Comment by andrewstuart2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by andrewstuart2 | Hacker News Reader

Probably. Assuming they're correct. Our planet is 12,742km in diameter, yet we've only drilled 12.262km deep [1] (and we were wrong about how hot it was gonna be), and sent a human down ~10.900km [2] (and we still can't decide how deep we've actually been). Do we really think we understand the probability of alien life on another planet that well, given the amount of data we have on those planets, and that we're constantly proven wrong on our own?

And yet (either way) I'm not sure it really matters. No human has left our own planet for longer than 437.7 days [3]. Say they're right, though. If an alien race exists, we're still a ways from being able to do anything about it. Unless we can make it there in 1.198 years. If that alien race can make it here, awesome. Let's talk then. If they can make it here and are hostile, then it's been swell. See you on the other side. Probably.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathyscaphe_Trieste

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight_records

You got the units of the borehole wrong, it's in meters not kilometers.

Well, we've certainly drilled more than 12 meters. :-P (Note the decimal point: 12.262km; I just converted to km to keep it consistent with the other measurements I cited)

Could be confusing if you're used to the inverse comma/period from what we use in the US (comma=thousands, period=decimal).

It is very confusing even though I know this to be the case. It is much harder to parse when the numbers are similar. I do not care which one, just wish everyone would use the same notation. In this case for me it would have been clearer if it said 12262km vs 12262m which is what I would have written. But he :) Interesting comment anyway.

It would be far less confusing if you only reported the depth to the hundredths place, as it them both disambiguates the period/comma (in the case where it's reversed by locale), and makes it immediately recognizable.

It was indeed the thousand separator which confused me, thanks

I remember in high school we were taught we should separate thousands using spaces instead of comma or period, since it avoids that whole cross-cultural confusion about which symbol does what.

Would be far less confusing if you'd just written "~12km" and "~11km". The meters add little to the point you're trying to make.

Well, that's probably true, but it was late and I thought the higher precision would help add to my point. Too late to fix it now, though. :-P

I like your post for the most part, but "Unless we can make it there in 1.198 years." is just nonsense for the sake of being pithy. We could do a decade easily. And it still doesn't get us to anywhere. No need to act like people die from a year in space.

Could we? 0G is pretty rough on the human body (if you're planning on going back to a gravitational environment). And the truth is that beyond 1.198 years, we can only extrapolate what the effects are, as we have no evidence beyond that amount of time. Yeah, chances are we could go longer, but we don't know what happens until we've actually tried and measured.

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