Poll of the Day > in 50000 years, some one is gonna find a copy of twilight

(+) Yeah! (+)

Who says twilight is fiction?

The idea has been around since the 50's that there are infinite universes and because of this, every possible combination exists in a universe, including exact replicas of any book universes (along with every alternative possibility in those books).

Heinlein wrote about it in The Number of the Beast (and a few other books I think), back in the 50-60's or so and I'm pretty sure others had before that.

So yeah, nothing wrong with following them as religions since they may actually be true somewhere. It's quite possible that eventually things will change drastically many times and in 50k years, we will actually have a world with rules/laws/creatures shown in twilight, right here.
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helIy posted...

Dash_Harber posted...

will speak English the exact same way for the next 50,000 years?

just like we all speak the same languages from thousands of years ago, and yet still translated them?


Dash_Harber posted...

And that means that paper will somehow stop degrading

in the right conditions paper degradation slows to a crawl

it's how we have all these old books from thousands of years ago

believe those conditions would be cold and dry
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helIy posted...

ust like we all speak the same languages from thousands of years ago, and yet still translated them?

We actually don't. As I pointed out before, you can't read written English from 800 years ago. And again, can you speak ancient Semitic? No? Why not? There are several 'dead' languages in the world that are not used at all anymore and require specialized knowledge to even remotely understand. You can't read Old Norse, for example.

helIy posted...

in the right conditions paper degradation slows to a crawl

it's how we have all these old books from thousands of years ago

The oldest book we have, IIRC, is 2,500. Not only do we not have a lot of books, even from a few hundred years ago, but the ones we do have need to be actively maintained by experts in preserving artifacts. More importantly, many old books were made from different materials that tend to hold up better. The modern pulping process used for paper tends to create paper that breaks down relatively quickly in poor conditions. Even in cold and dry conditions that slows paper degradation, there is still insects and animals that would damage it over time. That is not to mention the fact that natural plant life reclaiming the buildings and such these books are stored in. Even light breaks books after awhile, causing them to be illegible. That's not even starting on how ink breaks down over time.

I'm glad to see you've stopped just yelling 50,000 years over and over, but that doesn't change the fact that;
1 - We can't read languages from 6,000 years ago without specialized training and knowledge that wouldn't be available to a primitive civilization. You, personally, could not even read English (your native tongue I assume) from 800 years ago. 50,000 years is about a 62.5x longer span.
2 - Books, like everything else on the planet, degrade over time. After 50,000 years it would be impossible for an un-maintained paperback novel to survive unless it was in an airtight, light-free, vacuum. Even then, you'd have to worry about pests or wildlife damaging the space or nature reclaiming it. That also wouldn't be 'digging it up' as you stated in your original post.

Here, how about this; you go take a book, bury it in the dirt outside with no case or packaging, and leave it out there for a year. Come back and tell me how it looks when you find it. Then, multiply the damage by 50,000.