Prediction Thread

[Bootstoots]

Predictions for January 1, 2050:

No space probe has passed Voyager 1, nor will any craft be traveling on an escape trajectory that will pass Voyager 1 before 2100.

The atmospheres of a variety of exoplanets will have been characterized. None will be in the kind of obvious life-generated disequilibrium that Earth's is in (e.g. oxygen and methane co-existing at significant levels globally), although a few will show tantalizing hints of disequilibrium.

The life expectancy record of Jeanne Calment (122.5 years) still stands. That one is looking like a weird fluke - nobody's even reached 118 in the 21st century.

No element with an atomic number above 124 will have been synthesized. My most likely guess is we'll be somewhere from 120-122. 119 and 120 may well be discovered in the fairly near future but very little will happen after that because of the extremely short lifetimes and low fusion cross-sections above 120.

We still won't know what dark matter is.

 

[cardgame]

That's a long ways out. You think this forum will be here in 2050?

Also good predictions, I agree with all of them (except I'm completely 100% ignorant on synthesized elements, literally the only thing I know about them is some of them exist for like 1 second in lab conditions)

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Is there already a predictive model for social network capital clusters? What I mean is that if you link enough people together in social networks (either purely online, purely in person or a mix), eventually people with common entrepreneurial aspirations will cluster within the network, pool capital and start businesses. Obviously a social network as large as a country will have massive amounts of capital pooling and business generation going on, and banks play a huge role in this. But I think you can shrink the network arbitrarily to a point and still find capital pools within it.

There may be a lower bound to that critical network size, and I think that future economists will build a theoretical framework for predicting when businesses will spontaneously start and how many of them there will be within a given social network, just by looking at the size, demographics and links within a social network. Or maybe this is old hat, I don't know.

Also good predictions

They're good predictions but I disagree with almost all of them!

@Bootstoots -
I think space probes exceeding Voyager 1 speed are inevitable. I don't know if any of them will catch up with Voyager 1 by 2100 but I think it's quite likely they will. I also think we'll discover alien life (not intelligent life) within this decade.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I predict that the winners of the competition will be ULA and Northrop.

I feel more and more confident about this prediction every day. Northrop has started second stage static-fires, which is a key milestone that none of the other competitors are at other than SpaceX (who bid a currently-operational rocket).

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I think space probes exceeding Voyager 1 speed are inevitable. I don't know if any of them will catch up with Voyager 1 by 2100 but I think it's quite likely they will. I also think we'll discover alien life (not intelligent life) within this decade.

So the alien life will be just like Earth life?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

My next prediction is that Warren will run with Buttigeig on the Democratic ticket and will beat Trump by a significant margin.

Oh boy I'm calling this my first prediction loss of the thread!

Anybody else got predictions to call?

 

[cardgame]

Trump wins over Biden in a close victory, 51% or less, even a plurality, but he still comes out by 1-2% ahead. Lots of clamor and fury about election rigging, which there definitely is, and people notice it. After all, the FEC wasn't defanged for no reason. Not just conspiracy theories - what's left of the intelligence community confirms it in December or January, before the inauguration. Nothing happens, because the Democrats are absolutely spineless and Trump just says it's "fake news" spread by "deep state actors". Four more years of hellworld with at least two more years of GOP senate.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Boy that's dark but I can't say it's unlikely....which sucks ass

 

[IglooDame]

Prediction: Biden and Sanders both contract Coronavirus and die, along with a significant portion of the US House and Senate (SCOTUS is secluded and no justices are infected). Trump, horrified and terrified, hunkers down at Camp David completely isolating himself from any non-SecretService/non-domestic help contact (and they are not allowed any outside travel or visitors) for a span of months.

 

[cardgame]

Special elections do seem inevitable with the mortality rate this virus has on the elderly.

 

[Bootstoots]

I'll make a stab at some coronavirus predictions!

The case fatality rate (CFR) for the coronavirus will eventually be determined to be between 0.8 and 1.5% in the developed world, with the variation largely caused by when and where hospitals become overwhelmed and the age distribution of the population. Around 50-65% of all infections are either asymptomatic or (more commonly) mild enough that no medical treatment is sought, leading to an apparent case fatality rate (i.e. those who are diagnosed as confirmed or suspected) that remains around 3%.

The case fatality rate is not a whole lot higher in the developing world - below 3% in total, likely around 2%. The biggest factor here is the younger populations of most developing countries, along with the lack of effective treatments. More people who would have survived in Western ICUs will die, but overwhelming of hospital resources blunts that difference too.

Approximately 20% of the world population will contract it in 2020. At 1% CFR, this comes out to 0.2% of the world population or 15.4 million deaths. I'll round to 15, throw up a factor of 2 for error bars and say the total death toll will be 7.5 to 30 million by January 1, 2021. It's pretty sobering to see what small-looking fatality rates turn into when you multiply by the global population...

The disease does become endemic and more common in the winter in temperate latitudes, but with less of a pronounced seasonal variation than the flu.

The cancellations and restrictions of movement will diminish greatly by August, partly because of a slower spread due to the Northern Hemisphere's summer and and partly because we'll just be used to it as a disease that happens now, like the flu but worse. The increase in cases by November 2020 causes some more disruptions but not many, relative to what is occurring now. We already take flu deaths in stride and are capable of taking COVID deaths in stride too, even at 10-20X the lethality. Humans are pretty adaptable that way over the medium-to-long run.

A vaccine will be rolled out for the general population by July 2021. It will be approximately as effective as flu vaccines and will have to be changed annually for similar reasons. The disease becomes a bit less lethal over the long run because of virus evolution, a more steady-state number of cases, and the development of more effective treatments.

Slow but steady progress on antivirals and more effective vaccines, along with perhaps some more powerful genetic techniques, will occur through the 2020s and 2030s. By 2040, technology has advanced to the point where CoV deaths are again rare - no more common than seasonal flu deaths today.

Finally, at least one pandemic occurs before 2040 that both causes more total deaths than this one and has a higher CFR.

 

[Kaitzilla]

The Fed is going to break its one rule, cast off the fiction that is our current capital markets, and buy stocks before June 30th.

Index funds or ETF's, not individual stocks*

 

[hobbsyoyo]

2020 is turning into such a poopshow that I now predict NASA will confirm a-planet killing asteroid in on course to wipe us out by July. Trump will issue a strong response detailing the massive personal tax cut he will propose for Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and the gutting of NASA to pay for it.

 

[Synobun]

2020 is turning into such a poopshow that I now predict NASA will confirm a-planet killing asteroid in on course to wipe us out by July. Trump will issue a strong response detailing the massive personal tax cut he will propose for Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and the gutting of NASA to pay for it.

Elon Musk will reveal that car he launched is actually a nuke and is on course to the asteroid.

It'll just make the problem worse, but SpaceX Bros will laud it as revolutionary anyways.

 

[Broken_Erika]

2020 is turning into such a poopshow that I now predict NASA will confirm a-planet killing asteroid in on course to wipe us out by July. Trump will issue a strong response detailing the massive personal tax cut he will propose for Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and the gutting of NASA to pay for it.

I'm sure he'll send Harrison Ford and Aerosmith to destroy the asteroid.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

....Realistically, what would happen if you tried to nuke an asteroid in space?

 

[IglooDame]

....Realistically, what would happen if you tried to nuke an asteroid in space?

You'd get some more smaller asteroids in space.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

You'd get some more smaller asteroids in space.

Depends on how you nuke it. Obviously Armageddon got almost everything wrong, but the idea of burying the nuke to break it up is more or less how you'd go about doing it. If you set off the nuke above the surface, at best you'll nudge it along and kick off some debris but you will not break it up as without an atmosphere, most of the energy will be lost to space and not directed at the asteroid. You might be able to use an in-space detonation to nudge the asteroid (as a whole) off on a new trajectory but this is untested and comes with massive uncertainty bars. You are just as likely to nudge it onto a worse trajectory with a nuke.

Breaking up the asteroid can work if the pieces are small enough to burn up in the atmosphere or if the pieces are sent off on a new trajectory away from the Earth. The problem is, no one knows how to guarantee this result and would most likely end up splattering the asteroid into a shotgun blast of chunks big enough to survive the atmosphere, all on course for Earth.


All that said, in an absolute emergency, it's likely the nukes won't make things worse and are our only short-term response.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I predict @Commodore will post a rant about his inability to buy <foodstuffs> within 2 weeks. Well now he won't out of spite but still.

Moderator Action: Hobbs, please do not carry things over from another thread just to troll someone. Thank you. --LM

 

[Hygro]

I predict supply side inflation.