Interstellar travel?

[hobbsyoyo]

If life is super rare, then I could see that.

But if life is relatively common why would somebody fly here to study us? We're just average looking bipedal bags of water, who haven't really accomplished much of note. We're not really that special, who would care to fly such a long distance just for us?

Any aliens who have the capability of coming here on a whim are likely millions of years more advanced than us. We'll be as interesting to them as an ant is to us. And yeah, ants can be interesting I suppose, but would you fly halfway around the world just to look at some?

Even if life isn't super rare, I think it is safe to say intelligent life is which makes it worthy of study and observation.

The Halo universe uses both FTL and cryo sleep: the humans' technology takes days or weeks to make interstellar trips. In Harry Turtledove's WorldWar the aliens have ships that travel half as fast as light and use cryo sleep for decades-long trips (twenty years from Tau Ceti to Earth). They are slightly longer-lived than we are and their society changes much more slowly so going into cryo for even a round trip isn't such a big deal.

At the end of the series, humans send a ship at something like 30% the speed of light to the alien home world (Tau Ceti). Months after that ship arrives, a human FTL ship arrives having made the same journey in six weeks using an Alcubierre drive.

I loved that book series!

See, what I think is going on is this.. IMO There are 4 types of species of intelligent life out there:

A. Those species who don't manage to survive long enough to colonize their solar system or beyond, so we never see any evidence of them
B. Those species who become technologically advanced but don't feel the need to colonize anything, so we never see any evidence of them
C. Those species who have colonized their solar system and possibly beyond, but they are smart and mask their presence as best as they can, so we never see any evidence of them
D. Those species who have colonized their solar system and possibly beyond but aren't as smart as C.

So basically we are only looking for civilizations of type D. I suspect most civilizations are simply not stupid enough to do that, so they hide. So we're looking around hoping to find space morons, while most of the smartie civs are staying hidden from view

Unfortunately we are one of the "space moron" type civilizations for now. Hopefully that will change as we start colonizing our solar system.

What about option E where we just happen to live in a quiet, empty part of the galaxy?

Moving bodies across the universe is way too difficult. Entanglement is the best path. Move our minds quickly and easily. We just have to work on the science to do that.

Unfortunately entanglement won't actually allow us to have faster than light communications.

 

[red_elk]

Unfortunately entanglement won't actually allow us to have faster than light communications.

Yes, that's very discouraging. The only hope is that some of sci-fi methods like subspace travel or artificial wormholes will work.
Or that general relativity is fundamentally wrong, which seems to be very unlikely.

 

[warpus]

What about option E where we just happen to live in a quiet, empty part of the galaxy?

Yeah that's an option! I guess I was moreso listing the type of life out there, if there is any.

If there are aliens with much more advanced thinking, so that we are on the level of ants comparing to them, it means we would most likely never know about their existence even if they are right here watching us. Just like ants have no idea that it's a supreme being capable of space travel who is pouring molten aluminium in their anthill.

Yeah, that's a possibility. However, we do have the intelligence and technology required to study our environment in a way that ants can't and don't. If these super advanced aliens influence our plane of existence in some way, then we would see at least evidence of them. Ants on the other hand don't care what exists on their level of existence unless it's food or a spider or whatever.

On the other hand, if aliens visit us, they won't necessary be much more intellectually advanced than us. Technologically yes, but the humans who invented the wheel had the same brain and intelligence as we do.

There's only a couple thousand years between us and the humans who invented the wheel. There will likely be a lot more separation between us and any intelligent alien life we encounter (if we ever do)

 

[EgonSpengler]

There's only a couple thousand years between us and the humans who invented the wheel. There will likely be a lot more separation between us and any intelligent alien life we encounter (if we ever do)

Right. I would disagree that the people who invented the wheel were just as smart as the people who mapped the human genome, but the difference would be minor anyway. The sci-fi trope of the "precursor race" is not uncommon. For a sentient race to visit Earth, they would not only have to get here, they would have to get here inside the tiny window of time that modern humans have occupied. Our science fiction stories typically envision an alien species that's a handful of centuries ahead of us, or humanity a handful of centuries into the future, but in the galactic timescale, a sentient species on another planet that invented the wheel and developed agriculture ten million years ago wouldn't be out of the question.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Some scholars say people who invented the wheel were in fact more intelligent.

 

[red_elk]

If these super advanced aliens influence our plane of existence in some way, then we would see at least evidence of them.

May be we are unable to detect this evidence yet.
Or we see it, just taking it for natural phenomena.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Or we see it, just taking it for natural phenomena.

​

Until some smartass called Hans Zarkov realizes it is not and we all get destroyed.

 

[Hrothbern]

Earth has in general a good habitat for developed life based on water and proteins needing Earth like temperatures, availability of water, an atmosphere, a protective magnetosphere and on top a nice variety of elements.

IF it is likely that there are many really old civilisations that are high level, and if SF travel technologies would indeed be possible and discovered by such civilisations.
THEN we have a whole lot of such civilisations able to hopping through space since a very long time.
Among them with life forms quite happy with our Earth's habitat.

What did prevent them to colonise the Earth ?

Some galactic Law ?
The futility ?
The cost ?
?

Do civilisations mostly terminate themselves before such travel techs are discovered and developed ?
Or... could the conclusion not also be that those super fast long distance SF travel techs are not possible at all ?

 

[Lexicus]

I think it's much more likely that species transcend biological limitations long before the technology to actually colonize other star systems becomes feasible. What is the point of interstellar colonization when you've uploaded consciousnesses already? Turn enough of the Earth's mass into computing power and you can run all the universe simulations you want, no need to actually travel around the "real" universe...

 

[red_elk]

Turn enough of the Earth's mass into computing power and you can run all the universe simulations you want, no need to actually travel around the "real" universe...

May be it's a good idea to make particles behavior random at nano-level, to save computing power. Emulate it by wave function, or something.

 

[Hrothbern]

That's the futility argument.

Outward engaging is more for young people... and why not similar for young civilisations ?

When that conqueror minded Napoleon saw the pyramids, he felt impressed from those ancient giants dwarving him..... which did not stop him to take an obelisk with him.
How would it feel to grow up in a civilisation, where for every idea you have as a young kid, some 1000 year old teacher tells you that some scholar, a 100,000 years before, had already dedicated his life on that idea ?
How engaging would such a civilisation be ?
More likely an observing gerontocracy

 

[warpus]

May be we are unable to detect this evidence yet.
Or we see it, just taking it for natural phenomena.

Yeah, maybe that's what all the UFO/angel/bigfoot sightings are. Personally I don't think so, but hypothetically speaking, yeah

Right. I would disagree that the people who invented the wheel were just as smart as the people who mapped the human genome, but the difference would be minor anyway. The sci-fi trope of the "precursor race" is not uncommon. For a sentient race to visit Earth, they would not only have to get here, they would have to get here inside the tiny window of time that modern humans have occupied. Our science fiction stories typically envision an alien species that's a handful of centuries ahead of us, or humanity a handful of centuries into the future, but in the galactic timescale, a sentient species on another planet that invented the wheel and developed agriculture ten million years ago wouldn't be out of the question.

Exactly, statistically speaking any aliens we end up running into are likely millions of years more advanced than us. It's why I make the comparison with the ants. Imagine how advanced we would be if we managed to survive for another 10 million years. I can't.

 

[El_Machinae]

Except technology is on an s-curve, not a linear curve. Unless you know what the technological ceiling is, you cannot really state that people who're "millions of years ahead of us" are 'incomprehensibly ahead of us'. The speed of light seems to be hard limit, for example, so we suspect there's a ceiling. On any technology curve, 2100 CE humans are much closer (in time) to this ceiling than we are to the people who invented wheels.

Some scholars say people who invented the wheel were in fact more intelligent.

I'm not going to be preached at by 'scholars' who're dumber than wheel-makers!

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Some scholars say people who invented the wheel were in fact more intelligent.

C'mon man....the "invention" of the wheel is a pretty obvious case of observation and duplication, not creativity.

 

[warpus]

C'mon man....the "invention" of the wheel is a pretty obvious case of observation and duplication, not creativity.

If it was so obvious why didn't a guy invent the wheel 10,000 years earlier?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

If it was so obvious why didn't a guy invent the wheel 10,000 years earlier?

Limitations in ability to shape materials would be my guess, though I seriously doubt that we have any realistic idea when the wheel was "invented." It isn't like the first guy that stuck some round sticks under something heavy so that he could move it more easily immediately blogged about it to mark the occasion for posterity.

 

[Hrothbern]

Hunter gatherers do not need a wheel
very small agricultural villages neither, hardly transport needed
bigger villages along fertile flood areas could do with boats

I think urbanisation drove the usefull demand of (food) transport by wheels to cities by land..... IF the area was flat (and dry) enough for roads (no wheel in South American cultures !).

Perhaps the wheel was invented multiple times without practical economical advantage until it became a game changer.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Hunter gatherers do not need a wheel

Sure they do. When a game animal drops it might be in a thicket, or otherwise less accessible than it could be. Dragging it a few feet is beneficial, but can be hard to do. All it takes to "know the concept" of the wheel is to have steeped on a loose round stone.

The fashioning of a dedicated "wheel" and keeping it around for the purpose would come a whole lot later, but the use of the basic concept using readily available "natural tools" probably came right along with the lever and the inclined plane. And it was probably done all over the place.

 

[Broken_Erika]

C'mon man....the "invention" of the wheel is a pretty obvious case of observation and duplication, not creativity.

And a few failed attempts...

 

[Birdjaguar]

Unfortunately entanglement won't actually allow us to have faster than light communications.

Oh ye of little faith....