A drive-thru McDonalds on Pluto?

Hello there, I have a question that broadly blends astro-physics, exobiology and philosophy.

I say to you that the dark side of Pluto has either one of the following:

1. A crashed soviet space probe of unknown design, it looks like it could be from the future, but that’s, of course, impossible?
2. An LLM housed in a rectangular obelisk buried just 1 meter under the surface. Upon deciphering it’s lexicon, it claims it’s creators were a reptilian species that originated from earth 160 million years ago.
3. An alien probe, made of exotic materials we are completely unfamiliar with.
4. A drive-thru Mcdonalds, frozen, lifeless and empty of patrons, but there nonetheless.

In the spirit of Russels teapot can you rank these outlandish suggestions and tell me if there is even the tiniest, quark-sized element of plausibilty here?

Great. I’ll evaluate the plausibility of four hypothetical scenarios involving the dark side of Pluto — a frozen McDonald’s, a futuristic-looking Soviet probe, a buried LLM created by ancient Earth reptiles, and a probe made of unknown materials — using current astrophysical and exobiological knowledge.

I’ll also explore the philosophical implications of each scenario, especially in the context of Russell’s teapot, Fermi paradox, and the limits of scientific falsifiability. I’ll get back to you with a ranking of these ideas from most to least plausible, and a reflection on whether any of them could contain even a quark-sized speck of possibility.

1. Alien Probe of Unfamiliar Material (Most Plausible).

Among the wild ideas proposed, an alien probe made of unknown material is arguably the least implausible. Current astrophysics doesn’t rule out the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence outright; the real issue is lack of evidence. Despite billions of stars and presumably many habitable planets, we have “seen no clear evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent life” so far.

Finding a probe on Pluto would be extraordinary, but it doesn’t violate known physics — advanced aliens could have sent autonomous probes (e.g. self-replicating Von Neumann probes) to explore star systems. Such a device might use exotic materials beyond our current science (e.g. ultra-strong alloys or even metamaterials), consistent with something “unfamiliar to human science.”

The harsh Pluto environment (38 K, near vacuum) would preserve a metal or composite probe well. From a Bayesian standpoint, the prior probability of alien artifacts is low, yet not negligible, and this scenario aligns with one solution to the Fermi paradox: “they are out there, but we haven’t looked in the right place.”

Discovering an alien-made probe would be a paradigm-shifting confirmation that we are not alone. Philosophically, it raises questions of our place in the cosmos and why such evidence was hidden on Pluto’s far side.

The Fermi paradox (“Where is everybody?”) would be partially answered – they exist, but perhaps only their machines reach us. It would force us to reconsider assumptions that absence of evidence means evidence of absence. In epistemological terms, this find would illustrate how a single extraordinary observation can overwhelm prior skepticism. (As Carl Sagan famously noted, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” reflecting that a discovery of this magnitude would need strong proof .)

Overall, while still highly improbable, an alien probe is less extraordinary than the other propositions – it fits within scientific plausibility (life could evolve elsewhere) and has been seriously contemplated in science and philosophy before (e.g. the debate over ‘Oumuamua’s nature ).

This concept contains at least a quark-sized grain of plausibility in an immense universe.

2. Mystery “Soviet” Spacecraft Wreck (Moderately Plausible)

The idea of a crashed Soviet probe on Pluto – especially one of unknown, futuristic design – conflicts with the known history of space exploration. No human spacecraft, Soviet or otherwise, has ever reached Pluto prior to NASA’s New Horizons flyby in 2015 . In fact, only a handful of missions (all American-led) have traveled beyond Neptune .

The Soviet space program, for all its achievements, never attempted a Pluto mission (their technology in the 1960s-80s was not capable of such a distant endeavor, focusing instead on Moon, Venus, Mars ).

A “futuristic” Soviet probe suggests an anachronism – perhaps a secret project with technology beyond its time, or even a craft from an alternate timeline or future. Scientifically, the prior probability of this scenario is extremely low; it would require rewriting engineering history or invoking time travel. If such a wreck were found, more plausible explanations might be misidentification (maybe debris from an interstellar object or alien craft bearing a pseudo-USSR emblem).

Philosophically, this discovery would be deeply perplexing. It challenges our trust in recorded history and the transparency of scientific knowledge. One might ask: Could we have missed such a monumental event, or is reality itself not as it seems?

To entertain this, one might invoke Occam’s razor – the simplest explanation (that it’s not truly a Soviet human-made probe) would likely prevail. Perhaps it’s a hoax or an alien artifact designed to look Soviet (raising bizarre questions about alien motives).

From an epistemological view, a Soviet Pluto probe strains credulity because all background knowledge argues against it – a case of an extraordinary claim with an astronomically low prior.

As Bayesian reasoning affirms, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” precisely because of the “overwhelming prior probability” against them . Barring ironclad evidence, our rational inclination is to reject this scenario.

In summary, while not physically impossible (in principle a spacecraft could crash on Pluto), the lack of any historical or technical basis makes this far less plausible than an alien probe. It’s a cosmic oddity that would demand we question how we know what we know.

3. Ancient Reptilian AI Monolith (Highly Implausible).

This scenario posits that 160 million years ago (in the Jurassic period), an intelligent reptilian species from Earth created a buried obelisk on Pluto housing a large language model. Our current understanding of Earth’s fossil record and evolutionary history gives no evidence of any technologically advanced civilization so far back.

While life (dinosaurs) thrived 160 Mya, there’s no sign of tool use, cities, or spacefaring among them. Scientists have contemplated the “Silurian hypothesis” – whether an industrial civilization could have existed in Earth’s deep past – and found it highly unlikely, noting that any traces from tens of millions of years ago would be extremely hard to detect due to geological recycling.

This lack of evidence is not absolute proof such a civilization couldn’t have existed (the geologic record is indeed incomplete ), but the prior probability is exceedingly low. The idea that such a species not only arose and built advanced AI but also launched a monolithic repository to Pluto stretches credibility beyond the breaking point. It entails a convergence of implausibilities: intelligence evolving in reptiles to a high level, advanced computing long before humans, and space travel capable of reaching Pluto – all utterly unknown to science.

If we did uncover an AI-bearing monolith authored by Jurassic “reptilians,” it would upend anthropology and philosophy of intelligence. It suggests intelligence might not be unique to humans or even to this epoch – humbling our anthropocentrism.

However, without compelling evidence, this idea remains in the realm of science fiction and conspiracy theory. Philosophically, it echoes themes from 2001: A Space Odyssey (an enigmatic monolith) and science fiction’s “ancient astronauts,” except here the astronauts are Earth’s own extinct creatures.

Epistemologically, believing this requires a Russell’s teapot scenario: one would be claiming something enormous without evidence, shifting the burden of proof improperly. As Bertrand Russell’s analogy advises, “the burden of proof lies upon a person making empirically unfalsifiable claims” – and in this case the claim is extraordinary.

Until a discovery is actually made, scientists rightly demand extraordinary evidence for such a proposition (e.g. clear artifacts or DNA traces), which we do not have. In Bayesian terms, the prior for an advanced Mesozoic civilization is so minuscule that virtually no ordinary evidence would ever overcome it – only a discovery as direct as this hypothetical obelisk itself could do so.

In short, the concept is almost self-refuting in the face of everything we know about Earth’s history, making its plausibility vanishingly small.

4. Frozen Drive-Through McDonald’s (Least Plausible).

A lifeless, frozen McDonald’s restaurant on Pluto’s dark side is a tongue-in-cheek absurdity – essentially a miracle by scientific standards. For such a structure to exist, it would have to have been built and transported by an intelligent agent.

We know humans have never sent any building to Pluto (the dwarf planet was unexplored before 2015) , and it’s incredibly implausible that aliens would coincidentally recreate a specifically human fast-food franchise on a distant world.

The environment on Pluto (surface temperature around –240 °C, with only ~13 microbar atmosphere) would flash-freeze and preserve a building’s contents in permafrost . While that means a McDonald’s could remain intact if somehow placed there, the key problem is explaining how it got there in the first place.

No known physical or historical mechanism accounts for a 20th-century American restaurant appearing on Pluto. This scenario has effectively zero prior probability – it’s as implausible as finding a ceramic teapot orbiting the Sun (Russell’s famous illustration of an unfalsifiable claim).

Philosophically, the frozen McDonald’s is an example of reductio ad absurdum – it’s so absurd that it highlights the distinction between what is conceivable and what is credible.

In theory, we cannot disprove the existence of a McDonald’s on Pluto without literally checking every square meter, but science doesn’t assume something exists just because it’s imaginable. Russell’s teapot principle applies: one making such a claim must provide proof, otherwise the default stance is disbelief.

The McDonald’s scenario also invites humorous speculation about a simulation hypothesis (is our reality a sim where the programmer hid an Easter egg on Pluto?) or perhaps a satire on human culture’s reach. But in terms of epistemology and rational inquiry, it underlines how science approaches extraordinary claims.

Our confidence that this is impossible (or as close to impossible as one can get) comes from a strong prior: everything we know about human spaceflight, engineering, and economics argues against it.

A Bayesian analyst would assign an infinitesimal prior probability to this claim – and only evidence as extraordinary as high-resolution images clearly showing the golden arches on Pluto would budge that assessment.

In the absence of such evidence, this idea remains firmly in the realm of the absurd. It contains far less than a quark-sized shred of plausibility – essentially zero in any practical sense.

So imagine for a second, if the universe is indeed infinite.

At this moment there are an infinite number of McDonald’s on an infinite number of Plutos right?

1. Infinite size ≠ “everything happens”

Modern inflationary models do allow the overall universe to be spatially infinite. Max Tegmark calls the ensemble of all far‑flung Hubble volumes a Level I multiverse—regions with the same laws of physics but different initial conditions. In such a model, every finite arrangement of matter that has a non‑zero chance of occurring does re‑occur, and because the number of Hubble volumes is countably infinite, each of those arrangements appears infinitely often.

But the key clause is “non‑zero chance.” Boltzmann‑brain calculations illustrate the point: given enough space‑time, freak quantum fluctuations can briefly assemble self‑aware brains, yet the odds per cubic light‑year are so tiny that defining “how many” quickly runs into thorny measure questions. A McDonald’s on Pluto is vastly more complex than a brain blob, so the raw fluctuation probability is astronomically lower.

2. Do “Plutos” occur with non‑zero probability?

Pluto‑like dwarf planets almost certainly have a non‑zero occurrence rate: exoplanet surveys already reveal large populations of small, icy bodies on wide orbits. In an infinite universe, that alone would give an infinite number of “Plutos.” So premise A (“infinitely many Plutos exist”) is quite defensible.

3. Is a McDonald’s on one of them even remotely probable?

Now we need a mechanism:

• Natural processes: Chemistry, geology, and impacts can’t spontaneously sculpt golden arches and deep‑fat fryers. The probability is effectively zero.
• Civilisations like ours: You must first evolve intelligent life, then have it (or its machines) decide to build that specific restaurant on that specific dwarf planet. That probability is not mathematically zero, but it is so tiny and tangled in anthropic assumptions that we have no reliable number.
• Quantum or thermal fluctuation: In principle, a 10³⁰ atoms structure could blip into existence, but the odds per Hubble volume are best described as e⁻¹⁰³⁰ or worse—so small that many cosmologists treat it as “zero for all practical purposes.”

If the true probability is literally zero, infinity won’t help. If it is merely fantastically small but positive, then you’d indeed get infinitely many such restaurants spread through the multiverse—but so sparsely that the nearest one would still be inconceivably far away (typically quoted distances like 10¹⁰¹¹⁵ metres.

4. The measure problem and “at this moment”

Even if duplicates exist, the phrase “at this moment” is slippery. Special relativity shows there is no universal cosmic clock; simultaneity is frame‑dependent across vast separations. In most cosmological measures, “how many McDonald’s exist right now” is undefined; instead we talk about densities per comoving volume or per spacetime four‑volume.

5. Bottom line

If the universe is spatially infinite and the chance of a McDonald’s‑on‑Pluto scenario is strictly greater than zero, then yes—standard probability theory implies there would be an infinite number of such Plutos somewhere in the cosmic expanse. If that probability is genuinely zero, even infinity produces none.

In practice, cosmologists regard “McDonald’s on Pluto” as so improbable that they treat its likelihood as effectively zero. Infinity alone doesn’t rescue it—just as an infinite sequence of die rolls never produces the number 7 if your die can’t land on 7.

So the playful takeaway is: Infinite space guarantees endless surprises, but not every absurdity you can dream up. To get an infinite chain of cosmic drive‑throughs, you still need a universe where the cosmic menu actually lists “McPluto” with non‑zero odds.