4 ms·
What kind of argument is this "only if they are in our own solar system"? Even at the speed of Voyager 2, (15km/s), in a billion years it would cover about 4 *
by twawaaay 4y ago
What kind of argument is this "only if they are in our own solar system"?
Even at the speed of Voyager 2, (15km/s), in a billion years it would cover about 4 * 10^17 km or about 40 thousand light years. I am pretty sure people who have been developing for hundreds of millions of years can do better than that, by orders of magnitude.
Also you put a totally strange assumption that all civilisations will only restrict themselves to visiting planets. If there is a lot of civilisation it is more likely they will have different motivations.
- Valgrim 4y agoIf the dark forest hypothesis is true, you can bet any civilization advanced enough to detect us will go out of their way to avoid being detected by us. For all we know, there could be a gigantic tungsten rod slowly and purposefully accelerating toward us that would destroy all life on earth in ten thousand years, and we'd have no way of knowing.
- oAlbe 4y agoWhy a tungsten rod in particular?
- legutierr 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment
- vardump 4y agoPresumably because it's high density and thus higher destructiveness vs detectability? Although I guess they could also just paint their weapon black. A different matter how they hide the engine's infrared signature. Perhaps by just not running it when approaching, except for the final course corrections.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- twawaaay 4y agoI am not sure about usefulness of kinetic impactors at near light speeds over long distances. Imagine you are in impactor frame of reference -- any particle of dust it meets will cause tremendous damage to it regardless of what the impactor is built of (assuming our existing technology). It is in my opinion very likely that over long distances the impactor will just get converted to a shower of high energy particles over very large area.
- vardump 4y agoStars move relative to each other. You won't need much higher speeds than what we can already achieve, as long as you're willing to wait for another star to move nearby.
- vardump 4y agoStars don't have same velocities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_kinematics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_kinematics Gliese 710 is probably going to cross Oort cloud in 1.29M years. Perhaps we should wait and hop to this star? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_710#Computing_and_details_of_the_closest_approach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_710#Computing_and_detai...