Possible Habitable Planet Just 12 Light Years Away 420
sciencehabit writes "Astronomers have discovered what may be five planets orbiting Tau Ceti, the closest single star beyond our solar system whose temperature and luminosity nearly match the sun's. If the planets are there, one of them is about the right distance from the star to sport mild temperatures, oceans of liquid water, and even life (paper)."
Where's the queue? (Score:5, Funny)
I've got my own helmet. Where do I sign up?
Re:Where's the queue? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Where's the queue? (Score:5, Funny)
Helmet? What about a towel?
So you're planning to hitchhike to Tau Ceti? You do know it's off season and the hotel rates are insane? You don't even want to know what a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster will set you back.
Re:Where's the queue? (Score:4, Funny)
So you're planning to hitchhike to Tau Ceti? You do know it's off season and the hotel rates are insane? You don't even want to know what a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster will set you back.
A properly made Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster will set you back into infancy, no matter what the season.
Re:Where's the queue? (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, it's Tau Ceti. Khan lives there!!!
Re:Where's the queue? (Score:5, Funny)
Cheyenne Mountain oops I said to much.
Re:Where's the queue? (Score:5, Funny)
Who is much?
Re:Where's the queue? (Score:5, Funny)
Great. Now I've got to go back and watch them again. It just occurred to me to wonder whether the Antarctica gate flushes in the other direction.
Re:Where's the queue? (Score:4, Funny)
It was just Stargate Voyager. Stargate DS9 was fun while it lasted, but neither were as good as the original.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, considering that the fastest spacecraft we've ever built would take over 300,000 years to travel 12 light years, I'd say that at least the wait in line will be relatively short in comparison.
Engage! (Score:2)
Take us out of orbit, set the heading for Tau Ceti. Maximum warp. Engage!
So you're saying ... (Score:2)
Lets start seeding the galaxy with life (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
It was that sort of reasoning that almost prevented the Tau Cetians from seeding life here. Luckily cooler heads prevailed and here we are.
Re: (Score:2)
Definitely NOT Earth 2 (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, but your distance from the massive object does and that depends on the density of the planet. We can make some educated guesses based on the density of the Earth, Mars, Venus, Mercury, and from the moons in our system, but it is still no more than a guess.
Re: (Score:2)
Density has a lot to do with surface gravity. You can approximate (or if we assume a perfectly spherical planet of uniform density, exactly represent) the gravity of the planet with a point mass at the center of the planet.
How far away you are from that point mass while standing on the surface says how much surface gravity there will be. Thus volume matters.
Re: (Score:2)
Pretty impossible to say if the planet is habitable, but at 4 times the Earth's mass it definitely isn't Earth-like. The search continues...
To be specific, according to Stephen Dole and Isaac Asimov ( Planets for Man ), the max habitable gravity is 1.5g. If I'm 180 pounds, 4g would mean I feel like I'm an unsightly 720 pounds. Get in ma' belleh! :D
Re:Definitely NOT Earth 2 (Score:5, Informative)
Gravity is GM / R**2. Mass is proportional to R**3, which means that Gravity is proportional to R, if the density is the same. Inverting that, Gravity is proportional is M**(1/3), so 4 times the mass is 1.587 times the gravity (for a constant density).
So, I wouldn't rule it out.
Re: (Score:2)
A planet with four times Earth's mass but the same density would have a surface gravity of about 1.6g. Not so different. There are lots of people balancing 1.6 times my mass on similar sized feet.
I'll go! (Score:2)
I'll go. Please? No reservations here, just sign me up. Beem me up, please.
beam up no we have a gate you walkthough to get (Score:2)
beam up no we have a gate you walkthough to get there.
Re: (Score:2)
I'll go. Please? No reservations here, just sign me up. Beem me up, please.
beam up no we have a gate you walkthough to get there.
Even better. Is Sam there? Hell, I'll settle for Rodney.
Kaplah (to seriously mix a metaphor)!
I, for one.. (Score:2)
...welcome our new Tau Cetian overlords!
These are some big IFs (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if the planets are inside the habitable zone, they would need to be the correct consistencies... Venus and Mars are in the zone here, but neither has life or is natively habitable. Yes, we're attempting to discover if Mars may have HAD life, but as far as we can obviously tell, it has none now...
So it's fun and interesting to search these types of star systems and planets--and I think it's absolutely worthwhile to focus a SETI program on them to try to determine if there are any stray signals we can pick up--but otherwise this really is not much more than dreaming and guessing.
Assuming SETI finds no signals, but we do believe there a couple of planets into the habitable zone, then I think it would make some sense to attempt a probe mission there... but it could be a while before we're at the technology level we'd need...
I think our current speed record in space is about 150,000mph ... which is ~1/5000th the speed of light. So while 12 years seems do-able from a speed of light point of view, there is no (present) method to send a probe there in a reasonable amount of time... I'd say reasonable would be a ~36 years to get there, plus another 12 years for the return signal... so roughly 50 years from launch to first data... meaning it would likely be a two, maybe three, generation program from a NASA engineer point of view.
We'd need something capable of:
a) Traveling at least 1/3rd the speed of light (roughly a quarter billion miles per hour)
b) A power source capable of lasting at least ~40 years or more with enough juice available near end of life to complete its mission
c) Capable of complete autonomy in 100% unknown situation
d) Possibly requiring the ability to actively correct its course en route, and maybe even detect and avoid collisions
Re: (Score:3)
Your idea of "reasonable" seems somewhat arbitrary. I would posit 0.03c as reasonable enough. Four hundred years or about 7 generations. Still alot closer than the 666 years it would take to get to Gliese 581.
Re:These are some big IFs (Score:4, Interesting)
An Earth-like planet orbiting Tau Ceti could be examined telescopically in fair detail. If it's confirmed, it would be a great target for one of the extrasolar planetary imaging telescopes people are starting to design. It might even be possible, with refinement of current techniques, to get a rough spectrum from it with current telescopes.
Gravity? (Score:2)
From the article...
"It's the fourth planet--planet e--that the scientists suggest might be another life-bearing world, even though it's about four times as massive as Earth."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that mean that the gravitational pull on surface dwellers would be four times that of Earth? That would complicate any colonization plans...
That got me thinking though--how, exactly, do we deal with high-gravity environments? One tactic could be to use generational acclimatization--our first coloniza
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that mean that the gravitational pull on surface dwellers would be four times that of Earth?
Not necessarily. You forget that both mass and distance play a role in gravitational attraction. Therefore, given a larger radius, it could in fact have a comparable or identical gravitational attraction on the surface, though the exact numbers vary depending upon the density and distribution of material in the various layers of the planet. Assuming identical density distribution, it would require a radius twice that of Earth to have identical gravity on the surface. At the same time, the rotation speed of
Re: (Score:3)
1/2 right. IIRC the rotational ('centrifugal') effect is negligible compared to gravity unless it's really spinning fast. The force is represented as mv^2/r, where m is the mass of a person or whatnot, v is the angular velocity in meters/second, and r is the radius. If the radius is 2*Earth and the rotation speed is the same, then the surface velocity is roughly 80,000 km/day or 1 km/second. So for a 100 kg person (let's assume they're wearing a space suit), we have 100 kg * (1000 m/s) * (1000 m/s) / 80
Re: (Score:2)
Just? (Score:2)
We could conceivably make the trip in 12,000 years. Nothing to it!
Hell yeah (Score:4, Insightful)
Subtext: we don't care if we're proven wrong, so long as we learn something.
BECAUSE SCIENCE, BITCHES.
Just like Venus (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No, it isn't. The sun's habitable zone is between 0.9 AU and 1.5 AU. The maximum distance of Venus to the sun is 0.728 AU. So Venus doesn't even come close to the habitable zone.
210 posts and nobody mentioned Asimov? (Score:5, Informative)
He had foreseen this. The planet around Tau Ceti is called Aurora. It is the home of long-living humans and mind-reading robots.
Re: (Score:2)
Um, actually wouldn't that make it 840 years away assuming voyager speeds?
Re:"JUST" 12 light years? LOL. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"JUST" 12 light years? LOL. (Score:5, Interesting)
Keep in mind that Voyager, apart from some gravitational assists [wikipedia.org], wasn't ever really made to "go fast". Even now, there are ways to send things moving much quicker such as the Ion Thruster [wikipedia.org] which although not NEARLY as powerful as a chemical rocket, is amazingly more efficient. The Weight to Thrust ratio is fantastic and could well be utilized to provide constant thrust for a long time. Once you exit the earth's gravity well, something like an Ion Thruster could over a number of years accelerate a craft to a much higher speed.
Re: (Score:2)
Makes me wonder what you could accomplish with a huge bank of ion thrusters and a few fission reactors. I know that you really want to travel light when your thrust is low but I can't see a better way to send a manned mission to Titan.
Re:"JUST" 12 light years? LOL. (Score:4, Informative)
Even if it managed to get to a blisteringly fast .1c, you're still looking at longer than a human lifespan and generation ships.
Re: (Score:3)
Sure, and so what? We could do generation ships if we really wanted to, and I doubt there'd be a shortage of volunteers. Heck, they might as well start looking for those at places like Slashdot - just imagine, living in what's essentially an ultra-high-tech basement for the rest of your life, all bills paid in advance!
Re:"JUST" 12 light years? LOL. (Score:5, Insightful)
.
If we want to send people for thousands of years, I think it should be an artificial uterus with some deep-frozen zygotes in it. When you arrive you crack open the eggs, and voila! Adam and Eve.
Re: (Score:3)
I never found that argument very persuasive. In terms of space travel propulsion systems has our technology really changed that much since the 60s? Seems like we're building pretty much the same rocket engines now that we were nearly half a century ago. It's just that now we can put fancy computers on them. And better robots. Also that 'argument' will always work. By that argument there is never a good time to begin a long space journey.
Re: (Score:3)
If a frozen bacterium hit your head at 0.3c, I bet it would explode.
The bacterium, maybe, but not your head. Bacterium have very, very little mass.
For instance, a single E. Coli bacterium has a mass of approximately 2.9 x 10^-13. If someone flung one at you at at .3c, it could have a total momentum of only about 2.9 x 10^-13 x 3 x 10^8 x .3 = .0000261 gm/s.
This is about the equivalent momentum of a baseball (142g) moving at .00000001838 m/s (or .018 mm/s). (This is about the velocity imparted to an average baseball by an average slashdotter. So, not very fast.)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:"JUST" 12 light years? LOL. (Score:5, Informative)
The math is wrong - Voyager I is 0.71 light days away, or 0.0019 light years away. It will take a lot longer than 840 years to get to another star.
Re:"JUST" 12 light years? LOL. (Score:4, Interesting)
By "it" in my last sentence, I meant Voyager I. You can get to the stars faster if you spend more delta V doing so.
An interesting tidbit is that 1 year at 1 g thrust gets you to just about the speed of light. After 1 year at one g, you don't really go much faster (from the standpoint of someone left behind) but, boy does the relativistic time dilation kick in. Factoring in time dilation, you can get to almost anywhere in a fairly reasonably subjective time (i.e., the relativistic proper time for the traveler), assuming you can accelerate and deaccelerate continuously at 1 g. , Thrusting at 1 g also has the comfort advantage that we are totally used to it.
Of course, if you go very far, humans, or even the Earth, may not be there when you get back. And, how to achieve a constant 1 g thrust has to left as an exercise for the reader...
Re: (Score:3)
I think the parent is off by two orders of magnitude. I looks to me like 11 billion miles is 0.00187122571 light years. It sez here that Voyager is now travelling about 13 km/sec or 8 mi/sec, which is 0.00004 times the speed of light. Nevertheless, I think it's within the realm of the possible to build a probe, today, that could be accelerated to 1% of light speed - 3,000 km per second (about 250 times the speed of Voyager). That would make it to Tau Ceti in 1200 years. That's not an excessively long t
Re: (Score:3)
And yet -- and yet! -- it is only 0.17 light-years away.
Voyager 1 is only 17 light-hours away from the sun. That is only around 0.002 light-years, not 0.17.
Also note that the Voyager craft only used standard chemical propellants during launch and slingshot affects around various planets to gain the momentum they currently have - they only needed enough thrust to visit the target planets within a reasonable amount of time. In fact, they didn't want them going too fast, otherwise they would have zipped past the planets even faster, reducing the amount of time av
Re: (Score:3)
Also note that the Voyager craft only used standard chemical propellants during launch and slingshot affects around various planets to gain the momentum they currently have
Could you get more by slingshotting around the sun?
Re:"JUST" 12 light years? LOL. (Score:5, Funny)
Could you get more by slingshotting around the sun?
Yeah, but you'll end up in San Francisco in 1986 so it won't do you any good.
Re: (Score:3)
Could you get more by slingshotting around the sun?
Yeah, but you'll end up in San Francisco in 1986 so it won't do you any good.
Just stay off the LDS.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, which is why the fastest ever spacecraft (AKA man-made object) was Helios II, which orbited close to the sun back in the 70s. That craft achieved speeds four times faster than that of Voyager 1 (70 km/s versus 17 km/s). Certainly it makes sense to quickly pick up as much speed as possible while you're in the neighborhood of massive objects before heading out into deep space, where the ion drive would have to be used exclusively.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
No, Spock won't be born for hundreds of years to calculate your trajectory and you could slingshot yourself back to the Flintstones...
Re: (Score:3)
In point of fact, its all relative. You are using the orbital velocity of the planet plus its gravity, to transfer momentum to your Voyager craft. Or in your case, do the same with the sun, you would have to figure out what the relative solar motion is with respect to your destination star. There would be galactic rotation and other more local motions to be considered. Finally, the closer you get to the source of the gravity the bigger the slingshot, however if the source of your gravity assist is a ball of
Re: (Score:2)
OK, use solar sails. Augment the thrust with heat emitted by RTGs, reversing the effect that is decellerating Pioneer [slashdot.org]. Make it a big heat source and design a round trip robotic* mission to survey the system.
*Robotic because we don't want it returning with a bunch of Reavers [wikipedia.org] from the unshielded core.
Re: (Score:3)
Um, not even close. Voyager is currently just under 0.002 light years away. Two one-thousandths of a light year.
Which of course makes your point even more pertinent. 12 light years, or even 1 light year, may as well be infinity.
(When you said it was only 0.17 ly away I was like "what, seriously? That's actually pretty good!". Then I realised that can't be right, as I know the DSN isn't waiting anywhere near 0.17 years for signals from Voyager.)
Re: (Score:2)
We'll have to see how the ion drives do.
Re: (Score:2)
Voyager 1 has been moving away from Earth for what, 37 years, and it is now at the edge of, if not beyond, the Solar System's farthest reaches. It is 11 billion miles away.
It's been running on empty since soon after it was launched. Consider what its velocity would be if it had been continuously accelerating for the last 37 years. We can do that now.
Re: (Score:2)
You do realize that Voyager was never intended for interstellar exploration, right? It is not any sort of pinnacle of what humanity can do and it was never intended to be.
We could probably get to at least 0.07c with nuclear pulse propulsion. Of course at that speed it would still take us over 170 years to get there. Plus the additional 100-200 years to build the ship and the off world infrastructure necessary to do so.
Re: (Score:2)
If you want to go there. "Just" 12 light years is a lot better than 100 or 1000 if you want to look.
Re:"JUST" 12 light years? LOL. (Score:5, Interesting)
You make me post this in every extrasolar planetary thread and it's really annoying.
Voyager 1 is nowhere near current technology. We have ion thrusters now. We have supercomputers now. Hell, your cellphone would have been a supercomputer to the guys who designed that thing. We have water on the moon, in near-earth asteroids, and a limitless supply in Ceres, and we didn't know that then. We have new methods of separating that water into hydrogen and oxygen on orbit efficiently, so it doesn't have to be hoisted out of our gravity well. We have far more understanding about long-term space missions and habitation. Plants grow in space! We didn't know that either. We have commercial rockets that can dock with the space station: an absurd sci-fi fantasy back then. We have robots who can do the work of gathering fuel without too much supervision. We have robots that could survive the kind of acceleration provided by a 1000 km railgun that it would take to put the robots there in a reasonable time, and a place in low-g to put that rail gun and robots to build it. And software to put on the robots that apparently can withstand a 24 year ping time.
In fact, recent learnings about the Voyager Anomaly point to an obvious way to propel interstellar spacecraft: Put a couple dozen 200 MW fission reactors behind some heat/radiation shields and point them in the opposite direction from where you want to go, and let them melt down. The heat provides thrust. At 745 W per HP, that's good for a few thousand horsepower of thrust. Since a Newton is a Horsepower-second, near enough, and the reactors run for many years, that's insane number of Newtons. We actually used to have a project that worked on this theory called Project Orion.
So, for example, get the robots to gather up some water and refine it into LH2/LO2. Slide some of that fuel down to LEO and pick up a commercial hydrox booster and lift it into high orbit and fill it. Repeat until you have seven of them. Now arrange them in a filled hexagon at L2 orbit just beyond the moon, and fill with hydrox. Strap your meltdown-driven spacecraft and habitat/humans/robotic exploration package on the nose, and at the most opportune time when your cislunar orbit is headed closest to the desired direction, light that shit off. Boost for 2.5 minutes at 6 g, and discard the 7 Saturn boosters. You're already several times past solar system escape velocity, and your course is assured. Then engage the thermal drive and melt down the reactors and continue to boost at something on the order of 40 billion Newtons per year as you head to the nearest star. Somebody do the math for me. I'm thinking 50 years.
"Oh, but the cost!" you might say. Well look. We don't need the work of all the people we have. It turns out that something like 1 in 4 Americans is all that's required to maintain our standard of living. According the US Bureau of Labor Statistics [bls.gov] we have 11 million underemployed people in the US, or $500B/year worth of people who could do be doing something interesting and useful who aren't. And that's just the US, and I think that number is understated 2x. Besides, we'd like to be rid of that nuclear fuel anyway.
I'm not even in the space field and I could figure out how to get people to Tau Ceti in under one human lifespan with resources like that, or robots sooner still. We could do it, right now, with the resources and science that we have. It would be a one-way trip, but we would not lack for volunteers or robots. From one economic point of view it wouldn't cost us one whit more than we're already paying, and instead of being unhappily idle the proletariat would be excitedly engaged in a worthy endeavour. You just have to sell it.
Just because your grandparents couldn't figure out how to do this don't assume that the current generation can't.
Re:It goes the other way, too (Score:5, Interesting)
If that planet were inhabited by a technological civilization, we should have been detecting their twelve-year-old radio transmissions, faint as they might be.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It turns out that stars are pretty powerful radio transmitters, and the edge of a stellar system has considerable additional noise. And then there's the cube-square law. Even if they were deliberately transmitting directly at us 12 years ago, it's unlikely we could make out the signal from the noise.
Suns have a lot of light noise too, so we probably wouldn't see a laser transmitter either, unless it were from the very edge of the system.
What we might see if we were looking for it would be the ion emissio
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It turns out that stars are pretty powerful radio transmitters, and the edge of a stellar system has considerable additional noise.
So what?
And then there's the cube-square law.
Don't you mean inverse square law?
Even if they were deliberately transmitting directly at us 12 years ago, it's unlikely we could make out the signal from the noise.
While noise (snr) is certainly a problem in any long range communication, if transmitting at the proper frequencies (ie. 1-10 Ghz; 34-37 Ghz; 75-80 Ghz) it isn't a major one.
The problems are more along the lines of:
1. It seems unlikely that any system within 50 ly of us would contain a planet with not just life, but intelligent life. Biogenesis has been compared to a tornado in a junkyard constructing a car. We really have no idea how to even do it ourselves. So it
Re: (Score:3)
Don't you mean inverse square law?
No, I mean the Square-cube law. [wikipedia.org] In particular that the strength of radio emissions fall off at a ratio of the square of the power to the cube of the distance. Stars are very far and this law destroys the effectiveness of radiological communications over such distances.
Re:It goes the other way, too (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Vulcans Invented The Prime Directive (Score:5, Informative)
The Vulcans came from the habitable planet that orbited Tau Ceti, according to my Starfleet Technical Manual. Given that they invented the Prime Directive, they probably have to maintain radio silence (frex, using very directional masers where necessary for radio-band communications) to avoid clueing in lesser civilizations.
Plus the Andorians live right next to them and we all know what they are like.
Re:It goes the other way, too (Score:5, Funny)
You're forgetting that we can see our own TV signals, sent out and then reflected back at us by an unknown source from 47 years ago [rimmell.com]. If a low quality mirror is enough to span 47 light years, than a direct view of something 12 light years away should be fine.
Re:It goes the other way, too (Score:5, Funny)
AGGGH just noticed the date on that article. I'm such a tool.
Re:It goes the other way, too (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't feel too badly, you were on the right track. IIRC clear back in the 1970s it was determined that at TV frequencies the Earth was the brightest (known) object in the galaxy.
Re:It goes the other way, too (Score:5, Funny)
it was determined that at TV frequencies the Earth was the brightest (known) object in the galaxy.
That is until they learn to decode the signals. Then they will stop thinking we are bright.
Re: (Score:3)
Interesting, but from what I have read, without a truly giant parabolic reflector and a very sensitive receiver none of those VHF/UHF signals would be detectable above background noise at even 1 ly. Those frequencies just don't work very well for point to point communication at great distance. I think the Friis equation would require truly giant reflector dishes compared to higher frequencies. I think they may also be attenuated by the interstellar medium (adds up over truly great distances) in addition to
Re: (Score:3)
Hush! It's hard enough to get a government grant for some real astronomy, so we had to coat it into some kinda project that appeals to the common man. Or do you think you can sell a huge radio telescope to find some faint signals about the beginning of the galaxy to get closer to the big bang to the hicks who will instantly ask you "and what is it good for?"
But if you claim you're looking for E.T., they'll be pleased.
Re:It goes the other way, too (Score:4, Informative)
SETI is looking for intentional signals, not the alien equivalent of Abbot and Costello.
Re: (Score:3)
If they're as lonely as we are, and regardless of whether they used radio like we have, wouldn't any sufficiently advanced civilisation be transmitting radiowaves in all directions, with the purpose of getting a response from someone else? So, if they want to get in contact with us, radio seems like a good place to start, as least from a physics perspective?
We send out these kinds of signals now, but on a small scale. We should be sending these in all directions, and all the time, and the messages we should
Re:It goes the other way, too (Score:5, Interesting)
"On a small scale" is an understatement. We have virtually sent no signals at all. To any system past Alpha Centauri we would be dead silent on a radio scan of our system 99.9999999999999999999999999999% of the time. Are you wondering why we haven't made any effort to send signals? Fear. Even many radio astronomers themselves are frightened of attracting the attention of more advanced civilizations that may be listening. If we are too afraid to do it other civilizations may be as well. So we all listen but never speak. Everyone will stay very quiet out of ignorance and fear. Hence Fermi's Paradox and The Great Silence.
Re:It goes the other way, too (Score:5, Funny)
So basically it is like high school dating on a galactic scale?
Re:It goes the other way, too (Score:4, Insightful)
The Burvixese race evolved on the planet Arcturus 1, progressing from turtle-like swamp dewellers to a benevolent, highly technological society in just over fifteen million Earth years. Although the Burvixese had the wherewithal to build crude interplanetary vessels, they preferred to remain on the comfortable damp surface of their world and explore the galaxy through HyperWave communication. Using this method, the Burvixese made contact with several neighboring alien cultures, including the Utwig, the Gg, and unfortunately, the Druuge, whom the Burvixese would have been much better off never finding. For many decades, the Burvixese exchanged information with these races, trading technological, historical and philosophical facts and theories, until the fateful year 2142. It was then that the Gg announced that they had come under attack by a unknown alien race, who appeared to want nothing less than their complete annihilation. The Gg surmised that the hostile race, the Kohr-Ah, had located them using the Gg's HyperWave transmissions. Knowing that they had little chance of survival, the Gg warned the Burvixese that, unless they restricted their own transmissions, they too might face a gruesome fate.
Being a charitable race, before the Burvixese turned off their HyperWave transmitters, they shared the Gg's warning with the Druuge. But it was too late. The Druuge's powerful advertising beacons had already attracted the attention of the murderous Kohr-Ah, who, having finished with the Gg, began moving in the general direction of the Persei constellation, home of the Druuge. Realizing their peril, the Druuge took immediate action. They ceased all transmissions and sent a task force of their fastest ships to the moon of the Burvixese world. Once there, the task force assembled a huge HyperWave broadcaster on the moon's surface. When it was complete, the Druuge activated the unit which began emitting powerful HyperWave signals, focused directly toward the oncoming KohrAh fleet. The Druuge hoped that the hostile aliens would change course toward the Burvixese planet and fail to find their own worlds. Unfortunately, this ruse was all too effective: the Kohr-Ah changed course, attacked the poor Burvixese and, sadly, destroyed them all in three days of orbital bombardment.
--Star Control 2 manual
Re:It goes the other way, too (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that fear of attracting attention is very misguided. Civilisations capable of mass interstellar travel automatically have much better opportunities to pursue ... than to go torment younger single-planet civs.
Who said anything about tormenting? The Vogons did not destroy earth to torment, but for practical reasons. They were described as "Not cruel, just callous". I destroy wasp nests, but not to torment them. I recently trapped a dozen mice in my attic; I actually felt sorry for them, they look cute, but knew that if I let them be they would be taking over the house.
Such an advanced civilisation might see us as we see an ants nest. And don't depend on talking our way out of it, reasoning with them. They would be on a totally different mental wavelength. Most higher animals on Earth talk to each other (that is what "birdsong" is for example), and we have lived for thousands of years alongside them, yet most people will not even accept that they do so - let alone listen.
Re:It goes the other way, too (Score:5, Funny)
Hello out there! Any potential overlords looking for a slave race that's advanced enough to be useful without being able to defend itself effectively? And might be tasty?
Re:It goes the other way, too (Score:4, Funny)
Just send a B Ship full of your Republicans, climate denialists, gun nuts and all the other right-wingers around the world.
They can propel themselves there with bombastic hot air, and they'll fuck everything up enough that we'll never see that planet again. Of course, if the other guys have had the same idea, we'll need a strategy to deflect them. Pretending we're gay might seem like a good idea, but before you know it, they'll be "adopting a wide orbital stance" and stalk us forever.
Suggestions anyone?
Re:It goes the other way, too (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Easy, free ammo.
Just have them practice on the outside of the ship, firing in the opposite direction of travel, so it'll speed up the ship. Until turnaround for deceleration, of course.
Re: (Score:2)
Just put him on the "Botany Bay" with a crew made up of Network Newsclowns.
Re: (Score:2)
Alliterative and Redundant, well played.
Re: (Score:2)
Why stop there, lets send The entire Cabinet, Congress, The Senate and The Supreme Court so they all have one another to keep each other company... and if you can get Wall Street on the next bus, we should be pret-near perfect.
Re:It goes the other way, too (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
One has to organize the transport. And knowing how well they organize, the trip should only go to our own sun, which should save us heaps of fuel.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, but if we're considered a cancer on our planet ...
You may consider yourself a cancer. I consider myself an inhabitant.
Cortez had no intention of wiping out indiginous natives when he arrived in the New World. Feature. Serendipity. Ignorance is bliss. Yadayada. :-(
Re: (Score:2)
You can't have it both ways. If we're a cancer, we're incapable of good or evil.
Re: (Score:2)
Or learn some ecology.
Re: (Score:2)
... you might want to stock up on ammunition for your Grendel gun.
Or, shiny beads that the natives may enjoy trading for.
Just a thought.
Re:Tau Ceti is 2 X as old as our sun (Score:5, Interesting)