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this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2026
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Science Memes
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Imagine a terrestrial planet that is Earthlike in all respects, but it simply has more persistent cloud cover, such that seeing an open cloudless sky is miraculously unlikely, as unlikely as humans directly witnessing an asteroid impact.
No ground based astronomy.
No technological discoveries or culture that derives from ground based astronomy.
No celestial navigation on the ground.
Very different / stunted / more difficult cartography.
Technological civilization is capable of emerging, but it would not be able to well understand anything beyond the terra firma, not untill it generated aircraft capable of breaching the cloud cover layer, and then developed airborne observatories.
"Nightfall", by Arthur C. Clarke is a short story based on this premise.
Except in the story it's a complex multiple-star solar system that makes it very rare for all suns to set at once.
Edit: It's actually Isaac Asimov.
Augh!
You're telling me there's an Arthur C Clarke short that I missed?
Damnit I am losing so many nerd points today.
It's an Isaac Asimov story. An excellent one I cite frequently with regards to human ability to cope with increasing rate of change.
Whoops! That's my mistake.
points regained, even doubled!
Well, the church threw us back about a millenia, so what's a few centuries.
Is there a particular instance you're referring to here? Because contrary to popular belief, the church has historically been big on investing in what we now call science.
For instance, although the trial of Galileo is often characterised as "big bad church holds us back because religion is opposed to heliocentrism", there was actually a lot of legitimate scientific beef against Galileo. Although he ended up being right about heliocentrism, he didn't really have good evidence to support his claims; He didn't understand Kepler's laws of planetary motion, and his telescope produced so many aberrant artifacts that astronomers who use it were reasonable to be dubious of his claims.
If you'd like to learn more, here's an excellent video by Dr Fatima, an astrophysicist turned science communicator. The philosopher of science, Paul Feyerabend also uses Galileo as a case study in his book Against Method
Because religion contradicts scientific approach to thinking. I personally like the way in which Carl Sagan gets rid of all the "noise" information when investigating how the world works. Religion is a noise
If you're a fan of Sagan, you might be interested to hear that he considered that "science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality".
Religion might be noise for you, but for countless people across history, it has been what has helped them to cut through noise. Religion unequivocally does not contradict scientific thinking — what we understand as scientific thinking wouldn't even exist today if not for religion.
Things don't have to be a binary of religion vs science. Religion has so often been the driving inspiration for brilliant scientists across the world, for much of recorded history. And in parallel, there have been religious scholars who find spiritual awe and fulfillment in seeing scientific advances.
That definitely doesn't mean that everything is always great between religion and science — I'm very much not a fan of things like evangelical Christians who claim that dinosaurs weren't real, or the Taliban who prevent women from being educated. Those are examples of religion being used as a cudgel against science, but if we want to genuinely resist that kind of thing, it's not productive to instead try to use science to bash religion. Our best resistance is to embrace the fact that science and religion can and do coexist, in many different shapes and forms.
Part of my stance here is pragmatic — I'm a scientist myself, and I am filled with dread when I see how anti-science rhetoric is flourishing nowadays, and I am resentful as hell towards the many religious assholes who are feeding that. However, if I direct my beef towards religion as a whole, then that's a heckton of people that I've given up on trying to convince. I believe that the scientific method should be a tool that everyone has available in their toolbox, even if it's not something their daily life often requires — it's a useful perspective to have on hand no matter your background.
However, I'm realistically never going to convince someone to give up their faith in exchange for this tool, especially as I am not religious myself and thus don't properly understand what purpose religion serves them. I can make a far more compelling case for science if it isn't framed as something that seeks to displace their faith. And you never know, once someone does have scientific thinking as a tool in their toolbox, and they know how to use it, they might end up relying on it more and more. I personally know many scientists who have experienced this kind of journey. Though giving up on faith entirely isn't required, as evidenced by the many excellent scientists I have known whose religious faith drives their passion for research — the best biochemistry tutor I ever had was even a reverend.
Science and religion are not incompatible, and there is evidence of that strewn across history and society. To ignore that fact would be to betray the principles of empiricism that the scientific method is built upon.
Yes I am well aware that he advocated against religion but was pro spirituality.
The thing about religion and science is - religious scientists believe that absurd things in religious books are just a metaphysical explanation, though if you read it you just can not give a second meaning to it. Or they believe that god and his books exists outside of logical explanation. There are lots of religious people who practiced science and made their contribution. If mistakes like that exist in such a book of "extraordinary claims", with some shallow but definitely not "extraordinary evidences", that is just an "intellectual mistake" to believe it.
We already know that ppl despite all the intellect will be prone to believe what they were programmed for in their young age.
Any scientific base for that claim? Because there seems to be way to much religious scientist for it to be true.
Have you read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?
Hah, actually no I have not.
-1 nerd point lol
Don't want to spoil anything because you really should, but this is very reminiscent of a plot point in one of the books.
Damn, only now did I realize I've only read one book in a series
This hoopy frood really knows where the towel is.
Good news: it's all public domain (edit: it isn't). Whole series is there, at least the public domain ones. There was a newer one that wasn't public domain when I last checked, though that was a long time ago and it might be now.
Don't read it for nerd points. Read it to find out why it's associated with nerd points.
Edit: disregard above, no idea where I got that idea from, maybe from how easy it is to find the full novel online just by doing a search for it, I must have figured and then somehow along the way it turned into a fact in my mind.
Ahem.
https://archive.org/details/the-hitch-hikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-read-by-stephen-moore_202302
Not the PDF, but, also not not the book, technically.
Uhh, I couldn't see anywhere that it's in the public domain. Could you point me to a source for that?
Turns out I just made that up, no idea where it came from at least.
Series? More then one? So long and thanks for all the books!
the universe's only 5 part trilogy!
I wrote and tried publishing a short story about a species like that.
where only occasionally people on top of mountains see stars, and they chuck it as a consequence of low pressure. eventually they invented flight, and assume pilots going high enough to see stars are having cognitive issues due to lack of air.
They asked pilots to draw the stars they see, and they get different drawings (they sent pilots at different times of the year because they couldn't ever expect stars to shift) and assume its proof that thise stars are a cognitive artifact.
Eventually a pilot swears they are real and can actually use then to navigate, skepticism, he proves it. brand new research field emerges.
Although the story focuses more on deep DEEP time an omniengineering. (A term I just made up because mega engineering is a concept way too small compared to the one in the story).
If you want I don't mind putting that story in the conversation.
Post it for sure
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PTzQQKXLnBL1ICUK8IYa8YoUSD2ncQk5-jse-FaFPAI/edit?usp=drivesdk
tried putting the text in a comment, but it's too long, I enabled comments.
I loved it. Thanks for sharing!
Given who you are, it means a lot.
That was a good read! I liked the pacing, the dawning not quite horror.
I liked it. It seems to fall apart at the end a bit but this is a really cool concept for sure.
if you don't mind. could you elaborate? it's ok if you don't, I am rudely asking for free labor.
Seems like you were going for a bit of a twist ending where the letter is actually a threat. It didn't really land for me.
The threat could be more concise and pointed which would give it more impact. Instead of speculating about how humans may react and then saying the aliens will counter it, maybe just say something that amounts to "resistance is futile".
Its also not exactly clear to me what "the problem" is. Its that their race will someday come to an end? There is a lot to be said about this idea and I think you should explore the philosophy of that more. How does prolonging their existence save them? Seems to me like they're still left with the inevitable.
the problem is the inevitability of the heat death of the universe, and the meaningless of existence if there's no life at the end.
While the solution is to optimize the entire universe, though massive galactic engineering (using plausible physics) to maximize their research in order to break thermodynamics. I'll try to make it clearer.
the ending is clear, but wether it's good or bad is ambiguous and up to the reader, as they basically incarcerated humanity on earth and took away any possibility of humanity ever leaving earth. without any negative effects on the planet or humans.
My issue with "the problem" is that this doesn't really make sense to me philosophically. The science is more or less fine.
If they are thinking on the most macro of time scales then doom in 10 years or doom 10^1000 years is still doom. 100 is not any closer to infinity than 10 is. The inevitable is still inevitable.
They admit that they cant use suns from other galaxies. So, even if the universe is infinite, that doesn't help them. Galaxies are not. No matter how slow they make their sun, it will still burn out some day.
Maybe I'm missing the part about breaking thermodynamics.
keep cracking layers of reality, what's possible when understanding deeper physics enables unpredictable things. I'll have to make it clearer
Shit yeah go for it, I love those kinds of stories!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PTzQQKXLnBL1ICUK8IYa8YoUSD2ncQk5-jse-FaFPAI/edit?usp=drivesdk
tried putting the text in a comment, but it's too long, I enabled comments.
This is a Doctor Who Christmas Episode
Well, as soon as they invent radio and experience interferens radio astronomi will evolve... I guess?
Project Hail Mary has a bit about this, don't want to say more to keep it spoiler free.
Haven't seen it yet, I appreciate the nonspoiling =D
iirc that detail they are refering to, didnt make it into the movie.
Yes, correct, they skipped a lot of the harder science for the movie to keep it a reasonable length. Movie was still very good though!
yes. both are good in their own. It's definitely worth to both watch the movie, and also read the book.
Definitely read the book. The book is about the existential elation at discovering a solution to a dire problem, so knowing a poorly-communicated version of every solution will likely ruin the book for anyone serious about the hard Sci-Fi.
I have written a post about exactly this phenomenon, arguing that that's how most animals/insects see the world (assuming their sense of vision isn't good enough or they just don't care to look up). Apparently i was wrong, even insects can see the stars and navigate due to their light (milky way navigation).
I would instantly buy your book!
Hah, I haven't written one, but maybe check out Arthur's short story elsewhere in the comments!
He's got uh... watermelon emojis in his name.