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Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 14, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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all our telescopes and space surveys are lying to us

We're lying to the telescopes. The telescopes say there's something massively wrong with our model of the universe - dark matter and dark energy make up 95% of the universe's energy. That leaves a lot of space for aliens to dwell, likely rendering stars obsolete. From energy alone, they're pretty irrelevant, merely a subset of that 5% conventional matter.

In theory we could burn wood for fuel for energy but in practice it's a hassle and inefficient compared to proper energy sources. Perhaps stars are similar. Green Man Intergalactic could make 20% returns on a Dyson Swarm but 35% on a dark energy plant, he'll choose the latter every single time.

Either stars and all known baryonic matter are peanuts compared to the real structure of the universe or general relativity is seriously broken. Regardless, we aren't in a good position to say 'there are no aliens/no FTL' given we clearly don't understand what's going on out there.