This would be funnier if petroleum came from dead dinosaurs. But I guess a couple of plankton or algae wouldn’t hit the same.
ETA: Sorry I paid attention in my middle school science classes, I guess?
this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2026
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I paid attention im middle school and we learned it was dead dinosaurs. I often wish i paid less attention, the shit i learned in school is insane. Or not even learned per se, but things a teacher told me or mentioned and i saved it as a fact.
By far the worst one i remember was a teacher talking about the ozone layer, the hole in it and what it means. Then he casually mentions that because of that, new Zealand is basically inhabitable. Children have to wear special suits if they go outside during the day. I had no idea where new Zealand even was on the map, i don't think i heard of it before, but i kinda always imagined it as what the surface of mars looks like. I was absolutely abysmal at geography, and never cared for it as a kid, so for waaaay too long, i had that thought in my brain that there is a country that looks like mars, and there live people that are like reverse Inuits who wear their special gear to go outside. At some point i watched the movie "bad taste" and at the end i was like: wait, THAT'S new Zealand?!
Great info, bad presentation lol.
People acting like I said it wasn’t funny. Just said it would be funniER.
In a similar vein: My wife and I plan on having our carbon intermingled and compressed into diamond, then piggyback on a rocket and get ourselves fired off towards Alpha Centauri.
I plan on stopping climate change. It's good to have goals, even impossible ones.
I don't think there's anything impossible about it. It's not going to be easy, sure, or cheap, but every step along the way is feasible and the tech for all of it already exists; it's even within the realm of affordability for a non-millionaire, when you have half a lifetime to prepare and save towards it.
The "fired off towards Alpha Centauri" bit is the closest thing to impossible. It takes an enormous amount of energy to escape the influence of our sun. It is technically possible, as we've done it with the Voyager probes, but there's no commercial option for it right now. Having remains sent into space is somewhat reasonable, but your destination is effectively impossible most likely.
If you're wealthy enough, it's probably an option. You can start your own rocket company and maybe eventually be able to do it, but even most successful rocket companies don't have the ability to do this yet. SpaceX could, but I have no idea how much mass they could do it with, so it might cost an entire rocket for just this.
I'm aware of the physics involved. You said it was impossible, and you've just stumbled on my First Rule of Engineering: vanishingly few goals are actually impossible to achieve, but a great many are too expensive 😉
As to your argument here: the diamond would be very small, and low mass relative to the amount of energy you can muster to expel it. The maths is the hardest part, I think, but the goal itself is just to head off in that direction. Space is big and empty but not as empty as people think; I don't have any illusions about the chances of actually reaching Alpha Centauri. The symbolism is the point, for us.
That's nice. Maybe you'll be reincarnated there together