[QUOTE=catbarf;48760067]The only assumption here is that they are capable of logic. If an alien race is incapable of comparing problems (in this case, the problem of energy generation) to solutions and seeking the most effective answer, they won't be inventing wheels, let alone going to the stars. Being able to self-improve is a necessity of technological development and the Dyson sphere represents the ultimate solution to the problem of gathering energy from a star.[/QUOTE]
Whenever the Fermi Paradox comes up, and there's the problem of where all the alien "civilizations" are and whether they're going to go to "war" with us, it seems so human-centric to me. Here on Earth, ants are basically everywhere on land but the arctic, but they never needed to evolve sentience like us, they get by just fine with their own brain structure and mindset, which is entirely unconcerned with things like science, discovery, and any exploration and problem-solving beyond foraging. I'm not saying that humans are super special and clever, but it seems creatures can evolve just fine without human-style intelligence and curiosity, and if the same process of development we had ever repeats itself from an entirely different beginning of life, it would in probability be incredibly far away.
[QUOTE=catbarf;48760425]You're right that if some better source of energy comes along then you might as well use that. But I'd counter that if you're going to say that it's an assumption that a species would work towards a Dyson sphere, it's equally an assumption that if dark energy is viable that [i]every[/i] race would develop it, because if any miss that and continue in the development of nuclear fusion instead, we should inevitably see a sphere or spheres. It's simply the most efficient means of gathering the energy emitted by nuclear fusion.[/QUOTE]
Am I the only one confused by the frequent mentions of vacuum cleaners in this thread?
[QUOTE=Xain777;48760767]Am I the only one confused by the frequent mentions of vacuum cleaners in this thread?[/QUOTE]
yes. if you didn't know, a dyson sphere is a sphere that is built presumably out of solar panels, and is built around the whole star of the solar system. however, it is thought that (i think) only a type III civilization could do this since it would require a huge amount of material and technology to assemble it.
[QUOTE=Rixxz2;48758898]Maybe we're simply the first sentient beings[/QUOTE]
...that seriously just mindfucked me.
WE are the precursors that future civilizations will speak of in legends.
[QUOTE=ZakkShock;48760845]...that seriously just mindfucked me.
WE are the precursors that future civilizations will speak of in legends.[/QUOTE]
Now to make sure the only things that exist after this are penis shaped, so we have a future civ. worship it
[QUOTE=ZakkShock;48760845]...that seriously just mindfucked me.
WE are the precursors that future civilizations will speak of in legends.[/QUOTE]
Except galactic communication and travel is nigh impossible lol
Maybe we somehow really are the first of many to come
[QUOTE=Da Big Man;48760985]Except galactic communication and travel is nigh impossible lol[/QUOTE]
for now; all it might take are a handful of breakthroughs to make it possible
[QUOTE=Intoxicated Spy;48760914]Now to make sure the only things that exist after this are penis shaped, so we have a future civ. worship it[/QUOTE]
I don't know why, but I immediately thought of this scene after reading that.
[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqEgMLDS5CM[/media]
[QUOTE=Lambda 217;48760441]Whenever the Fermi Paradox comes up, and there's the problem of where all the alien "civilizations" are and whether they're going to go to "war" with us, it seems so human-centric to me. Here on Earth, ants are basically everywhere on land but the arctic, but they never needed to evolve sentience like us, they get by just fine with their own brain structure and mindset, which is entirely unconcerned with things like science, discovery, and any exploration and problem-solving beyond foraging. I'm not saying that humans are super special and clever, but it seems creatures can evolve just fine without human-style intelligence and curiosity, and if the same process of development we had ever repeats itself from an entirely different beginning of life, it would in probability be incredibly far away.[/QUOTE]
I don't think human-style intelligence and curiosity is necessary at all. In fact, I think intelligence without sentience is pretty plausible- read Blindsight by Peter Watts for a pretty cool depiction of this idea. This is fundamentally a matter of evolution.
Again, this isn't about human thinking. It's effectively a mathematical problem. Harvesting [i]all[/i] of the energy from a star is the logical endgame of harvesting some of the energy from said star.
Leave aside human ideas of 'civilization' and 'war'. It's a matter of replication, of evolution in its purest form. The species that comes to dominance isn't going to be the one that stays comfortably on its own planet, it'll be the one that continually evolves and replicates and expands. Even if there's a vast majority of alien races that don't progress to god-like technological prowess, all it takes is one, and that's the one that will survive and win and expand. The question is, why isn't that top dog [i]here[/i], and where's their mark on the heavens?
How fucking cool would it be if they found an artifact of a past civilization.
[QUOTE=Robman8908;48761348]How fucking cool would it be if they found an artifact of a past civilization.[/QUOTE]
how cool would it be if it was this
[t]http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140824204738/destinypedia/images/a/ab/Ghost.png[/t]
[QUOTE=Rixxz2;48758898]Maybe we're simply the first sentient beings[/QUOTE]
sapient
[QUOTE=catbarf;48760425]But regardless of the power source, if a species can gather and use energy on a scale greater than what a Dyson sphere can provide, we should be able to see the emitted radiation from that energy use. It doesn't really matter where the power's coming from, either way it's going to emit as heat- you can see a distant lantern at night because it's emitting light, it doesn't matter if it's powered by oil or batteries.[/QUOTE]Or maybe they already have and we just haven't observed it yet. If we built a dyson sphere around the sun, it would be twelve years until anyone in Tau Ceti (the closest system that can likely support any life like ours) would notice it. Then nine months later anyone near Kapteyn's Star would know of it, and fifteen years later Gilese 876's collection of planets could detect the new construction.
That's just within the local bubble, by the way, it's a small fraction of one arm of our very large galaxy which isn't even that big or remarkable of a galaxy among many, many others that are very, very far away.
This is why "the Great Filter" is a stupid bullshit theory shot down by one of the most basic concepts in the universe. I think the Fermi Paradox falls within the same category too, and both fail to take into account that anything within a hundred light years (we have not been actively searching for extraterrestrial life for a hundred years so it's a moot point anyway) is going to have roughly the same time frame we have to develop. Most of the stars near us are close in age to our own, and by extension, most of the planets are as equally mature so they haven't had any "head start" on developing life any faster than we have if they have at all. Plus this is assuming that they're going to be doing something large enough for us to notice in the first place, the best we can hope for is to catch a fragment of an artificial signal sent by accident. (or maybe on purpose, who knows)
[editline]25th September 2015[/editline]
Oh and that's not even acknowledging interference, picking out commercial broadcasts from Earth would be really fucking hard even if you were in Alpha Centauri. You have this teensy weensy little electromagnetic signal being broadcast next to a ball of nuclear fusion that's constantly blasting out it's own radiation, there's not going to be much getting through. Essentially we're an asthmatic grandma whispering next to a 400ft speaker stack, a stack that's hooked up to a guitar being abused by a meth-addled garage guitarist who set his amp to 20 and broke off the knob.
Then there's the issue of degradation, according to the inverse square law of electromagnetic propagation this means any signal is going to be more and more poorly received the farther away the receiver is. Right now some hundred light years away anyone listening will be hearing our first broadcasts and they will be mere murmurs against the roar of the background radiation of the cosmos.
Nobody has heard us, not even our closest neighbor.
[QUOTE=woolio1;48760375]The problem is that it takes a really, really long time. You can use solar sails and stuff, but you're still looking at a voyage of a few thousand years per trip. [/QUOTE]
And that to me makes the whole concept impossible. Several thousand years is a long, long time. It's like us sending ancient Romans to space and having them arrive at their destination probably a thousand years from now or more. I don't think the original mission would even matter to whoever is on that ship by then. The mission might have turned into a religion or something, who knows. Hell, maybe the crew no longer even knows how the ship works or where it came from. It would be insanely difficult to pull off.
[QUOTE=Zestence;48761747]And that to me makes the whole concept impossible. Several thousand years is a long, long time. It's like us sending ancient Romans to space and having them arrive at their destination probably a thousand years from now or more. I don't think the original mission would even matter to whoever is on that ship by then. The mission might have turned into a religion or something, who knows. Hell, maybe the crew no longer even knows how the ship works or where it came from. It would be insanely difficult to pull off.[/QUOTE]
Nuclear pulse propulsion can do it, its all about efficiency and nuclear pulsed drives have both very high ISP and very high thrust
[QUOTE=JumpinJackFlash;48761506]Or maybe they already have and we just haven't observed it yet. If we built a dyson sphere around the sun, it would be twelve years until anyone in Tau Ceti (the closest system that can likely support any life like ours) would notice it. Then nine months later anyone near Kapteyn's Star would know of it, and fifteen years later Gilese 876's collection of planets could detect the new construction.[/QUOTE]
So? A thousand years is a blink of an eye in the age of the universe, let alone fifteen. Postulating that aliens, if they're out there, could have existed at least a few thousand years ago, is not a stretch at all.
[QUOTE=JumpinJackFlash;48761506]I think the Fermi Paradox falls within the same category too, and both fail to take into account that anything within a hundred light years (we have not been actively searching for extraterrestrial life for a hundred years so it's a moot point anyway) is going to have roughly the same time frame we have to develop. Most of the stars near us are close in age to our own, and by extension, most of the planets are as equally mature so they haven't had any "head start" on developing life any faster than we have if they have at all.[/QUOTE]
Life began on Earth 3.8 [I]billion[/I] years ago. We have undergone repeated, random extinction events over the course of the history of life. If that long chain of evolution were a hundredth of a percent slower, we would currently be in the Middle Paleolithic 380,000 years ago, not even cavemen.
Even if life arose at exactly the same time on two planets, the chances of them experiencing comparable development into intelligent life on a similar timeframe almost four [i]billion[/i] years later is nil. A next-door neighbor who evolved that hundredth of a percent faster than us would be [I]380,000[/I] years ahead of us.
[QUOTE=JumpinJackFlash;48761506]Oh and that's not even acknowledging interference, picking out commercial broadcasts from Earth would be really fucking hard even if you were in Alpha Centauri. You have this teensy weensy little electromagnetic signal being broadcast next to a ball of nuclear fusion that's constantly blasting out it's own radiation, there's not going to be much getting through. Essentially we're an asthmatic grandma whispering next to a 400ft speaker stack, a stack that's hooked up to a guitar being abused by a meth-addled garage guitarist who set his amp to 20 and broke off the knob.[/QUOTE]
I don't think many people in science take seriously the idea that SETI and the like contribute to the Fermi Paradox. It's more a matter of observation of lack of evidence for high-energy Kardashev Type II+ civilizations, and the current lack of non-human occupiers or ancient ruins on our planet.
[QUOTE=Zestence;48761747]And that to me makes the whole concept impossible. Several thousand years is a long, long time. It's like us sending ancient Romans to space and having them arrive at their destination probably a thousand years from now or more. I don't think the original mission would even matter to whoever is on that ship by then. The mission might have turned into a religion or something, who knows. Hell, maybe the crew no longer even knows how the ship works or where it came from. It would be insanely difficult to pull off.[/QUOTE]
A few thousand years isn't too long in the grand scheme of things. It's just long to us.
We went two hundred thousand years without developing the most basic form of civilization. There are periods of tens of thousands of years where the development of flint or bronze was the most groundbreaking thing that happened. Something happened around 3000 BC that slingshotted us forward much faster than we really should have been able to go, and that something was agriculture.
In the past three hundred years, we've built a globally-interconnected network of countries with trade, communication, and immigration that surpasses anything the Romans did. We're in this bizarre golden age of human technology that's really quite unprecedented, as old a species as we are.
Who's to say there won't be a period after this one where we don't progress as quickly? Progress isn't infinite, and eventually we're going to hit a brick wall. Maybe that next Agriculture is space colonization, where it makes sense to send out these big colony ships because we haven't made any significant advancements here?
Also, you haven't seen Wall-E, have you?
[QUOTE=woolio1;48762115]A few thousand years isn't too long in the grand scheme of things. It's just long to us.[/QUOTE]
In the universal timescale a thousand years is a blink of an eye. However, in human history so much information has been lost and discovered in the last few thousand years, empires have appeared and disappeared, culture has changed many times. I find it difficult to think a crew on a ship could keep itself intact and aware of its mission for so long. Just to keep a single culture going for so long would be a massive achievement.
[QUOTE=woolio1;48762115]Also, you haven't seen Wall-E, have you?[/QUOTE]
Several times, but I always thought it was mostly about pollution and consumerism rather than space travel.
[QUOTE=Amplar;48757127]"Mars is dead"
No shit[/QUOTE]
But who killed it?
[QUOTE=Canuhearme?;48762818]But who killed it?[/QUOTE]
Definitely not Elon Musk. Can't wait to hear what they found exactly.
I just don't think space travel on the scale we think of it is possible. Faster-than-light travel is just so improbable. Hell, you can't even really get close to the speed of light without some bad shit start to happen. Basically, the other way you can do space travel, IE the slow way, would just make it so incredibly impossible to make a true galactic civilization, or at least one we can observe. Even though thousands of years is a really short amount of time in the greater span of things, it'd still be so fucking impossible to spread out over the entire galaxy with each star taking those thousands of years. That's why I think the Fermi Paradox is bullshit. You can't find or see another alien civilization because it's simply impossible to do so.
[QUOTE=catbarf;48761055]I don't think human-style intelligence and curiosity is necessary at all. In fact, I think intelligence without sentience is pretty plausible- read Blindsight by Peter Watts for a pretty cool depiction of this idea. This is fundamentally a matter of evolution.
Again, this isn't about human thinking. It's effectively a mathematical problem. Harvesting [i]all[/i] of the energy from a star is the logical endgame of harvesting some of the energy from said star.
Leave aside human ideas of 'civilization' and 'war'. It's a matter of replication, of evolution in its purest form. The species that comes to dominance isn't going to be the one that stays comfortably on its own planet, it'll be the one that continually evolves and replicates and expands. Even if there's a vast majority of alien races that don't progress to god-like technological prowess, all it takes is one, and that's the one that will survive and win and expand. The question is, why isn't that top dog [i]here[/i], and where's their mark on the heavens?[/QUOTE]
I don't know why you keep bringing up Dyson spheres when we don't even know whether such a structure is practical or even possible to pull off. We don't even know if a space elevator can be built on Earth so why are you assuming that any sufficiently advanced civilization would necessarily enclose its star in a gigantic shell? Perhaps the reason no alien race progressed to god-like technological prowess is that it is simply impossible. No matter your level of scientific proficiency you simply can't violate the laws of physics, which are restrictive enough that they could make galactic dominance plainly impossible.
And all that also assumes that those galactic civilizations don't care about being found out. I'd say running the risk of being spotted by a superior and potentially belligerent alien race is not worth building a Dyson sphere, but that's just me.
[QUOTE=_Axel;48763146]I don't know why you keep bringing up Dyson spheres when we don't even know whether such a structure is practical or even possible to pull off. We don't even know if a space elevator can be built on Earth so why are you assuming that any sufficiently advanced civilization would necessarily enclose its star in a gigantic shell? Perhaps the reason no alien race progressed to god-like technological prowess is that it is simply impossible. No matter your level of scientific proficiency you simply can't violate the laws of physics, which are restrictive enough that they could make galactic dominance plainly impossible.
And all that also assumes that those galactic civilizations don't care about being found out. I'd say running the risk of being spotted by a superior and potentially belligerent alien race is not worth building a Dyson sphere, but that's just me.[/QUOTE]
a dyson sphere is not literally a sphere, it's just a web of energy-efficient satellites situated around a sun to collect almost all its energy. the concept of a physical shell is complete pop-science fabrication and is almost certainly impossible on most if not every level
[QUOTE=Joekirk;48762845]Definitely not Elon Musk. Can't wait to hear what they found exactly.[/QUOTE]
Doesn't he want to nuke it like crazy? Maybe when he does, a wormhole will open, sending the nukes into the past to destroy all life on the planet from before...
:tinfoil:
[QUOTE=Cone;48763188]a dyson sphere is not literally a sphere, it's just a web of energy-efficient satellites situated around a sun to collect almost all its energy. the concept of a physical shell is complete pop-science fabrication and is almost certainly impossible on most if not every level[/QUOTE]
That still requires an amount of materials that is not necessarily available or usable in a single solar system, not to mention all the fuel and rocketry that is necessary to put them there. There's really no telling whether it's possible or practical until we actually pull it off and basing either the Fermi Paradox or the Great Filter on this assumption is not very rigorous.
[QUOTE=exhale77;48757475]I've read somewhere with regards to the Fermi Paradox, if we were to find life it would be devastating news because it would hint that the great filter is ahead of us (or something along those lines).
Thoughts? I'm just vaguely babbling about something I read out of a blog article.[/QUOTE]
The thing is, the great filter can be on either side of us even in the case we find life remains, building blocks or even rudimentary life on mars.
Why are we all assuming that we didn't accidentally kill the rest of the life in the universe?
[QUOTE=catbarf;48761939]So? A thousand years is a blink of an eye in the age of the universe, let alone fifteen. Postulating that aliens, if they're out there, could have existed at least a few thousand years ago, is not a stretch at all.[/QUOTE]None of this even touches my other points though, you're talking like any aliens out there are these super advanced beings that can bend space and time when really they're just as equally likely to be single-celled organisms or living in mushroom huts.
[QUOTE=catbarf;48761939]Life began on Earth 3.8 [I]billion[/I] years ago. We have undergone repeated, random extinction events over the course of the history of life. If that long chain of evolution were a hundredth of a percent slower, we would currently be in the Middle Paleolithic 380,000 years ago, not even cavemen.[/QUOTE]Yeah, I'm well aware. I'm also going from the assumption (that can easily be and is likely wrong) that the planets more or less have the same starting conditions and will [i]roughly[/i] produce the same results if life actually starts. I don't expect aliens that can fly in spaceships, I'm expecting that they're still going through extinction cycles. Our sentience is likely a fluke, we're an evolutionary accident.
[QUOTE=catbarf;48761939]I don't think many people in science take seriously the idea that SETI and the like contribute to the Fermi Paradox. It's more a matter of observation of lack of evidence for high-energy Kardashev Type II+ civilizations, and the current lack of non-human occupiers or ancient ruins on our planet.[/QUOTE]See the Fermi Paradox doesn't really address that the evidence for alien civilization is almost impossible to find to begin with, which is why I'm kind of pissed that you're entirely ignoring the part about my post that addresses that. You're talking about evidence for a certain kind of extraterrestrial civilization that's doing a specific thing (stellar manipulation) and this is assuming that the idea is even feasible and the aliens in question have even thought to do it.
Again, the likely evidence for their existence is impossible for us to get because of so many factors. If we want to know if extraterrestrial life exists we'll have to [i]go out and find it[/i] which is precisely why the Fermi Paradox is a flawed concept.
[editline]25th September 2015[/editline]
Essentially to "break" the paradox two alien civilizations would both have to be sufficiently advanced, willing to transmit a message, and able to receive a message, and the message itself would have to be understandable among two [i]absolutely different species and civilizations that have evolved light years away on planets entirely unrelated to each other,[/i] and they would have to be aware that the other planet could maybe support life.
It's unlikely on unlikely on unlikely on almost impossible on top of unlikely. It's like me creating a JackFlash Paradox that states if lottery winners exist, why haven't I won and people actually taking me seriously. I suppose there would be somebody out there like me arguing the ridiculousness of it and pointing out how I don't even play the lottery, but that's beside the point.
[QUOTE=Cone;48763188]a dyson sphere is not literally a sphere, it's just a web of energy-efficient satellites situated around a sun to collect almost all its energy. the concept of a physical shell is complete pop-science fabrication and is almost certainly impossible on most if not every level[/QUOTE]
He amended his designs over the years, there is the classic Dyson sphere with is a giant solar collecting shell, but there are tons of variations to the very thick sphere with a planet like surface on the inner wall, to an orbiting cloud of satellites collecting power,
there's even a good one where you build half a Dyson sphere, put a ring world on it and use gravity and a controlled solar flare to make a ship out of the whole contraption, the thing about dysons ideas though is they are scientifically possible, the materials needed did not exist when he designed this stuff, but he could calculate what the materials needed to be and our own understanding of materials science has come leaps and bounds since then, which is why stuff like a space elevator is starting to look possible from emerging work. Dyson didn't just imagine his stuff he designed it and that's why we still talk about it because we have pretty reasonable numbers to think about
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