For me it is Cellular Automata, and more precisely the Game of Life.

Imagine a giant Excel spreadsheet where the cells are randomly chosen to be either “alive” or “dead”. Each cell then follows a handful of simple rules.

For example, if a cell is “alive” but has less than 2 “alive” neighbors it “dies” by under-population. If the cell is “alive” and has more than three “alive” neighbors it “dies” from over-population, etc.

Then you sit back and just watch things play out. It turns out that these basic rules at the individual level lead to incredibly complex behaviors at the community level when you zoom out.

It kinda, sorta, maybe resembles… life.

There is colonization, reproduction, evolution, and sometimes even space flight!

  • yunggwailo@kbin.social
    3·
    1 year ago

    It honestly pisses me off lol. I was so into space as a youngin but as Ive gotten a better grasp of the scale and what is actually possible in physics Ive realized its a massive boondoggle. Real pretty though

    • abbadon420@lemm.ee
      5·
      1 year ago

      I still refuse to believe that we can’t overcome the limit of the speed of light. Maybe it’s something like “warpspeed”, maybe it’s something like evolving beyond the need for a physical body, but I believe that at some (far) point in our future we will solve that problem.

      • yunggwailo@kbin.social
        31·
        1 year ago

        Speed of light is a bit of a misnomer, its really the speed of causality; the least amount of time it can take for one thing to interact with another. It will never be possible to overcome that limit unfortunately

        • Telodzrum@lemmy.ml
          12·
          1 year ago

          Nah, it’s impossible with our current understanding of the nature of the universe and it’s rules. Every time that has been true of something, humanity has eventually either solved the problem or rendered it moot. This one may just take a while.