Author Topic: What If Humanity Is Among The First Spacefaring Civilizations?  (Read 24891 times)

Offline Robotbeat

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 39271
  • Minnesota
  • Liked: 25240
  • Likes Given: 12115
I’m just saying gunpowder was a more fundamental requirement than fossil fuels for the development of humanity beyond muscle for on-demand power. You’d be better off looking at planetary constraints in the ingredients of gunpowder (or related things) than you would on fossil fuels, when it comes to seeing which planets might be suitable for the development of industrial civilization.

Of course, before even being used for true cannons, gunpowder was used for rockets… which even the apocryphal pre-industrial China was imagined to have been used for space travel… maybe a retelling of a probably-true REAL crewed rocket flight by a Turkish/Ottoman inventor in 1633: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagâri_Hasan_Çelebi
« Last Edit: 12/28/2022 04:06 pm by Robotbeat »
Chris  Whoever loves correction loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.

To the maximum extent practicable, the Federal Government shall plan missions to accommodate the space transportation services capabilities of United States commercial providers. US law http://goo.gl/YZYNt0

Offline Robotbeat

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 39271
  • Minnesota
  • Liked: 25240
  • Likes Given: 12115
Wait, on the first crewed rocket flight in 1633 (using gunpowder), Lagâri told the Sultan, and I quote, “ I am going to talk to Jesus!” 😭😂😂😂 One way or another, amirite

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagâri_Hasan_Çelebi

Chris  Whoever loves correction loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.

To the maximum extent practicable, the Federal Government shall plan missions to accommodate the space transportation services capabilities of United States commercial providers. US law http://goo.gl/YZYNt0

Offline JohnFornaro

  • Not an expert
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10974
  • Delta-t is an important metric.
  • Planet Eaarth
    • Design / Program Associates
  • Liked: 1257
  • Likes Given: 724
Of course, before even being used for true cannons, gunpowder was used for rockets…

I was going to bring up rockets, but then I got to thinking; rockets aren't machines, are they?

And after gunpoweder, we had dynamite, and its inventor went on to reward human endeavor in a great many fields.  Nowadays a great deal of productive work in the Ukraine is being done with the help of TNT.  Turns out that destruction is a lot of work.  Later, a lot of people will be involved in productive work putting the dang country back together.

Work is work.

Quote
In physics, work is the energy transferred to or from an object via the application of force along a displacement. In its simplest form, for a constant force aligned with the direction of motion, the work equals the product of the force strength and the distance traveled.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_(physics)
« Last Edit: 12/28/2022 05:56 pm by JohnFornaro »
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline Robotbeat

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 39271
  • Minnesota
  • Liked: 25240
  • Likes Given: 12115
A rocket is an internal combustion engine, so yes, it is a machine. (And the Greek Aeolipile described in about 30BC or Hero’s Engine operated on the same principle as a rocket engine—expelling steam through a nozzle to produce thrust, in this case to turn a turbine, but used an external heat source and was purely for amusement or at best experiment and therefore was largely forgotten, unlike gunpowder which had practical use immediately in war.)
« Last Edit: 12/28/2022 06:06 pm by Robotbeat »
Chris  Whoever loves correction loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.

To the maximum extent practicable, the Federal Government shall plan missions to accommodate the space transportation services capabilities of United States commercial providers. US law http://goo.gl/YZYNt0

Offline arfdog

  • Member
  • Posts: 3
  • Liked: 2
  • Likes Given: 0
Thought i'd chime in since I keep seeing this idea of a gunpowder combustion engine. The point is such an engine is not practical and it's not contributed as much to society, by far, as fossil fuel engines. Yes, it's useful as an explosive to demolish, entertain, and for weaponry. But all the various experiments don't count as contributions until their impact is broad.

Now as to the main topic of Grabby Aliens.

Industrial Revolution and cheap energy
Only possible with a large amount of stored energy coupled with the ability to harness into power. The revolution basically happened on the back of coal and wood, in the form of the steam engine, which allowed other complex machines and tools to be made. These sources of energy are biological stores of solar energy. Also major contributions were made by at least 2 renewable sources of energy: geothermal and solar (hydro, wind).


Aliens
I saw a comment [llanitedave] that there's a good possibility there's a bunch of civilizations with equivalent technology as humans scattered throughout the universe, probably with billions of light-years between them. I'd agree with this but after billions of years to present-day, you have to think there has emerged at least one giga-powerful, almighty planet-eating civilization.

So I think that's what the grabby aliens theory says; given that intelligent life could pop up in as little as 3-5 billion years after the Big Bang, with many billions of years of evolution to bring us to present-day, there could be a civilization that's evolved beyond all imagination. And since we can't see any evidence of this yet, best-case for them (or worst-case for us) is they gained the capability to ride a wave of light after say 1 billion years of evolution, and are now riding that wave as real space-farers. So they can encounter other civilizations as they travel across say 5 billion light-years, yet have maybe another billion years of travel before encountering Earth. Thus we'll never know until after another billion years in the future, yet with a 8-10 billion year disadvantage. Of course, we should be able to see their local exploits before they arrive, since they could only take to light speed travel after they're sufficiently and visibility advanced.

Offline Robotbeat

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 39271
  • Minnesota
  • Liked: 25240
  • Likes Given: 12115
You underestimate hydro power’s role in the first industrial Revolution. It was far more important than steam power, which was just a curiosity at the time.
Chris  Whoever loves correction loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.

To the maximum extent practicable, the Federal Government shall plan missions to accommodate the space transportation services capabilities of United States commercial providers. US law http://goo.gl/YZYNt0

Online edzieba

  • Virtual Realist
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 6105
  • United Kingdom
  • Liked: 9330
  • Likes Given: 39
I'd agree with this but after billions of years to present-day, you have to think there has emerged at least one giga-powerful, almighty planet-eating civilization.
That assumes that planets are particularly attractive to inter-stellar spacefarers. It may be that rocks stock in a big ball at the bottom of a gravity well - requiring you to start stripping away at the surface just to get at the juicy bits - just aren't all that useful when you can pick systems to visit with more attractive combinations of loose rubble orbiting hot stars (more energy available, less energy needed to access resources). "Aliens want to invade our planet" seems like a mere extension of the old "aliens want to steal out water" trope that ignores the teratonnes of water available floating about the rest of the solar system alone that does not require ~11km/s to drag out of a gravity well.
« Last Edit: 03/08/2023 08:15 am by edzieba »

Offline GalacticIntruder

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 512
  • Pet Peeve:I hate the word Downcomer. Ban it.
  • Huntsville, AL
  • Liked: 247
  • Likes Given: 70
Thoughts:

Universe 13.5 Billion years old. Sun 4.5B, Earth 4B, Life 3.8B, Humanoid 2M, Civ 15k, radio 130yrs ago, nukes 70 years ago, Spacefaring 60yrs ago, Intrasolar TBD. Interstellar TBD. Max Civ on Earth lifespan remaining, 1B years. Sun's remaining lifespan 5B.

That is basically 4.5B of nothing and 1 Billion year window to GTFO. What were the previous 9B years of the Universe like? They might need stable stars that exist 5B years before Space Civs arise. Large stars die quickly. Most stable stars have planets but we don't know what percentage are in the habitable/water zone. Could be very rare.

If Aliens existed and could leave their planet they would know of Earth, but either cannot get here since too far and FTL is impossible or Earth had no detectable Civs before they died out.  If FTL is possible they would have been on Earth, ignored us or conquered US or had non-interference, stealth observe or colonized Earth.

I think advanced civs are very rare. Maybe less than 100 per Galaxy over 10B years.

FTL is the key. If our physics is basically correct FTL is not possible. No one ever goes very far, even over billions of years. If our physics is wrong, and I think it is, FTL is possible and other Civs would have found it eventually. But we have no evidence they are here but they should be here or have been here.

I think most of these puzzles will be solved in the next 50 years.
« Last Edit: 03/08/2023 08:00 am by GalacticIntruder »
"And now the Sun will fade, All we are is all we made." Breaking Benjamin

Offline JohnFornaro

  • Not an expert
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10974
  • Delta-t is an important metric.
  • Planet Eaarth
    • Design / Program Associates
  • Liked: 1257
  • Likes Given: 724
If our physics is wrong, and I think it is, FTL is possible and other Civs would have found it eventually. But we have no evidence they are here but they should be here or have been here.

Our physics is "wrong" in that it is probably incomplete, but everything that we know of seems to work as predicted by our physics.  There could be stuff that we don't know of.

As to whether the aliens "should be" or should "have been here", you cannot support this view without using the probabilistic Drake equation, and its totally made up fraction:

fl = the fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life at some point.

For some unknown reason, my conjecture on this has not spread widely.  That is, there could at least three civilizations in the universe; the one that came to be sentient the day before we did, and the one that came to be sentient the day after we did.  All three civs have roughly the same amount of technical knowledge.  We are simply unable to see one another.

Anyhow, while chirality is seen as an indicator of ET, we cannot see it if information can only spread at the speed of light.  This means that the indicator can only be seen by us at the time and distance allow.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1387647320300725

Quote
In fact, what the meteorites studies tell us is that we can even make a bolder prediction: On Mars (or elsewhere), if carbon processing life exists, then L-alanine will perform better than D-alanine in a labeled release experiment. Hopefully, repeating this experiment in its chiral modification will be considered for a future mission.  No doubt, a new fascinating era of the exploration of life beyond Earth has just begun.

« Last Edit: 03/08/2023 10:36 am by JohnFornaro »
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline dondar

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 436
  • the Netherlands
  • Liked: 299
  • Likes Given: 260
good example of why American habit of early specialization in .... sucks.

I don't understand what you mean by this, Please explain.
sorry for the late response. Subj specialization starts already from the second year of underground study program even in very good universities. It leads to habit of over-generalizations and overextending "logical chains".
Everything we use in science has many lines of fine print you won't get from googling. (initial assumptions, scale and area of application, validity assumptions, parameter calibration details etc.). Basically you do need proper background for proper reasoning.
Basically you need to know and appreciate the history of what you use for father "advances"... and to have a sufficiently wide horizon not to fall into "streetlight effect". 
Dude is solid astrophysicist, but definitely biology and geophysics weren't his forte.
« Last Edit: 03/08/2023 08:46 pm by dondar »

Offline arfdog

  • Member
  • Posts: 3
  • Liked: 2
  • Likes Given: 0
I'd agree with this but after billions of years to present-day, you have to think there has emerged at least one giga-powerful, almighty planet-eating civilization.
That assumes that planets are particularly attractive to inter-stellar spacefarers. It may be that rocks stock in a big ball at the bottom of a gravity well - requiring you to start stripping away at the surface just to get at the juicy bits - just aren't all that useful when you can pick systems to visit with more attractive combinations of loose rubble orbiting hot stars (more energy available, less energy needed to access resources). "Aliens want to invade our planet" seems like a mere extension of the old "aliens want to steal out water" trope that ignores the teratonnes of water available floating about the rest of the solar system alone that does not require ~11km/s to drag out of a gravity well.


I didn't mean literally eat planets... lol. I guess a more descriptive phrase would be "extraterrestrial energy user" - a civilization which has begun to utilize the materials and energy available outside their home planet, particularly stellar or gravitational energy.

Offline arfdog

  • Member
  • Posts: 3
  • Liked: 2
  • Likes Given: 0
Thoughts:

Universe 13.5 Billion years old. Sun 4.5B, Earth 4B, Life 3.8B, Humanoid 2M, Civ 15k, radio 130yrs ago, nukes 70 years ago, Spacefaring 60yrs ago, Intrasolar TBD. Interstellar TBD. Max Civ on Earth lifespan remaining, 1B years. Sun's remaining lifespan 5B.

That is basically 4.5B of nothing and 1 Billion year window to GTFO. What were the previous 9B years of the Universe like? They might need stable stars that exist 5B years before Space Civs arise. Large stars die quickly. Most stable stars have planets but we don't know what percentage are in the habitable/water zone. Could be very rare.

If Aliens existed and could leave their planet they would know of Earth, but either cannot get here since too far and FTL is impossible or Earth had no detectable Civs before they died out.  If FTL is possible they would have been on Earth, ignored us or conquered US or had non-interference, stealth observe or colonized Earth.

I think advanced civs are very rare. Maybe less than 100 per Galaxy over 10B years.

FTL is the key. If our physics is basically correct FTL is not possible. No one ever goes very far, even over billions of years. If our physics is wrong, and I think it is, FTL is possible and other Civs would have found it eventually. But we have no evidence they are here but they should be here or have been here.

I think most of these puzzles will be solved in the next 50 years.

I think your last point is reasonable. And if we take the fact that even the prior several billion years did not yield much in the way of intelligent life that we know of, we may very well be a bunch of islands just playing around in our respective earth planets' sand boxes and perhaps terraforming a planet or two at best, all of us having just emerged from single-celled organisms recently.

So if we all started civilizing around the same time, plus or minus a few million years, perhaps we could see some of those civilizations which started at the exact same time we did. We could start seeing their light between now and a few million years in the future.

And I doubt we'll ever be able to visit each other, furthermore i doubt anyone will figure out FTL travel.... seeing as no other phenomena or entity in the universe seems to have achieved this.

But perhaps, given how prevalent habitable planets are, there could be at least two civilizations which are close enough (like Proxima Centauri b) and lucky enough to both evolve intelligent life who are able to at least communicate with each other, albeit over a span of a few lifetimes of the species due to the distance.
« Last Edit: 03/10/2023 07:06 pm by arfdog »

Offline JohnFornaro

  • Not an expert
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10974
  • Delta-t is an important metric.
  • Planet Eaarth
    • Design / Program Associates
  • Liked: 1257
  • Likes Given: 724
And I doubt we'll ever be able to visit each other, furthermore I doubt anyone will figure out FTL travel.... seeing as no other phenomena or entity in the universe seems to have achieved this.


I do share your initial point.

But.  Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.  Neither is it some weird proof of existance.  Certainly we have not seen any of these posssible "entities".  Point being, if there are entities, then they haven't made themselves observable by us.  Can't say for sure there aren't any.

Quote
... all of us having just emerged from single-celled organisms recently.

It's too early to tell.
« Last Edit: 03/10/2023 12:44 pm by JohnFornaro »
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline whitelancer64

*snip*

Most stable stars have planets but we don't know what percentage are in the habitable/water zone. Could be very rare.

*snip*

NASA's analysis of the Kepler space telescope data, shows that about half of all Sun-like stars could have a rocky planet in the habitable zone. The most conservative estimate in that study is 7% of all Sun-like stars in our galaxy should have a rocky planet in the habitable zone. This would mean there is approximately 300 million such planets in the Milky Way galaxy.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler-occurrence-rate

Quote
*snip*
FTL is the key. If our physics is basically correct FTL is not possible. No one ever goes very far, even over billions of years.
*snip*

Also, fully within our current understanding of physics and current technology, using large generation ships powered with nuclear propulsion a la Project Orion, humanity could explore and colonize the entire Milky Way galaxy within a few million years.
« Last Edit: 03/15/2023 06:45 pm by whitelancer64 »
"One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree -- make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to." - Elon Musk
"There are lies, damned lies, and launch schedules." - Larry J

Offline Robotical

  • Member
  • Posts: 26
  • Milwaukee, WI
  • Liked: 31
  • Likes Given: 21
*snip*

Most stable stars have planets but we don't know what percentage are in the habitable/water zone. Could be very rare.

*snip*

NASA's analysis of the Kepler space telescope data, shows that about half of all Sun-like stars could have a rocky planet in the habitable zone. The most conservative estimate in that study is 7% of all Sun-like stars in our galaxy should have a rocky planet in the habitable zone. This would mean there is approximately 300 million such planets in the Milky Way galaxy.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler-occurrence-rate


I'd say one of the biggest unknowns about the prevalence and complexity of life in the universe is how critical and unique the Theia collision event was to life's development on Earth. If complex life could not have arisen without it, 300 million starts to sound like an awfully tiny number.

Offline whitelancer64

*snip*

Most stable stars have planets but we don't know what percentage are in the habitable/water zone. Could be very rare.

*snip*

NASA's analysis of the Kepler space telescope data, shows that about half of all Sun-like stars could have a rocky planet in the habitable zone. The most conservative estimate in that study is 7% of all Sun-like stars in our galaxy should have a rocky planet in the habitable zone. This would mean there is approximately 300 million such planets in the Milky Way galaxy.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler-occurrence-rate


I'd say one of the biggest unknowns about the prevalence and complexity of life in the universe is how critical and unique the Theia collision event was to life's development on Earth. If complex life could not have arisen without it, 300 million starts to sound like an awfully tiny number.

We should have an answer to that question fairly soon - when JWST does or does not see any signs of life whenever it looks at the atmospheres of exoplanets.
"One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree -- make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to." - Elon Musk
"There are lies, damned lies, and launch schedules." - Larry J

Offline Vahe231991

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1689
  • 11 Canyon Terrace
  • Liked: 462
  • Likes Given: 199
In your opinion, what percentage of Americans say that interstellar space travel is beyond mankind's technological capacity?

Offline D_Dom

  • Global Moderator
  • Full Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 655
  • Liked: 481
  • Likes Given: 152
I generally offer a sense of perspective with my opinions regarding the source of stated opinion.
 For example;
anatomical - off the top of my head
terrestrial - atmospherically extracted
sun centric - pulled from the kuiper belt


So here is my opinion from the oort cloud, more than half of americans will say that interstellar space travel is within our technological capacity. Certainly not currently but well within our ability to imagine.

We have demonstrated an ability to transform our thought processes into physical reality.
Space is not merely a matter of life or death, it is considerably more important than that!

Offline deadman1204

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1782
  • USA
  • Liked: 1468
  • Likes Given: 2520
While there are alot of rocky planets out there, rocky does not equal habitable. There is alot of thought that planets close in to a m star will not have an atmosphere. To date, we've gotten info about atmospheres for a tiny number of rocky planets around m stars, and they've had no atmosphere. JWST found one didn't have an atmosphere recently. 

The idea that theres lots of planets, so it must've happened lots of chances misses a basic idea of statistics. That assumes that life is common, and that intelligent tool using life is rather common. Whats uncommon? People often run through the drake equation and use 1/10 chances or 1/100 for each step. What if the chance of life is 1 in a trillion? What of life developing tools is 1 in quintillion? That would mean we are the only ones in the entire super cluster. However people rarely consider numbers like that because it:
1. gives results they don't life
2. don't normally deal wiht numbers like that, so they are inherantly biased against considering them.

Remember that aside from number of rocky planets, ALL the statistics people use are 100% made up with zero basis in fact. We simply don't have the information to make these predictions.

Offline Vahe231991

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1689
  • 11 Canyon Terrace
  • Liked: 462
  • Likes Given: 199
While there are alot of rocky planets out there, rocky does not equal habitable. There is alot of thought that planets close in to a m star will not have an atmosphere. To date, we've gotten info about atmospheres for a tiny number of rocky planets around m stars, and they've had no atmosphere. JWST found one didn't have an atmosphere recently. 

The idea that theres lots of planets, so it must've happened lots of chances misses a basic idea of statistics. That assumes that life is common, and that intelligent tool using life is rather common. Whats uncommon? People often run through the drake equation and use 1/10 chances or 1/100 for each step. What if the chance of life is 1 in a trillion? What of life developing tools is 1 in quintillion? That would mean we are the only ones in the entire super cluster. However people rarely consider numbers like that because it:
1. gives results they don't life
2. don't normally deal wiht numbers like that, so they are inherantly biased against considering them.

Remember that aside from number of rocky planets, ALL the statistics people use are 100% made up with zero basis in fact. We simply don't have the information to make these predictions.
Even if one or two exoplanets are deemed suitable for life, it's arguable if mankind will establish footholds on Earth-like exoplanets because many people will say that extrasolar travel to a few exoplanets is beyond mankind's technological capacity and people wary of the notion of space colonization might brace for the possibility that people who dream of colonizing extrasolar planets might be caught by surprise by hitherto-unknown extraterrestrial beings if they set foot on planets outside the solar system.

 

Advertisement NovaTech
Advertisement Northrop Grumman
Advertisement
Advertisement Margaritaville Beach Resort South Padre Island
Advertisement Brady Kenniston
Advertisement NextSpaceflight
Advertisement Nathan Barker Photography
0