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Aliens Are Out There – But They Probably Don't Care About Us
- demondemidi 3y agoThese articles should spend more time trying to explain the scale of galaxies and superclusters, plus the sheer number of stars vs. physics. That puts in so much perspective: even if we had warp 11 drives it would be essentially impossible to look for alien life on every star system. We’ll never find each other because the universe is too damn big.
- nadermx 3y agoThat's assuming that's the only mode of travel. There could be worm holes, or things we can't imagine. Also if the goal was to find life, searching would not be optimal. It would be better to launch pods that self expand to nearby planet, make their own pods, and go to the next nearby planets.
- demondemidi 3y agoEven if there is a wormhole or some crazy sci-fi thing we haven’t thought of, there are a million trillion stars. Basically invisible. Unless you suggest some technology appears that allows an entity to travel to every star and observe it for billions of years. I’d love to hear a sci-fi proposal that covers this without invoking omniscient gods or the supernatural.
- ngetchell 3y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft
- demondemidi 3y agoVery cool!
- mmh0000 3y agoIf you thing Von Neumann probes are cool, you might enjoy the sci-fi series Bobiverse: https://www.goodreads.com/series/192752-bobiverse https://www.goodreads.com/series/192752-bobiverse
- jdechko 3y agoIt starts with clicking a button to make a single paperclip.
- bsmith 3y agoMultidimensional beings that transcend time and/or space. Not necessarily dieties, but it kind of is from our perspective. Another night be that consciousness exists at many physical levels. Just like you are made of trillions of automata of cells and bacteria, which are played out by proteins and DNA, maybe the universe is a single consciousness, and we are but one part. Or a part of a part.
- saulpw 3y agoThe universe is so vast, that I think even self-replicating probes traveling via wormholes would not be able to cover even a tiny fraction of the existing planets before their suns die out. The universe is really really really big.
- demondemidi 3y ago200 billion trillion stars in the universe. 13.7 billion years old, with a window of detection of about 1,000,000 years (evolution to self-extermination). Maybe I'm just a dumb human, but I really don't see why a supergenius race would invest the resources in scouring the universe. Unless it was their manifest destiny. In my head a narrative to address this crosses from sci-fi into fantasy.
- volemo 3y ago“Because it is there”
- bsder 3y ago> We’ll never find each other because the universe is too damn big. Intra-galaxy is certainly not too big. Even at slow, sub-relativistic speeds, our local galaxy should be fully colonized by now--whether by self-replicating automation or life. This is the paradox.
- araes 3y agoKind of a worldbuilding stackexchange response, yet other reasons aliens might not interact (from a "they exist" perspective). Hitchhiker's Guide - We're just not very interesting. The aliens exist, have noticed the Earth, yet don't care, because we don't really do much from a galactic perspective. Mostly Harmless. Star Trek - The aliens exist, yet have some external reason to not interact, like a diplomatic treaty. Star Wars - The aliens exist, there's just too many other aliens to deal with already (Republic). The situation external to Earth is some kind of massive bureaucracy that makes doing much other than dealing with the bureaucracy nearly unmanageable. Culture Novels - The aliens exist, yet don't interact because we're the equivalent of barbarous housepets from their perspective. Forever War - The aliens exist, may have noticed, they're just too busy fighting some really long term war with each other to care. Stargate - The aliens exist, just view the Earth as a non-threatening farm to be harvested eventually. The Algebraist - Aliens exist, yet the most common form is just really weird from a human perspective (like gaseous objects in cloud giants). Flesh bipeds are not all that interesting, or perhaps discounted because "intelligence only exists in these forms." Dragon Ball Z or Warhammer 40k - Aliens exist, yet the Earth is boring. It's mostly calm bickering a lot of the time. Where are the enormous battles and massive weapons? No titanic fights that lay waste to the surface?
- millerhooks 3y agoI never understood the aliens as harvesters as a threat movie plot / Hawking logic. There is SO much stuff in space. All of the stuff. Why care about our stuff? Intergalactic highway imminent domain? Just chart a different course. There’s no reason other than to mess with us for fun like dolphins jacking with a pufferfish. I guess maybe I’ve stumbled onto a sci-fi short story idea.
- volemo 3y ago> Just chart a different course. Do we reroute highways to avoid anthills?
- southernplaces7 3y ago
- syntaxing 3y agoMaybe they would if they live in a solar system with 3 suns?
- mcheung610 3y agoWe don't even care about ourselves or the neighbor next door.