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Extend that too: a) An alien civilization has overcome the massive problems of interstellar travel and is able to visit in a manner that doesn't create a second
by tomatotomato37 3y ago
Extend that too:
a) An alien civilization has overcome the massive problems of interstellar travel and is able to visit in a manner that doesn't create a second sun in the sky
Seriously people underestimate the ludicrous energies involved in near-c travel. Even with engines off at those speeds the interstellar dust undergoing nuclear fusion off your hull will give you away
- z3phyr 3y agoWhy near c travel is assumed?
- paulddraper 3y agoBut what if it's 0.5c travel? That's a massive difference from 0.99c travel
- jay_kyburz 3y agoAgree, visitors may have traveled for millions of years to get here. We should not project human timescales on aliens. Humans as we know them today will never visit other galaxies, but our AI descendants almost certainly will.
- Sunspark 3y agoIf you have 20 million years and don't mind waiting, you can send probes to every system in the galaxy at sub-light speeds.
- chasd00 3y agoIdk what’s so special about the speed of light/causality, in an alien universe it may not even be relevant. When talking about alien intelligence and technology literally everything is on the table.
- 0xr0kk3r 3y ago> literally everything is on the table Right, they could have ridden dragon-unicorn hybrids through a magic portal made from the dust of black hole centers. That's what you mean when you say "literally everything is on the table." Or, start drawing lines for me if you disagree.
- NemoNobody 3y agoThere is only one universe
- hermitcrab 3y agoI'm not sure we will ever know if this is the only universe. However it seems highly unlikely that aliens could travel from another universe and, even if they could, bring their own laws on physics with them.
- marstall 3y agowith coldsleep technology, or a species evolved or self-engineered for ultralongterm hibernation, speed might not matter.
- dekhn 3y agoHaving just finished Iain Banks excellent The Algebraist, this is immediately what came to mind: we have no idea what timescales aliens would operate on.
- keskival 3y agoMachines would be more likely than anything biological in any case. Not implying this is what we have here, just a general observation. It's weird people believe space travel requires pilots.
- DaiPlusPlus 3y ago> Machines would be more likely than anything biological in any case. Counterpoint: biology is a machine in itself. Our machines of metal and microchips are incredibly primitive compared to where they'll be in 100, 500, 1000, 10K+ years from now - and when a machine has the ability to to self-replicate, have autonomy, and to protect itself from microscopic threats, then it sure looks a lot like life-as-we-know it.
- edu 3y agoExtend that too: a) An alien civilization has overcome the massive problems of interstellar travel and is able to visit in a manner that doesn't create a second sun in the sky b) then crash