Semi-OT: A General Tech Question Thread for me :)

[Hunpecked]

Starhawk writes: "Or generally speaking the universe is really freaking huge and what are the odds of an interstellar empire just happening to bump into us?"

El_phil writes: "The universe is somewhat large, you do know this right?"

I also know a billion years is a long time. Given FTL travel and a few billion years' head start, the entire known universe is well within reach of one intelligent species. Note that any restrictions put on FTL travel to keep this (these) species out of our neighborhood also work against our own exploitation of FTL technology.

Granted, the "no contact" observation can also be interpreted as evidence against the existence of other intelligent, expansionist species--though we really need only one besides our own. Given the relative ease with which life developed on Earth--within a few hundred million years--and the "really freaking huge" size of the universe, what are the odds of that?

So no, this is not a joke. There are a number of possible explanations for this observation, but it remains a fact that has to be explained. And even if it can be plausibly explained, it's unlikely the explanation will be consistent with the kind of Space Empires-ish universe so popular in sci fi.

Note also that real science is a double-edged sword for sci fi: while future breakthroughs may confirm that FTL travel is both possible and practical, science may also shut the last theoretical door on FTL.

[Starhawk]

Yeah but for sci-fi that would be boring


Well possibility is that we are the oldest sentient species, anyone ever consider that? No....why? Because it just isn't something we get in our puny little heads (mainly I think it started as a way to shut out the Creationist religions who say man came first so Evolutionists just said LIKE HELL) but anyway seriously even from my opinion (I'm a christian so I tend to think with the bible here lol) even if we acknowledge evolution as a creation factor.
Why is it not possible that we are the oldest race yet to acheive sentient status? I mean if you look at evolution it is supposed to have taken our ancestors a few hundred million years to acheive sentient status so maybe other planets got started a little after us


Also possible: There ARE other expansionist races out there they just might not be in our block of the galaxy, so maybe if and when we get out there WE will be the expansionist Empire crushing all in our wake.


I am not joking here either btw.

[Suicide Junkie]

Even if you can't go FTL, you could still colonize the entire galaxy in less than 10 million years from here.

IIRC, the assumptions were along the lines of:
- Travel at 10% of light speed
- 100 years per colony ship launched
- 500 years after landing for a colony to industrialize and send out its first colony ship.
- Goal of sending a colony ship to every star in the milky way.

[douglas]

Did that model take into account the possibility of multiple independent colony efforts going to the same stars, or was it assumed that it would all start with one master plan of chains of colonization that all colonies would have uncorrupted versions of? There's also the matter of how many colony ships would actually find livable planets to colonize at their destinations.

[Wolfman77]

Here is one site I found that talks about it.

http://www.ibiblio.org/astrobiology/...?page=future05

It assumes 25% light speed and done in under 100 million years. Also assumes a few other things.

[Alneyan]

Speaking of contact, aliens and the like: are we currently ready to detect alien spacecraft in our vicinity, or could they slip past us unnoticed?

Consider that such a ship enters our system tomorrow, and uses technology comparable to ours (and within the boundaries of science as we know it): do we have the technology to (indirectly) detect that something is amiss? If so, is this technology currently used?

Oh, and just for kicks: am I right in thinking we would be hard to detect ourselves? SETI would be a clear give-away, if someone else was doing the same thing, and our satellites might allow detection; is our activity on Earth detectable without going up close?

[Hunpecked]

Starhawk writes: "Well possibility is that we are the oldest sentient species, anyone ever consider that? No....why?"

This is of course one of many POSSIBLE explanations, as I suggested earlier. However, since solar systems capable of supporting terrestrial-type life almost certainly formed billions of years before our own, it SEEMS unlikely. I use the term "seems" because with only one data point we can't actually calculate the odds. Of course in a sci fi setting with many alien species, the more aliens, the less plausible it is that humans are first, or even comparably advanced.

Isaac Asimov has used the "humans first" premise either implicitly or explicitly in several of his stories, notably the "Foundation" series, his short story "The Last Question", and his novel "The End of Eternity". In this last novel, humanity squanders its head start by wasting 10 million years (a cosmic eyeblink) using temporal technology to "improve" human life on Earth, which inadvertently postpones interstellar travel until too late.

These are all great stories despite their failure to deal explicitly (or convincingly) with the "FTL yet humans first" paradox. If, however, an author makes a good effort to resolve the paradox, thereby at least making unlikely premises more self-consistent, then so much the better.

[Hunpecked]

Suicide Junkie writes: "Even if you can't go FTL, you could still colonize the entire galaxy in less than 10 million years from here."

I remember seeing something like this in Carl Sagan's 1980 TV series "Cosmos", with a similar time scale. Presumably intergalactic distances are too great for "practical" STL travel (except perhaps by robots), but that just changes the problem from "first in the universe" to "first in the galaxy".

As for how we would detect advanced interstellar ships, presumably an expansionist species would colonize our solar system, or self-replicating robots would exploit it until all resources were consumed.

As for "them" detecting "us," I read somewhere that the Earth is one of the brightest radio sources in the sky. In Sagan's novel "Contact" the ETs respond to a TV broadcast of the 1936 Olympics.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Isaac designed a story universe shortly before his death in which humans were the newest and seventh species with FTL. It's called 'Isaacs' Universe' and there's some anthologies set in it. I've read three, I think. Pretty good.

Asimov described the Foundation series as '...a galaxy-wide lense to view humanity through...' - Near as I can remember.

[Starhawk]

Well I sort of stick mainly to humans only in my story as you can tell, I only had three "Xeno" species and they were primtiive compared to the comparable humans (I don't know why but thats how it worked in the game so it was great for my story) and if and when I right a book set in the latter "Fourth Empire" Icarans and they encounter aliens they'll probobly be roughly equal to Icarans.

Though one thing I would have is a "give and take" technological "equality" for example the Icarans have good weapons while the Xenos might have excellent drives considering unlike Star Trek I doubt every race would be researching along the same lines as one another forever.