1. Standard memberbunnyknight
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    04 Jan '20 06:21
    Was wondering how long our recorded music will last and here's my thoughts: As long as civilization remains reasonably undamaged, people will continue to copy music to newer storage formats. But if technology or humanity comes to an end, most of our music will probably degrade within a century, unless a more permanent storage medium is used, like etching the music onto gold discs or quartz crystals. But if Earth gets pulverized by an extinction level event, that won't be enough. Copies of those recordings would need to be scattered across other planets or moons, marked by some sort of marker so they can be found by some future intelligence. Extinction of our civilization would be bad enough, but erasure of our great music would make it so much worse.
  2. Subscribersonhouse
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    04 Jan '20 15:00
    @bunnyknight
    So what happens if all that transpires and Earth is gone, humans are gone and a space faring civilization finds our data but they don't use sound, say they communicate with smells. What then?
  3. Standard memberbunnyknight
    bunny knight
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    04 Jan '20 17:26
    @sonhouse said
    @bunnyknight
    So what happens if all that transpires and Earth is gone, humans are gone and a space faring civilization finds our data but they don't use sound, say they communicate with smells. What then?
    Good question ... In that case, after a billion years and dozens of new civilizations, one of them might use sound and when their historians discover our billion-year-old music they will be so happy and amazed they'll turn us into ancient legends.
  4. Subscribersonhouse
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    04 Jan '20 17:46
    @bunnyknight
    Well it could happen.....
    What if the rules of the universe says only one civilization is allowed per galaxy? Plenty of civilizations in the universe, billions of them but unless they come up with a star drive going a trillion times the speed of light, they would never find us.
    So suppose that happens, an advanced civilization does exactly that and comes to our galaxy.
    How would they find the remains of our civilization where our planet would be one in tens of billions?

    BTW, even at a trillion times the speed of light it would still take a full month to travel the width of the universe...
  5. Standard memberbunnyknight
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    04 Jan '20 20:58
    @sonhouse said
    @bunnyknight
    Well it could happen.....
    What if the rules of the universe says only one civilization is allowed per galaxy? Plenty of civilizations in the universe, billions of them but unless they come up with a star drive going a trillion times the speed of light, they would never find us.
    So suppose that happens, an advanced civilization does exactly that and comes to o ...[text shortened]... ion times the speed of light it would still take a full month to travel the width of the universe...
    We'd need to set up a beacon at each location of our music archive. But the bigger problem might be this: I think advanced civilizations gave up on difficult interstellar travel and instead retreated into a world of virtual reality. Just imagine the progress of our video games in the past 30 years ... now imagine the next 30 years, and then 400 years.
  6. Subscribersonhouse
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    06 Jan '20 00:48
    @bunnyknight
    Sure but that is still local. The speed of light means we can't have VR from a computer on Earth to a dude on Mars. If it takes 20 minutes for a command to be given and then 40 minutes go by between command and execution there will be no VR.
    VR can only work if you are MILLISECONDS away from the computer.

    That doesn't stop you from building a 'galactic encyclopedia' with radio waves or Lasers or gravity waves, neutrino beams, whatever we come up with in the next few hundred years and have receivers on distant stars, SOMETHING has to go to that star first and so far that journey will be max close to c and even if it's within one foot per hour away from c the trip, say its 1000 light years to that star, the spacecraft may THINK it only takes a few hours due to being so close to the speed of light but in reality OUR clocks say the trip took 1000 years and then the signal would have to have been being transmitted for 1000 years before the craft left so there would be any kind of signal when the receiver gets up and running and presumably retransmitting that received signal, which turns that device into what is called a transponder, which takes a received signal and retransmits it maybe on another frequency maybe at a different direction and so forth so after a few tens of thousands of years an operational galactic encyclopedia could theoretically be built but the problem there is it would still be 'local' in a cosmological sense. That signal say some of it leaks out of our galaxy, it won't be picked up by even the NEAREST galaxy for a couple million years. It would be difficult indeed for stuff like that technology to be built to work for millions of years and that signal would be very far down in the mud of other radio, IR, UV, gravity wave, neutrino stuff floating around the detection would be difficult indeed maybe requiring an antenna of billions of kilometers across to get sufficient gain.
    But that would only be to allow some kind of comm between two 'close' galaxies, there are hundreds of billions of such galaxies, literally BILLIONS of light years apart, so any such signal even assuming detectors could detect such signals, said signals would not get there for billions of years. By THAT time our whole solar system could have turned into a red giant and Earth consumed in the atmosphere of that new red giant. And maybe the same with other main sequence stars in our galaxy.
    You see the problem with all that galactic encyclopedia or VR kind of tech?
  7. Standard memberbunnyknight
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    06 Jan '20 19:45
    @sonhouse
    Things look mighty grim for the future of our music. However, there might be a bright side; all it would take is one couple, Mr. Adam Smith and Ms. Eve Smith, to leave doomed Earth and start life somewhere else, and take with them a crystal containing the entire music archive of Earth.
  8. Subscribersonhouse
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    06 Jan '20 22:26
    @bunnyknight
    And then found by beings communicating with light beams😉
  9. Standard memberbunnyknight
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    06 Jan '20 23:12
    @sonhouse
    Whether our music gets passed on to future human survivors, or some alien intelligence, all it matters is that it doesn't perish. I'm optimistic, and I believe that within 2 billion years our entire galaxy plus Andromeda will be dancing to Strauss, Rihanna and Eric Clapton.
  10. Subscribersonhouse
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    06 Jan '20 23:39
    @bunnyknight
    Within 2 billion years, Andromeda and the milky way will be one galaxy, they are racing towards each other as we speak😉
    Doesn't mean much for existing stars actually, it means a lot of new stars will be born of the dust and rocks of the collisions.
  11. Standard memberbunnyknight
    bunny knight
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    07 Jan '20 01:15
    @sonhouse said
    @bunnyknight
    Within 2 billion years, Andromeda and the milky way will be one galaxy, they are racing towards each other as we speak😉
    Doesn't mean much for existing stars actually, it means a lot of new stars will be born of the dust and rocks of the collisions.
    Even better! That means the Andromedans and Milky Wayans will be dancing together to our ancient music.
  12. Subscribersonhouse
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    07 Jan '20 11:28
    @bunnyknight
    News at 11😉
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