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Whether they want to or not is irrelevant. I'm only concerned with whether or not they do. My point is that for a civilization to have an unlimited lifespan it

Whether they want to or not is irrelevant. I'm only concerned with whether or not they do. My point is that for a civilization to have an unlimited lifespan it either has to exist in multiple star systems or progress beyond the need for a star system at all. A single planet is just too vulnerable. Nuclear war, biological war, grey goo, supervolcano, gamma ray burst, ecological collapse. To exist for billions of years on one planet requires that a species be dynamic enough to create hyper-advanced science but so peaceful it doesn't kill itself with it while being so incredibly culturally stable that doesn't change for eons. I don't buy it. Living on one planet is a death sentence in probably much less than a billion years.

jjk166 6y ago
Multiple is not the same as all. Once a civilization colonizes a handful of solar systems, it is essentially impervious to any disaster. Further expansion produces diminishing returns. There is no resource which can justify the cost of interstellar travel, and any civilization capable of making technology on that scale will have to be social enough that a latency of years to centuries in communication with the civilization's core would be a major disincentive. Even if there were a brief exploration phase when everything was new and uncharted, there would be no reason to maintain all those colonies indefinitely. A civilization inhabiting a dozen star systems all within a few lightyears of eachother would not be significantly more detectable than a single planet civilization.
- Causality1 6y ago
  That's a lot of assumptions you're making. For example, some undiscovered resource could be that valuable. Perhaps the species has a slow enough physical metabolism and mental process that interstellar travel times are only mildly inconvenient.
  - jjk166 6y ago
    It is easier to synthesize any substance from scratch than it is to transport it between even the nearest star systems. The only way such a resource could exist is if our entire understanding of physics is way off. Earth gives us a wide range of organisms with different lifespans and metabolic rates. There are not that many species that live longer than us, and extremely few that live significantly longer than us. Even if something lived 100 times longer than us, only a very small portion of the galaxy would be traversible within a lifetime, and there is still no reason to go more than a few lightyears.

jjk166 6y ago

Multiple is not the same as all. Once a civilization colonizes a handful of solar systems, it is essentially impervious to any disaster. Further expansion produces diminishing returns. There is no resource which can justify the cost of interstellar travel, and any civilization capable of making technology on that scale will have to be social enough that a latency of years to centuries in communication with the civilization's core would be a major disincentive. Even if there were a brief exploration phase when everything was new and uncharted, there would be no reason to maintain all those colonies indefinitely. A civilization inhabiting a dozen star systems all within a few lightyears of eachother would not be significantly more detectable than a single planet civilization.

Causality1 6y ago
That's a lot of assumptions you're making. For example, some undiscovered resource could be that valuable. Perhaps the species has a slow enough physical metabolism and mental process that interstellar travel times are only mildly inconvenient.
- jjk166 6y ago
  It is easier to synthesize any substance from scratch than it is to transport it between even the nearest star systems. The only way such a resource could exist is if our entire understanding of physics is way off. Earth gives us a wide range of organisms with different lifespans and metabolic rates. There are not that many species that live longer than us, and extremely few that live significantly longer than us. Even if something lived 100 times longer than us, only a very small portion of the galaxy would be traversible within a lifetime, and there is still no reason to go more than a few lightyears.