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They could be von Neumann probes having travelled for a long time. Even without FTL travel, von Neumann probes could colonize an entire galaxy in reasonable tim
by dan_mctree 3y ago
They could be von Neumann probes having travelled for a long time. Even without FTL travel, von Neumann probes could colonize an entire galaxy in reasonable time (a few million years). Even just a single successful civilization somewhere in the milky way or even a neighboring galaxy could've accomplished that
- neuronic 3y agoEspecially since at the point any civilization starts to develop technology, it happens really exponentially. Even just 1 million years, which is nothing compared to geological time scales, is an absolutely insanely long amount of time to develop technology after the initial spark. Our 300,000 year old species didn't even settle down until a mere 12,000 years ago, we didn't really develop proper government systems until 2-3,000 years ago and learnt flight only ~120 years ago. Within the last 120 years we went to the Moon (!), developed the integrated microchip, the Internet, AR/VR and built deep space solar communications infrastructure, got smartphones, MRTs... you name it. Even among all of these marvels, we still poop though.
- trashtester 3y ago> Especially since at the point any civilization starts to develop technology, it happens really exponentially. Most likely, even overall technological development forms some kind of sigmoid function. It's likely to hit an absolute wall at some point. Obviously, though, we have no idea if we're 0.0001% of the way or 10% of the way to that wall.