this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
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Space is really, really big and the earth's radio wave hasn't hit all that many systems, so it's no surprise that no one has contacted us, but why we don't see the radio waves of the rest of the galaxy? Probably because we don't have the tech to pick up a signal. We can barely see that stars have planet around them -- I don't think we can pick up a faint signal from one of those planets as different from the background.
Because the galaxy is fucking huge and signals attenuate
Yeah, in theory light signals shouldn't attenuate in a vacuum, but in reality no vacuum is truly empty and the distances are literally astronomical. Then add that spherical signals necessarily drop with the square of distance, and all the interesting locations (stars) have a lot of background noise, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if communication between solar systems just isn't possible -- or requires extremely good tech for very narrowly optimized conditions (i.e. local stars only).
All speculative since this isn't really my field, but points worth considering at least.
The galaxy isn't a vacuum it has tons of shit and lots of background radiation.