Trying to conceptualize the interchangeability of gravity and acceleration is a humbling mental exercise. It really pushes the bounds of our monkey brains that evolved to operate three dimensional space to make rocks and sticks work together. That, and that the speed of light is not just the universal speed limit but also deeply entwined with time itself. Einstein was a swell guy; he is sorely missed by our species.

If you have never studied about him personally here is a very good documentary (made before History channel went off exploring aliens). Speaking of aliens, a friend recently asked me if I believed they exist. The more I study what we know so far about physics the more the answer seems to be "maybe, but we'll never see them with our own eyes."

Thanks for that. I always appreciate a good docu

I always assumed the side plot of the gummy bears was about trying to find life on other planets and we basically can’t.

Frankly I think humans have a lot of growing to do, before we do that.

We won't need to grow if we can get some gummy berry juice.

I think it's entirely likely that humans will meet aliens in person someday, provided we can make it through the next few centuries without going extinct or suffering catastrophic technological collapse. If we can manage to get all our eggs out of the same basket and into multiple, independent, self-sustaining human populations that no longer need to rely on Earth's ecosystem for survival, then our species will have *billions* of years left before the universe ends to poke around looking for other species in the same situation, even without magic stargates or FTL drives or whatever.

Anything is possible; but to expand on my statement about our 'own eyes' I just don't see our corporeal bodies transcending the laws of physics.

Science fiction seems a bit narrow in it's projection that we will take to the stars encased within ships of our technology. Unfortunately, those ships would still be made of matter which is constrained by the same laws. We're going to have to figure out a way to bend space. That's going to take a lot of energy; probably requiring a Dyson swarm of sorts.

Directing remote molecular assembly probes once they had arrived in other systems to create a human colony is intriguing and more within the bounds of our current understanding of what is possible. Our bodies are extremely delicate chemical processes that operate within a very narrow margin. It's foreseeably impossible to reach even the closest star as a human within our prescribed lifetime. The Singularity may be a necessity to extend individual consciousnesses via computers.

Even if we 'have billions of years' we need to start "soon" in the span of thousands I think. The universe, expanding at an accelerating rate, means that once we leave Earth in transit the other galaxies will be moving away from us. To cross physical space would be like trying to climb the wrong escalator... which is moving faster and faster.

To channel Carl Sagan; we pretty much have only this pale blue dot for right now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Daedalus

We could reach Barnard's Star in a single human lifetime if we REALLY wanted to.

Politics just be a crazy bitch about things, yo.

Politics and money are the stopping points; yes. Back when it was about war we had no problem throwing open contracts at the best weapons manufacturing companies to take us beyond Earth. Now in peace we ironically make less progress.

It's really up to the super rich to get us there now. I'm following the progress of Breakthrough Starshot which is a feasible project but unfortunately unmanned.

Did you see the crazy and/or historically significant shit that happened with Tom DeLonge back in October?

Oh, absolutely. We're never going to get anywhere lumbering around in giant chunks of unintelligentluly designed meat. I think long before we take any significant steps out of the solar system we're going to be swapping in and out of custom designed bodies (organic, mechanical, and every shade in between) like teenage girls changing clothes and chuckling over virtual beers with our buddies, meat-born and algorithmic alike, about the bad old days when "human" was a taxonomic classification rather than a cultural identity.

In an interesting confluence of pursing my interests (market cycles) just a day after you posted this I came across a man named Roger Babson. A bit of an eccentric in his views of gravity (he thought it was an evil force) but he founded the Gravity Research Foundation