RE: Extraterrestrial intelligence?
August 11, 2016 at 8:05 pm
(This post was last modified: August 11, 2016 at 8:07 pm by vorlon13.)
Freeman Dyson seemed to think the technology of the 50s and 60s was edging towards being sufficient for interstellar travel, Orion Nuclear Impulse looking like it could advance enough to send 50,000 colonists and the fixins for a viable colony to Alpha Centauri. The time scale was a little daunting, developing and building the craft was projected to take a few centuries, the flight time would be similar.
My favorite explain for the Fermi paradox (and Fermi might even concur) is that we are first.
Picture all the inhabitable planets in the galaxy in a competition. The first one to evolve a lifeform with the urge and the ability to establish a colony at another star system capable of itself sending out another colony effort wins the galaxy.
In this view the galaxy is equivalent to a petri dish, and the first 'germ' to figure out how to move and multiply gets the entire petri dish. The time scale for exploring and colonizing the galaxy is a few million years, even with spacecraft speeds of a small % that of light. What really gets the 'winner' up the graph is after a few generations of establishing colonies and those colonies establishing more, the speed of the spacecrafts becomes increasingly irrelevant. At any given time, even with ships only capable of 5% C, if there are 64 of them, or 256, or 4096, you're getting the job done even if each one is pokey.
My favorite explain for the Fermi paradox (and Fermi might even concur) is that we are first.
Picture all the inhabitable planets in the galaxy in a competition. The first one to evolve a lifeform with the urge and the ability to establish a colony at another star system capable of itself sending out another colony effort wins the galaxy.
In this view the galaxy is equivalent to a petri dish, and the first 'germ' to figure out how to move and multiply gets the entire petri dish. The time scale for exploring and colonizing the galaxy is a few million years, even with spacecraft speeds of a small % that of light. What really gets the 'winner' up the graph is after a few generations of establishing colonies and those colonies establishing more, the speed of the spacecrafts becomes increasingly irrelevant. At any given time, even with ships only capable of 5% C, if there are 64 of them, or 256, or 4096, you're getting the job done even if each one is pokey.
The granting of a pardon is an imputation of guilt, and the acceptance a confession of it.
