[7thaccount]

James Cameron knows as he has been to the bottom of Challenger deep :)

In all seriousness it doesn't mean we've explored literally everything, but a lot of the wonder is missing. It's frustrating that there might be millions of planets we can inhabit out there with limitless exploration....maybe billions or even trillions of worlds depending on how many galaxies to include, but it's all out of reach. We haven't even left the kuiper belt not to mention the Oort Cloud and have no idea how to do something remotely like warp to reach distant stars in a reasonable amount of time and maybe never will. Star Trek may be the wrong solution too. Perhaps it's more likely we have a singularity event first and can then increase our intelligences rapidly and then figure something out. Or maybe we just build our own simulations to dwell in and direct our exploration more inwards <End Rant/>

[Qem]

If everything else doesn't work, at least we can treat the whole planet Earth as a very slow, random walking spaceship. If we learn how to maintain a technological civilization here sustainably, without wrecking it's life support systems, it will take us to the next destination in a bit over 1Myr, for free: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_710

[RetroTechie]

Or bring us a lot closer in a 'measly' 30..40k years. See "Distant future and past encounters" here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars_and_br...

Maybe that's our 'test' as intelligent lifeform: have opportunities to 'jump ship' to other solar systems, potentially discover alien life there, if only we can survive & maintain space-travel capability long enough for other star(s) to come within hopping distance?

[Terr_]

Looking at that little rotating starfield, it reminds me of an idle problem I occasionally think of: "If I was somehow lost in space and found by helpful aliens, what useful information could I provide--from memory--for locating my home planet again?"

The best I can think of offhand are ratios that could help them filter existing records:

1. It's the third planet from the Sun, the majority of it is covered with water, etc.

2. It has a moon 1/6 its mass

3. The largest planet in the system has a little over 70% of all the planetary mass

4. The largest planet in the system is 5.2x further from the Sun than my third-planet

But on a larger scale... Somewhere around the middle distance of an arm in a galaxy? I doubt I would have triangulation distances from major quasars memorized.

[jfengel]

I get the frustration, but it also sounds like a whiny teenager. "Mom, I'm bored." "You could read a book, or play a game, or go for a walk." "All of those things are boring."

It always sounds like an excuse to me. They've picked a thing that they can't do and set it as the only meaningful goal, to avoid having to do anything that might actually matter.

I'm sorry that they got denied the thing that they specifically want to do. They can join the line with all the kids that fail to become movie stars and tech CEOs. It's a club called "everybody", and we meet at the bar.

[7thaccount]

I don't understand what you're trying to say. Nobody is saying everything is boring, they're just saying the kind of exploration that was possible for most of human history and which may be possible in the next thousand years or so is no longer available to us. That's it. Just an observation and a longing.

[forgotpwd16]

When we have reached the point to explore extrasolar worlds, we will probably have also reached the point that a spacecraft can map an entire planet as soon as it has reached it.

[7thaccount]

True, but you'll still be the first humans climbing it's mountains and walking through it's forests and beaches. It still counts.

[massysett]

Or the wonder is right here and we just don’t see it. That was the point of “ Star Trek IV”: The aliens came to Earth, and our conceit is that they would only come to talk to us.

[7thaccount]

There's surely wonder in our planet including creatures like dolphins, whales, octopi (is that the plural form), monkeys, and many others. Scientists are working on trying to better understand how those animals work.

[GoblinSlayer]

Science (or knowledge in broad sense) will be always unexplored, because humans are born ignorant.