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Notch's Next Game is '0x10c'

It's set in space, and sounds appropriately insane.

This man would like to take you to space.
This man would like to take you to space.

Notch hinted not too long ago that his next game would be set in space, an idea that undoubtedly sent minds racing as to what kinds of crazy crap the Minecraft creator might come up with when working within the boundless stretches of the universe at large. Still, I doubt anything was expecting anything quite this specifically bonkers.

0x10c is the name of Notch's next game, a space-faring "hard science fiction" game that puts players in the role of one of many human astronauts from an alternate universe where the space race never ended. As the back story here goes... you know what? Let's just use Notch's own words.

In 1988, a brand new deep sleep cell was released, compatible with all popular 16 bit computers. Unfortunately, it used big endian, whereas the DCPU-16 specifications called for little endian. This led to a severe bug in the included drivers, causing a requested sleep of 0x0000 0000 0000 0001 years to last for 0x0001 0000 0000 0000 years.

It's now the year 281 474 976 712 644 AD, and the first lost people are starting to wake up to a universe on the brink of extinction, with all remote galaxies forever lost to red shift, star formation long since ended, and massive black holes dominating the galaxy.

Get all that? I hope so, because I don't think I'm smart enough to dissect it any further.

Players will control a ship that works via a generator with a fixed wattage. Certain technologies will require a bigger drain on your ship's generator than others. Notch cites the example of a cloaking device, which would require so much power that you'd have to shut down most computer systems and dim the lights just to make it work correctly.

The on-board computer you'll be using is "a fully functioning emulated 16 bit CPU" that you can use to control all your ship's functions. Notch plans to release full specs for the computer soon.

As for actual gameplay, Notch promises everything from lots of engineering and advanced economy systems to full-on combat against AI and rival player ships. You can see the full breadth of what Notch has thus far announced at the official 0x10c website. Similar to Minecraft, Notch plans to release an early version of the game publicly in order to have players help shape the ultimate direction of the final product.

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163 Comments

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Max_Cherry

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Edited By Max_Cherry

I like how the game begins a few weeks before my conception. That way I can pretend to do all that "Back To The Future" stuff before the game jumps ahead over 280 trillion years. I just hope that 0x10c doesn't really cross time and space, and actually influence the past and future because then my entire existence could end up really being erased and I would disappear from reality forever! You never know with Notch.

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barap

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Edited By barap

He had me up until the monthly fee. Seriously he tried to charge for modding in Minecraft and that failed and now he wants to make a low end MMO. He must be concerned about running out of cash. While else is always trying to find another funding source.

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barap

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Edited By barap

@MonkeyMitcho: that's a project by other people in the company.

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BitterAlmond

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Edited By BitterAlmond

@Saudade said:

@fisk0 said:

@psoplayer said:

@broqz said:

@psoplayer: i love just about everything u said there. even though i understand almost none of it, it still leads me to speculate that in the game you are imagining, where code could be traded/sold/stolen? could there not also be virus code? could players destroy/control/trick other players with clever 16 bit code?

i know pretty much nothing concerning coding or whatnot (i did take a few BASIC class's in high school but that was a long time ago) but the idea of what you could possibly do with this game seems amazing. so i hope i would still be able to benefit from the communitys output. even with the threat of a virus.

Oh, absolutely. The possibilities of writing malevolent code would be just as real as they are in computers today. The primary (theoretical) difference is that you would have a lot less to gain by distributing a virus in 0x10c than by growing a botnet in the real world. EDIT: Notch on the subject: "Yes [you will be able to trade programs]. And I won't stop viruses, the players will have to do that themselves." Fun times, indeed!

I begrudgingly completed a semester of assembly programming half a decade ago, but a game like this might make me try my hand at it once more.

Can't wait for the user made virtual anti-virus software, which needs so much resources to run it's real-time protection that you have to shut down almost all the ship's system to keep safe from malicious software.

Notch is creating a new internetz... IN THE INTERNETZ?! "Yo dawg, I herd you liek internetz in your internetz, so we put virus' in your internet'z internetz, so you false-positive your false-positives!"

This game is going to be bananas. Hopefully it'll also be actually fun, and not just a code monkey's wet dream.

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SmilingPig

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Blocks in Space!

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Saudade

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Edited By Saudade

@fisk0 said:

@psoplayer said:

@broqz said:

@psoplayer: i love just about everything u said there. even though i understand almost none of it, it still leads me to speculate that in the game you are imagining, where code could be traded/sold/stolen? could there not also be virus code? could players destroy/control/trick other players with clever 16 bit code?

i know pretty much nothing concerning coding or whatnot (i did take a few BASIC class's in high school but that was a long time ago) but the idea of what you could possibly do with this game seems amazing. so i hope i would still be able to benefit from the communitys output. even with the threat of a virus.

Oh, absolutely. The possibilities of writing malevolent code would be just as real as they are in computers today. The primary (theoretical) difference is that you would have a lot less to gain by distributing a virus in 0x10c than by growing a botnet in the real world. EDIT: Notch on the subject: "Yes [you will be able to trade programs]. And I won't stop viruses, the players will have to do that themselves." Fun times, indeed!

I begrudgingly completed a semester of assembly programming half a decade ago, but a game like this might make me try my hand at it once more.

Can't wait for the user made virtual anti-virus software, which needs so much resources to run it's real-time protection that you have to shut down almost all the ship's system to keep safe from malicious software.

Notch is creating a new internetz... IN THE INTERNETZ?! "Yo dawg, I herd you liek internetz in your internetz, so we put virus' in your internet'z internetz, so you false-positive your false-positives!"

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Estwilde

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Edited By Estwilde

This premise reminds me of Vernor Vinge's 'Marooned in Realtime.' Except with these last remnants of humanity being there on accident instead of purposefully putting themselves in stasis to pass the years.

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TiE23

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Edited By TiE23

@EmuLeader said:

I think the premise is kind of hilarious, considering I've never seen anyone have the basis of their story revolve around a computer register input incompatibility. 0x10c is still an odd name though. Depending on the input style, it is either

0x0001 0000 1100 or 0x1100 0000 0001. Neither one of those is the number mentioned in the story, so I wonder what it is supposed to mean.

The C in the name is supposed to be in superscript. So it's really 0x10^C.

A = 10, B = 11, C = 12

So it's 0x10-to-the-twelth-power.

0x...1 0000 0000 0000 (twelve 0s)

Which is 0x0001 0000 0000 0000, as to the joke of the story of the game's name.

I'm actually in the middle of taking two classes on this junk, going to be dealing with MIPS assembly soon. But my lack of understanding is why do you represent the friggin year in 256 bits? How do you mess up so bad that you represent a 16-bit number and miscast it as a huge hexadecimal number with 16 figures?

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Relys

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Edited By Relys

Haha, I like the Comp Sci joke.

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drjota

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Edited By drjota

0x10c just so happens to be my hat size.Trilbys in space!

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ArsenalFan

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Edited By ArsenalFan

This seems rather ambitious

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Davvyk

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@Fasckira: Scrolls isnt Notch's project at mojang, Its Jakobs. Its still coming.

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Quantical

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Edited By Quantical

Holy crap, just.... what the fuck?

I have no idea on a comment really.

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SockLobster

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Edited By SockLobster

Space travel fiction just doesn't do it for me, and the games are so boring and nerdy

GOLLY GOSH I CAN'T WAIT TO TRADE 500 SPACE ROCKS FOR FUEL AT THE NEXT SPACE OUTPOST, THIS SURE IS ENTHRALLING

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fisk0

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Edited By fisk0  Moderator
@ScreamingFist said:

@Neonie said:

Notch is now Peter Monluex

+1

Considering the game's themes, maybe Derek Smart and his Battlecruiser 3000AD is an appropriate comparison. But maybe not when it comes to politeness.
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fisk0

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Edited By fisk0  Moderator
@psoplayer said:

@broqz said:

@psoplayer: i love just about everything u said there. even though i understand almost none of it, it still leads me to speculate that in the game you are imagining, where code could be traded/sold/stolen? could there not also be virus code? could players destroy/control/trick other players with clever 16 bit code?

i know pretty much nothing concerning coding or whatnot (i did take a few BASIC class's in high school but that was a long time ago) but the idea of what you could possibly do with this game seems amazing. so i hope i would still be able to benefit from the communitys output. even with the threat of a virus.

Oh, absolutely. The possibilities of writing malevolent code would be just as real as they are in computers today. The primary (theoretical) difference is that you would have a lot less to gain by distributing a virus in 0x10c than by growing a botnet in the real world. EDIT: Notch on the subject: "Yes [you will be able to trade programs]. And I won't stop viruses, the players will have to do that themselves." Fun times, indeed!

I begrudgingly completed a semester of assembly programming half a decade ago, but a game like this might make me try my hand at it once more.

Can't wait for the user made virtual anti-virus software, which needs so much resources to run it's real-time protection that you have to shut down almost all the ship's system to keep safe from malicious software.
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RurouniGeo

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Edited By RurouniGeo

I have never played minecraft or any derivative game but... I am extremely interested in this. I've always wanted to play around in an end of the universe/existence itself type world. I hope Notch takes as long as he needs to make this concept as awesome as it is.

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ScreamingFist

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Edited By ScreamingFist

@Neonie said:

Notch is now Peter Monluex

+1

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ZmillA

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Edited By ZmillA

want

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OmegaPirate

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Edited By OmegaPirate

Oh hey.. people gonna be all over notches bell end again. hurray

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Nethlem

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That sounds like an cool setting for an videogame!

Something so messed up that most people can't even imagine how it's gonna play/look/feel in the end.

Let's just hope that at least Notch has some kind of idea how to make this work.

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ShadowSkill11

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Edited By ShadowSkill11

The game looks really interesting from the sounds of it besides the shitty graphics it's going to have. I like how it's going to force people that know nothing of computer science or how games are programmed to actually program things in some type of programming language.

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raiz265

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@TheHT said:

@nERVEcenter said:

With my already existing knowledge of theoretical physics and astronomy in general, thinking about 281 trillion years and the rest of the universe being lost to red shift just serves to depress me.

Because it's inaccurate or because it's just sad?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future

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h0lgr

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Edited By h0lgr

I'm fuckin pumped for this. Can't wait to see what the man makes this time.

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Edited By isomeri

In 1988, a brand new deep sleep cell was released, compatible with all popular 16 bit computers. Unfortunately, it used big endian, whereas the DCPU-16 specifications called for little endian. This led to a severe bug in the included drivers, causing a requested sleep of 0x0000 0000 0000 0001 years to last for 0x0001 0000 0000 0000 years.

It's now the year 281 474 976 712 644 AD, and the first lost people are starting to wake up to a universe on the brink of extinction, with all remote galaxies forever lost to red shift, star formation long since ended, and massive black holes dominating the galaxy.

I'm interested in knowing exactly where these deep sleep cells were located? They couldn't be on Earth since the planet will likely have been vaporized at that point in time. Also there won't he a Milky Way that late in the game, we will have collided with Andromeda by then. Although it is highly unlikely that a star, planet or spacecraft would collide with anything from the other galaxy, shit would get flung around all over the place.

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mariussmit

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Edited By mariussmit

Is the name pronounced Zero Existency?

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probablytuna

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Edited By probablytuna

Sounds deep.

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Fasckira

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@mosespippy: @thebigJ_A: Cheers guys, thanks for clearing that up!

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DukesT3

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so a game?

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Cathadan

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@broqz said:

@psoplayer: i love just about everything u said there. even though i understand almost none of it, it still leads me to speculate that in the game you are imagining, where code could be traded/sold/stolen? could there not also be virus code? could players destroy/control/trick other players with clever 16 bit code?

i know pretty much nothing concerning coding or whatnot (i did take a few BASIC class's in high school but that was a long time ago) but the idea of what you could possibly do with this game seems amazing. so i hope i would still be able to benefit from the communitys output. even with the threat of a virus.

Oh, absolutely. The possibilities of writing malevolent code would be just as real as they are in computers today. The primary (theoretical) difference is that you would have a lot less to gain by distributing a virus in 0x10c than by growing a botnet in the real world. EDIT: Notch on the subject: "Yes [you will be able to trade programs]. And I won't stop viruses, the players will have to do that themselves." Fun times, indeed!

I begrudgingly completed a semester of assembly programming half a decade ago, but a game like this might make me try my hand at it once more.

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thebigJ_A

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@Fasckira said:

So... Scrolls? That looked kind of cool, but seems to have vanished post-legal-nonsense.

This looks cool though, deffo be keeping an eye on it!

It's still around. They just settled the case a couple weeks ago, and can use the name see: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/03/10/notch-and-bethesda-settle-on-scrolls/. Scrolls isn't being done by Notch himself, but by one of the teams of people he hired with his minecraft money (with input from him, obviously).

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BestUsernameEver

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@selbie said:

@BestUsernameEver said:

@selbie said:

@ChrisTaran said:

I am going to pronounce this "Oxloc" as no other possible way to say 0x10c as a word comes to mind.

If you say each number and letter it sounds like Zero Extancy....or Zero Ecstasy :P

Actually it comes out as Zero ExTENcy. Unless you're from the south, then it is tancy.

That's why I said 'sounds LIKE'...and I'm aussie so I guess that's as far south as you can get :P

It's actually a cool coincidence if you take it as being derived from the word 'extant' which means to remain in existence. Thus, Zero Extancy would link to the fact that the rest of humanity is no longer "extant" :D

hide hide hide, dont look at him, there's no argument here, literally nothing can be said to prove anything.

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selbie

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Edited By selbie

@BestUsernameEver said:

@selbie said:

@ChrisTaran said:

I am going to pronounce this "Oxloc" as no other possible way to say 0x10c as a word comes to mind.

If you say each number and letter it sounds like Zero Extancy....or Zero Ecstasy :P

Actually it comes out as Zero ExTENcy. Unless you're from the south, then it is tancy.

That's why I said 'sounds LIKE'...and I'm aussie so I guess that's as far south as you can get :P

It's actually a cool coincidence if you take it as being derived from the word 'extant' which means to remain in existence. Thus, Zero Extancy would link to the fact that the rest of humanity is no longer "extant" :D

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Neonie

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Edited By Neonie

Notch is now Peter Monluex

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Zatoishwan

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Edited By Zatoishwan

Oh man, I am totally sold on this :P

I actually wrote a microprocessor emulator in my spare time while studying.

I havent touched minecraft so far. (Edit: SP)

And MMOs are not for me.. until now if you see this as an MMO or at least MMOish game.

So yay, it seems like there finally will be a game for total geekheads like me :)

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broqz

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Edited By broqz

@psoplayer: i love just about everything u said there. even though i understand almost none of it, it still leads me to speculate that in the game you are imagining, where code could be traded/sold/stolen? could there not also be virus code? could players destroy/control/trick other players with clever 16 bit code?

i know pretty much nothing concerning coding or whatnot (i did take a few BASIC class's in high school but that was a long time ago) but the idea of what you could possibly do with this game seems amazing. so i hope i would still be able to benefit from the communitys output. even with the threat of a virus.

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Stephen_Von_Cloud

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I just hope we all call it Oxloc. And I can play a clone of Mario on my ship computer while I'm mining some asteroid.

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victor5

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Edited By victor5

http://0x10cboards.com is up with some info

http://0x10cboards.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=21

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WinnipegFats

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Edited By WinnipegFats

This is damn exciting

I study Theoretical and Astrophysics at University and a game that incorporates even some of that field in a "hard science fiction" universe strikes a very specific chord with me. Also, if anyone can recreate my StarControl II experience, I trust Notch to do it.

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BestUsernameEver

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Edited By BestUsernameEver

@selbie said:

@ChrisTaran said:

I am going to pronounce this "Oxloc" as no other possible way to say 0x10c as a word comes to mind.

If you say each number and letter it sounds like Zero Extancy....or Zero Ecstasy :P

Actually it comes out as Zero ExTENcy. Unless you're from the south, then it is tancy.

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mdimmett

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Edited By mdimmett

That seems an awful lot like FTL to me. http://www.ftlgame.com/

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@Mr_Skeleton said:

Am I the only one confusing this name with The Elder Scrolls?

I laughed harder than I should have at this :p

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Arker101

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Edited By Arker101

The games sounds depressing, but then you said 16-bit commands, and I'm back on board.

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Edited By Mr_Skeleton

Am I the only one confusing this name with The Elder Scrolls?

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Hitchenson

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Edited By Hitchenson

Why would I trust a word Notch says ever. That would be stupid.

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buzz_killington

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Edited By buzz_killington

Is is pronounced "0 times 10 to the power of c"? Because in that case, the "10 to the power of c" part is a bit redundant...

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selbie

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Edited By selbie

@ChrisTaran said:

I am going to pronounce this "Oxloc" as no other possible way to say 0x10c as a word comes to mind.

If you say each number and letter it sounds like Zero Extancy....or Zero Ecstasy :P

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ChrisTaran

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Edited By ChrisTaran

I am going to pronounce this "Oxloc" as no other possible way to say 0x10c as a word comes to mind.

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Bunny_Fire

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Edited By Bunny_Fire

sounds interesting .... there better be futuristic space creepers though ... something that looks like a xenomorph

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@Crocio said:

@nERVEcenter said:

With my already existing knowledge of theoretical physics and astronomy in general, thinking about 281 trillion years and the rest of the universe being lost to red shift just serves to depress me.

You should send him an empathetic and understanding letter that would make him want to read the whole thing on why he's wrong, or better phrased, "to a closer understanding of modern astronomy".

Honestly, I think that would work.

Actually, the rest of the universe, galaxies other than the ones in our local cluser, WILL be lost to redshift. We will end up alone and, somehow even more depressingly, any future intelligent species who happen to start exploring the universe at that time will simply have no way of knowing of the existence of other galaxies outside our cluster. They therefore won't discover the expansion of the universe and consequently they will never know the size or age of the universe.

Maybe this is just something that bothers physics nerds...