Given infinite time we actually expect all particles in the universe eventually to spread out and collapse into nothingness, everything with structure and energy eventually pulled apart into flat uniform empty space.

The observable universe is actually relatively finite. We can only see, at best, objects that are a few dozen billion light years away from us now, but are rapidly receding away from us such that soon the light they emit will never reach us because the expansion of the universe means those galaxies are moving away from us faster than the speed of light.

So in theory maybe somewhere out in the non-observable universe, that is the universe outside of the realm of things we could ever possibly observe it's possible there are galaxies identical to ours, but within the observable universe that is basically impossible.

That is of course referring to matter in this universe. It's entirely possible that there are infinite parallel universes which could have exactly the same configuration as this one or be slightly different, but we have no way to observe those if they exist.

I like these deep thinking questions …

Have you ever watched “The flash” well using that show for example and how they explain the multiverse is how I think the universe is . Thinking about the universe is so mind blowing because it seems so infinite with many possibilities , I feel once we can actually prove living human civilization in another plant and actually communicate with them then it’s going to be a whole different ball game !

What I have stated may not make sense to some but I tried my best to word it so it can make sense ….

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But have you looked at the back of your hand......ON WEED?!

Putting into a parking or graveyard orbit would be a ton of effort. But pruning it a bit to reduce drag once it's unmanned, and lifting it somewhat higher would be pretty easy. At this point, literally just a matter of cost.

Lunar gateway is, well, a gateway, not a permanently manned station

Safety isn't that much of a concern, it's a simplification but all of the places we're likely to put an orbiting station for the forseeable future are in the same ballbark of risk in terms of ease of access and return, obstacles, etc.

You can't separate physics and dollar cost since dollar cost is directly related to payload, quite simply delta v costs money.

Launches play a big part... Like, the ISS is low enough that it suffers a lot from atmospheric drag and its orbit needs frequent boosts (and that'll get worse as the atmosphere warms). But obviously higher up = harder to get to. So that's just a plain old compromise, but it's ultimately one that can be handled within a really wide range- raising it occasionally is just a question of fuel, so that's meant that the low-ish orbit has worked well and that's probably still true.

The other being the orbital path of course, since you have to have the launches intersect with the orbit. And that's simple phyics really but not simple human-stuff. Where will we be launching from in 2040, and how will we be launching? Will we have equatorial stations, or more mobile floating launchers? Will be still be using chemical rockets for everything with no other options in sight, or will we be kettling stuff up, or have a big railgun up an equatorial mountain, or be launching payloads from the moon, or getting close to any of those? It all gets insanely complicated, right down to "which US politicians want to keep launching from their state" or "which countries will be friendly and stable enough to invest this stuff in"

An ISS replacement in the short to medium term, I bet 20 scottish pence would end up at a similar orbital height, but with a different track to suit current US launch sites and less or no thought to Russian cosmodromes. In the longer term I'd expect payload delivery to get easier and therefore a higher altitude to become more desirable, especially with a warming atmosphere, but for now it's almost certainly still better to be lower and to get mass there easier

Not all infinities are the same. The infinite numbers between 1 and 2 are not the same as the infinite numbers between 3 and 4, and they will never overlap.

"the bit where he says that no evidence doesn't mean it doesn't exist is frankly embarrassing" was pretty damn dismissive dude, GTFO with that dishonest-ass nonsense lol :D

If Infinity actually exists I don't think we'd even be able to understand what it means

Imagine hurtling a wrench at normal throwing speed in 0G and then think about how dumb it would be to actually do in a spaceship

They throw it slow because regardless of speed. It's going to make it to its target.

Sure. There are slow motion practical effects that help with dramatic cinematography but I mean...

Here watch this spacewalk there are very practical reasons why they don't move very fast. #1 being safety.

Why be snarky, it was a good question. Killing curiosity over here

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I have an idea.

Send up empty space shuttles, detach and load up the modules you want to save into the shuttle's bay, and land the shuttle safely.

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Ever take a long look at your hand, man?

Whoa.

at no point have i dismissed dark matter, i have only presented arguments against the evangelization of dark matter, which this article supports. you argued beside the point, and have now volunteered yourself to exit the conversation.

rest easy, your words are as sharp as you are

Maybe he means cost-effectively? It is the most inefficient and expensive part of the process.

Your point was some crude dismissal of dark matter based on what seems to be a gross misunderstanding you have. Sorry for correcting your misunderstanding. It must hurt your feelings, being corrected.

Okay, I concede you that. It started out as "matter we can't see," and today a popular interpretation of that is that it doesn't interact with light at all. My mistake.

But, that also wasn't really my point.

> it's called dark matter because it only interacts gravitationally, not because we can't explain why it should be there.

No, the notion that it only interacts gravitationally came much later. Previously it was assumed that it might simply be... dark matter, regular old gas, dust, rocks, stellar remnants, black holes, etc. that were not luminous. Take a look at MACHOs and WIMPs for theories about "dark matter" being regular standard model stuff that simply wasn't glowing.

It wasn't until decades later that "it only interacts gravitationally" became the dominating notion, entirely based on the preponderance of observations indicating something like that.

Is there a way to sell it to a private sector and keep it in orbit?

it's called dark matter because it only interacts gravitationally, not because we can't explain why it should be there. dark matter is not a bad model, it does explain observations well. we are not exactly in the early stages as far as that is concerned. nor are we in the early stages of attempting to explain what exactly that matter is, a lot of things have been ruled out that seemed promising at first. i would agree that the dark matter hypothesis is the most attractive solution available to us now, but the continuous failure of dark matter particle experiments, along with no unified theory to work from, makes it difficult to say that it is probably the right one. General relativity does not predict dark matter - we infer it from our observations. No experiment has been able to confirm hypotheses about the origins of dark matter, and there have been quite a few of them so far. It's good that we've come up with lots of ideas, and it can't hurt to keep trying, but we also know that general relativity and the standard model are not complete theories, so it seems unreasonable to me to argue that, because general relativity is nearly perfect, we shouldn't doubt dark matter.

Gerbils? Gerbils you say?!

Some day AI will make this a reality…