Have we really thought out the Fermi Paradox and who/what is out there? What if ala Bill Keith/Ian Douglas there is a race which has exterminated all others, and as long as we stay quiet, we survive? Or in the thread of Arthur C. Clarke's Rescue Party, there is already a huge Interstellar polity, and we are the aggressive aliens intent on destroying civilization, WE are the Barbarians at the Gates?
The Fermi Paradox and Traveller
- Thread starter Murph
- Start date
The aggressive radio-less interstellar polity would be the Vilani's Zira Surka (I hope I spelled that right) or first Imperium. We, meaning solomani, do overthrow it and institute the rule of man or second Imperium after a series of interstellar wars. (Well, exactly how much influence we had over the fall can be disputed, for we know that the first imperium also had problems with the Vagr and they also must have entered Zhodani space around this time)
Ziru Sirka.
Thing is, we'd have a bloody hard time detecting ourselves right now from Alpha C, let alone Barnards. While we can detect a cell phone at jupiter (and Voyager 1&2, and Pioneer 10, out past the heliopause), we're talking
Pioneer 10 roughly: 1.4960E11 x 90
Alpha Centauri: 9.4607E15m x 4.26
269402 times as far... or 1/(7.257E10) the signal strength.
one seven-billionth the signal.
Really, unless one is actively trying to signal, the odds are you're not putting enough signal on target to matter.
Oh, and there is this nasty radio static everywhere... If your signal is significantly below (ISTR 1/10th) you can't send messages reliably, and below that is a detectability threshold (which ISTR is about 1% of white noise), and is what SETI is trying for... Just finding that needle using the biggest antennae they can find, with some of the most sensitive detectors money can buy.
In other words, Fermi's Paradox is pretty much a non-issue... unless they are spreading out, looking.
Thing is, we'd have a bloody hard time detecting ourselves right now from Alpha C, let alone Barnards. While we can detect a cell phone at jupiter (and Voyager 1&2, and Pioneer 10, out past the heliopause), we're talking
Pioneer 10 roughly: 1.4960E11 x 90
Alpha Centauri: 9.4607E15m x 4.26
269402 times as far... or 1/(7.257E10) the signal strength.
one seven-billionth the signal.
Really, unless one is actively trying to signal, the odds are you're not putting enough signal on target to matter.
Oh, and there is this nasty radio static everywhere... If your signal is significantly below (ISTR 1/10th) you can't send messages reliably, and below that is a detectability threshold (which ISTR is about 1% of white noise), and is what SETI is trying for... Just finding that needle using the biggest antennae they can find, with some of the most sensitive detectors money can buy.
In other words, Fermi's Paradox is pretty much a non-issue... unless they are spreading out, looking.
An aged thread, but it appeared as I logged back on; Timothy Ferris did a film on this very subject entitle "Life Beyond Earth". In it it discusses the frequency and survival of like civilizations occurring at the same time, and within what proximity's they might appear.
There are some three general possibilities; civilizations rise and fall, but do so after another has already fallen, and therefore the two never meet. There are a number of civilizations that rise and interact (or are aware of) with one another. Or, life is so rare that we are essentially it as far as civilization goes.
It's probably the luck of the draw. I think we're probably in a pretty dead neighborhood, but perhaps other regions of the Milky Way, and probably most certainly other galaxies, have a different distribution of factors that make life and civilizations viable.
I figure that either they're at least as planet-bound as we are, or are 1000 parsecs away with jump-2.
From AstronomyToday.com: "if all the signal energy ever received from all the radio telescopes ever built (viewing objects other than the sun) were combined there would not be enough total energy to melt a single snow flake." So even though we're already in the business of collecting unbelievably tiny amounts of energy from space, it still may be woefully short of the sensitivity needed.
Steve
Steve
We might not be looking in the right direction, or in the right way. Signals might be too strong or too weak and thus be undetectable to our instruments. They might be too far away, or some kind of interference is in the way (dark matter nebula swallowing light or emissions between point a and b? I don't know, I'm just throwing out ideas). Maybe they're not interested in communicating.
They might have already visited here, but millions of years ago and as a result, didn't leave anything behind to signal their presence. After all, at the time there wouldn't have been any sign of intelligent life, and the planet would have been a xeno-zoological curiosity to any hypothetical interstellar visitors.
They might have existed but died off. We're not exactly treating our biosphere well, and we're at the height of our industrial and scientific powers. Perhaps this is a common fate of any species that gets as developed as we have.
Humanity might be a unique little snowflake as far as the universe is concerned, or we might be one amongst many, but when they're spread out in multiple galaxies contact becomes a bit impossible doesn't it?
Maybe there are a race of synthetic aliens who don't like organic aliens, and go around exterminating them via berserkers. Or organics using sythetics to wipe out other organics. Pretty depressing.
Or... they're already here... and the government knows about them! And they're not telling us! :O
They might have already visited here, but millions of years ago and as a result, didn't leave anything behind to signal their presence. After all, at the time there wouldn't have been any sign of intelligent life, and the planet would have been a xeno-zoological curiosity to any hypothetical interstellar visitors.
They might have existed but died off. We're not exactly treating our biosphere well, and we're at the height of our industrial and scientific powers. Perhaps this is a common fate of any species that gets as developed as we have.
Humanity might be a unique little snowflake as far as the universe is concerned, or we might be one amongst many, but when they're spread out in multiple galaxies contact becomes a bit impossible doesn't it?
Maybe there are a race of synthetic aliens who don't like organic aliens, and go around exterminating them via berserkers. Or organics using sythetics to wipe out other organics. Pretty depressing.
Or... they're already here... and the government knows about them! And they're not telling us! :O
If we take our cues from T4 the Rimward provinces of the Vilani empire were extremely under populated and populated by dissents. Which is the reason why I have given to players why we cannot get their signal.
In terms of the heartland, yes, we have actively listened to the sky and the principles of radio or listening to the bandwidth would be the same on Vland as it would be on Terra but maybe they developed meson communications early and we are not listening for that or capable at this Tech Level to decode it. There is a picture in IW that sums up my view of the Vilani perfectly. A uniformly High Tech civilization (although prison worlds and captive races) but stagnant. If you think of the Time Lords of Gallifrey - you have the Vilani.
In terms of the heartland, yes, we have actively listened to the sky and the principles of radio or listening to the bandwidth would be the same on Vland as it would be on Terra but maybe they developed meson communications early and we are not listening for that or capable at this Tech Level to decode it. There is a picture in IW that sums up my view of the Vilani perfectly. A uniformly High Tech civilization (although prison worlds and captive races) but stagnant. If you think of the Time Lords of Gallifrey - you have the Vilani.
Peter Schutze
SOC-12
interstellar morse code .... maybe that explains short period flare stars ?
read somewhere that about the only way we are going to be able to transmit useful volumes of information beyond our local stellar neighbourhood is to directly manipulate a star's output
of course if we knew roughly where to aim the message we could probably use a semaphore type method rather than triggering actual flares
read somewhere that about the only way we are going to be able to transmit useful volumes of information beyond our local stellar neighbourhood is to directly manipulate a star's output
of course if we knew roughly where to aim the message we could probably use a semaphore type method rather than triggering actual flares
Apart from the signal strength and meson technology questions raised, there's another technological question.
Let's put aside signal strength issue issues and go for a "they could hear us" option on the physics.
We've been broadcasting volumes of stuff on radio wave bands using analogue methods. Throw in TV on VHF and UHF bands into that mix.
Firstly for TV - you'd have the problem of translating the line of transmitted signal into a 2D screen. This would be the more straightforward problem: someone receiving the signal could, in theory, simple take different assumptions for screen width until they came up with a coherent picture.
But there's a second problem. We're progressively not transmitting in analogue but in digital representation of everyday pictures and sounds. We are also compressing and encrypting the signal. And that's over an already implied encryption: why would anyone receiving the digital signal have any idea how to translate ANSI code as letters?
Total volume of analogue transmissions at a substantial rate spans around 80 years. We could be looking for signals of civilisations that are ahead or behind us by hundreds or up to millions of years for a signal that in total time in our civilisation was only around 80 years. We may even have detected a SETI signal and not even known it was intelligently generated.
Let's put aside signal strength issue issues and go for a "they could hear us" option on the physics.
We've been broadcasting volumes of stuff on radio wave bands using analogue methods. Throw in TV on VHF and UHF bands into that mix.
Firstly for TV - you'd have the problem of translating the line of transmitted signal into a 2D screen. This would be the more straightforward problem: someone receiving the signal could, in theory, simple take different assumptions for screen width until they came up with a coherent picture.
But there's a second problem. We're progressively not transmitting in analogue but in digital representation of everyday pictures and sounds. We are also compressing and encrypting the signal. And that's over an already implied encryption: why would anyone receiving the digital signal have any idea how to translate ANSI code as letters?
Total volume of analogue transmissions at a substantial rate spans around 80 years. We could be looking for signals of civilisations that are ahead or behind us by hundreds or up to millions of years for a signal that in total time in our civilisation was only around 80 years. We may even have detected a SETI signal and not even known it was intelligently generated.
Icosahedron
SOC-14 1K
Ojno, it's not necessary to actually decode the signal to realise it was intelligently generated. SETI simply looks for patterns against the random background, on the basis that any intelligent signal, howsoever generated, will contain a pattern or code.
Being able to read the code is not important for first contact, we just need to exchange intelligent patterns. The rest will come when we can direct an intended message to a known recipient.
Being able to read the code is not important for first contact, we just need to exchange intelligent patterns. The rest will come when we can direct an intended message to a known recipient.
Say we had the ability to modify stars. We could create some kind of regular beacon to inform nearby civilisations of our presence and power.
But they'd just chalk it up as some kind of natural event.
