2 ms·

My explanation for the Fermi paradox is the most mundane. All our experience starting with the Industrial Revolution shows that all the various Moore's laws tha

My explanation for the Fermi paradox is the most mundane. All our experience starting with the Industrial Revolution shows that all the various Moore's laws that we've had come to an end. We like to extrapolate to infinity, but in reality it's quite likely that no mater how advanced a civilization gets, they will never be able to exceed 1 percent of the speed of light. If that is so, then interstellar travel would be possible, but infrequent. Civilizations would consider carefully their next move to another solar system. The galaxy could be filled with populated solar systems like a spiderweb, but the strands of the spiderweb would go from one hospitable system to another one. It could be that 99.999% of the systems are not that hospitable, or are not close enough to other hospitable systems. And so, aliens could be all around the galaxy, but the closest to us could be 2000 light years away. How could we ever tell they are there? Come to think about it, how could we ever tell if some aliens were just next door in the Proxima Centauri system?

gremlinsinc 4y ago
Even with generational ships, humanity could colonize much of the milky way galaxy in a few million years. A long time but only by our scale. If people live longer lives and can also use cryo-stasis, it may even be easier to fathom. We could probably colonize the 4 closest star systems within 100k years, and we can get a head start if we used drones to stake out planets far away. These we could actually hurl much faster than normal spacecraft because it wouldn't be as bad if they crash into something since they're tiny, and no life will be on board. I think it'd be worth it if you could build generational ships with the 'feel' of earth, with day/night cycles, gravity, and an ecosystem to supply food and water d infinitum. This is probably doable within 500 years. Maybe 100, but not crossing my fingers. If FTL ever enters the equation then that timescale moves up by a factor of 100 or more. Personally I think FTL is possible, because spooky action at a distance shows that quantum states can communicate with entangled particles across the universe and to do so defies the speed of gravity, as it's near instantaneous. (I'm not a physicist, but that's what I gleaned from youtube videos by physicists lol).

gremlinsinc 4y ago

Even with generational ships, humanity could colonize much of the milky way galaxy in a few million years. A long time but only by our scale. If people live longer lives and can also use cryo-stasis, it may even be easier to fathom. We could probably colonize the 4 closest star systems within 100k years, and we can get a head start if we used drones to stake out planets far away. These we could actually hurl much faster than normal spacecraft because it wouldn't be as bad if they crash into something since they're tiny, and no life will be on board. I think it'd be worth it if you could build generational ships with the 'feel' of earth, with day/night cycles, gravity, and an ecosystem to supply food and water d infinitum. This is probably doable within 500 years. Maybe 100, but not crossing my fingers. If FTL ever enters the equation then that timescale moves up by a factor of 100 or more. Personally I think FTL is possible, because spooky action at a distance shows that quantum states can communicate with entangled particles across the universe and to do so defies the speed of gravity, as it's near instantaneous. (I'm not a physicist, but that's what I gleaned from youtube videos by physicists lol).