How do you explain it?

[dogscoff]

One scientist classified civilizations in 3 categories:
- Category 1 civilization will harness all the energy of the planet. That means mainly: solar, wind, fosil, all mechanic energies that I can't name, nuclear, lava, tectonic energies.
- Category 2 civilization will harness all the energy a solar system will produce. That means category one plus harnessing the sun energy and taping directly into it and the planet gravitational movements energy.
- Category 3 civilization will harness all the energy of the galaxy. It is category 1,2 and a whole bunch of energy types that I don't understand at all...hehe

Sounds to me like the kind of twaddle a scifi writer would come out with- Asimov or Clarke from the sound of it.

Why would you *want* to harness all the energy of a galaxy, or a solar system, or a planet? If we could harness all of Earth's energy, we would have thousands of times more energy than we had any clue what to do with. Perhaps we could fire a laser beam and blow up a neighbouring planet/solar system/galaxy or something. And how do you define *all* the energy on a planet anyway? If you have covered the entire planet in solar panels to harness *all* of the sun's rays, where are we going to put the wind farms to harness *all* the wind power? (which is just converted solar energy anyway) What level of energy conversion efficiency must we achieve to qualify for this arbitrary categorisation? 10%? 50%? 100%?

Theoretically, we have the technology to 'harness' all of Earth's uranium deposits right now (just dig up all the uranium and build lots and lots of power stations), but we haven't used it *all* until there's none left and we'd be idiots to do it all in one go. And why stop at Uranium? Energy can be derived from any matter- must we bleed every atom completely dry? Besides, there are useful things Earth's energy could be doing that don't directly involve us- like growing trees and sustaining our ecosystem for instance.

Similar problems apply to the supposed category 2 and 3 civilisations. And even if, for some absurd reason, humanity did want to harness every single scrap of Earth/Sol/MW's energy, who's to say that any other sentient species would have such an appetite? And even after reading the foundation series, I'm still not convinced by the prospect of an entire-galaxy-spanning civilisation either, which kind of rules out #3. It's just too damn big- it would be a real bugger to administer.

So all in all, a very narrow and somewhat pointless statement, imho. No offence to Jestak though, that's at least the second of your comments in this thread shot down- sorry dude.

[Slick]

Greetings and no offense, but you have twisted the idea of "time dilation" horribly out of shape. It is in no way linear as you suggest.

Here's a calculator

[atari_eric]

Ragnarok-X said:
Oh yeah, and keep in mind, another species may not even see the need for "development" or "technology" at all. A society, if formed, may be based around things we cant even imagine, not necesarrily something like religon, like or advancements.

Asian culture was once unconcerned with "advancement". They thought that the natural order was static - that it was <b>wrong</b> to change.

Gives me the willies...

[Jack Simth]

Jestak said:
Greetings,

Purely scientifically, you all forgot something very important: Our dear friend Albert Einstein discovered it more than 80 years ago and it was spoken out by someone I can't remember his name.

Time flows at different pace for each system because those systems go to a different speed (i.e.: Relativity theory). In theory, a system in a galaxy moving 10 times faster than our galacy will flow 10 times slower than us (A vehicle moving at speed of light will see the people around it frozen.)

So, Sol III (us) could see 2000 years pass by while planet X in another galazy could see 1 million years pass during that same Sol III 2000 years.

It makes all those silly sci-fi movie and television show quite archaic. . Of course, Star Trek universe is all in the same Galaxy, so the time is almost all the same. But what about the galaxies at the edge of the universe that travel 2000 times faster than our galaxy? One year here is 2000 years there. Imagine the progress of the last 100 years (wireless, nuclear, etc) here are nothing compared to the progress an identical society could make in 200,000 years.

Thank you

It's not linear, but that's irrelavant; that's one perspective. Another, equally valid perspective is that time flows slowly here and faster there. It's a variation on the twin paradox. From our perspective, their clocks are slow; from their perspective, our clocks are slow.

Perhaps we are the most advanced civilization there is! All others are in different frames of reference, and, due to the "magic" of relativity, are advancing more slowly than we are in our frame! Of course, that would be equally true of all other civilizations from their frame.... Oooh... Headache....

[Aiken]

Back to WP explanations. Possibly it's an alternative universe, and warp points are an inherent part of its physics. And probably traditional (for us) interstellar travel is theoreticaly impossible there.

In perfectly explains why Aaron rejected to implement intersystem movement at speed of light in se5 - he has arrived from that universe recently (his saucer was last seen about 20 years ago) and this kind of movement is a wild nonsense for him.

[AngleWyrm]

"Time isn't made out of lines, it is made out of circles. That is why clocks are round." -Caboose

Further reference details at:
http://www.redvsblue.com/archive/download.php/?id=607

[Jestak]

Greetings,

Indeed, the time distorsion is not linear. I was just simplifying too much.

Concerning other comments:
"Sounds to me like the kind of twaddle a scifi writer would come out with- Asimov or Clarke from the sound of it. "

Nope, it came from a very serious scientific community. First time I read about it, it was in Discovery magazine then I made some more researches on the web. It is a simple classification. There are others, but this one is the most known and it is done in relation with energy consumption. I am not a physicist or futurologist. Just a simple engineer. hehe

"Why would you *want* to harness all the energy of a galaxy, or a solar system, or a planet? If we could harness all of Earth's energy, we would have thousands of times more energy than we had any clue what to do with."

Not really. Our knowledge of the universe and fundamental physic is far beyond our technological knowledge. Only the energy of the earth will be far from suficient in a distant futur. I gave as an example the Star Trek Enterprise. In theory, a ship like that one would deplete the earth energy in a very few time.

I am not offensed at all. Just that I can't put here the whole "Energy classification" thing. It was more to point out to some people to fin some reading. I underestimated the people by simplifying too much. Anyway, next time I'll have more scientific rigor.

Thank you

[DarkHorse]

Sounds to me like the kind of twaddle a scifi writer would come out with- Asimov or Clarke from the sound of it.

Asimov wrote and published over 400 books in his lifetime, including textbooks on mathematics, science and physics. I would hardly describe his life's body of work as "twaddle". There is nothing wrong with inventing hypothetical technology in the context of telling a story.

He also hated the term 'scifi', preferring science fiction, or S.F. for short.

[dogscoff]

Asimov wrote and published over 400 books in his lifetime, including textbooks on mathematics, science and physics. I would hardly describe his life's body of work as "twaddle".

I've nothing against Asimov, I do have criticisms of his work, but on the whole I like his stuff a lot. If you don't believe me, just go to http://www.dogscoff.co.uk/fiction and click "influences".

There is nothing wrong with inventing hypothetical technology in the context of telling a story.

Absolutely. I have been known to do it myself from time to time. I might not be published, and as I clearly state in the "influences" page I directed you to just now* I wouldn't put myself on the same level as Asimov, but I *was* including myself in the the collective term "scifi writers" when I referred to their (and therefore my own) output as "twaddle".

Because let's face it, it is. No matter how much fun it is to write and to read, and how cleverly researched, and how often a writer gets lucky and actually predicts or inspires something, scifi is nothing but telling tall tales with a little fancy guesswork mixed in.

However, I digress. The point I was trying to get across was that the "classification of civilisations" thing posted earlier has nothing to do with "inventing hypothetical technology". It doesn't describe a technology at all, it's just an arbitrary and largely meaningless statement that sounds to me like it was just made up by someone or other because it sounds a bit cool and a bit scientific and a bit like the three laws or robotics and a bit like the Drake equation, despite the fact that it is waaaaaaaaaay too vague to have any basis in actual science.

He also hated the term 'scifi', preferring science fiction, or S.F. for short.

Too bad, I like 'scifi', or better yet, 'sciffy'. Sorry Mr Asimov


*EDIT: The bit in italics is actually stated in a different part of the same site. Click "Courier" to read it, instead of "influences". Read the courier stories while you're there=-)

[dogscoff]

Only the energy of the earth will be far from suficient in a distant futur. I gave as an example the Star Trek Enterprise. In theory, a ship like that one would deplete the earth energy in a very few time.

Exactly, so why would you ever do that? By the time you have that kind of technology, you'd (hopefully) have sources of energy that don't require you to bleed your homeworld completely dry in a matter of years for the sake of delivering a few red-shirts to their grisly deaths around the galaxy.