Comment by trvz
18 hours ago
They are dangerous and reckless. They were also done in the name of humanity, but without humanity’s consent.
I despise the naive scientists who did them as much as those who brought the damocletian sword of nuclear weapons on us.
Earth's "radio bubble" is well over 100 light years across now. If there are aliens out there, they are probably already on their way to ask us in person why Ross, the largest Friend, doesn't simply eat the others.
After the transition to digital TV our broadcasted signals mostly look like noise, though. Maybe an outside observer would assume that our civilization ended sometime in 2010.
You can still see from far away that our planet's atmosphere has a very unusual chemical composition that's far out of equilibrium.
We are already using spectroscopy to gain insights into the chemical composition of exo-planets, and we have barely begun doing this kind of research. In even just a few decades we'll be massively better at this.
Radio signals do weaken and dissipate over time and space. Broadcast signals could fade into the cosmic microwave background in a few light years depending on their strength. The sci-fi trope of aliens picking up Earth tv and radio just isn't plausible.
And in that light, you're worried two blocks the size of a small car will get picked up on the alien's hyperspace scanners?
3 replies →
Imagine how far technology has come in 100 years. Then imagine if the alien had just a 1 million year head start to technology. 1 million years is less than 1/1000 of the age of the universe earlier.
We have literally no idea what technology the alien could have.
1 reply →
The chances of either Voyager ending up in the hands of intelligent aliens are remote compared to the chances of us blowing ourselves up. Be happy that there is at least a tiny possibility of a tombstone for a race which once upon a time aeons ago showed some promise. Personally I think they should have stuck a mummy in there.
They're not even wrong about both their complaints. The "damocletian sword of nuclear weapons" is actually what's been keeping humanity from setting the planet on fire for the past 60+ years.
I think you're not appreciating how big space is. They're not going to be near any star for thousands of years - and near here is still very distant. If we're still around then, we'll probably be able to look after ourselves.
I assume you are against them due to the silent forest hypothesis? Better not announce ourselves, because anything out there might not be friendly to us?
The dark forest hypothesis assumes that it's easy to travel between stars, so interstellar conquests are possible. But it doesn't seem to be the case.
There are no material goods that can justify the material and energetic expense of any interstellar travel. You'd be far better off just using a particle accelerator to forge any chemical element and then assemble them into molecules using nano-replicators.
The best you can do is to send information, possibly with the help of gravitational lensing.
Sci-fi mode on: given that the potential galactic civilization is going to be information-based, who's to say the Earth is not already under attack? An interstellar fleet of large invasion ships with soldiers is not feasible, but a small drone with an AI that connects to terrestrial networks and steers the civilization towards collapse is possible. I'd start investigating if TikTok algorithm developers got some nudges from a weirdly knowledgeable source.
> The dark forest hypothesis assumes that it's easy to travel between stars, so interstellar conquests are possible. But it doesn't seem to be the case.
Wrong. Dark Forest isn't about conquest, it's about preemptive strikes.
The Dark Forest hypothesis assumes that travel between stars is hard - more importantly, that even communications at those distances is hard - specifically, that it takes a long time, which prevents building trust. This, combined with one other assumption: that technological progress makes unpredictable jumps ahead, makes the conclusion fall out straight from basic game theory.
So per the Dark Forest hypothesis, if you spot a primitive agrarian society sending a "hello" to you with smoke signals, you're better off lobbing a nuke at them in response - because otherwise, should you send a friendly "hello back" instead, you may discover that while that message was in flight, they underwent a triple industrial revolution, and shot a magic proton bomb at you.
Why would they do that, you ask? Because from their POV, at any moment you can have a sudden technological breakthrough and start dragging black holes at them or whatever. Point being, it's best for them to get rid of you, while they still can.
(People get too fixated on the forest metaphor XOR the sci-fi parts, but it's really neither; the second book of the trilogy pretty much spelled out the whole rationale like a math textbook, in case anyone missed it after half of first book making analogies to it with ants and history of modern China and such.)
(ETA: what's the justification for "sudden technological jumps" assumption? History. Humanity had ~all the ingredients for the industrial revolution for centuries, and it's not clear why it happened when it did, and not a century or two earlier (or later). Then it happened, but the outcome wasn't "evenly distributed". Then the 20th century saw several large nations jumping all the way from pre-industrial agrarian societies to post-industrial peer superpowers, in a span of merely a few decades. The author writes extensively about living through that transition in the first book.)
1 reply →
That sounds like an invisible malevolent force trying to destroy us, himm, sounds familiar :).
>>There are no material goods that can justify the material and energetic expense of any interstellar travel.
Material, no. but we know with absolute certainty that Earth will stop being habitable for humans at some point. So assuming any intelligent race, human descendent or otherwise, still exists on this planet, it will have to eventually move. It's just pure luck that we evolved when we did. But there are valid reasons for interstellar travel(other than you know, pure curiosity).
6 replies →
That's why I never understood sci Fi nerds obsession with outer space, as opposed to inner space. Humans sit about half way between the biggest and smallest things in the universe. Instead of exploring the cosmos, which takes tons of energy and is almost entirely empty, we could be exploring the space between atoms and building worlds without our own world. It is also almost entirely empty, but the energy costs to construct anything would be close to zero.
4 replies →
[flagged]
The vast space of everything seems to me that any intelligent life eventually discovers physics to get out of this dimension. Dune space feudalism is unlikely
Good thing those gold plates give aliens the wrong directions to Earth anyway.
For some good portion of the earth's population, I dont think things would go worse than it is even if there were an alian invasion.
I'm firmly against METI, but the Voyagers aren't evenly remotely METI / risky.
Elaborate please.
They read The Three Body problem
They read the Three Body Problem but forgot that light exists. For aliens with interferometers looking at Earth there's little question there's some sort of interesting active chemistry (life) here.
Theres no hiding that fact. If they're within about 100 light years they'll be watching the effects of the Industrial Revolution on the atmosphere. Even if they're don't know the exact cause the spectra of pollutants and rates of change will give hints the changes are unlikely to be from random natural processes.
Outside of 100 light years but pretty much anywhere in the galaxy (assuming interferometers capable of getting spectra of Earth) will know there's some sort of life here. Even if you want to assume some aliens don't recognize life as we understand it they'll at least see extremely interesting and varied chemistry.
The idea you're going to hide Earth's biosignatures is silly. Trying to hide our technology signatures is pointless. At about 70 light years any interested aliens will start seeing isotopes resulting from above ground nuclear testing.
3 replies →