12 ms·

My pet theory (which is not intended to be taken too seriously) is that it is indeed a discarded light sail, and that light sail in particular was used to trans

My pet theory (which is not intended to be taken too seriously) is that it is indeed a discarded light sail, and that light sail in particular was used to transport a Von Neumann probe which detached at some point after the object entered our solar system but before we first observed it. This detachment, in addition to leaving the sail tumbling, would have changed its trajectory, meaning our estimation of which direction the object originally came from is incorrect. In any case, the probe is now busy replicating, perhaps on the surface of Mercury. In a few years an army of robots will launch from there and invade the rest of the solar system! Realistically, though, it's too much of a coincidence that such a probe would first arrive so soon after we gained the ability to conceive of it.

knob 6y ago
That reminds me of the books We Are Legion, We Are Bob. I really enjoyed those!
- bengale 6y ago
  Book 4 is on preorder now, drops in September.
jameshart 6y ago
Which forces the logical conclusion that this isn't the first such probe, obviously.
- kentonv 6y ago
  That could only be true if they are intentionally hiding from us, rather than replicating and harvesting the solar system as fast as they can. But personally I have a hard time believing that hyper-intelligent devices would care about avoiding detection by lowly biological organisms like us.
  - badrabbit 6y ago
    They?
    - 8bitsrule 6y ago
      She
      - badrabbit 6y ago
        Hmm...She!
  - throwaway316943 6y ago
    If the mission of the probe is exploration then it doesn’t need to consume all of the resources of a solar system. It just needs enough to make a few copies to reach the nearest handful of stars. If they are using light sails as propulsion they probably need barely anything. I don’t have a hard time believing that an advanced civilization would choose hiding as the default method of exploration. Anything from the dark forest to the prime directive could be used as an argument to do so. I agree with the other comments that it’s fairly likely that our system has had multiple probes pass through. The unlikely event will be when one decides to contact us.
    - 14 6y ago
      In case there are some younger non Trekkies not sure what the Prime Directive https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive
    - kentonv 6y ago
      While it's entirely possible they'd have a good reason to be stealthy, I don't think it's likely to be anything we've thought of. The Prime Directive is a mushy human emotional idea, not something that makes any logical sense for a space-faring civilization to follow. If there's any competition out there among space-faring civilizations, none of them are going to tie their hands behind their backs by refusing to touch planets that have native life on them. And under the Dark Forest, the best way to survive would be to replicate as fast as possible, consuming all available resources. They would want to hide from external, more-powerful civilizations, but they'd have no reason at all to hide from us. Hiding from us would be a strict loss for them, as it means they can't mine Earth for resources.
- rriepe 6y ago
  (We are)
burtonator 6y ago
> Realistically, though, it's too much of a coincidence that such a probe would first arrive so soon after we gained the ability to conceive of it. It is based on TIME but our conception of it would be independent. I think a lot of what's part of the drake equation is merited on overlap. It's entirely possible that other civilizations have been created and died out LONG before mammals even evolved. IF you factor in just the last 200 years of human technological advancement it's plausible in another 200 we will have either destroyed ourselves or evolved into gods. Either way we're not going to be talking to anyone in the universe. I think it's plausible that a god would not want to talk to another intelligent civilization. Why would we? We would be to a god what bacteria is to us. I don't really have a conversation with the bacteria infecting a wound. I just take antibiotics.
- nvrspyx 6y ago
  > I think it's plausible that a god would not want to talk to another intelligent civilization. Why would we? We would be to a god what bacteria is to us. That may be because we can't even perceive bacteria, but if we go a little bit bigger and you could have a conversation with a dog, cat, deer, or any other animal, I bet you would. I know I personally would just to understand how those animals think and the differences between them and us. With that said, I do agree with you, but I don't think this is really a comparable analogy though because I'm sure a god wouldn't want to converse with us due to boredom of interacting with plenty of other intelligent life and pretty much everything else before reaching us.
  - postalrat 6y ago
    It's hard to conceive of an intelligence as much above ours as we are above bacteria cell. But if such a thing did exist why would it want to communicate with us?
    - neatze 6y ago
      If I could talk to cell(s), morphogenesis would be my topic of discussion.
- 6y ago
jimhefferon 6y ago
> it's too much of a coincidence that such a probe would first arrive so soon after we gained the ability to conceive of it. Perhaps they observed I Love Lucy and Gilligan and came by to complain about spectrum pollution.
- kentonv 6y ago
  I don't think so. Light sails are not fast. It would have taken the probe millions of years to get here.
novalis78 6y ago
Speaking of pet theories, here is mine: There exists a sentry system of interstellar buoys that get sucked into star systems passing by. Perhaps with a solar sail, so they can control a bit which stars they want to take a closer look at. Our solar system become "recently" a candidate for obvious reasons. The probe made its analysis and plotted a fast escape, sending a tight laser beam to the next closest relay station. A fleet of planet biosphere erasing machine intelligence dispatch is on its way. Probably some ancient left over from AIGs engaged in eternal warfare. Hence a dead silent galaxy, a rather dark forest.
- gratalis 6y ago
  Or, in other words, the main plot line in the Inhibitor trilogy within the Revelation Space series by acclaimed sci-fi author and astrophysicist Alastair Reynolds. https://www.goodreads.com/series/56392-revelation-space https://www.goodreads.com/series/56392-revelation-space
  - novalis78 6y ago
    Ha! Thanks for the reading tip. I was unaware.
NotSammyHagar 6y ago
Mercury provides solar power but you need a lot more energy to get from there to earth. The asteroid belt still provides adequate solar power with I'd guess an easier ability to 'fall on the earth'. It wasn't clear whether the goal of your invader was destruction or takeover. Falling rocks would do the destruction job.
- rriepe 6y ago
  The point is obviously more probes. I think a sufficient gravity field and planetary mass is going to let you work a lot faster. Robotic probes with basically no atmosphere to get through means you can use kinetic cannons to get off-world. Your initial "factory line" would be a mostly underground equatorial band on Mercury.
- kentonv 6y ago
  Maybe, but the trajectory of the object seems more consistent with having dropped someone off at Mercury, not the asteroid belt.
Kye 6y ago
This is clearly a visitor from Bajor. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Bajoran_lightship https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Bajoran_lightship
tobyjsullivan 6y ago
> Realistically, though, it's too much of a coincidence that such a probe would first arrive so soon after we gained the ability to conceive of it. Are you sure it's a coincidence? Imagine you are an intergalactic species that advances yourself by invading other worlds and stealing the inhabitants' knowledge and technology. What would be the best time to invade? I would suggest waiting as long as possible in their technological advancement but just before they develop the ability to defend themselves.
- kentonv 6y ago
  Light sails are not very fast. The probe would have had to have been launched thousands of years ago at least, maybe millions. Either way, long before our current level of advancement could have been predicted.
  - motohagiography 6y ago
    I'd argue development isn't linear, as we seem to have millennia with pretty static tech, then in the span of a (increasingly long) lifetime, electricity, flight, and the internet. On that scale, our last 150 years could have occurred randomly at any time.
    - ekianjo 6y ago
      > as we seem to have millennia with pretty static tech, That's not even remotely true. Even between antiquity and middle ages there were constant technological improvements. Of course everything sped up once we had access to steam and later fossil fuels as machinery to replace manual work became a reality.
- booleandilemma 6y ago
  Would a species that has mastered intergalactic travel really have anything to learn from us? I think they would either kill us, eat us, enslave us, or maybe all of the above.
  - 6y ago
monkeypizza 6y ago
Excellent page discussing the physics of colonizing mercury: https://einstein-schrodinger.com/mercury_colony.html https://einstein-schrodinger.com/mercury_colony.html "Colonization of Mercury appears to be a very real and practical possibility, whereas colonization of Mars or the other planets, moons or asteroids is really more in the realm of fantasy." A big advantage of Mercury over mars is higher light intensity: "One very important advantage is the high solar light intensity, which is stronger than on Earth by a factor of 10.6 at perihelion and 4.6 at aphelion"
- jrussino 6y ago
  Cool! Personally, I like the idea of building a Dyson swarm out of it (sorry Mercury!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP44EPBMb8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP44EPBMb8A
- lmilcin 6y ago
  Big disadvantage of Mercury is its depth in Sun's gravitational well. This is worse than planetary escape velocity, because you have to pay it on both ways (to get to Mercury as well as get back). Another problem is radiation which this close to Sun and with no atmosphere is pretty huge issue. Light intensity is irrelevant. Energy in the form of light is pretty much free within solar system unless it is somehow obstructed. Free in that you don't need to take it with you and it is completely renewable. If you have less light you just gather it from a larger area. Mars has actually pretty good light intensity because it has thin atmosphere (it blocking much less electromagnetic spectrum). For a colony much more important are parameters: how difficult and long to get there, how much need to be taken with you (ie. do you need to have water/air with you), how much protection you will need to live there (temperature, differences, atmospheric pressure, radiation, gravity, etc.)
  - codeflo 6y ago
    Can you explain why you have to pay for the Sun's gravitational well on the way to Mercury? From the famous XKCD illustration[1] I get the impression that it might be hard to "stop at" Mercury since the pull of the Sun is relatively strong. Is there no clever trajectory that comes close enough to Mercury to get caught in its orbit? [1] https://xkcd.com/681/ https://xkcd.com/681/
Florin_Andrei 6y ago
> it's too much of a coincidence that such a probe would first arrive so soon after we gained the ability to conceive of it We've gained the ability to conceive of complex stuff only some thousands of years ago. Everything is "too soon" on that scale.
Ancalagon 6y ago
I thought one of the main issues arising with the "alien tech" theory is that this object was moving too slowly to ever make it to our solar system in any timely manner? Thats not to say it couldn't have slowed down prior to us finding it, but if its a detached light sail why wouldn't the alien probe have detached it at higher speeds to have less mass to slow down?
- kentonv 6y ago
  The probe would have needed to use the light sail to slow down as it approached the target star. Really, the opposite is a better argument: How could the probe have landed safely on Mercury (or wherever) after ejecting from a light sale that still had enough velocity to escape the solar system?
jonathankoren 6y ago
I thought you were going to say that’s the the discarded lightsail from a probe that’s thousands of years old, and all we were never the target of it. It’s just space trash now.
bitwize 6y ago
My theory was it's the Super Dimension Fortress Macross and we can expect a Zentraedi invasion Real Soon now.
gorgoiler 6y ago
...and also first arrive so soon (comparatively speaking) after the publication of The Mote in God’s Eye — an excellent novel by Larry Niven whose plot starts with the arrival of a light-sail powered tube.
hinkley 6y ago
Sundiver: Egg sac for a species of star-dwelling creatures. Hopefully they didn't arrive from Betelgeuse...
LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
Shit happens, as in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_the_Lifemaker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_the_Lifemaker The prologue is sufficient http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200203/0743435265___0.htm http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200203/0743435265___0.htm , the rest is a matter of taste. Personally I found it to be hilarious :-)
azernik 6y ago
> Realistically, though, it's too much of a coincidence that such a probe would first arrive so soon after we gained the ability to conceive of it. Alternately, this implies that we're visited all the time, but usually by robotic probes flying through the solar system for brief visits before being disposed of responsibly and cleanly.

knob 6y ago

That reminds me of the books We Are Legion, We Are Bob. I really enjoyed those!

bengale 6y ago
Book 4 is on preorder now, drops in September.

jameshart 6y ago

Which forces the logical conclusion that this isn't the first such probe, obviously.

kentonv 6y ago
That could only be true if they are intentionally hiding from us, rather than replicating and harvesting the solar system as fast as they can. But personally I have a hard time believing that hyper-intelligent devices would care about avoiding detection by lowly biological organisms like us.
- badrabbit 6y ago
  They?
  - 8bitsrule 6y ago
    She
    - badrabbit 6y ago
      Hmm...She!
- throwaway316943 6y ago
  If the mission of the probe is exploration then it doesn’t need to consume all of the resources of a solar system. It just needs enough to make a few copies to reach the nearest handful of stars. If they are using light sails as propulsion they probably need barely anything. I don’t have a hard time believing that an advanced civilization would choose hiding as the default method of exploration. Anything from the dark forest to the prime directive could be used as an argument to do so. I agree with the other comments that it’s fairly likely that our system has had multiple probes pass through. The unlikely event will be when one decides to contact us.
  - 14 6y ago
    In case there are some younger non Trekkies not sure what the Prime Directive https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive
  - kentonv 6y ago
    While it's entirely possible they'd have a good reason to be stealthy, I don't think it's likely to be anything we've thought of. The Prime Directive is a mushy human emotional idea, not something that makes any logical sense for a space-faring civilization to follow. If there's any competition out there among space-faring civilizations, none of them are going to tie their hands behind their backs by refusing to touch planets that have native life on them. And under the Dark Forest, the best way to survive would be to replicate as fast as possible, consuming all available resources. They would want to hide from external, more-powerful civilizations, but they'd have no reason at all to hide from us. Hiding from us would be a strict loss for them, as it means they can't mine Earth for resources.
rriepe 6y ago
(We are)

burtonator 6y ago

> Realistically, though, it's too much of a coincidence that such a probe would first arrive so soon after we gained the ability to conceive of it. It is based on TIME but our conception of it would be independent. I think a lot of what's part of the drake equation is merited on overlap. It's entirely possible that other civilizations have been created and died out LONG before mammals even evolved. IF you factor in just the last 200 years of human technological advancement it's plausible in another 200 we will have either destroyed ourselves or evolved into gods. Either way we're not going to be talking to anyone in the universe. I think it's plausible that a god would not want to talk to another intelligent civilization. Why would we? We would be to a god what bacteria is to us. I don't really have a conversation with the bacteria infecting a wound. I just take antibiotics.

nvrspyx 6y ago
> I think it's plausible that a god would not want to talk to another intelligent civilization. Why would we? We would be to a god what bacteria is to us. That may be because we can't even perceive bacteria, but if we go a little bit bigger and you could have a conversation with a dog, cat, deer, or any other animal, I bet you would. I know I personally would just to understand how those animals think and the differences between them and us. With that said, I do agree with you, but I don't think this is really a comparable analogy though because I'm sure a god wouldn't want to converse with us due to boredom of interacting with plenty of other intelligent life and pretty much everything else before reaching us.
- postalrat 6y ago
  It's hard to conceive of an intelligence as much above ours as we are above bacteria cell. But if such a thing did exist why would it want to communicate with us?
  - neatze 6y ago
    If I could talk to cell(s), morphogenesis would be my topic of discussion.
6y ago

jimhefferon 6y ago

> it's too much of a coincidence that such a probe would first arrive so soon after we gained the ability to conceive of it. Perhaps they observed I Love Lucy and Gilligan and came by to complain about spectrum pollution.

kentonv 6y ago
I don't think so. Light sails are not fast. It would have taken the probe millions of years to get here.

novalis78 6y ago

Speaking of pet theories, here is mine: There exists a sentry system of interstellar buoys that get sucked into star systems passing by. Perhaps with a solar sail, so they can control a bit which stars they want to take a closer look at. Our solar system become "recently" a candidate for obvious reasons. The probe made its analysis and plotted a fast escape, sending a tight laser beam to the next closest relay station. A fleet of planet biosphere erasing machine intelligence dispatch is on its way. Probably some ancient left over from AIGs engaged in eternal warfare. Hence a dead silent galaxy, a rather dark forest.

gratalis 6y ago
Or, in other words, the main plot line in the Inhibitor trilogy within the Revelation Space series by acclaimed sci-fi author and astrophysicist Alastair Reynolds. https://www.goodreads.com/series/56392-revelation-space https://www.goodreads.com/series/56392-revelation-space
- novalis78 6y ago
  Ha! Thanks for the reading tip. I was unaware.

NotSammyHagar 6y ago

Mercury provides solar power but you need a lot more energy to get from there to earth. The asteroid belt still provides adequate solar power with I'd guess an easier ability to 'fall on the earth'. It wasn't clear whether the goal of your invader was destruction or takeover. Falling rocks would do the destruction job.

rriepe 6y ago
The point is obviously more probes. I think a sufficient gravity field and planetary mass is going to let you work a lot faster. Robotic probes with basically no atmosphere to get through means you can use kinetic cannons to get off-world. Your initial "factory line" would be a mostly underground equatorial band on Mercury.
kentonv 6y ago
Maybe, but the trajectory of the object seems more consistent with having dropped someone off at Mercury, not the asteroid belt.

Kye 6y ago

This is clearly a visitor from Bajor. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Bajoran_lightship https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Bajoran_lightship

tobyjsullivan 6y ago

> Realistically, though, it's too much of a coincidence that such a probe would first arrive so soon after we gained the ability to conceive of it. Are you sure it's a coincidence? Imagine you are an intergalactic species that advances yourself by invading other worlds and stealing the inhabitants' knowledge and technology. What would be the best time to invade? I would suggest waiting as long as possible in their technological advancement but just before they develop the ability to defend themselves.

kentonv 6y ago
Light sails are not very fast. The probe would have had to have been launched thousands of years ago at least, maybe millions. Either way, long before our current level of advancement could have been predicted.
- motohagiography 6y ago
  I'd argue development isn't linear, as we seem to have millennia with pretty static tech, then in the span of a (increasingly long) lifetime, electricity, flight, and the internet. On that scale, our last 150 years could have occurred randomly at any time.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    > as we seem to have millennia with pretty static tech, That's not even remotely true. Even between antiquity and middle ages there were constant technological improvements. Of course everything sped up once we had access to steam and later fossil fuels as machinery to replace manual work became a reality.
booleandilemma 6y ago
Would a species that has mastered intergalactic travel really have anything to learn from us? I think they would either kill us, eat us, enslave us, or maybe all of the above.
- 6y ago

monkeypizza 6y ago

Excellent page discussing the physics of colonizing mercury: https://einstein-schrodinger.com/mercury_colony.html https://einstein-schrodinger.com/mercury_colony.html "Colonization of Mercury appears to be a very real and practical possibility, whereas colonization of Mars or the other planets, moons or asteroids is really more in the realm of fantasy." A big advantage of Mercury over mars is higher light intensity: "One very important advantage is the high solar light intensity, which is stronger than on Earth by a factor of 10.6 at perihelion and 4.6 at aphelion"

jrussino 6y ago
Cool! Personally, I like the idea of building a Dyson swarm out of it (sorry Mercury!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP44EPBMb8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP44EPBMb8A
lmilcin 6y ago
Big disadvantage of Mercury is its depth in Sun's gravitational well. This is worse than planetary escape velocity, because you have to pay it on both ways (to get to Mercury as well as get back). Another problem is radiation which this close to Sun and with no atmosphere is pretty huge issue. Light intensity is irrelevant. Energy in the form of light is pretty much free within solar system unless it is somehow obstructed. Free in that you don't need to take it with you and it is completely renewable. If you have less light you just gather it from a larger area. Mars has actually pretty good light intensity because it has thin atmosphere (it blocking much less electromagnetic spectrum). For a colony much more important are parameters: how difficult and long to get there, how much need to be taken with you (ie. do you need to have water/air with you), how much protection you will need to live there (temperature, differences, atmospheric pressure, radiation, gravity, etc.)
- codeflo 6y ago
  Can you explain why you have to pay for the Sun's gravitational well on the way to Mercury? From the famous XKCD illustration[1] I get the impression that it might be hard to "stop at" Mercury since the pull of the Sun is relatively strong. Is there no clever trajectory that comes close enough to Mercury to get caught in its orbit? [1] https://xkcd.com/681/ https://xkcd.com/681/

Florin_Andrei 6y ago

> it's too much of a coincidence that such a probe would first arrive so soon after we gained the ability to conceive of it We've gained the ability to conceive of complex stuff only some thousands of years ago. Everything is "too soon" on that scale.

Ancalagon 6y ago

I thought one of the main issues arising with the "alien tech" theory is that this object was moving too slowly to ever make it to our solar system in any timely manner? Thats not to say it couldn't have slowed down prior to us finding it, but if its a detached light sail why wouldn't the alien probe have detached it at higher speeds to have less mass to slow down?

kentonv 6y ago
The probe would have needed to use the light sail to slow down as it approached the target star. Really, the opposite is a better argument: How could the probe have landed safely on Mercury (or wherever) after ejecting from a light sale that still had enough velocity to escape the solar system?

jonathankoren 6y ago

I thought you were going to say that’s the the discarded lightsail from a probe that’s thousands of years old, and all we were never the target of it. It’s just space trash now.

bitwize 6y ago

My theory was it's the Super Dimension Fortress Macross and we can expect a Zentraedi invasion Real Soon now.

gorgoiler 6y ago

...and also first arrive so soon (comparatively speaking) after the publication of The Mote in God’s Eye — an excellent novel by Larry Niven whose plot starts with the arrival of a light-sail powered tube.

hinkley 6y ago

Sundiver: Egg sac for a species of star-dwelling creatures. Hopefully they didn't arrive from Betelgeuse...

LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago

Shit happens, as in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_the_Lifemaker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_the_Lifemaker The prologue is sufficient http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200203/0743435265___0.htm http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200203/0743435265___0.htm , the rest is a matter of taste. Personally I found it to be hilarious :-)

azernik 6y ago

> Realistically, though, it's too much of a coincidence that such a probe would first arrive so soon after we gained the ability to conceive of it. Alternately, this implies that we're visited all the time, but usually by robotic probes flying through the solar system for brief visits before being disposed of responsibly and cleanly.