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Obviously it isn't aliens and the rest of this is just fun, but: Our Galaxy formed 13,000 million years ago. We estimate any single technological civilization
by matthewdgreen 4y ago
Obviously it isn't aliens and the rest of this is just fun, but:
Our Galaxy formed 13,000 million years ago. We estimate any single technological civilization that developed the technology to build Bracewell/von Neumann probes during this time (perhaps minus a few billion years) could have colonized every star system in the galaxy with self-replicating tech in at most a few million years. Presumably if the probes were self-replicating they could also be self-maintaining and therefore a single colonization could effectively produce a permanent technological presence within a given star system. We can't know what a civilization would do with such a network, but we can guess that human beings would program it to investigate life and technological civilizations.
So the "could there be alien technology in our solar system" question breaks down to a series of technical questions around the feasibility and probabilities of the above events. I personally still think those probabilities are low enough that we can round them to zero, but the spec-fi fan in me very much hopes that they're not.
Also: for god's sake, these are Chinese balloons and not aliens. :)
- adastra22 4y agoWhy would the von Neumann probes not engage in stellar engineering to stop the wasteful emission of sunlight doing nothing more than heating the cosmos by a few micro kelvin? Where are all the Dyson spheres?
- matthewdgreen 4y agoFor the same reason we don't build condos in northern Saskatchewan. Earth is in the sticks.
- adastra22 4y agoI’m not talking about earth. I’m talking about the hundred billion stars out there in the galaxy.
- cwsx 4y agoCurious, how would we detect these? I'm guessing, but is it because we'd see a big empty space with a large gravitional pull? Would light bend around it similar to a black hole, or is the behaviour different enough to be obvious? Disclaimer, my knowledge extends to high school physics (which I've largely forgotten).
- matthewdgreen 4y agoThere have been efforts to find them in the Milky Way and in other galaxies. All we really know is that Kardashev Type III civilizations aren't all around us. But that doesn't mean very much. https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2022/01/20/the-dyson-sphere-search/ https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2022/01/20/the-dyson-sphere-...