still don't get where did the dark matter come from that's expanding the universe even more and accelerates it🤔

Try Google "big expansion" The baloon is a good example, but think of the Atoms of gas inside, and not the surface. each trying to get as far away from each other, while it gets bigger without adding anything. thats why we cant see futher away than 13b lj. It was too dense for light to travel and too hot for Atoms to condense. At least thats how i understand the latest models as Amateur...

E: spelling

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In your analogy, and I can't stress that it is an analogy enough, the surface of the balloon is representing 3d space. We don't see the interior of the balloon because it's not the universe it's the shape that the universe is curved around.

What we actually observe is that distances on a cosmic scale are all getting longer at a range proportional to their length. This is distinct in some ways from observing objects moving away from us, specifically it isn't restricted by the speed of light as the objects don't really have the velocity that the changing distance to them implies.

> How did small atoms expand themselves to become size of galaxies.

They didn’t. Until roughly 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the entire universe was a thick opaque cloud of plasma of electrons and nuclei.

As the universe expanded, it cooled off enough to let the plasma become atoms, and the cosmos became transparent.

It is space itself that’s expanding, not the particles.

> I thought big bang was like a supernova where a massive amount of matter exploded.

This is a common misconception. A supernova is the explosion of a particular size star that occupies a point in space. The Big Bang was not an explosion, but the expansion of space.

Imagine infinite points packed together with infinite density. Those points occupy everywhere. There is no inside or outside.

Now imagine each of those infinite points moving further from its adjacent points, with the space between them expanding at an increasing rate.

For 380,000 years, the universe was entirely comprised of plasma but then it cooled enough that the electrons and nuclei combined to form atoms, molecules, dust, stars, planets and so on.

We have evidence of the above (post-380k years) since the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB).

>which external force was applied on universe to stretch it?

The best current hypothesis is Dark Energy, but we can only measure its effect. It falls outside the known laws of physics.

Edit: some relevant reading

Can you figure out centre of a complete eclipse balloon? Big bang is that tiny fraction of second between zero air in Balloon to perfect eclipse balloon. And it's not done yet. It's still blowing outwards dominated by dark energy. Think of galaxies as polka dots on balloon when their is no air. Now with a air filled balloon those dots are light years apart. It's not a 100% accurate picture as it's missing gravity and why some galaxies are bound to be merged whereas others drift apart. But it's a good imagination to clear your head that there is no center. Air is filled in the balloon everywhere at same time.

Or the balloon is so humongous that we only see a tiny fragment of it that just feels flat, hard to tell with the data we're given

But matter can't be created nor destroyed right? How did small atoms expand themselves to become size of galaxies. I thought big bang was like a supernova where a massive amount of matter exploded. But if universe really starched itself like rubber then how does dark matter exist in between galaxies and which external force was applied on universe to stretch it?

But the Big Bang didn’t happen in the same way as an inflating balloon. Your premise is false. The expansion happened everywhere. That is, each measurable point in space grew (and continues to grow) further from all other points in space. This is called inflation and expansion.

Edit: I should add that for this reason, every point is the centre of the universe relative to all other points. If you were able to teleport to the edge of our observable universe, you’d be at the centre of a similarly-sized observable universe “bubble.”