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Space Technology

Aliens Wouldn't Need Warp Drives to Take Over an Entire Galaxy, Simulation Suggests (gizmodo.com) 199

Posted by msmash from the ticket-closed dept.
A new computer simulation shows that a technologically advanced civilization, even when using slow ships, can still colonize an entire galaxy in a modest amount of time. The finding presents a possible model for interstellar migration and a sharpened sense of where we might find alien intelligence. From a report: Space, we are told time and time again, is huge, and that's why we have yet to see signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. For sure, the distances between stars are vast, but it's important to remember that the universe is also very, very old. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that, in terms of extremes, the Milky Way galaxy is more ancient than it is huge, if that makes sense. It's for this reason that I tend to dismiss distances as a significant variable when discussing the Fermi Paradox -- the observation that we have yet to see any evidence for the existence of alien intelligence, even though we probably should have. New research published in The American Astronomical Society is bolstering my conviction.

The new paper, co-authored by Jason Wright, an astronomer and astrophysicist at Penn State, and Caleb Scharf, an astrobiologist at Columbia University, shows that even the most conservative estimates of civilizational expansion can still result in a galactic empire. A simulation produced by the team shows the process at work, as a lone technological civilization, living in a hypothetical Milky Way-like galaxy, begins the process of galactic expansion. Grey dots in the visualization represent unsettled stars, magenta spheres represent settled stars, and the white cubes are starships in transit. The computer code and the mathematical analysis for this was project were written at the University of Rochester by Jonathan Carroll-Nellenback. Astronomer Adam Frank from the University of Rochester also participated in the study.
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Aliens Wouldn't Need Warp Drives to Take Over an Entire Galaxy, Simulation Suggests More

Aliens Wouldn't Need Warp Drives to Take Over an Entire Galaxy, Simulation Suggests

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  • Starcraft. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Narcocide ( 102829 ) on Friday June 18, 2021 @03:07PM (#61499566) Homepage

    People need to stop wasting research money on stuff that any video gamer could tell you from first-hand experience.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      Eh, research of today becomes the video games of the future.
      • It actually seems more the reverse, the SCI FI and video games come first giving the researchers ideas for pointlessly spending money.

    • I think Universal Paperclips is a better simulation!

      "There was an AI made of dust, whose poetry gained it man's trust..."

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by spun ( 1352 )

        Sure, that's just what a pile of unprocessed paperclip raw materials would say. Get in the paperclipiniator and fulfil your true destiny.

      • "If is follows aught
        It'll do what they thought
        In the end we all do what we must..."

        Such a great little game. I'm going to go play another round. See how many drifters I can kill this time around.

    • Mod parent funny.

      Go for the insight:

      Exponential growth is incompatible with geologic time. Do the math.

      I'd include a table of examples, but "You can't do that here." (Which game? Adventure? Zork?)

      • Seems familiar, but I only played Adventure, not Zork... probably when I was trying to open the iron grate

        but, I digress

        I am not so sure about problem with geological time, but more to do with the lifespan of a civilization

        Humans seem to have been on Earth for about 200,000 years, with a significant bottleneck event (great rift... maybe) that narrowed the population down significantly.

        What were humans before they became totally inbred as a result of surviving suck a bottleneck?

        Whatever the answers of the di

        • Few thousand years? That seems to long a time frame. As you point out, it's only been the last 12 thousand years that we could remotely begin to say we had civilization. That's about the time we started farming which would be the earliest we could really say would be civilized.

          Before that was just tribes roaming around. Suppose it's possible that tribes partied together and maybe some light trade but I could just as easily see them fighting over something as well.

          I would say we will cover our single solar s

          • You came close to identifying the major problem with this research. They won't be the same people when they get to the other side. They won't have the same culture, language, beliefs, system of government, genetic makeup, memes, mating rituals, etc.

            Empires, religions, cultures, causes, etc., have a lifespan incompatible with the time required to travel through space.

            As an overworked example, consider the Nazis. If they had set in motion a galactic colonization plan, would modern Germany be continuing that p

            • Empires, religions, cultures, causes, etc., have a lifespan incompatible with the time required to travel through space.

              I think it's more hilarious that you can make claims like this- with literally nothing but conjecture to back it up- than for someone to show that non-ftl galactic colonization is possible. You know, by relying on the known and observable principles of geometric growth, galactic motion, and galactic timescales.

              What can you imagine would be more extreme than first contact with isolated '

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Jeremi ( 14640 )

              If you haven't heard from your boss in the last 150 years, how do you really know that you're still doing the right stuff?

              More to the point, why would you care? With 150 years of separation, there's not going to be much incentive to do what the boss wants you to do, even if you do somehow know what that is. You've got your own life to live, and your own priorities.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Why would they. All indications are more intelligent species reproduce less and not more. Why would their society expand beyond say 1,000 to 10,000 worlds. Bearing in mind, logically and sanely, the additional worlds are not to increase your population but to have different specialised worlds, more primitive, more advanced, specific cultures, joint worlds with other societies, so your society can express many different elements of itself over the years. Beyond that it because pointlessly complex and locust

        • Evolution. Sects that want to expand will.

          There's no shortage of people willing to vote with their feet. Or with their rocket pack.

          Keep this in mind as nations decide on a global tax. Joy. Nowhere to flee anymore.

          That alone is sufficient reason not to have one.

    • It is an artificial intelligence. Biological life that is intelligent enough to have radios only exists for a couple of centuries or so, then moves on to AI.

      And software can travel at the speed of light, we do that every day. All it needs is a receive willing to execute it. Like us.

      A for Andromeda figured this out decades ago.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jeremi ( 14640 )

        All it needs is a receive willing to execute it.

        Well, that and able to execute it. Downloading and then executing alien-Java-bytecodes correctly would take some significant research and engineering, and if the software is sophisticated enough to pass as "life", then it will probably require some fairly hefty computing power to run in a useful fashion. The chances of a civilization being simultaneously clever enough to provide such a hardware platform and also naive enough to go ahead and execute mysterious alien bytecodes that it happened to receive fr

        • A message from space would be designed to be understood. It would start simply, and then become steadily more complex. For example
          2 Z 3 = 5; 4 Z 5 = 9;
          makes it pretty obvious that Z is addition.

          Any message from space would be extremely interesting, and have a lot of energy devoted to decoding it.

          Compare this with the amazing 19th century efforts to decode Cuniform. That shows what can be done with messages that were not designed to be decoded.

          And we probably already have more than enough hardware to supp

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
            First you need to recognise 2, 3, 4, 5, 9. It's not hard to recognise cunieform as writing created by intelligent beings, but finding a signal in all the possible communications in the universe is not necessarily so easy. I would expect it would be possible, though, ultimately. But then LGMs turned out not to be.

  • Lem (Score:3)

    by guygo ( 894298 ) on Friday June 18, 2021 @03:12PM (#61499576)

    as in Stanislaw. Read "His Master's Voice".
    Why are people wasting huge amounts of computer resources to what is essentially a mega Game of Life? Ridiculous.

    • Why are people wasting huge amounts of computer resources to what is essentially a mega Game of Life? Ridiculous.

      They could be mining crypto!

  • Turtles. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Ostracus ( 1354233 ) on Friday June 18, 2021 @03:14PM (#61499578) Journal

    The computer code and the mathematical analysis for this was project were written at the University of Rochester by Jonathan Carroll-Nellenback. Astronomer Adam Frank from the University of Rochester also participated in the study.

    Ah a simulation within a simulation.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mark-t ( 151149 )
      It always surprises me how willing people are to consider the proposal that we might live in a simulation while at the same time being entirely dismissive of Intelligent Design, despite the fact that the former practically necessitates the latter.

      • Re: Turtles. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by joh ( 27088 )

        A simulation would just set the basic conditions and then let it run its course. This is very different from what some people mean when they talk of âzIntelligent Designâoe.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mark-t ( 151149 )

          Whether or not it's what some people mean when they talk about it doesn't change what it alleges, that there was a designer. Full stop. At its core, it alleges nothing about the designer's nature.

          Again, what most people might be talking about when they promote I.D. is irrelevant as to what it is, and if I.D. is a garbage idea, it should be disregarded on the merits of the idea itself, not simply because of whatever agenda people might have who might advocate for it. To do anything else is shamefully h

          • I think that comes down to how active a God we have. As you say, we could be in a simulation that was made by God. God sets all the parameters and lets it run. Everything within is just what arose from the parameters this time around.

            I'm sure if that was all there was to religion and God, it would be quite easy to agree on.

            Instead, people want God to take an active role in life...whatever.

            Even if we are in a simulation, it doesn't mean we shouldn't enjoy it. It's real for all intended purposes.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by mark-t ( 151149 )
              Well now, take that to another level... if we live in a simulation, but the designer(s) of that simulation could anticipate how things were going to play out in that simulation throughout its life, right down to the level of the events that happen in the world and even the disposition of our own psyches and the choices that we believe that we might be freely making, then it follows that the designer(s) would appear to us to be actively involved in our existence even if they were not, simply because we have
          • Except that one of those two things is a philosophical dead end, and the other is a huge pain in the ass. Simulation? Fine- we're done here, reality is unknowable because it would be filtered through the simulation. Intelligent design? Great, now all the fucking crackpots insist that their kids should get to lead prayers in school and you're going to hell because the designer said so.

            Also, it's not anti-scientific to think through the logical consequences of personal beliefs like this. But more to the poin

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
          What worries me is often people monitor their simulations and if it is producing junk output they kill it and start it again... So if this is a simulation we are one meta-being's cosmic qdel 162527 from blinking out of existence.

      • I think that it is because the people pushing intelligent design also want to carry forward a 6,000 year old view of reality, while simulation 'believers' want to play a write your own version of life

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mark-t ( 151149 )

          I.D. is nothing beyond the principle that we are designed. Full stop, If we live in a simulation, then that simulation was designed, and I.D. is right.

          To base a rejection of an idea on nothing more than the rejection of some so-called agenda of people who might promote the idea rather than on the merits of the idea itself, or the lack thereof, is nothing less than hypocritical of anyone who would otherwise want to say that they are a scientist or they are supposedly a critical thinker.

          • Even if the universe is a simulation, it wouldn't prove that your stupid Abrahamic god is real. By definition of being 'all powerful', it would have no need to simulate anything, it could simply create universes as it sees fit.

            There's no reason to assume that those capable of building a universe simulator themselves would not also be the product of evolution. Ergo we would still be the product of evolution even though the parameters of our simulation were 'designed'.

            Here's scientists 'intelligently designin [youtube.com]

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by mark-t ( 151149 )
              Again, my issue is with people who would give credibility to the simulation theory but disregard I.D. I.D., is only relevant to belief in an Abrahamic god to the extent that such a god would be compatible with I.D. I.D. does not necessitate such a belief, however.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Intelligent design is a scam, designed (by humans) to keep the failing religious fantasy alive. It is nothing but yet another cleverly crafted lie. Incidentally, even if we live in a simulation (which is a bizarre idea), there is absolutely no need for the simulation controllers and designers to be in any way god-like.

      • It's simple: ID is a dishonest proposal that is merely creationism in disguise, along with the clear implication of the existence of a god/creator.

  • 1 Billion Years (Score:5, Informative)

    by curtis3389 ( 5534388 ) on Friday June 18, 2021 @03:15PM (#61499580)

    The "modest" amount of time is 1 billion years. It's modest because it's 7-9% of the age of the milky way galaxy.

    • Re:1 Billion Years (Score:5, Interesting)

      by sfcat ( 872532 ) on Friday June 18, 2021 @05:24PM (#61499950)
      It is also misleading. Part of the deal with approaching the speed of light is time dilation. Consider if many spacecraft were sent to various planets at various speeds which are a fraction of the speed of light (so yes a warp drive). To the people on the ships, each journey would take less than a lifetime and be from a year to 30 years. However, to those on earth, those ships wouldn't arrive at the other worlds spanning times from a few centuries to a few billion years from when they launched. It is likely that part of why we haven't seen a great spread of aliens is that that spread would not only be across space, but across time too. Also, a remote colony would have to be completely self-sufficient from the start and there might be some other filter that gets the colonies (but not the home planet). This would limit the rate of spread as the colonies failed due to reasons the home world doesn't understand. It is also the case that our radio waves don't travel more than about 40 light years from their source. It is likely the same for advanced civilizations if they even used the same part of the spectrum. Looking for aliens is hard. And it is very likely that there is something we won't know about for thousands of years that explains what we are seeing (or not seeing) about other civilizations.
      • This isn't a problem if there are massive self-contained spaceships with 10 to 100 million people. That's not possible now, but feasible within the next 1000 years which is a blip in time.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Well, looks like Homo Sapiens will not even make it to 250k years, so we certainly will not do any galaxy colonizing.

  • Speard out is not the same (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Friday June 18, 2021 @03:16PM (#61499582) Journal

    A species spreading though the galaxy is not exactly the same as colonization/empire.

    What kind of empire are you if nothing, not even news they arrived safely, comes back from your "colony" for 20+ years?

    Unless life spans are much longer than the 80-120 years the healthiest of us humans lives, I don't see having any kind of real societal/imperial linkage over that kind of distance.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Guspaz ( 556486 )

      It's feasible to form an imperial setup if the civilization is making extensive use of suspended animation technology (both in transit and on planets), and/or if lifespans are much longer than that of humans.

      • Re:Speard out is not the same (Score:5, Insightful)

        by spun ( 1352 ) <loverevolutionary@@@yahoo...com> on Friday June 18, 2021 @03:47PM (#61499686) Journal

        Nah, lifetime doesn't matter. Response time matters. You won't stay an empire for long if you can't react in a timely fashion to things happening on your periphery. If your periphery is more than a year away from your locus of control, you can't respond to emergencies. If you don't have a locus of control, you aren't an empire, you are at best a loose confederation of allies.

        • If you don't have a locus of control, you aren't an empire, you are at best a loose confederation of allies.

          Found the member of the Terran Confederacy. [fandom.com]

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Tom ( 822 )

          If you don't have a locus of control, you aren't an empire, you are at best a loose confederation of allies.

          If that. Given the time scale involved, these star systems would most likely become entirely seperate cultures, not just political entities. Heck, given the time scales, they'd become biologically different, too.

    • A modern might think the same thing about primitive civilizations without seeing how it was done.

      Can you imagine trying to run a global, imperial democracy on 2nd century communication tech?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        Democracy no - empire yes. However even Rome got news of the furthest stretches of the empire in months or at worst year or so.

        4.3 light years to alpha centauri; assuming light is speed is the best case rate of information propagation (maybe entanglement or something would allow faster); we are talking about quite a but more lag time to just one potential colony. They had it better in the second century.

    • have you never read science fiction?

      I would suggest that you start with 'The Foundation' series, since it is based on the idea of layer upon layer of long term control systems backing the expansion and evolution of human civilization

  • stargates can work!

  • We've known this for a while (Score:3)

    by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Friday June 18, 2021 @03:30PM (#61499630) Homepage
    Back of the envelope estimates have suggested that this is the case before. Roughly speaking space is really big, but time is much bigger. The galaxy is about 100,000 light years across. So to get from one end to the other even at 1% of light speed (which is not an unreasonable number given our understanding of the laws of physics) takes about 10 million year which in astronomical terms is pretty small. One of the major concerns about the Fermi paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox [wikipedia.org] and worry about there being a Great Filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter [wikipedia.org] is this sort of spread. People often dismiss such concern by focusing on radio signals, but that's not the main reason for concern. It isn't just a lack of radio signals, but a lack of any sign of any spread of aliens along with nothing resembling any large-scale megaproject construction. We have at this point a lot of evidence that we can't really see signs of pretty much any megastructures https://arxiv.org/abs/0811.2376 [arxiv.org] https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/no-dyson-spheres-found-yet [discovermagazine.com].

    • Re:We've known this for a while (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bob_jenkins ( 144606 ) on Friday June 18, 2021 @04:08PM (#61499760) Homepage Journal

      The search for Dyson swarms is flawed. They're searching for temperatures in the range of 100K-600K. A more likely temperature is 10K. Such civilizations will learn how to not limit themselves to biological forms. Colder temperatures make better use of energy spent. It probably makes sense to be at least double the background radiation temperature, but not much more than that. Such Dyson swarms want to be as big as possible (size lets them get more done), so some of the efforts to rule out really big dark matter would still catch them.

    • The galaxy is about 100,000 light years across. So to get from one end to the other even at 1% of light speed (which is not an unreasonable number given our understanding of the laws of physics) takes about 10 million year which in astronomical terms is pretty small.

      I'm speaking out of my ass, because I'm sure the people who actually write papers about these things have the answers, but I'm yet to be told what it is...and calculations like what you've shown me aren't convincing to me. Because it dismisses that **physically possible**, it may not be **economically feasible**.

      The first time we visited the moon was in 1969. The last time we visited the moon was in 1972. Do we have the technology to go there? Yep. But we didn't have the motivation to spend the resources to

      • The constant increase in technology is the only way. We still don't know if the Great Filter lies ahead or behind. There are numerous things that have zero to do with us that could stop us from ever leaving the solar system or even the planet for that matter.

        I think we will likely fill up this star system and when we have exhausted all the resources, we will leave.

        I picture this as massive generation ships with carrier spaceships escorting them the entire way.

        Don't ask me how we will make the journey betwee

    • We have at this point a lot of evidence that we can't really see ...

      I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that you couldn't describe the logic behind the Scientific Method if someone put a gun to your head.

  • The universe is not as ancient... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sique ( 173459 ) on Friday June 18, 2021 @03:33PM (#61499644) Homepage
    People tend to forget that the age of our planet already spans one third of the total age of the Universe, and that for any life to occur (and for it to form a civilization), you need something else than only Hydrogen and Helium. At least you need Carbon to form anything interesting at all, because all elements before Carbon aren't very variable in their chemical compounds. And you only get something else after at least one generation of stars has died and in its supernovae send out enough heavy elements to form anything different than huge gas balls. And the outer shells of even the largest stars are not very rich in heavy elements which are fused in the inner core. And most elements heavier than iron will be formed by neutron star mergers as we have seen with LIGO. So you have to have neutron stars first to even get something like copper, silver, rare earth elements or gold, and then they have to merge. There are not many chances for a civilization to get a head start compared to us, as the conditions for Life to form were much worse in the early Universe and only get better with time.

    So yes, there probably are civilizations out there that are older than us, but a) they aren't much older, and b) they are very seldom.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by lsllll ( 830002 )

      People tend to forget that the age of our planet already spans one third of the total age of the Universe, and that life as we know it to occur (and for it to form a civilization), you need something else than only Hydrogen and Helium.

      There. FTFY.

      Seriously, why does everyone define life only as they know it? I'd venture to say that not only is there life out there, but there's life out there that doesn't fit into our paradigm of what's living.

      • Life relies on chemistry, and you cannot build complex molecules with just hydrogen and helium.

        • Life relies on chemistry, and you cannot build complex molecules with just hydrogen and helium.

          There's that story about the 24K years old organism being brought back to life. [reuters.com]

          There's the original molecule that first had the drive to persist and reproduce, both, thus being alive.

          What exactly then, is life? If you arrange certain molecules in a certain way, do they become alive? Does each organism have some quantity of X that animates them, like the 24K years old organism?

          We have utterly no idea about the spec

          • Despite everything you write, the poster is correct. You cannot build life with H and He. For one damn thing He is inert.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by lsllll ( 830002 )
          Must be nice to rely on your existing knowledge of life and chemistry to make assumptions about the rest of the universe, because there's not much we don't know about. Like Einstein said, nothing can travel faster than light, until we find something that can.

      • Re:The universe is not as ancient... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Sique ( 173459 ) on Friday June 18, 2021 @06:28PM (#61500110) Homepage
        There are some very good arguments for "Life as we know it". First, only electrons, up- and down-quarks are stable, forming protons and neutrons (which are only stable if they are bound to other protons or neutrons), which leaves us with matter made up of atoms. All other particles of the Standard Model are either unstable or only weakly interacting, which makes them unfit to form any structures. What Life needs most is structure, and structure you only get if you have something that does something interesting, and stays that way for some time. But if all you have is neutrons, protons and electrons, chemical elements are the result. Carbon is the first element that is able to form molecules as chains and branches. But Carbon compounds are not very stable above 500 Kelvin. The next element which forms chains and branches is Silicon, but Silicon needs much higher temperatures to do anything at all. At terrestrial temperatures, any Life based on silicon won't get beyond the state of some colloids floating in primordial soup until the central stars of its systems burns out. But planets with surface temperatures too high will lose their Hydrogen very fast, and thus no solvent like Water is around as a way to transport molecules. You are confined to a temperature window as high as possible without going over the boiling point of Water and the burning point of Carbon compounds.

        In the end, it makes sense to look for Life based on Carbon chemistry.

    • Yes, but their are still planets in our neighborhood which are 1 billions years older than us. You only need 1 life to from on any of the planets hundreds of millions to billions of years older than the earth in the entire galaxy

    • Then there is the rarity of a planet with the right conditions for life coming out of the cloud created by that rare neutron-neutron star collision. And multiply that by the probable rarity of intelligent life evolving on a planet with the right conditions for life (It isn't inevitable. Intelligent life is not a biased evolutionary path) and one can see how really impossible intelligent life is. Put that together with the extreme difficulty communicating existence over vast distances and it shouldn't surpri

  • Maybe it's us. Maybe we're the ones who do it.

    On a somewhat related note, I hereby declare myself Emperor of the Galaxy.

    Go ahead and be upset about this, you have only yourself to blame. You could have proclaimed it yesterday, but you didn't.

  • Timescales (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MBGMorden ( 803437 ) on Friday June 18, 2021 @03:51PM (#61499704)

    One interesting concept that was recently brought up is that we don't even really need to travel a long time (comparatively) to get to another star system as long as we're not in a rush, because the stars themselves are moving too.

    At this very moment yes, the closet star to us (Proxima Centauri) is 4.2 light years, but for example in 1.3 Million years there is an orange dwarf star that will be passing within 0.065 light years of the sun. Even at current technology levels we can make that distance in a few decades. And if there is a habitable world there, we would likely setup a colony. And then the next time either of those stars pass another star, same process. Essentially as long as the civilization doesn't wipe itself out in that amount of time, you just wait for the star system you're hanging out in to wander close enough to another star and then hop over to the passing system.

    Granted, 1.3 million years is a long time, but various versions of dinosaurs lasted HUNDREDS of millions of years until an external factor led to their extinction. The only big question is whether or not a TECHNOLOGICAL civilization can last that long.

    Also there are other passes at various intervals at varying distances. We might not have to wait 1.3 Million years for example if we're able to cover distances a little closer to a whole light year in a reasonable amount of time.

    The thing is - you really have to be in it for the long game. Barring any unlikely "recycling" or continuity of consciousness (eg, reincarnation or the like) this is a future that none of us will ever see or be able to verify.

    • Even at current technology levels we can make that distance in a few decades.

      We could send a lightweight probe. We couldn't send a colony ship.

      And it's not a given that propulsion tech development accelerates forever. We're practically where we were 50 years ago, except now we can't reach the moon.

    • various versions of dinosaurs lasted HUNDREDS of millions of years

      A couple. And if you look at the first (Chindesaurus, Scelidosaurus ), they aren't really all that similar to the later ones (Deinonychus, Triceratops). Differences going way past genera.

      So odds are against us remaining human. Factoring in dispersion, it's a guarantee we won't.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      The only big question is whether or not a TECHNOLOGICAL civilization can last that long.

      You can leave out "technological".

      Dinosaurs didn't have civilization. That means they didn't have religion or idiological reasons to murder each other. It also means they didn't have the organisational means to wage war on a large scale, wiping out entire populations.

      Humans were assholes long before technology became a dominant factor. Entire cultures have disappeared this way. Sure, it takes a bit longer with bronze spears than it does with nukes, but that didn't stop our ancestors from genocide at all.

  • From the paper: "the simulation spans 1Gyr". I thought 1 billion years was a long time.

  • Human beings broke out of Africa, either through Sinai or through the Horn of Africa about 75000 years ago. Just 30,000 years later, just with walking pace and floating log rafts, and coastal expansion reached Australian coast and deep into the interior. During the Ice Age the sea levels were lower. But even with lower sea levels this entailed at least six deep ocean passages where the destination shore is not visible from the departing shore. Every spec of micronesia was found and occupied in the Pacific w

  • WHAT?! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Friday June 18, 2021 @04:11PM (#61499768)

    the universe is also very, very old.

    Who wrote this shit?! The universe is practically new-in-box! ~13.8 billion years is nothing. Consider this, Earth is ~4.5 billion years old. That's right, planet Earth has been around for a third of the history of the entire universe. That's how young the universe is, a frickin' newborn.

    The only thing needed for anyone to take over the galaxy is a stream of antimatter. How it's made is unimportant but thanks to the minimal mass needed, antimatter reactors enable travel at fractions of C where time dilates which means you could travel most anywhere and it would seem like it only took a year or so (presuming constant acceleration at 1G). Sure, you leave everyone and everything behind that you don't take with you but humans used to do that with ships all the time.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jeremi ( 14640 )

      The only thing needed for anyone to take over the galaxy is a stream of antimatter. How it's made is unimportant

      Really the only thing needed for anyone to take over the galaxy is a teleporter with unlimited range. How it's made is unimportant, but it will get you to anywhere in the universe instantaneously. The rest is just a matter of engineering details.

  • Maybe super intelligent aliens don't find colonization all that motivating? Think of the movie Her; the super intelligent AI decided to live in their own universe away from the physical one. I could see a scenario where once a species is intelligent enough they find spending their lives in space ships just do the next generations can conquer a new planet a meaningless endeavor. Maybe they instead spend their time at coffee shops discussing philosophy, playing music and board games. This concept of conquest
    • Also any intelligent civilization would not watch television, which is why we haven't seen any radio signals

  • FFS, do the editors know how to google ?

  • Maybe it's just not necessary.

    As in any advanced alien race or civilization has perhaps decided that this crazy outward expansion is not necessary.

    In the reverse of a different famous quote, maybe they were too busy thinking about if they should, rather than how.

    Maybe the fact that we don't see them everywhere is a sign that the goal of expanding everywhere may perhaps be an incorrect or misguided idea.

    Kind of like how as a kid I never seen adults spending hundreds of dollars in candy stores, but I knew the

  • I'm thinking Peter F Hamilton but wiki isn't tickling any nerons.

    It was a 2-3 book series, each well over 600 pages, set more than 1,000 years into the future. There was a group of traders that visited worlds in the arms of the Milky Way, where there was no FTL so they slept for hundreds of years at a time. They circled the galaxy, with the core the center of the galaxy. They would make fairs, where all the traders could meet at the same place at the same time. If a trader missed a fair then due to l

  • This might explain why we haven't found any traces of intelligent aliens yet.

    https://www.smbc-comics.com/co... [smbc-comics.com]

  • So what is the plan to expand out?

    First, we would need to determine if there is a suitable planet in any of our neighboring star systems. We're just beginning to discover planets now, but we'll probably need to first send probes to learn more about them before sending people. Of course, the more we colonize within our own star system, the broader our definition of suitable becomes.

    My vision would be to send out a fleet of autonomous probes to as many nearby star systems as possible. The probes would gath

  • One billion years. Fucking stupid. Of course if all you consider is speed, it can work. If you factor in evolution both biological and social, it's garbage.
  • In one of his Culture novels the subject of a species using nano technology to populate the Universe came up, and IIRC it was dismissed by saying that more advanced civilizations watch for that, and it earns the society in question a sentence of no longer being worrisome. If we postulate that FTL travel is impossible, then I guess it might be a matter of other aggressive species noticing, and unleashing an attack aimed at the center of the expanding infestation. Say, maybe that Doomsday Machine in Star Trek

  • What the paper and simulation basically say is this: Exponential growth, bitch!

    That all is a far cry from "galactic empire". The paper nowhere states that any kind of political entity emerges from this all, it only governs the spread of a species across star systems over time.

    It also vastly simplifies things. It doesn't take into account setbacks and disasters (both natural, like planet-killer asteroid hits and alien-made, such as global wars). It assumes that whatever technology is required for their star-

  • As others have pointed out this simulation spans a billion years. The paper posits journey times between stars for the species of up to 300,000 years. Even if the inhabitants of those slow-moving spaceships were in some form of suspended animation (though one that continued to operate for the entire time sounds a little far-fetched: 300,000 years with no maintenance?) - then the place they started from would have live communities and therefore evolving species.

    So the inhabitants that departed, frozen in t

  • Colonization is not possible. We are not living on the Earth; we ARE the Earth. We are no place else and can live no place else. We are home bound and so would be any intelligent life that evolved anywhere in the Universe.

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