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Why do they assume that an alien civilisation could only hold communication technology for a hundred years? Surely there’s nothing really holding them back from

Why do they assume that an alien civilisation could only hold communication technology for a hundred years? Surely there’s nothing really holding them back from it unless they wiped themselves out, and is there any reason to believe that at least some of them couldn’t last for thousands or even millions of years?

austincheney 6y ago
> "The search for intelligent life is only expected to yield a positive observation if the average life-span of [communicating extra-terrestrial intelligence] within our Galaxy is 3,060 years. That is to say, our communicating civilization here on Earth will need to persist for 6,120 years beyond the advent of long-range radio technology (approximately 100 years ago) before we can expect a [search for extra-terrestrial intelligence] two-way communication." https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/15/world/intelligent-civilizations-galaxy-scn-trnd/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/15/world/intelligent-civiliz...
bhaak 6y ago
The problem with long lasting alien civilisations is that if they do exist, why aren't they here already? Colonizing the galaxy only takes a few millions years even with 0.1c. So far, we only have proof that civilisations can exist for at least several thousand years if you consider the Human civilisation. But so far, the data on civilisations capable of interstellar communication doesn't look too promising. The "unless they wiped themselves out" is the big question. Are we behind or in front of the Great Filter.
- GuiA 6y ago
  By definition there has to be a first intergalactic civilization, if there is to be at least one. The universe is ~15B years old, and we expect it to keep forming stars (as good as any of a metric for “hospitable to life”) for another trillion years. In other words, we’re in the first percent or so of the lifespan of the universe. Doesn’t seem too crazy that if we start conquering the stars, we might be the first ever species to do so. (And if history is any indication, we’ll probably cause some sort of galactic global warming in the process, that all starfaring species after us will curse us for)
  - akiselev 6y ago
    > (And if history is any indication, we’ll probably cause some sort of galactic global warming in the process, that all starfaring species after us will curse us for) The only serious theoretical FTL paper (Alcubierre drive) I know of requires exotic matter (negative mass) or energy equivalents of entire planets so if we ever manage to build it, I think that's a fair bet. Another paper calculated that the space-time bubble created by the Alcubierre drive would capture radiation and particles along its path, creating a gamma ray burst at the destination in a large cone in the direction of travel. Meaning, we'd be sending deadly bursts of radiation all over the galaxy that would wipe out all carbon based life for tens or hundreds of light years every single jump. A rogue actor or a miscalculation could wipe out significant fractions of our own civilization.
- bitcurious 6y ago
  > The problem with long lasting alien civilisations is that if they do exist, why aren't they here already? Colonizing the galaxy only takes a few millions years even with 0.1c The kind of colonization you’re describing requires exponential growth, but at least on Earth we’ve seen that birth rates dropping in developed nations.
  - pedrosorio 6y ago
    There is no evidence this will hold true in a colonization scenario.
  - adventured 6y ago
    Exponential growth doesn't inherently require population expansion. This would especially be true for a far more advanced civilization. You could dramatically amplify your colonization efforts with machines, reducing your need for traditional population expansion (productivity expansion in tandem with population contraction is exactly what we're going to see on Earth this century).
    - bitcurious 6y ago
      Without population growth you lose the motivation. Communication gets harder every time you add a star to your civilization, unless you somehow break the speed of light. Resource use is unlikely to be a motivator - a civilization sufficiently advanced to be multistellar will no doubt have cracked either fusion or the stain sphere problem.
  - bhaak 6y ago
    A sufficiently advanced civilisation would be able to control their birth rate to whatever rate they would need at the moment. Think of an artificial womb (if that civilisation is mostly biological, if it's mostly robotic, controlling the birth rate becomes even easier). It's also likely that a self sufficient, long-term thinking planetary civilisation would limit their population to a certain size, to not needlessly exploit the resources that they have available.
    - 6y ago
- tzs 6y ago
  > The problem with long lasting alien civilisations is that if they do exist, why aren't they here already? Colonizing the galaxy only takes a few millions years even with 0.1c. Suppose it turns out that there is nothing faster for interstellar travel than rockets or light sails. No wormholes stabilized with exotic matter. No warp drives. No other tricks. I'm not sure in that case that those long lasting civilizations would bother trying interstellar colonization. The round trip transport time between the home world and colonies would be so long that it is hard to come up with any economic benefit establishing such colonies provides to the home worlds.
  - est31 6y ago
    > it is hard to come up with any economic benefit establishing such colonies provides to the home worlds. If medium human life were only 4 weeks, nobody would find funding for a 1 year colonization trip across a different continent. You wouldn't find a crew when it'd take one generation just to cross the atlantic once. I think it's similar here. With future (bio-)technological improvements, we might live for hundreds or thousands of years. Suddenly individuals would start thinking really long term... At one point every niche of the solar system will either be declared a national park/treasure, or mined, filled with real estate developments, etc. We'd run out of space and some rich folks would meet on one of the private moons of Jupiter (like how there are private islands today) to discuss a venture towards another star.
  - zamfi 6y ago
    > The round trip transport time between the home world and colonies would be so long that it is hard to come up with any economic benefit establishing such colonies provides to the home worlds. Let’s just hope, for the sake of any beings already on other planets, that you are right. History here on Earth suggests that long journeys are not a sufficient obstacle for exploitation.
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    The problem with these discussions is everyone seems to assume colonising a galaxy is just like colonising a planet - so you have an Age of Exploration, and then you set up colonies, and stuff happens, and you have an Empire or a Federation, or something. This is really, really unlikely to be true, for all kinds of reasons. There's a huge difference between colonising a galaxy - which assumes some kind of uniform culture, and common strategic goals - and simply throwing more or less living/sentient stuff around a galaxy and hoping some of it sticks. We've gone from barely being noticeable on Earth to being in danger of being responsible for a planetary extinction event in around 12,000 years. We know nothing about building a stable culture that can last for millions of years. It's unlikely any sentient species will be able to learn that skill without making a lot of mistakes - some of which will be terminal. So galactic colonisation requires a lot more than solving the mechanics of transportation. And the "few million years at 0.1c" estimate is going to be Not Even Wrong.
- dividedbyzero 6y ago
  There might be not a lot sense in doing that. Maybe infinite growth isn't desirable. Maybe becoming a hundred trillion people across a galaxy isn't so great.

austincheney 6y ago

> "The search for intelligent life is only expected to yield a positive observation if the average life-span of [communicating extra-terrestrial intelligence] within our Galaxy is 3,060 years. That is to say, our communicating civilization here on Earth will need to persist for 6,120 years beyond the advent of long-range radio technology (approximately 100 years ago) before we can expect a [search for extra-terrestrial intelligence] two-way communication." https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/15/world/intelligent-civilizations-galaxy-scn-trnd/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/15/world/intelligent-civiliz...

bhaak 6y ago

The problem with long lasting alien civilisations is that if they do exist, why aren't they here already? Colonizing the galaxy only takes a few millions years even with 0.1c. So far, we only have proof that civilisations can exist for at least several thousand years if you consider the Human civilisation. But so far, the data on civilisations capable of interstellar communication doesn't look too promising. The "unless they wiped themselves out" is the big question. Are we behind or in front of the Great Filter.

GuiA 6y ago
By definition there has to be a first intergalactic civilization, if there is to be at least one. The universe is ~15B years old, and we expect it to keep forming stars (as good as any of a metric for “hospitable to life”) for another trillion years. In other words, we’re in the first percent or so of the lifespan of the universe. Doesn’t seem too crazy that if we start conquering the stars, we might be the first ever species to do so. (And if history is any indication, we’ll probably cause some sort of galactic global warming in the process, that all starfaring species after us will curse us for)
- akiselev 6y ago
  > (And if history is any indication, we’ll probably cause some sort of galactic global warming in the process, that all starfaring species after us will curse us for) The only serious theoretical FTL paper (Alcubierre drive) I know of requires exotic matter (negative mass) or energy equivalents of entire planets so if we ever manage to build it, I think that's a fair bet. Another paper calculated that the space-time bubble created by the Alcubierre drive would capture radiation and particles along its path, creating a gamma ray burst at the destination in a large cone in the direction of travel. Meaning, we'd be sending deadly bursts of radiation all over the galaxy that would wipe out all carbon based life for tens or hundreds of light years every single jump. A rogue actor or a miscalculation could wipe out significant fractions of our own civilization.
bitcurious 6y ago
> The problem with long lasting alien civilisations is that if they do exist, why aren't they here already? Colonizing the galaxy only takes a few millions years even with 0.1c The kind of colonization you’re describing requires exponential growth, but at least on Earth we’ve seen that birth rates dropping in developed nations.
- pedrosorio 6y ago
  There is no evidence this will hold true in a colonization scenario.
- adventured 6y ago
  Exponential growth doesn't inherently require population expansion. This would especially be true for a far more advanced civilization. You could dramatically amplify your colonization efforts with machines, reducing your need for traditional population expansion (productivity expansion in tandem with population contraction is exactly what we're going to see on Earth this century).
  - bitcurious 6y ago
    Without population growth you lose the motivation. Communication gets harder every time you add a star to your civilization, unless you somehow break the speed of light. Resource use is unlikely to be a motivator - a civilization sufficiently advanced to be multistellar will no doubt have cracked either fusion or the stain sphere problem.
- bhaak 6y ago
  A sufficiently advanced civilisation would be able to control their birth rate to whatever rate they would need at the moment. Think of an artificial womb (if that civilisation is mostly biological, if it's mostly robotic, controlling the birth rate becomes even easier). It's also likely that a self sufficient, long-term thinking planetary civilisation would limit their population to a certain size, to not needlessly exploit the resources that they have available.
  - 6y ago
tzs 6y ago
> The problem with long lasting alien civilisations is that if they do exist, why aren't they here already? Colonizing the galaxy only takes a few millions years even with 0.1c. Suppose it turns out that there is nothing faster for interstellar travel than rockets or light sails. No wormholes stabilized with exotic matter. No warp drives. No other tricks. I'm not sure in that case that those long lasting civilizations would bother trying interstellar colonization. The round trip transport time between the home world and colonies would be so long that it is hard to come up with any economic benefit establishing such colonies provides to the home worlds.
- est31 6y ago
  > it is hard to come up with any economic benefit establishing such colonies provides to the home worlds. If medium human life were only 4 weeks, nobody would find funding for a 1 year colonization trip across a different continent. You wouldn't find a crew when it'd take one generation just to cross the atlantic once. I think it's similar here. With future (bio-)technological improvements, we might live for hundreds or thousands of years. Suddenly individuals would start thinking really long term... At one point every niche of the solar system will either be declared a national park/treasure, or mined, filled with real estate developments, etc. We'd run out of space and some rich folks would meet on one of the private moons of Jupiter (like how there are private islands today) to discuss a venture towards another star.
- zamfi 6y ago
  > The round trip transport time between the home world and colonies would be so long that it is hard to come up with any economic benefit establishing such colonies provides to the home worlds. Let’s just hope, for the sake of any beings already on other planets, that you are right. History here on Earth suggests that long journeys are not a sufficient obstacle for exploitation.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  The problem with these discussions is everyone seems to assume colonising a galaxy is just like colonising a planet - so you have an Age of Exploration, and then you set up colonies, and stuff happens, and you have an Empire or a Federation, or something. This is really, really unlikely to be true, for all kinds of reasons. There's a huge difference between colonising a galaxy - which assumes some kind of uniform culture, and common strategic goals - and simply throwing more or less living/sentient stuff around a galaxy and hoping some of it sticks. We've gone from barely being noticeable on Earth to being in danger of being responsible for a planetary extinction event in around 12,000 years. We know nothing about building a stable culture that can last for millions of years. It's unlikely any sentient species will be able to learn that skill without making a lot of mistakes - some of which will be terminal. So galactic colonisation requires a lot more than solving the mechanics of transportation. And the "few million years at 0.1c" estimate is going to be Not Even Wrong.
dividedbyzero 6y ago
There might be not a lot sense in doing that. Maybe infinite growth isn't desirable. Maybe becoming a hundred trillion people across a galaxy isn't so great.