Sure thing Tilt....glad you enjoyed itThanks for posting that link last year btw. I missed it at the time, and it's a great read.
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Sure thing Tilt....glad you enjoyed itThanks for posting that link last year btw. I missed it at the time, and it's a great read.
We have the theoretical capability to colonize the galaxy now. In 100,000 years? Easy. It will take many generations, but still doable.The Meal wrote: I think calling galactic expansion "easy" is a non-standard point of view. I understand that motivation would seem to be high (we're all orbiting something which won't last forever), but space is VAST. What was the analogy in the article I linked? If Neptune's orbit was the size of a quarter, then the nearest star is a football field away? (And the nearest known habitable star is, what, 5× that?) In the face of that obstacle, El Guapo's objections, and time scales measured in billions of (earth) years, maybe motivation isn't actually all that high?
noxiousdog wrote:We have the theoretical capability to colonize the galaxy now.
Agreed. Though I'd add the (tiny) caveat that it'd only take one *before* us.And again, it [motivation] doesn't have to be high. It can be very rare as it only takes one.
Can't argue with that (especially considering the AI article which came through here a month or so ago).If we want to get into guesses, I would bet intelligent beings are far more likely to transcend into cyborgs/computers.
You don't need that to colonize the galaxy though. A far flung galactic empire would surprise me. A civilization giving off radio signals? Not so much.The Meal wrote:Travel? Agreed.
Communication? Show me our FTL-receiver.
A couple things. First, "until long after everyone alive at the time is dead and gone" is a huge and terrible assumption. Not only do you not know what form of communication they may be using, but who knows what the lifespan of another species might be? It may well be indefinite, particularly if they're so advanced and have mastered genetic engineering (or transferred their consciousness into machines).El Guapo wrote:I'm not sure why we would assume that a civilization would eventually colonize substantially the whole galaxy given enough time. If the speed of light is a hard physics rule that can't be overcome with sufficiently advanced technology, that means it would take enormous amounts of time to colonize even relatively near worlds, to say nothing of worlds on the other side of the galaxy. It may well be possible for a civilization to do that over enough time (say by the self-replicating colonizers that the original article mentions), but what reason would a civilization have to do that? You would spend an enormous amount of resources building the colonizer, send it out...and then never hear anything from the colony at least until long after everyone alive at the time is dead and gone. You might not be able to communicate effectively with other colonized worlds, probably can't get resources back.
It might make sense to colonize a couple worlds just to avoid the risk that the entire species gets wiped out by some cataclysmic event impacting the original world, but why would we assume that they would decide to colonize the whole galaxy?
http://zidbits.com/2011/07/how-far-have ... rom-earth/Another way to think of it, is that the strength of a radio signal will be only 1/4 as great once you are twice the distance from the source. At ten times the distance, the strength of the signal would only be one hundredth as great.
Because of this inverse square law, all of our terrestrial radio signals become indistinguishable from background noise at around a few light-years from earth. For a civilization only a couple hundred light-years away, trying to listen to our broadcasts would be like trying to detect the small ripple from a pebble dropped in the pacific ocean off the coast of California – from Japan.
And there is no reason to believe that's not the case. Because we don't detect them? That's partly my point, us detecting anything from aliens is not a given. Fermi, and those that consider that question, start with some kind of assumption that we have the tools and tech to see what there is to see. We don't. Once upon a time infrared didn't exist as far as humans knew, now we can 'see' things in infrared. Some future tech might show us a Lovecraftian reality, with alien things here on this planet all along and we never knew it.Grifman wrote:It has nothing to do with how long we've been looking but everything to do with how long other civilizations should have existed. Given that ours is a young star, there should have been many civilizations that have arisen.
That doesn't really work because I'm the one saying we have a long, long way to go before we can say we've detected even the thousandth part of what exists. People like you are the ones saying we've looked everywhere and they aren't there. It's on you guys to present a convincing argument that we even know what to look for, much less where to look.I could just as easily say that your position is self serving because you want to not make humans special. See how easy that is?Point is, I don't get the sense that most professionals involved in this discussion care much one way or another. In fact most probably leans towards the idea that humans aren't special.
Huge assumption there on your part. That they'd have to leave obvious signs of their existence. Considering that we are talking alien intelligence, what makes you think they 'have to' do anything? What is 'obvious' evidence of alien existence? I bet you are using those words in a human centric way, which is why I think it's meaningless and self serving.Again, you miss that point that given the young age of our star, there should have been many powerful civilizations that would have arisen before us, and they should have left obvious signs of their existence.
If they are immortal what evolutionary pressures are pushing them to spread?BooTx wrote:A couple things. First, "until long after everyone alive at the time is dead and gone" is a huge and terrible assumption. Not only do you not know what form of communication they may be using, but who knows what the lifespan of another species might be? It may well be indefinite, particularly if they're so advanced and have mastered genetic engineering (or transferred their consciousness into machines).
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Which leads me to my last point, which is that from the knowledge we have of all life on Earth, it is a pretty safe bet that other life will follow similar colonization patterns (in other words, they'll pretty much spread everywhere they can).
Nor do I think a hypothetical non-single-solar-system alien race would need FTL travel or communication. I was responding to the post preceding mine which implied that our current state of affairs implies no FTL travel (to which I agree) or FTL communication (to which I say, we wouldn't know).noxiousdog wrote:You don't need that to colonize the galaxy though. A far flung galactic empire would surprise me. A civilization giving off radio signals? Not so much.The Meal wrote:Travel? Agreed.
Communication? Show me our FTL-receiver.
If humans gained immortality do you really think they'd stop spreading? I think it would only increase the rate (exponentially in the long run).GreenGoo wrote:If they are immortal what evolutionary pressures are pushing them to spread?
Because it's difficult and cost-prohibitive when weighed against the potential gains, I suppose. Ask the world governments. For the record, we've had six manned moon landings, which isn't too bad when you consider how ridiculously inexperienced we are with space travel.GreenGoo wrote:We've been to the moon a couple of times. We haven't gone back. Why not?
Or maybe some satisfaction will come of it. You know, because it's a fun exercise. And fun is satisfying.GreenGoo wrote:It's a fun exercise, but in the end no satisfaction will come of it, because until we know, we don't know. Sorta like God.
The fundamental pressure. Reproduction. Being immortal doesn't mean you don't want offspring nor does it mean that the resulting genetic roll of the dice isn't beneficial to the species.GreenGoo wrote: If they are immortal what evolutionary pressures are pushing them to spread?
This is ridiculous every time I hear it. Newtonian physics isn't going to stop working. Except in the case of some technological singularity that transforms a civilization into energy, there's going to be some form of recognizable signature. You can't hide a civilizations energy signature unless you're in a Dyson sphere, and then there's going to be a hole where the sun should be.TiLT wrote:There's a huge leap of logic here that most of you seem to be making (including the author of the article). What exactly would these advanced civilizations send out that we would be able to detect? We can barely detect planets in nearby star systems, and only by studying orbital patterns and similar things. How could anyone expect us to be able to detect the presence of an alien race thousands of light years away? We're listening to radio, and as pointed out earlier, radio is extremely ineffective over the distances needed for it to matter. Half the Milky Way's stars could be covered in Dyson Spheres for all we know, and we might just think they're black holes.
Our capability to detect and discover other species is so limited right now as to be almost non-existent. An alien species could be on our doorstep, and we'd be none the wiser.
Unless the aliens make contact on their own (and why would they?), we're essentially blind right now.
I do not agree with this assessment. I don't think any civilization sufficiently advanced to overcome the huge obstacles discussed in this thread would have any interest in stomping on our comparative ant hill. Much more likely is they would hope to preserve a rare intelligent species.El Guapo wrote:Also I agree with Hawking and Sagan that actively attempting to contact alien species is incredibly stupid and reckless.
I don't agree. Species that conquer their evolutionary trees are going to be predatory. Species that expand beyond their systems are going to be aggressive. They may not be spit slavering aggressive but they are going to be aggressive in terms of civilization and expansion. They may not even recognize us as worth the trouble of courtesy as they grab whatever resource on our planet turns out to be valuable to them. Hopefully it's not our women. It might be white quartz for all we know. Common here but rare everywhere else.Jaymann wrote:I do not agree with this assessment. I don't think any civilization sufficiently advanced to overcome the huge obstacles discussed in this thread would have any interest in stomping on our comparative ant hill. Much more likely is they would hope to preserve a rare intelligent species.El Guapo wrote:Also I agree with Hawking and Sagan that actively attempting to contact alien species is incredibly stupid and reckless.
And I crack up at all the "battlefield earth" fantasies. Any actively hostile galactic aliens would just slip us a nano goo mickey and we would never know what hit us.
The Meal wrote:Name the things which generate energy which we cannot detect.
Why would any elements be rare in the galaxy, but not rare on Earth? It would be far easier to get them from an asteroid. I have a hard time thinking they just couldn't synthesize them anyway.msduncan wrote:
I don't agree. Species that conquer their evolutionary trees are going to be predatory. Species that expand beyond their systems are going to be aggressive. They may not be spit slavering aggressive but they are going to be aggressive in terms of civilization and expansion. They may not even recognize us as worth the trouble of courtesy as they grab whatever resource on our planet turns out to be valuable to them. Hopefully it's not our women. It might be white quartz for all we know. Common here but rare everywhere else.
We are infants. Nay, we are fetuses in the Universe.
And yet, we're pretty sure it exists.dbt1949 wrote:The Meal wrote:Name the things which generate energy which we cannot detect.
Dark energy?
Perhaps. I think an immortal species would feel less biological pressure to procreate. What does offspring mean when you're going to be around for every and all generations forever? "We" don't procreate because we think it's a good idea to create biological diversity, even though it is a good idea. Assuming they had genes, maybe they'd just decide to engineer their genetic diversity. Maybe they'll all be clones of each other. Who knows. Imagine away.LawBeefaroni wrote:The fundamental pressure. Reproduction. Being immortal doesn't mean you don't want offspring nor does it mean that the resulting genetic roll of the dice isn't beneficial to the species.GreenGoo wrote: If they are immortal what evolutionary pressures are pushing them to spread?
Maybe. Depends where we are and how we became immortal. Our entire reason for being seems to be reproduction as a form of genetic immortality. What happens when we don't need to reproduce to obtain genetic immortality? Does the human drive remain? If so, why? It becomes an evolutionary relic at that point.BooTx wrote:
If humans gained immortality do you really think they'd stop spreading? I think it would only increase the rate (exponentially in the long run).
Maybe.BooTx wrote: In any case I certainly don't think having an indefinite lifespan would halt the spread of a civilization. There are plenty of reasons to do so. The collection of resources, knowledge, et cetera. Hell they may just be dicks out looking for a trophy to hang on their wall.
It's actually pretty terrible in the context of this thread. We made it to the moon. Then we stopped. Hell, we didn't even bother to go back again after we'd been there a few times. We're in a thread talking about colonizing the universe, and the human race has decided that the moon was far enough. We didn't even go that far and stop. We went that far and then retreated back home. That was my point. Will future generations go back? Probably. Maybe. Who's going to pay for it? Not enough people today want to pay for the little bit of space exploration we do do, but somehow as a species we're going to decide to pump untold resources into moving from here to there? Maybe. It's a nice dream. I'm not sure it's realistic. But I wasn't even referring to the economic costs involved (which are immense).BooTx wrote:Because it's difficult and cost-prohibitive when weighed against the potential gains, I suppose. Ask the world governments. For the record, we've had six manned moon landings, which isn't too bad when you consider how ridiculously inexperienced we are with space travel.
You misunderstand my use of satisfactory, but it is an enjoyable thread.BooTx wrote:Or maybe some satisfaction will come of it. You know, because it's a fun exercise. And fun is satisfying.
You're saying we have the technology to detect the energy output of another species on a different planet on any given planet in the galaxy? Really?noxiousdog wrote:This is ridiculous every time I hear it. Newtonian physics isn't going to stop working. Except in the case of some technological singularity that transforms a civilization into energy, there's going to be some form of recognizable signature. You can't hide a civilizations energy signature unless you're in a Dyson sphere, and then there's going to be a hole where the sun should be.TiLT wrote:There's a huge leap of logic here that most of you seem to be making (including the author of the article). What exactly would these advanced civilizations send out that we would be able to detect? We can barely detect planets in nearby star systems, and only by studying orbital patterns and similar things. How could anyone expect us to be able to detect the presence of an alien race thousands of light years away? We're listening to radio, and as pointed out earlier, radio is extremely ineffective over the distances needed for it to matter. Half the Milky Way's stars could be covered in Dyson Spheres for all we know, and we might just think they're black holes.
Our capability to detect and discover other species is so limited right now as to be almost non-existent. An alien species could be on our doorstep, and we'd be none the wiser.
Unless the aliens make contact on their own (and why would they?), we're essentially blind right now.
We can only detect planets in nearby systems because they don't give off energy (and yet we still can). If something gives off energy, it's easy to detect even at the edge of the universe.
As so many science fiction writers have done, we could dream up any number of ways to circumvent it. If we can alter the rules of our universe, then we can break the math and/or substitute new math. How do you do that? I haven't the foggiest.Kraken wrote:FTL would be a game-changer, as might any other new physics. Dark matter/energy might knock our socks off when we finally understand them. Maybe wormholes are real. But since Einstein proved (mathematically, with subsequent experimental support) that it takes infinite energy to accelerate mass to light speed and that time stops when you reach it, I'm not willing to casually wave the speed limit aside.
I will allow that it might be possible to reach a very high fraction of c, as I did in my story.
There would be no evolution without death. Complex life won't arise without it. That's not to say that death can never be overcome, but if immortality appears spontaneously then that species stops changing, so it's counterproductive to complex life.GreenGoo wrote:
How a species could become immortal I have no idea. Science? Evolution? Magic? I think a species that came into existence immortal would probably not have the same biological drives that shorter lived species. A species that becomes immortal might lose those drives.
We could be tasty cattle as far as they're concerned. Wouldn't that suck for us!msduncan wrote: I don't agree. Species that conquer their evolutionary trees are going to be predatory. Species that expand beyond their systems are going to be aggressive. They may not be spit slavering aggressive but they are going to be aggressive in terms of civilization and expansion. They may not even recognize us as worth the trouble of courtesy as they grab whatever resource on our planet turns out to be valuable to them. Hopefully it's not our women. It might be white quartz for all we know. Common here but rare everywhere else.
We are infants. Nay, we are fetuses in the Universe.
That's certainly one scenario.Daehawk wrote:Immortality would speed up either extinction or expansion. There only so much room on Earth..if no one ever died then we would be forced into concentrating all efforts to expanding or use up what we have and go extinct. And Im speaking of immortality where you can die from damage but not grow old.
I don't disagree, but I think it's simply our imaginations failing us at this point, since our reality is so completely dominated by the concept of iterative evolution.Kraken wrote:There would be no evolution without death. Complex life won't arise without it. That's not to say that death can never be overcome, but if immortality appears spontaneously then that species stops changing, so it's counterproductive to complex life.GreenGoo wrote:
How a species could become immortal I have no idea. Science? Evolution? Magic? I think a species that came into existence immortal would probably not have the same biological drives that shorter lived species. A species that becomes immortal might lose those drives.
Not any given plant, but if you can aim the telescope correctly and avoid something else drowning it out, yes.TiLT wrote: You're saying we have the technology to detect the energy output of another species on a different planet on any given planet in the galaxy? Really?
Our energy output is insignificant compared to that of the sun. We wouldn't have to hide it, because it's so insignificant as to not matter to sensors available to us at the distances we're talking about here. At least as far as I know. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I'm sorry, but that's a horrible example.noxiousdog wrote:The best example might be brown dwarfs. At only 250-600 degrees C, we can still see them.