Posted on 06/04/2003 1:05:01 PM PDT by bedolido
Edited on 04/13/2004 1:40:43 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Forget the next Star Wars movie. The real space sequel guaranteed to capture public attention, astronomers say, is the discovery of another planet like Earth in our own starry neighborhood -- and it is likely to happen within a decade.
(Excerpt) Read more at usatoday.com ...
The tricky part, is that it's potentially practical for those who go, because of the time dilation effect, but probably not for those who'd likely foot the bill, and stubbornly continue to accrue dividends on earth time schedules. When some group that wants to go is rich enough to build private slingshots out of a goodly portion of the solar system's net available mass, than it's practical in general.
It's possible with the technology we have now.
According to Fred Hoyle--and the bet my money is riding on--they are, and we is them. By Fred's lights, all the life in the universe is related through cross-pollination since the git-go--the later models seeded deliberately by their spacetraveling relatives. There are a couple of reasons we might well not detect a geometrically expanding run on resources by alien technical civilizations.
One is that the DNA structure of beings capable of sustaining technical civilizations runs it's course well before the universe can be consumed:
Being so good at existing that you don't have predators to sharpen up the gene pool strikes me as a pretty risky long term bet.
At any rate, speaking of poor bets, it's a poor bet that because we don't detect aliens selling swamp land to each other to drain, and shopping like maniacs at Bimart, that they therefore aren't around. Compare a palm pilot to a secretary and a receptionist, and a front office. Compare that to a temple full of expensive sacred priests who carefully guard the secret of the henscratchings by which they predict the floods and measure out acreage and tithings and calender events. It's a reasonably good bet that advanced civilizations deal more and more in knowledge and less and less in bulk consumables, and might be darn difficult to notice, even if they were zipping around on joyrides in our local neighborhood in droves.
Another option is that, being of sound DNA stock, we and our local environs represent a substantial investment, which is protected from tampering by property rights. Maybe more than one investment, and more than one set of property rights.
I would settle for a holosuite.. :p
What technology do we currently have that will take us to the stars?
We should be so lucky as to have trading partners now that would accept old automobile mufflers as currency.
Fossil fuel rocketry. Electrical induction slingshoting. Solar sails. Generation ships have been within our technical grasp since the first day a sputnik went up. All that's required is cash and patience--no new technologies need to be invented.
See post #103.
The only life that explodes geometrically is waste heap opportunists--and this strategy does not last for very long in any given locale for obvious reasons.
Large, complex multi-cellulars find various means for reaching static accord with their environment. For some insight on this try "Why Large, Fierce Animals are Rare".
Wolves do it by limiting matings to the alpha pair in hard times. Humans, as per Levi-Strauss's observations on primative cultures, apparently, do it by becoming warlike in crowded conditions, and limiting the supply of females through female infanticide--a practice that invariably establishes itself in primative cultures in wartime conditions, due to the perceived increased value of warriors in wartime.
One might suppose that a culture advanced enough to own the universe might wonder what it would do after it had used the universe up.
Not a problem. They'll self-destruct long before then because their computers can't handle the Y10K problem.
But what is not taken into account is that while most other animals specialize, mankind is the ultimate generalist.
There is not another animal alive which, in the long haul, can outrun a man. There is not another animal alive which is actually driven to succeed as man is. It has been shown time and again, that with the proper training, puny naked bare-handed man is more than a match for most of the world's fiercest predators. There have been cases where man, armed only with a knife, has not only survived Grizzly ambushes, but killed the Grizzly with said knife and then walked and crawled huge distances alone to get help (Hugh Glass comes to mind).
A knife? You mean a nice long tempered Bowie? Which was stumbled onto in a Bowie quarry?
This is a fine soliloqy to man, whose capacities I greatly admire, but that does not dim the fact that we are creatures scupted by our environment, and as such, have genetically inherited limitations that could have profound effect on us.
Case in point being--man being such a fantastic predator only adds urgency to the problem of using up the universe. Fantastic skill as predators doesn't help solve this problem, it exacerbates it. Tigers can only be just a little better as predators than their prey can be at escaping predators. If tigers are too good at bringing down wilderbeasts, then we get lots more tigers and--presto--no wilderbeasts. No wilderbeasts, no tigers. What's a predator to do?
Mass loading of reflective foils
Albedo or reflectivity of thin foils
Deployment of thin films
Extra mass of booms, deployers, etc
Survival of thin films in hostile environment of UV, flares, particle radiation, charging "packageability, areal density, structural stability, deployability, controllability, and scalability...strength, modulus, areal density, reflectivity, emissivity, electrical conductivity, thermal tolerance, toughness, and radiation sensitivity."
Unfortunately, light weight sails must also be very thin. And that leads to a host of other problems. The deployment of ultrathin foils without tearing or crumpling is a major issue. Then there are the environmental problems of UV and particle radiation in space that are known to convert plastic into so much brittle parchment, much like the rear window of convertibles.
Solar sails may one day be a viable means of interstellar travel, but not right now, as the problems with solar sails are immense.
What are you talking about? How can we possibly use up the universe?
By geometric expansion of our domain, once we escape from being constrained to this one mudball we currently occupy.
A McDonald's in every cubic nanometer--that's our motto.
Go back and read the argument: It wasn't my suggestion. I think our DNA will discorporate through rampant speciation into various channels that no longer support brains that can maintain a space-faring technical culture, long before we can get to even a tiny fraction of the universe.
I must have missed a post somewhere. I don't see where someone is worried we might eat the entire universe.
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