5 ms·

Colour me a little disappointed. Firstly, this seems obvious. The conclusion of "even really slow spaceships will colonise the galaxy given enough time" is alm

Colour me a little disappointed. Firstly, this seems obvious. The conclusion of "even really slow spaceships will colonise the galaxy given enough time" is almost mind-numbingly banal. Secondly, the parameters seem to be chosen in order to produce an "interesting" propagation pattern, rather than based on any actual data or guesstimates (I know there is no data, but making shit up is no substitute). Thirdly, it doesn't answer the big important question of "where are they?" (as fnord77 asks). Saying "even really slow spaceships will colonise the galaxy given enough time" brings us immediately right back to "how much is enough time to colonise the entire galaxy?" which they then say is ~1 billion years. Fourthly, but they're not here. So the answer to that question must be "over ~10 billion years". So either the simulation is wrong (because it takes longer than ~1 billion years) or it's pointless (because the only other explanation is that there has been no such colonisation effort, so why are we modelling it?). This wasn't addressed at all. Fifthly, this assumes that all solar systems can be colonised, and will produce another colony ship 100,000 years later (for inadequately explained reasons). Given that we know a fair bit about the actual galaxy (though the simulation doesn't look anything like our actual galaxy), why didn't they run the simulation on our actual galaxy, and exclude the stars that we know can't be colonised (because red giant, etc)? Finally. Is this the state of cutting-edge research on SETI? This wishful-thinking make-believe "look what I made Mum!" stuff? If this was a bootcamp dev showing off their WebGL modelling demo, I'd be impressed. 'nuff said. Sorry to be harsh, but... really? this is it?

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avaldes 5y ago
> Finally. Is this the state of cutting-edge research on SETI? This wishful-thinking make-believe "look what I made Mum!" stuff? If this was a bootcamp dev showing off their WebGL modelling demo, I'd be impressed. 'nuff said. Sorry to be harsh, but... really? this is it? I mean, when all you have to work is literally nothing all you can do is speculate. It is disappointing but what can they do but throw everything at the wall and see if it sticks.
- throwaway316943 5y ago
  Well they don’t have absolutely nothing. We know how much it costs to get mass into orbit, we know the launch cadence we’re capable of, we know how long it takes to build huge vessels like nuclear powered submarines and aircraft carriers, we have realistic proposals for propulsion techniques that could get us to our nearest neighbour. You could make limited extrapolations from these points to figure out how much it would cost and how long it would take to build a colony ship. That would tell you a bit about the conditions necessary to begin colonizing the galaxy and you’d be able to tell if those conditions were likely to occur in the near future. We know how long it took to colonize the Americas so you could adjust that data. That should give you both the rate at which you can create colony ships and how long it takes for a colony to reach the point that it can begin building them.
  - marcus_holmes 5y ago
    this. But I see no attempt to do any of this work. Just "1 colony ship every 100,000 years, limited to 15 light years"
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    It seems like this is an entirely different question than the one evaluated in the article. IT is a an interesting question, but it seems weird to fault the article for not being something different. Alternatively, one could argue that all of this data is worthless in predicting the industrial capacity of spacefaring culture, at least 100,000 years more advanced. Im guessing this is why they didn't bother.

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avaldes 5y ago

> Finally. Is this the state of cutting-edge research on SETI? This wishful-thinking make-believe "look what I made Mum!" stuff? If this was a bootcamp dev showing off their WebGL modelling demo, I'd be impressed. 'nuff said. Sorry to be harsh, but... really? this is it? I mean, when all you have to work is literally nothing all you can do is speculate. It is disappointing but what can they do but throw everything at the wall and see if it sticks.

throwaway316943 5y ago
Well they don’t have absolutely nothing. We know how much it costs to get mass into orbit, we know the launch cadence we’re capable of, we know how long it takes to build huge vessels like nuclear powered submarines and aircraft carriers, we have realistic proposals for propulsion techniques that could get us to our nearest neighbour. You could make limited extrapolations from these points to figure out how much it would cost and how long it would take to build a colony ship. That would tell you a bit about the conditions necessary to begin colonizing the galaxy and you’d be able to tell if those conditions were likely to occur in the near future. We know how long it took to colonize the Americas so you could adjust that data. That should give you both the rate at which you can create colony ships and how long it takes for a colony to reach the point that it can begin building them.
- marcus_holmes 5y ago
  this. But I see no attempt to do any of this work. Just "1 colony ship every 100,000 years, limited to 15 light years"
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  It seems like this is an entirely different question than the one evaluated in the article. IT is a an interesting question, but it seems weird to fault the article for not being something different. Alternatively, one could argue that all of this data is worthless in predicting the industrial capacity of spacefaring culture, at least 100,000 years more advanced. Im guessing this is why they didn't bother.