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Even without FTL, if civs can travel across stars, they should have already colonized the galaxy. Imagine a civ arising 50 million years ago (a majority of the
by danielweber 12y ago
Even without FTL, if civs can travel across stars, they should have already colonized the galaxy.
Imagine a civ arising 50 million years ago (a majority of the other stars in the Milky Way are billions of years older than the Sun). It takes 50,000 years to become interplanetary, and then 1000 years later it's ready to launch a mission to the nearest neighbor, 8 light years away. It travels at 0.02c and then arrives 400 years later. After 2000 years it has colonized that system enough that it has local resources to repeat the process.
The galaxy is 100,000 light years across, so that allows a spread from one edge to the other in 30 million years, which is long ago for us. Forming closer to the center and allowing for the mixing of star systems with galactic rotation would shrink that number.
Wormholes or warp drive would actually explain the Fermi paradox for me: since the other civs are used to their stars that are older and hotter, and they only pay attention to the prime real estate. But limited to the speed of light, a civ will spread by filling each nook and cranny it can live in.
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoIts unlikely any race would last unchanged for 50 million years. They could likely lose interest in colonizing long before that much time had passed. So the question becomes: how much colonization can one race accomplish before burning out their will to continue? Just 2 million years ago, human ancestors were small-brained apemen. A million years is a long time.
- danielweber 12y agoEven if most lose their interest in colonization, there would still be some interested in colonization, and those would do so. Unless there were some enforcement mechanism to stop potential settlers from leaving.
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoI don't mean intellectually. I mean, they become a creature that can't/doesn't leave the nest. At all.