77
Scientists Debate Humanity’s Response to Possible Intelligent Life Beyond Earth
(universalrecord.org)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 18 May 2026
77 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
84769 readers
3482 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I wonder how the conversation would go since the delay would be at best several years.
<Do you have any oil?
<Yes
<OMW, it seems like terrorists have infiltrated your government!
I was thinking about the quote "the rarest material in the universe is wood". I feel like oil is rarer. I of course get the sentiment about ignoring the beauty on Earth, but realizing there's probably less oil (and not being able to replace it) just put me in a bummed mood about the human condition.
"we're not gonna make it, are we? Humans, I mean"
Oil, or at least equivalents would be pretty easy to make from raw elements. It's just random chains and configurations of carbon with hydrogen, toss in some oxygen and nitrogen here and there with some other elements. Wood on the other hand is made from chains of This. It's so complex and tough that it took 70 million years for something to evolve that could break it down. We think of plastic as lasting forever, but there's already bacteria and fungi that can break it down, and it even breaks down in sunlight. So in comparison, after about 100 years, something evolved to break down plastic, but it took 700,000x as long for something to evolve to break down wood.