How do you think the world will look like in 2070

[Twisted Cyclone 🚓 6,259]

Hopefully not wiped out in nuclear war. Oh wait... That'll happen in 7 more years. Not 2070.

[TopQuark 409]

Might want to temper your expectations there. I mean FTL travel is still a pretty damn far way off. Me, I'd be happy for just sustained habitats in orbit by 2070. 

 

Well, I don't mean a full-blown schematic of a warp engine, just a mathematical basis, of which we have several now. They just need to be refined so that power requirements are within the realm of possibility, or wait for power generation technology to catch up.

Edited January 18, 2016 by TopQuark

[Steel Accord 6,660]

Well, I don't mean a full-blown schematic of a warp engine, just a mathematical basis, of which we have several now. They just need to be refined so that power requirements are within the realm of possibility, or wait for power generation technology to catch up.

 

Ah I see, more reasonable. There is a theory that one could suspend a spacecraft in a tachyon particle field to sort of cheat the law of lightspeed. As tachyon's lie on the other side of that law, e.g. they can't go slower than the speed of light. So if we could somehow use them or a similar principal, than we could achieve quite literally any speed.

[TopQuark 409]

Ah I see, more reasonable. There is a theory that one could suspend a spacecraft in a tachyon particle field to sort of cheat the law of lightspeed. As tachyon's lie on the other side of that law, e.g. they can't go slower than the speed of light. So if we could somehow use them or a similar principal, than we could achieve quite literally any speed.

 

My personal favourite is the Alcubierre drive - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

[Twilight Dirac 721]

 

We probably have a long way to go before heading to other stars.  First we need to cut the cost of getting into orbit by an order of magnitude or more.  Then we need to start colonizing the solar system, which is a big place.  By the time we are actually ready to head out into interstellar space, we will probably have radically revised how to go about FTL, figured out a way around that whole causality violation in certain inertial reference frames problem that occurs for anything causal escaping the light cone, and hopefully made the whole process much more energy efficient.  Even without Einstein's Relativity throwing a monkey wrench into FTL travel, the energy cost associated with relativistic speeds are still prohibitive.  We really need some sort of ingenious physics cheat to cross the gulf between stars.

 

 

 

On 1/12/2016 at 11:06 PM, SunBurn said:

And nothing on the melting ice mass either? Let's not forget about water's enthalpy of fusion. That's the amount of heat that is absorbed or released when a substance goes from solid to liquid or vise-versa. The source states water's enthalpy of fusion to be 334.774 J/g, equivalent to 334.774 kJ/kg. So if you're going to melt 1 kg of ice at 0ºC, it's going to take 334.774 kJ of heat to turn ice to liquid water at 0ºC. Only afterwards can heat start to raise the water's temperature. If we round the specific heat of water to 4.2 kJ/(kg*K) (Source), the same heat needed to melt 1 kg of ice without raising the temperature could raise the temperature of the same mass of water by 79.7ºC (143.5ºF). So yeah, that's a lot of heat being absorbed when ice melts and in a relatively compact and lightweight package.

 

There has been a lot of back an forth when it comes to sea ice.  Ice has been melting in the arctic, but there has been considerable sea ice expansion in the antarctic.  And this doesn't explain why sea ice is only having an effect now while the current warming trend has going on for nearly a century.  And if the effect is so obvious then why did all the IPCC models miss it?  The enthalpy of fusion isn't exactly a thermodynamic secret.  At the end of the day you can come up with an endless number of excuses for why the models don't work, but the only course of action is to fix them and see if you can make a reasonable projection out a decade or so once the fixes have been incorporated, and repeat the process until the models work.

Edited May 27, 2020 by Twilight Dirac

[Tranquil Claw 80]

Here is more or less a rundown of the situation in warp drives. If power becomes a problem you might want to look at what people have been doing recently with magnets and magnetic fields. Plenty of not well known impossibilities going on in the world.

 

[Anneal 2,197]

These events should most certainly happen in the nezt six decades:

 

- A good amount of countries will be forced to change their economies and energy sources as not just oil, but several other metals and even a few rare earth metals are not meeting up to exponentially increasing demands.

 

- In return asteroid mining is made a lot more possible and is used as a replacement for the already depleting resources on our planet. Also, fusion energy becomes viable and mostly replaces nonrenewables and possibly even fission energy.

 

- Serious global warming change that will take several decades to restore.

 

- Colonization of some of the solar system's planets and moons.

 

- Life expectancy reaches 100 in some countries if nothing wrong happens. Also almost all countries are no longer considered "developing" and poverty is rare.

[20% Cooler Than Cake 161]

In a worst case scenario, the world population will continue to rise at a high rate, and soon overpopulation and food shortages pose a major threat.  Luckily, judging from the rate of technological advancements since the 1700s, we're most likely going to see technology develop at a rate never seen before, so this could be used to mass produce food, or who knows...maybe establish space colonies?  However, there is a downside to this.  If technology and science do accelerate, then our messed up human nature could drive us to create far more destructive, secret weapons, and make the atomic bomb look like a shot gun in comparison.  That could start another race for arms and a World War III, if we're not careful.  I believe that our leaders will find a way to avoid this, though global warming is another issue, and if governments don't act fast, our climate is only going to get far worse.  So, eventually these problems, particularly overpopulation, are going to force us to find a way to migrate away from this planet.  Can't stay on good old Earth forever, so lets hope that NASA and other private space companies are up to the challenge, because otherwise, we're all doomed. 

Edited January 30, 2016 by 20% Cooler Than Cake

[Veil 260]

If I had to guess, the world will on fire by then.

[Grtxkkyz 388]

Something between Fallout Universe and the future of Choice of Robots.

[Anneal 2,197]

@, @@chirox the pony, @@Gestum, @, @@Side Bird, @@Twiggy,    

 

Jesus Christ, lighten up the lot of you! We're bronies, we're supposed to be the optimistic side of the internet!

 

Me, I'm not qualified or educated enough to make even a solid prediction, but I can tell you with admantium clad certainty what 2070 won't be, extinction nor dystopia! People have predicted the end of the world, since the beginning of the world. And you know what? I'm sick of it, I truly am. Every generation thinks there's is somehow the last, yet every generation has proven wrong and the world's kept spinning.

 

I'm not really a pessimist, but a big reason for this is kind of like Victor in Frankenstein; we think whenever something bad is going to happen, it's going to happen to us, because in our eyes the world practically revolved around our generation. Honestly we're a bit self-centered, so if there was going to be an apocalypse, it's going to happen now or in the near future, not the next few centuries.

 

Also nuclear war isn't very likely, as someone said before, it's basically like blowing up someone's house because he dented your mailbox.

[Ziggy + Angel + Rain 11,302]

Roundish.  Slightly egg-shaped.

[Steel Accord 6,660]

I'm not really a pessimist, but a big reason for this is kind of like Victor in Frankenstein; we think whenever something bad is going to happen, it's going to happen to us, because in our eyes the world practically revolved around our generation. Honestly we're a bit self-centered, so if there was going to be an apocalypse, it's going to happen now or in the near future, not the next few centuries.

 

Also nuclear war isn't very likely, as someone said before, it's basically like blowing up someone's house because he dented your mailbox.

 

Well in our defense, and as I sort of pointed out, we aren't the first. Every generation, or at least a slice of it, thinks it will be the last. I just think we have less and less excuse to do so as the world ages and we can look back with some hindsight. I mean, we laugh at previous generations for believing the world was flat, why can't we laugh at ourselves or our peers for existential egoism? I noticed this phenomenon in High School during history class.

 

"The world began with my perception so it can't possibly endure that long beyond it."

 

That isn't what was said but that seemed to be the perception. Especially when one of my peers asked.

 

"Did they have sex back then?"

 

 

"No Ishmael, the human race stopped reproducing in the 17th century!" Is what I felt like saying and while others weren't as oblivious as him, when really asked to put themselves in the shoes of someone back then, it really did seem like they couldn't make the connection that life, not big sweeping historical events, just life, happened before them.

 

That's part of why I don't like these doomsday prophecies and also don't like the more utopian projections. They're both couched in the ego of the speaker, hence me shrugging my shoulders and just saying that it won't be that radically different. The world . . . will just keep spinning.

 

Despite what some, I greatly suspect and for reasons that I can't fathom, actually want to happen.

Edited January 30, 2016 by Steel Accord

[Anneal 2,197]

Well in our defense, and as I sort of pointed out, we aren't the first. Every generation, or at least a slice of it, thinks it will be the last. I just think we have less and less excuse to do so as the world ages and we can look back with some hindsight. I mean, we laugh at previous generations for believing the world was flat, why can't we laugh at ourselves or our peers for existential egoism? I noticed this phenomenon in High School during history class. (snip)

 

That's part of why I don't like these doomsday prophecies and also don't like the more utopian projections. They're both couched in the ego of the speaker, hence me shrugging my shoulders and just saying that it won't be that radically different. The world . . . will just keep spinning.

 

Despite what some, I greatly suspect, actually want to happen.

Well, as one of my favorite historians Howard Zinn put it (in paraphrase), although there are people who are plainly cruel and morally wrong in the world, you can't ignore the fact that people who are genuinely benevolent or at the least want to develop also exist as well. If you are too rooted into negativity you lose the power to act.

 

Therefore you can't just look at the plantation slaveowners without looking at the abolitionists or slaves. You can't just look at the Nazis without looking at the amount of people who directly or indirectly resisted them. And you can't just look at the apartheid supporters in South Africa without looking at the groups of blacks and whites alike demanding racial equality and civil rights.

 

That's why I sort of hope for humanity not to at least cause its own extinction and genuinely see the future ahead filled with problems but also progress. And even if by some nigh impossible chance that some nutjob detonates a nuclear bomb, I'll be damn sure that there would be as much people helping each other and restoring civilization over the people destroying it.

[Steel Accord 6,660]

Well, as one of my favorite historians Howard Zinn put it (in paraphrase), although there are people who are plainly cruel and morally wrong in the world, you can't ignore the fact that people who are genuinely benevolent or at the least want to develop also exist as well. If you are too rooted into negativity you lose the power to act.

 

Therefore you can't just look at the plantation slaveowners without looking at the abolitionists or slaves. You can't just look at the Nazis without looking at the amount of people who directly or indirectly resisted them. And you can't just look at the apartheid supporters in South Africa without looking at the groups of blacks and whites alike demanding racial equality and civil rights.

 

That's why I sort of hope for humanity not to at least cause its own extinction and genuinely see the future ahead filled with problems but also progress. And even if by some nigh impossible chance that some nutjob detonates a nuclear bomb, I'll be damn sure that there would be as much people helping each other and restoring civilization over the people destroying it.

 

As I brought him up before, I point to Colonel Stanislav Petrov. I need no more proof of my faith in humanity than to know we were at the brink and had the excuse, and we chose to live.

[Unr3alGamer 230]

The world will not exist. Thanksgiving will be about killing indians and gravity will be non-existent.

[Black Sabbath 2,486]

As I brought him up before, I point to Colonel Stanislav Petrov. I need no more proof of my faith in humanity than to know we were at the brink and had the excuse, and we chose to live.

Yeah, let's ignore the fact that literally everybody else would have reported it and thus creating world war 3. I mean, this one guy didn't, so that obviously means that humans want to live.*

 

*that was sarcastic. 

[Steel Accord 6,660]

Yeah, let's ignore the fact that literally everybody else would have reported it and thus creating world war 3. I mean, this one guy didn't, so that obviously means that humans want to live.*

 

*that was sarcastic. 

 

Yes let's ignore that fact. Or rather, acknowledge it and live in the world he saved and strive to make it so that we won't have to put another in his position ever again.

 

*That was sincerity. You should try it some time, along with optimism.

Edited January 30, 2016 by Steel Accord

[Black Sabbath 2,486]

Yes let's ignore that fact. Or rather, acknowledge it and live in the world he saved so that we won't have to put another in his position ever again.

 

*That was sincerity. You should try it some time, along with optimism.

Or we can acknowledge that you can't base your entire argument on one guy, especially considering that everybody else would have created world war 3. 

 

Also, I prefer being a realist over an optimist. 

[Rawzy 1,302]

well since you say "looks", it sounds like you mean "appearance"...well....the world wouldn't really look any different than how it is now except for if we have like....world war 3 or something 

[Steel Accord 6,660]

Or we can acknowledge that you can't base your entire argument on one guy, especially considering that everybody else would have created world war 3. 

 

Also, I prefer being a realist over an optimist. 

 

You're right, I can't base my argument on him. But I'm not, he just adds to my existing faith in humanity. My argument comes from our world now treating Nuclear Armageddon as a bad outcome rather than a foregone conclusion that it was at the time, and the age of decentralization that followed the Cold War.

[Black Sabbath 2,486]

You're right, I can't base my argument on him. But I'm not

Let me rephrase that. You can't use one guy as evidence that humans want to live when everybody else would have created world war 3. Is that better?  

[Steel Accord 6,660]

Let me rephrase that. You can't use one guy as evidence that humans want to live when everybody else would have created world war 3. Is that better?  

 

I just said that I'm not using that as evidence of my argument.

[Black Sabbath 2,486]

I just said that I'm not using that as evidence of my argument.

Oh really, then why did you say this?

 

As I brought him up before, I point to Colonel Stanislav Petrov. I need no more proof of my faith in humanity than to know we were at the brink and had the excuse, and we chose to live.

[Steel Accord 6,660]

Oh really, then why did you say this?

 

That's not my argument though, that was just me sharing something I find inspiring with @,.

 

My actual argument that human civilization will survive to 2070 is that wars are not fought by massive power blocs with city leveling weapons but small units and increasingly precise methods of engagement. (Special Forces instead of waves of grunts. Predator drones replacing B-17s) The one thing that has stayed from the Cold War is nations competing economically and ideologically, and mostly in peace through trade and cultural exchange. The internet has also lessened the atmosphere of exclusion that distance maintained between people.

 

So, as I said in my very first post, I make no predictions of 2070 apart from humanity still being around when it comes.

Edited January 30, 2016 by Steel Accord