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It's jarring to think that if intelligent life were on Kepler 452-b and observing Earth, we're so far away that they would be seeing our "civilizations" in 615

It's jarring to think that if intelligent life were on Kepler 452-b and observing Earth, we're so far away that they would be seeing our "civilizations" in 615 AD: shrinking global population as the old Roman and Byzantine empires are overrun by barbarian hordes and Arab conquest, with some pockets of human progress in China. They would have no way of knowing that the descendants of those squabbling warlords just cooperated to fling a space probe at 36000 MPH past a tiny ball of rock at the edge of our solar system.

staunch 11y ago
I hope they were recording the whole time and upload the videos to YouTube. I can't wait to watch Hannibal on the Pyrenees From Space.mp4
- Falcon9 11y ago
  My favorite thought is that they've sent probes millions of years ago and we could send a request to watch some HD surveillance of dinosaurs roaming the Earth. It'll just take ~3k years to receive the requested footage.
  - anon4 11y ago
    Not if you board a spaceship and travel to them at close to light speed! Then you, personally, would just wait a few hours.
    - 33W 11y ago
      Once again, it will be easier to bring people to the data, than data to people.
    - raphaelj 11y ago
      You're right about the idea, but a few hours is way too short, because of how the Human body tolerance to strong accelerations. Assuming an acceleration of 10 m/s^2 (similar to Earth's gravity), it will takes roughly one year to accelerate to a speed close to the speed of light were relativistic effects occurs, and you will need one more year to decelerate.
- qq66 11y ago
  You'll have to wait 6000 years to see it on YouTube: 1500 for them to hear about YouTube and 4500 for them to upload (assuming TCP)
  - Zelphyr 11y ago
    Sheesh. I can't believe after 6000 years TCP is still in use.
    - angersock 11y ago
      At least 25% of it will be over IPv6!
      - rogeryu 11y ago
        > At least 25% of it will be over IPv6! We probably will need IPv10 to connect all the dots in the sky!
        tempestn 11y ago
        Actually no! Estimates I found are of around 10^23 stars in the universe. There are over 10^38 IPv6 addresses, so even if there were tens of inhabitable worlds per star and billions or even trillions of addresses per world, we'd have enough! (Although it is possible that stars number is a significant underestimate.)
        p1mrx 11y ago
        IPv6 only has space for 10^19 networks, so you would need to heavily chop up /64s if you wanted to number the universe. But IP is not designed for high-latency networks, so this only really matters if FTL communication is invented.
        catshirt 11y ago
        Internet of Stars™
      - 11y ago
- rolilink_ 11y ago
  do they have a pirate bay?
- manachar 11y ago
  Hannibal lived 247 – 183/182/181 BC. That's a few hundred years earlier than 615 AD.
justindz 11y ago
One can perhaps take comfort in the fact that a civilization advanced enough to be aware of us would likely be aware of the fact that we were more advanced than what they could see at any given moment (or they had found a way to narrow the perception lag).
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  They would likely have extrapolated the savagery they saw and realized that we may pose some problems for the galactic community. RKKVs are probably on their way towards Earth as we speak.
tomjakubowski 11y ago
> It's jarring to think that if intelligent life were on Kepler 452-b and observing Earth, we're so far away that they would be seeing our "civilizations" in 615 AD: shrinking global population as the old Roman and Byzantine empires are overrun by barbarian hordes and Arab conquest, with some pockets of human progress in China. Is there something uncivilized about the Arab conquest of Byzantine lands? Had the Kepler 452-b-ians been observing Earthians but a few hundred years prior, they'd have seen the Romans doing much the same to expand their own empire. And the Arabs did quite a good job to not only preserve the Roman intellectual and scientific state of the art, but to contribute their own advancements of those fields.
- eastbayjake 11y ago
  Not a dig at anyone, especially not the Arabs who basically preserved philosophy and mathematics while Europe entered the Dark Ages. My point was simply that Kepler 452b-ians observing Earth would be seeing lots of war and destruction even though we're currently peacefully collaborating among mankind to discover and explore planets.
  - balls187 11y ago
    > observing Earth would be seeing lots of war and destruction even though we're currently peacefully collaborating among mankind to discover and explore planets. If they were observing us today, they'd still see plenty of war and destruction. It just so happens that a fraction of the worlds population lives under "peaceful" conditions. That's not universally true.
    - khuey 11y ago
      Most of the worlds population lives under peaceful conditions these days.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > My point was simply that Kepler 452b-ians observing Earth would be seeing lots of war and destruction even though we're currently peacefully collaborating among mankind to discover and explore planets. There's a quite a bit more human energy going into war and destruction right now than into "peacefully collaborating among mankind to discover and explore planets."
evidencepi 11y ago
If they have the ability to telescope us before we do. They can probably guess that technology accelerates. In fact I feel more pessimistic of the human's future as we found more and more such older planets -- If their million or billion years older civilization cannot reach us, then we might not reach out that far as well in the next billion year, or ever.
- icodebot 11y ago
  That thought makes me sad.
coldtea 11y ago
>we're so far away that they would be seeing our "civilizations" in 615 AD: shrinking global population as the old Roman and Byzantine empires are overrun by barbarian hordes and Arab conquest, with some pockets of human progress in China. Err, the Byzantine empire was still going strong for 6 centuries after that (and still existed, but not in a good shape, for 8). It never got overrun by "barbarian hordes", but it did have a run in with thieving "supposedely christian horders" on their way to the Crusades in the 12th century, and was finally overrun by the muslim Ottoman empire in the 14th century.
kinj28 11y ago
I would want to wait for the day when NASA announces to watch earth from light years or light months away and show us earth back in time.
- _ikke_ 11y ago
  You'd have to travel faster then light to outrun the light emmited from years ago.

staunch 11y ago

I hope they were recording the whole time and upload the videos to YouTube. I can't wait to watch Hannibal on the Pyrenees From Space.mp4

Falcon9 11y ago
My favorite thought is that they've sent probes millions of years ago and we could send a request to watch some HD surveillance of dinosaurs roaming the Earth. It'll just take ~3k years to receive the requested footage.
- anon4 11y ago
  Not if you board a spaceship and travel to them at close to light speed! Then you, personally, would just wait a few hours.
  - 33W 11y ago
    Once again, it will be easier to bring people to the data, than data to people.
  - raphaelj 11y ago
    You're right about the idea, but a few hours is way too short, because of how the Human body tolerance to strong accelerations. Assuming an acceleration of 10 m/s^2 (similar to Earth's gravity), it will takes roughly one year to accelerate to a speed close to the speed of light were relativistic effects occurs, and you will need one more year to decelerate.
qq66 11y ago
You'll have to wait 6000 years to see it on YouTube: 1500 for them to hear about YouTube and 4500 for them to upload (assuming TCP)
- Zelphyr 11y ago
  Sheesh. I can't believe after 6000 years TCP is still in use.
  - angersock 11y ago
    At least 25% of it will be over IPv6!
    - rogeryu 11y ago
      > At least 25% of it will be over IPv6! We probably will need IPv10 to connect all the dots in the sky!
      - tempestn 11y ago
        Actually no! Estimates I found are of around 10^23 stars in the universe. There are over 10^38 IPv6 addresses, so even if there were tens of inhabitable worlds per star and billions or even trillions of addresses per world, we'd have enough! (Although it is possible that stars number is a significant underestimate.)
        p1mrx 11y ago
        IPv6 only has space for 10^19 networks, so you would need to heavily chop up /64s if you wanted to number the universe. But IP is not designed for high-latency networks, so this only really matters if FTL communication is invented.
      - catshirt 11y ago
        Internet of Stars™
    - 11y ago
rolilink_ 11y ago
do they have a pirate bay?
manachar 11y ago
Hannibal lived 247 – 183/182/181 BC. That's a few hundred years earlier than 615 AD.

justindz 11y ago

One can perhaps take comfort in the fact that a civilization advanced enough to be aware of us would likely be aware of the fact that we were more advanced than what they could see at any given moment (or they had found a way to narrow the perception lag).

TeMPOraL 11y ago
They would likely have extrapolated the savagery they saw and realized that we may pose some problems for the galactic community. RKKVs are probably on their way towards Earth as we speak.

tomjakubowski 11y ago

> It's jarring to think that if intelligent life were on Kepler 452-b and observing Earth, we're so far away that they would be seeing our "civilizations" in 615 AD: shrinking global population as the old Roman and Byzantine empires are overrun by barbarian hordes and Arab conquest, with some pockets of human progress in China. Is there something uncivilized about the Arab conquest of Byzantine lands? Had the Kepler 452-b-ians been observing Earthians but a few hundred years prior, they'd have seen the Romans doing much the same to expand their own empire. And the Arabs did quite a good job to not only preserve the Roman intellectual and scientific state of the art, but to contribute their own advancements of those fields.

eastbayjake 11y ago
Not a dig at anyone, especially not the Arabs who basically preserved philosophy and mathematics while Europe entered the Dark Ages. My point was simply that Kepler 452b-ians observing Earth would be seeing lots of war and destruction even though we're currently peacefully collaborating among mankind to discover and explore planets.
- balls187 11y ago
  > observing Earth would be seeing lots of war and destruction even though we're currently peacefully collaborating among mankind to discover and explore planets. If they were observing us today, they'd still see plenty of war and destruction. It just so happens that a fraction of the worlds population lives under "peaceful" conditions. That's not universally true.
  - khuey 11y ago
    Most of the worlds population lives under peaceful conditions these days.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > My point was simply that Kepler 452b-ians observing Earth would be seeing lots of war and destruction even though we're currently peacefully collaborating among mankind to discover and explore planets. There's a quite a bit more human energy going into war and destruction right now than into "peacefully collaborating among mankind to discover and explore planets."

evidencepi 11y ago

If they have the ability to telescope us before we do. They can probably guess that technology accelerates. In fact I feel more pessimistic of the human's future as we found more and more such older planets -- If their million or billion years older civilization cannot reach us, then we might not reach out that far as well in the next billion year, or ever.

icodebot 11y ago
That thought makes me sad.

coldtea 11y ago

>we're so far away that they would be seeing our "civilizations" in 615 AD: shrinking global population as the old Roman and Byzantine empires are overrun by barbarian hordes and Arab conquest, with some pockets of human progress in China. Err, the Byzantine empire was still going strong for 6 centuries after that (and still existed, but not in a good shape, for 8). It never got overrun by "barbarian hordes", but it did have a run in with thieving "supposedely christian horders" on their way to the Crusades in the 12th century, and was finally overrun by the muslim Ottoman empire in the 14th century.

kinj28 11y ago

I would want to wait for the day when NASA announces to watch earth from light years or light months away and show us earth back in time.

_ikke_ 11y ago
You'd have to travel faster then light to outrun the light emmited from years ago.