The Physics of Extra-Terrestrial Civilizations

http://www.mkaku.org/ ^ | unk | Michio Kaku

[longshadow]

heliopause: a form of stellar mid-life crisis....

[Flightdeck]

Wasn't Freeman Dyson's "Orion Project" based on the gigantic specific impulse of a nuclear-bomb powered spaceship?

[longshadow]

You still have the Kuiper Belt (of which Pluto is one of the bigger and closer objects) and the Oort cloud, which extends something like half a light year out.

Amazing, and to think a certain recently banned Freeper used to say "you don't know beans about astronomy"....

;-)

[Junior]

It was a rather eliptical dig at my knowledge...

[PatrickHenry]

heliopause: a form of stellar mid-life crisis....

At last, the true explanation for the Fermi Paradox. The aliens know better than to approach our solar system at this delicate time.

[longshadow]

It was a rather eliptical dig at my knowledge...

"Wildly elliptical," if my recollection serves.

But you're in good company; I think he did that at least 1⁷²⁰ times.

[harbingr]

Yes, the predators are here - humanity is a protectorate of God - His garden of souls. Free will is the key. Damnation is a personal choice (ie:pro-choice). Science without faith is Folly. The denouement will find you wanting.

[boris]

"Actually I think Fermi's paradox is garbage. IMHO, it was an offhand remark with little or no thought to it."

I'm surprised to hear you say that. Especially since it has puzzled lots of people for a long time. The "billions and billions" argument--if you can call it that--breaks upon the pillar of the Fermi Paradox. It's like Olber's Paradox...which tells you that something in the received conventional wisdom isn't quite right.

The "billions and billions" coupled with the Drake Equation (with carefully selected parameters) says we should be overwhelmed with contacts. Rare Earth tosses dozens of 0.0001 probabilities at the "billions and billions" until you are down to some or none. And at the heart of it lies Fermi's famous question.

--Boris

[boris]

"I still don't see colonizing an entire galaxy. That's a tall order even for an advanced race. All speculation anyway. (on both sides) :-)

What if only third generation stars produce life? Maybe there are thousands of races out there that are just beginning to invent the wheel and a few who destroyed themselves? I have no idea. In fact I don't "believe" in ET. I suspect there may be so I search. :-)

If we are alone this is profound, if we are not, this is also profound. SETI is a win win science."

Sagan argued that we are the new kids on the block--after all we just discovered radio 100 or so years ago. Everybody else--following Sagan--is either dead or much, much more advanced than we.

Being alone is depressing. Firstly, to quote "Contact" it seems an awful waste of a universe. Secondly if we are the best the universe can come up with, what a rotten universe. Finally it invests everything you do with a horrible portent....

--Boris

[harbingr]

Click on my name and read about the Fallen Angels and Satan's plan for The Great Deception

[RightWhale]

if we are the best the universe can come up with

Maybe we are. Maybe there is no need for anything better since we are all potential. If we can reach our potential the universe should be pleased with the results. If the universe has any feelings on the matter.

[cookcounty]

"This question is no longer a matter of idle speculation. Soon, humanity may face an existential shock as the current list of a dozen Jupiter-sized extra-solar planets swells to hundreds of earth-sized planets,....

Gonna take a lot more than a few hundred "earth-sized planets" to come up with a civilization. Like maybe a few hundred trillion...or more. Unless, of course, some unnamed Being got Creative.

[cookcounty]

"We must look like a bunch of barbarian savages to any that might be watching."

Then again, it might be the Space Gestapo that survives best. Especially since survival of the fittest is what makes for survival. (is there an echo in here?)

[RightWhale]

I still don't see colonizing an entire galaxy.

That is entirely possibe and should take about 1 million years once we get started. Going to other galaxies is a different matter. We'll probably not travel to M31.

[RadioAstronomer]

I'm surprised to hear you say that.

I was rushed and it came out a bit harsher than I intended. :-(

I have looked at it and I still think the Lorentz Transformation is the key to why we are not being visited if anyone else is a tool building society that has achieved spaceflight.

[Rudder]

“What does it mean for a civilization to be a million years old? We have had radio telescopes and spaceships for a few decades; our technical civilization is a few hundred years old... an advanced civilization millions of years old is as much beyond us as we are beyond a bush baby or a macaque.” (Carl Sagan)

This opening quote for this article reveals a subtlely conveyed, albeit perverse, concept: the author has evolution's direction in his grasp. How did Sagan, or anyone else, come to know the course of evolution yet to come? Since advancing technical complexity and/or intelligence is always posited by futurists as the putative hall mark of a long-standing civilization, it seems to me that a critical analysis of their presumptions is warranted because there is no way to know that this position is even close to the true state of evolutionary affairs.

That Sagan, an allegedly reputable scientist, would be so foolish as to predict the future is not surprising, almost all scientists (as well as the laiety) express similar views.

There's no way anyone can know the variance of future selective pressure, let alone predict unknown organisms' response to them.

But, the fallacious position will no doubt persist. That is, aliens, with eons of time to have evolved, will have most certainly followed the course we ourselves would have chosen.

[PatrickHenry]

P L A C E M A R K E R

[Eala]

Thanks for the ping.

[Eala]

One small correction here. He shouldhave written" "But already, we can see the seeds of a Type I HELL.
We see the beginning of a planetary language (English), a planetary communication system (the Internet), a planetary economy (the forging of the European Union), and even the beginnings of a planetary culture (via mass media, TV, rock music, and Hollywood films).
I, for one, see no virtue in either a move towards the EU nor the "global" Hollyweird culture.

I agree. Just got back from a week in Denmark during which I was rendered incommunicado because there was no way I was about to pay their $2/minute tax (or was that $1 / 2minute?) on local phone calls from a hotel room. Everywhere I encounter it, $ocialism is horrendously expensive; and for all it provides things "free," somehow the standard of living seems much lower where it prevails. <

[Robert A Cook PE]

Your question beings up a critical point:

Travel, of course, must be possible to "start" the idea of a transstellar civilization.


BUT ...

Two more things are essential:

First, you must be able to travel BACK to the otigin. (Requires navigation and at least a two-way amount of supplies and resources/fuel. (Worse, you don't know whwre you're goinf when you've left: How many stars are you going to have to aim for, travel to, de-accelerate into, explore, then accelarate away to the next vefore you find ONE important enough to want to return home from?

And, once you've left your origin, you must be able to navigate back to where your origin NOW is when you've gotten back there. (Rotation of the galaxy and all that minor stuff.)

Coomunication is as important as travel: If ou can't communicate faster than speed of light, nothing you do away from the home system will ever be economically viable.