Author Topic: What If Humanity Is Among The First Spacefaring Civilizations?  (Read 24868 times)

Offline sanman

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5974
  • Liked: 1312
  • Likes Given: 8
What If Humanity Is Among The First Spacefaring Civilizations?



Our biggest worry may be the aliens we can't see
« Last Edit: 11/11/2022 10:08 pm by sanman »

Online M.E.T.

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2313
  • Liked: 2912
  • Likes Given: 508
What If Humanity Is Among The First Spacefaring Civilizations?



Our biggest worry may be the aliens we can't see

Grabby aliens again. Don’t like that theory. Basically built on the assumption that because we don’t see evidence of them out there, they must be expanding fairly close to the speed of light, to account for the fact that their visible light does not reach us significantly before they do.

Requiring a rather contrived constraint that the older they are, the further away they are (to avoid a situation where a billion year old civilization is in e.g. the Andromeda galaxy, which should have made it visible to us within at most a few million years, so hundreds of millions years ago from the present).

Why would older civilizations necessarily be more distant from us. There is no logical reason for that to be the case.

The simpler alternative is that they’re just not there in the first place.

« Last Edit: 11/12/2022 07:06 am by M.E.T. »

Offline TrevorMonty

Statistical we wouldn't be first or last. There are  trillions of planets out there. Life on earth has existed for few 100million years and we've gone from ape to spacefaring in 100,000years.
« Last Edit: 11/12/2022 07:23 am by TrevorMonty »

Offline dondar

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 436
  • the Netherlands
  • Liked: 299
  • Likes Given: 260
I am not sure we can call "humanity" a spacefaring  civilization quite yet. "Spacefaring" as a word is an evolution of seafaring, which has very practical meaning. Seafaring is the use of sea for transportation or travel. There is no practical use of space quite yet.

About time table for the "first".  It took ~1 bln years to go from automata to a single cell. It took another 1.5 bln to learn harvesting of (sun) energy within cell, it took yet another 1.5bln for the transition into multi-cell communities which spiraled into  what we are taking yet another 1bln years.
Let see: stable sun, post Fe elements (which means our Sun is a foster  star formed from the leftovers of previous stars probably after multiple generational cycles), no fancy gravity/radiation quirks in the area (this alone kills any chances for the central cluster in our galaxy), quite specific elements composition in the planet crust, an external source of some fancy/low cycling weak energy (we have Moon for that) which is needed for mild atmospheric mixing, temperature ranges facilitating forming and continuous existence of the low energy bonds between elements.

So yes. It is quite possible we are the first "in the reachable area". (hard to talk about general uniqueness in the limitless universe).

Offline Phil Stooke

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1354
  • Canada
  • Liked: 1424
  • Likes Given: 1
"There is no practical use of space quite yet."

Really?  I admit that Mars rovers might not qualify as practical, but why are communications, environmental monitoring, GPS, surveillance, and so on not practical?  Or are you only counting crewed flight as spacefaring?  If so I don't agree with that limitation. 

Offline ulm_atms

  • Rocket Junky
  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 926
  • To boldly go where no government has gone before.
  • Liked: 1565
  • Likes Given: 770
Depends on your measurement size.

In a 5yl radius from Earth?.....good chance but not given.

In this quadrant of the Milky Way?......0.000001% chance....maybe.

Anywhere else in the universe?.....Absolutely not.

I am of the thought that we are not special in the universe and life is out there everywhere.  Given the universe's currently agreed upon age, we are young.  There could easily be billions of civilizations throughout the universe that have come, spaced, and gone before Earth existed.

But if we are among the first?  I hope we have humanities's issues sorted out by then.  We don't need to push our problems/issues to the stars.

Offline dondar

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 436
  • the Netherlands
  • Liked: 299
  • Likes Given: 260
"There is no practical use of space quite yet."

Really?  I admit that Mars rovers might not qualify as practical, but why are communications, environmental monitoring, GPS, surveillance, and so on not practical?  Or are you only counting crewed flight as spacefaring?  If so I don't agree with that limitation.
I am talking about space. We (the humans) do very small steps on the "walking distance" from our home. Mars rovers etc. are just very few experiments on the level of first pre Columbus experiments with the sea navigation.
Small experiments is not use. They are just experiments, the knowledge they provide is very conditional and almost always very situational. The data about Mars are practical if Mars will be ever used. Which is not.

More of it it's quite easy to make very solid arguments that generally "Space" drive is about to end completely and there will be nothing after. Your country (just like the rest of the world) is undergoing through very significant social and cultural changes. Basically confucian nonsense (moral licensing is a powerful drug) is winning the world. I remind that most human present civilizations are static historically and are focused on the past.

Offline Twark_Main

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3618
  • Technically we ALL live in space
  • Liked: 1878
  • Likes Given: 1187
"There is no practical use of space quite yet."

Really?  I admit that Mars rovers might not qualify as practical, but why are communications, environmental monitoring, GPS, surveillance, and so on not practical?  Or are you only counting crewed flight as spacefaring?  If so I don't agree with that limitation.
I am talking about space. We (the humans) do very small steps on the "walking distance" from our home. Mars rovers etc. are just very few experiments on the level of first pre Columbus experiments with the sea navigation.
Small experiments is not use. They are just experiments, the knowledge they provide is very conditional and almost always very situational. The data about Mars are practical if Mars will be ever used. Which is not.

Phil admits that "Mars rovers might not qualify as practical," but you never address the second half of his post.


More of it it's quite easy to make very solid arguments that generally "Space" drive is about to end completely and there will be nothing after. Your country (just like the rest of the world) is undergoing through very significant social and cultural changes. Basically confucian nonsense (moral licensing is a powerful drug) is winning the world. I remind that most human present civilizations are static historically and are focused on the past.

I'm not sure what you mean. Can you elaborate?
"The search for a universal design which suits all sites, people, and situations is obviously impossible. What is possible is well designed examples of the application of universal principles." ~~ David Holmgren

Offline laszlo

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 920
  • Liked: 1235
  • Likes Given: 530
"There is no practical use of space quite yet."

Really?  I admit that Mars rovers might not qualify as practical, but why are communications, environmental monitoring, GPS, surveillance, and so on not practical?  Or are you only counting crewed flight as spacefaring?  If so I don't agree with that limitation.

In English "seafaring" comes from a combination of "sea" and the Germanic word for "journey" via Middle English and its strong German roots. It literally means "sea journey". Changing what is being traveled on/in gives us "spacefaring" or "space journey/travel". None of the uses you mention involve travel. They just whiz around the Earth, never leaving or arriving. The GEO satellites don't even do that relative to the Earth. Crew or no crew, they're not traveling. The general public understands that at a gut level and that's one of the main reasons that it lost interest in space once Apollo ended.

If a true spacefaring society is equivalent to at least the Phoenicians and Vikings, what we have now is the riverside society with canoes to tend the fish traps and weirs and some people spending time in a duck blind out in the middle of the river (ISS).



Offline dondar

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 436
  • the Netherlands
  • Liked: 299
  • Likes Given: 260
"There is no practical use of space quite yet."

Really?  I admit that Mars rovers might not qualify as practical, but why are communications, environmental monitoring, GPS, surveillance, and so on not practical?  Or are you only counting crewed flight as spacefaring?  If so I don't agree with that limitation.
I am talking about space. We (the humans) do very small steps on the "walking distance" from our home. Mars rovers etc. are just very few experiments on the level of first pre Columbus experiments with the sea navigation.
Small experiments is not use. They are just experiments, the knowledge they provide is very conditional and almost always very situational. The data about Mars are practical if Mars will be ever used. Which is not.

Phil admits that "Mars rovers might not qualify as practical," but you never address the second half of his post.
Everything he mentioned is about Eath.It is not about "space-faring" even it is not not about doing anything in space. It is just jumping a bit and look back at Eath. It is about using space border as an advantaged area for Eath activities. It is not faring.
More of it. Such activities are orthogonal to space-faring. It's like surround your port with chain barriers and than wonder why nobody sails.

More of it it's quite easy to make very solid arguments that generally "Space" drive is about to end completely and there will be nothing after. Your country (just like the rest of the world) is undergoing through very significant social and cultural changes. Basically confucian nonsense (moral licensing is a powerful drug) is winning the world. I remind that most human present civilizations are static historically and are focused on the past.

I'm not sure what you mean. Can you elaborate?
[/quote]
It is subj for a special big post because there are few arguments each requiring substantiation. And I am missing routinely prepositions in my speech, so there's that. 
For a quick reference what I am talking about (as in "direct results of what is happening generally" and how it is going to happen in the future everywhere) compare EA of Boca Chica spaceport and FEIS of Brownsville port expansion.

Offline Vahe231991

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1689
  • 11 Canyon Terrace
  • Liked: 462
  • Likes Given: 199
"There is no practical use of space quite yet."

Really?  I admit that Mars rovers might not qualify as practical, but why are communications, environmental monitoring, GPS, surveillance, and so on not practical?  Or are you only counting crewed flight as spacefaring?  If so I don't agree with that limitation.

In English "seafaring" comes from a combination of "sea" and the Germanic word for "journey" via Middle English and its strong German roots. It literally means "sea journey". Changing what is being traveled on/in gives us "spacefaring" or "space journey/travel". None of the uses you mention involve travel. They just whiz around the Earth, never leaving or arriving. The GEO satellites don't even do that relative to the Earth. Crew or no crew, they're not traveling. The general public understands that at a gut level and that's one of the main reasons that it lost interest in space once Apollo ended.

If a true spacefaring society is equivalent to at least the Phoenicians and Vikings, what we have now is the riverside society with canoes to tend the fish traps and weirs and some people spending time in a duck blind out in the middle of the river (ISS).
An interesting link regarding the question of whether mankind could truly become the first spacefaring civilization:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/10/14/are-humans-earths-best-chance-to-become-a-spacefaring-civilization/?sh=5f1ec26b7d84

Offline darkenfast

  • Member
  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1539
  • Liked: 1829
  • Likes Given: 8739
I have a sneaking suspicion that before a civilization can become truly interstellar, they are exterminated by their machines, who then go dark.
Writer of Book and Lyrics for musicals "SCAR", "Cinderella!", and "Aladdin!". Retired Naval Security Group. "I think SCAR is a winner. Great score, [and] the writing is up there with the very best!"
-- Phil Henderson, Composer of the West End musical "The Far Pavilions".

Offline Vahe231991

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1689
  • 11 Canyon Terrace
  • Liked: 462
  • Likes Given: 199
I have a sneaking suspicion that before a civilization can become truly interstellar, they are exterminated by their machines, who then go dark.
People who think that humanity could become the first spacefaring civilization should recall that attempting interstellar travel at the speed of light is tempered by Einstein's theory of relativity stipulating that time slows everything down, especially spacecraft.

Offline dondar

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 436
  • the Netherlands
  • Liked: 299
  • Likes Given: 260
"There is no practical use of space quite yet."

Really?  I admit that Mars rovers might not qualify as practical, but why are communications, environmental monitoring, GPS, surveillance, and so on not practical?  Or are you only counting crewed flight as spacefaring?  If so I don't agree with that limitation.

In English "seafaring" comes from a combination of "sea" and the Germanic word for "journey" via Middle English and its strong German roots. It literally means "sea journey". Changing what is being traveled on/in gives us "spacefaring" or "space journey/travel". None of the uses you mention involve travel. They just whiz around the Earth, never leaving or arriving. The GEO satellites don't even do that relative to the Earth. Crew or no crew, they're not traveling. The general public understands that at a gut level and that's one of the main reasons that it lost interest in space once Apollo ended.

If a true spacefaring society is equivalent to at least the Phoenicians and Vikings, what we have now is the riverside society with canoes to tend the fish traps and weirs and some people spending time in a duck blind out in the middle of the river (ISS).
An interesting link regarding the question of whether mankind could truly become the first spacefaring civilization:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/10/14/are-humans-earths-best-chance-to-become-a-spacefaring-civilization/?sh=5f1ec26b7d84
good example of why American habit of early specialization in .... sucks.
Let start with the basic: "Theory of evolution" is not about "survival of the fittest" neither it is about those "best to adapt" etc.
It is always about "good enough" and  "barely sufficient" efforts. You don't have to build a full blown brick house to survive, a small leaking cave is actually enough. Somewhere. The mere fact of the immense diversity of life on our planet is sufficient argument for exactly that.
This argument is actually critical here, because there is no reason to believe that the evolutionary path our civilization takes is "general" and is "inevitable".  Basically most of what we use now we own to a couple of hundreds people who decided to write letters to each other some 6 centuries ago. And many many coincidences and lucky chances on the way up to now.

Offline stormhelm

  • Member
  • Posts: 12
  • Minnesota
  • Liked: 4
  • Likes Given: 23
Good point..

Offline sanman

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5974
  • Liked: 1312
  • Likes Given: 8
Grabby aliens again. Don’t like that theory. Basically built on the assumption that because we don’t see evidence of them out there, they must be expanding fairly close to the speed of light, to account for the fact that their visible light does not reach us significantly before they do.

Requiring a rather contrived constraint that the older they are, the further away they are (to avoid a situation where a billion year old civilization is in e.g. the Andromeda galaxy, which should have made it visible to us within at most a few million years, so hundreds of millions years ago from the present).

Why would older civilizations necessarily be more distant from us. There is no logical reason for that to be the case.

The simpler alternative is that they’re just not there in the first place.

The farther away we are from them, the longer it will take for them to get to us -- and the more opportunity they have to age before coming into contact with us.

What would be the most likely differences in the type of "first contact" we'd experience from aliens who originate from within our solar system, as compared to aliens who originate from beyond our solar system?

Offline laszlo

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 920
  • Liked: 1235
  • Likes Given: 530
good example of why American habit of early specialization in .... sucks.

I don't understand what you mean by this, Please explain.

Offline Slothman

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 523
  • Liked: 549
  • Likes Given: 27
Grabby aliens again. Don’t like that theory. Basically built on the assumption that because we don’t see evidence of them out there, they must be expanding fairly close to the speed of light, to account for the fact that their visible light does not reach us significantly before they do.

Requiring a rather contrived constraint that the older they are, the further away they are (to avoid a situation where a billion year old civilization is in e.g. the Andromeda galaxy, which should have made it visible to us within at most a few million years, so hundreds of millions years ago from the present).

Why would older civilizations necessarily be more distant from us. There is no logical reason for that to be the case.

The simpler alternative is that they’re just not there in the first place.

The farther away we are from them, the longer it will take for them to get to us -- and the more opportunity they have to age before coming into contact with us.

What would be the most likely differences in the type of "first contact" we'd experience from aliens who originate from within our solar system, as compared to aliens who originate from beyond our solar system?

The ones closer to us, if they exist,  will likely be alive and the ones coming from far away will be more likely to be dead when they arrive.

Space travel is never trivial, unless you go into science fictional levels of technology where you snap your fingers and a spaceship appears and you can travel close to the speed of light. But I suppose we're talking about reasonable, "known to us" means of propulsion as well as manufacturing and outfitting (i.e. no magical force fields to contain hull breaches).

The longer they have to travel (just imagine sitting on top of each other for 1000 years, classes/factions are going to form, in-ship wars may be inevitable) the more likely it is that some technical failure, sabotage, uprising or other stuff happens that damages their ship and renders it uninhabitable.

So, either a long distance species coming to us is extremely peaceful (towards each other and probably towards outsiders) or dead.

Grabby aliens again. Don’t like that theory. Basically built on the assumption that because we don’t see evidence of them out there, they must be expanding fairly close to the speed of light, to account for the fact that their visible light does not reach us significantly before they do.

Requiring a rather contrived constraint that the older they are, the further away they are (to avoid a situation where a billion year old civilization is in e.g. the Andromeda galaxy, which should have made it visible to us within at most a few million years, so hundreds of millions years ago from the present).

Why would older civilizations necessarily be more distant from us. There is no logical reason for that to be the case.

The simpler alternative is that they’re just not there in the first place.

The farther away we are from them, the longer it will take for them to get to us -- and the more opportunity they have to age before coming into contact with us.

What would be the most likely differences in the type of "first contact" we'd experience from aliens who originate from within our solar system, as compared to aliens who originate from beyond our solar system?

The ones closer to us, if they exist,  will likely be alive and the ones coming from far away will be more likely to be dead when they arrive.

Space travel is never trivial, unless you go into science fictional levels of technology where you snap your fingers and a spaceship appears and you can travel close to the speed of light. But I suppose we're talking about reasonable, "known to us" means of propulsion as well as manufacturing and outfitting (i.e. no magical force fields to contain hull breaches).

The longer they have to travel (just imagine sitting on top of each other for 1000 years, classes/factions are going to form, in-ship wars may be inevitable) the more likely it is that some technical failure, sabotage, uprising or other stuff happens that damages their ship and renders it uninhabitable.

So, either a long distance species coming to us is extremely peaceful (towards each other and probably towards outsiders) or dead.

Agree with that assessment, which incidentally simply echoes 'the meek shall inherit...'.
One should also adjust for the sheer improbability of technically intelligent life, with much less than 10,000 years of existence in the at least 1 billion years of life on earth.

Offline Scooter

I have a suspicion, could be wrong, that Humans are the only species to build spacecraft and the Earth is the only habitable planet.

I don't have much confidence in the concept of aliens.
F-14D Tomcat - a swing winged beauty

Offline sanman

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5974
  • Liked: 1312
  • Likes Given: 8
The ones closer to us, if they exist,  will likely be alive and the ones coming from far away will be more likely to be dead when they arrive.

Space travel is never trivial, unless you go into science fictional levels of technology where you snap your fingers and a spaceship appears and you can travel close to the speed of light. But I suppose we're talking about reasonable, "known to us" means of propulsion as well as manufacturing and outfitting (i.e. no magical force fields to contain hull breaches).

The longer they have to travel (just imagine sitting on top of each other for 1000 years, classes/factions are going to form, in-ship wars may be inevitable) the more likely it is that some technical failure, sabotage, uprising or other stuff happens that damages their ship and renders it uninhabitable.

So, either a long distance species coming to us is extremely peaceful (towards each other and probably towards outsiders) or dead.

What if they're self-replicating Von Neumann swarms?


Online M.E.T.

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2313
  • Liked: 2912
  • Likes Given: 508
The issue is not about us physically meeting them. It’s about us SEEING (or rather NOT seeing) evidence of their civilizations  in their home galaxies.

The older they are the more visible an effect these “grabby aliens” should have on their stellar neighbourhood. To explain this lack of detection, the Grabby Alien hypothesis says that those old enough to have visibly changed their stellar environments HAVE to be far enough away that the light of their civilization has not had time to reach us yet.

So a “mega structure / stellar engineering capable” civilization could have arisen 500M years ago in a galaxy 1B light years away, but it is not allowed to have arisen in the next door Andromeda galaxy more than 2.5 million years ago. Or in the Milky Way itself more than ~100K years ago. Else we would see evidence of it.

So the theory requires that the older a civilization is, the farther away from Earth it has to be. That’s a weird, rather Earth-centric condition that has no logical or natural reason for existing, other than to make the theory work.

« Last Edit: 11/30/2022 03:15 am by M.E.T. »

Offline Yiosie

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 456
  • Liked: 635
  • Likes Given: 97
The issue is not about us physically meeting them. It’s about us SEEING (or rather NOT seeing) evidence of their civilizations  in their home galaxies.

The older they are the more visible an effect these “grabby aliens” should have on their stellar neighbourhood. To explain this lack of detection, the Grabby Alien hypothesis says that those old enough to have visibly changed their stellar environments HAVE to be far enough away that the light of their civilization has not had time to reach us yet.

So a “mega structure / stellar engineering capable” civilization could have arisen 500M years ago in a galaxy 1B light years away, but it is not allowed to have arisen in the next door Andromeda galaxy more than 2.5 million years ago. Or in the Milky Way itself more than ~100K years ago. Else we would see evidence of it.

So the theory requires that the older a civilization is, the farther away from Earth it has to be. That’s a weird, rather Earth-centric condition that has no logical or natural reason for existing, other than to make the theory work.

From what I gather about the grabby aliens hypothesis, it is specifically designed to address the question of why humans have appeared so early in the universe's existence, 13.8 billion years in, when the average star in the universe will last ~5 trillion years and it is vastly more likely for advanced life to appear later rather than sooner by the hard-steps power law model of the origin of advanced life. It states that if we assume that human civilization is not special in appearing so early (Copernican principle and all), then there must be something that prevents civilizations like ours from appearing and observing the universe like we do in those trillions of years of distant future; that "something" is grabby aliens, which drastically change their stellar environments and prevent the emergence of indigenous alien civilizations within their sphere of influence.

Because we don't observe the kind of obvious stellar engineering activity that defines "grabby aliens", the appearance rate of these types of alien civilizations is highly constrained. Robin Hanson, who proposed and wrote the mathematical model behind this hypothesis, states the following here:

Quote
Our recent analysis suggests that they appear at random stars roughly once per million galaxies, and then expand at roughly half the speed of light. Right now, they have filled roughly half of the universe, and if we join them we’ll meet them in roughly a billion years. There may be far more quiet than grabby alien civs out there, but those don’t usually do much or last long, and even the ruins of the nearest are quite far away.

Those are the median values that his model spits out if we assume grabby civilizations both exist and haven't appeared in our light cone yet. So it's not that "the older a civilization is, the farther away from Earth it has to be"; it's that grabby aliens in particular are so rare and expand so fast that it isn't unusual that we don't see them yet (even then, Hanson predicts that over half the universe can currently see obvious alien activity in their night skies; we're just outside those light cones at the moment). Basically, we'll encounter the nearest one in about a billion years, and in under ten billion years every star in the observable universe will be within a grabby civilization. Thus, we observe ourselves appearing near the beginning of the universe's history because civilizations like ours can only appear near the beginning; Copernican principle preserved.

Online M.E.T.

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2313
  • Liked: 2912
  • Likes Given: 508
The issue is not about us physically meeting them. It’s about us SEEING (or rather NOT seeing) evidence of their civilizations  in their home galaxies.

The older they are the more visible an effect these “grabby aliens” should have on their stellar neighbourhood. To explain this lack of detection, the Grabby Alien hypothesis says that those old enough to have visibly changed their stellar environments HAVE to be far enough away that the light of their civilization has not had time to reach us yet.

So a “mega structure / stellar engineering capable” civilization could have arisen 500M years ago in a galaxy 1B light years away, but it is not allowed to have arisen in the next door Andromeda galaxy more than 2.5 million years ago. Or in the Milky Way itself more than ~100K years ago. Else we would see evidence of it.

So the theory requires that the older a civilization is, the farther away from Earth it has to be. That’s a weird, rather Earth-centric condition that has no logical or natural reason for existing, other than to make the theory work.

From what I gather about the grabby aliens hypothesis, it is specifically designed to address the question of why humans have appeared so early in the universe's existence, 13.8 billion years in, when the average star in the universe will last ~5 trillion years and it is vastly more likely for advanced life to appear later rather than sooner by the hard-steps power law model of the origin of advanced life. It states that if we assume that human civilization is not special in appearing so early (Copernican principle and all), then there must be something that prevents civilizations like ours from appearing and observing the universe like we do in those trillions of years of distant future; that "something" is grabby aliens, which drastically change their stellar environments and prevent the emergence of indigenous alien civilizations within their sphere of influence.

Because we don't observe the kind of obvious stellar engineering activity that defines "grabby aliens", the appearance rate of these types of alien civilizations is highly constrained. Robin Hanson, who proposed and wrote the mathematical model behind this hypothesis, states the following here:

Quote
Our recent analysis suggests that they appear at random stars roughly once per million galaxies, and then expand at roughly half the speed of light. Right now, they have filled roughly half of the universe, and if we join them we’ll meet them in roughly a billion years. There may be far more quiet than grabby alien civs out there, but those don’t usually do much or last long, and even the ruins of the nearest are quite far away.

Those are the median values that his model spits out if we assume grabby civilizations both exist and haven't appeared in our light cone yet. So it's not that "the older a civilization is, the farther away from Earth it has to be"; it's that grabby aliens in particular are so rare and expand so fast that it isn't unusual that we don't see them yet (even then, Hanson predicts that over half the universe can currently see obvious alien activity in their night skies; we're just outside those light cones at the moment). Basically, we'll encounter the nearest one in about a billion years, and in under ten billion years every star in the observable universe will be within a grabby civilization. Thus, we observe ourselves appearing near the beginning of the universe's history because civilizations like ours can only appear near the beginning; Copernican principle preserved.

All of that still means that billion year old civilizations have to be more than a billion light years away, while 100 million year old civilizations only need to be 100 million light years away. The inverse would mean that the billion year old civilization would have been visible to us for the last 900 million years or so.

So yes, it does mean that older civilizations have to be farther away to make the model work.
« Last Edit: 11/30/2022 09:37 am by M.E.T. »

Offline Yiosie

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 456
  • Liked: 635
  • Likes Given: 97
The issue is not about us physically meeting them. It’s about us SEEING (or rather NOT seeing) evidence of their civilizations  in their home galaxies.

The older they are the more visible an effect these “grabby aliens” should have on their stellar neighbourhood. To explain this lack of detection, the Grabby Alien hypothesis says that those old enough to have visibly changed their stellar environments HAVE to be far enough away that the light of their civilization has not had time to reach us yet.

So a “mega structure / stellar engineering capable” civilization could have arisen 500M years ago in a galaxy 1B light years away, but it is not allowed to have arisen in the next door Andromeda galaxy more than 2.5 million years ago. Or in the Milky Way itself more than ~100K years ago. Else we would see evidence of it.

So the theory requires that the older a civilization is, the farther away from Earth it has to be. That’s a weird, rather Earth-centric condition that has no logical or natural reason for existing, other than to make the theory work.

From what I gather about the grabby aliens hypothesis, it is specifically designed to address the question of why humans have appeared so early in the universe's existence, 13.8 billion years in, when the average star in the universe will last ~5 trillion years and it is vastly more likely for advanced life to appear later rather than sooner by the hard-steps power law model of the origin of advanced life. It states that if we assume that human civilization is not special in appearing so early (Copernican principle and all), then there must be something that prevents civilizations like ours from appearing and observing the universe like we do in those trillions of years of distant future; that "something" is grabby aliens, which drastically change their stellar environments and prevent the emergence of indigenous alien civilizations within their sphere of influence.

Because we don't observe the kind of obvious stellar engineering activity that defines "grabby aliens", the appearance rate of these types of alien civilizations is highly constrained. Robin Hanson, who proposed and wrote the mathematical model behind this hypothesis, states the following here:

Quote
Our recent analysis suggests that they appear at random stars roughly once per million galaxies, and then expand at roughly half the speed of light. Right now, they have filled roughly half of the universe, and if we join them we’ll meet them in roughly a billion years. There may be far more quiet than grabby alien civs out there, but those don’t usually do much or last long, and even the ruins of the nearest are quite far away.

Those are the median values that his model spits out if we assume grabby civilizations both exist and haven't appeared in our light cone yet. So it's not that "the older a civilization is, the farther away from Earth it has to be"; it's that grabby aliens in particular are so rare and expand so fast that it isn't unusual that we don't see them yet (even then, Hanson predicts that over half the universe can currently see obvious alien activity in their night skies; we're just outside those light cones at the moment). Basically, we'll encounter the nearest one in about a billion years, and in under ten billion years every star in the observable universe will be within a grabby civilization. Thus, we observe ourselves appearing near the beginning of the universe's history because civilizations like ours can only appear near the beginning; Copernican principle preserved.

All of that still means that billion year old civilizations have to be more than a billion light years away, while 100 million year old civilizations only need to be 100 million light years away. The inverse would mean that the billion year old civilization would have been visible to us for the last 900 million years or so.

So yes, it does mean that older civilizations have to be farther away to make the model work.

That's kind of a natural consequence of the hard-steps model of the development of complex life, rather than for the grabby aliens model? It is very unlikely for each step in the process to occur successfully, so the rate that new advanced lifeforms appear in the universe is one that will increase exponentially over time. The earliest civilizations, if distributed throughout the universe somewhat evenly, would be separated by billions of light years; the more recent ones, filling in the gaps, would be separated by "only" hundreds of millions of light years. Therefore, it isn't unreasonable to expect that the billion year old grabby aliens are over a billion light years away, and 100 million year old ones are hundreds of millions of light years away. Alien civilizations are supposed to be extremely rare after all, and grabby aliens comprise a tiny fraction of the total number of civilizations.

I suppose you could imagine a cosmic Powerball lottery where you can repeatedly choose numbers from 1 to 1 billion indefinitely for each slot (representing the hard steps in the development of complex life), and you only move on to the next slot once you finally guess the right one. The first ones to guess the final slot are freakishly lucky and find themselves alone for a very long time, but the completion rate picks up over time as more and more people reach the final slot and get lucky. The final Powerball number is optional in this scenario, and those who actually attempt it are civilizations that try to become "grabby"; the successful guessers get to spread out until the universe is full, while those who fail become "quiet" civilizations or collapse and don't make much impact on the universe.

Incidentally, the model posits that only about one star in a million galaxies will ever spawn a grabby civilization, so you actually do have to be a little lucky (or unlucky, depending on your point of view) to have another grabby alien civilization spawn within your galactic supercluster before grabby aliens from a neighboring supercluster arrive a billion years later.

Online markbike528cbx

  • Full Member
  • *
  • Posts: 162
  • The Everbrown portion of the Evergreen State
  • Liked: 143
  • Likes Given: 88
…..snip…
So, either a long distance species coming to us is extremely peaceful (towards each other and probably towards outsiders) or dead.

Agree with that assessment, which incidentally simply echoes 'the meek shall inherit...'.
One should also adjust for the sheer improbability of technically intelligent life, with much less than 10,000 years of existence in the at least 1 billion years of life on earth.
I have a T-shirt that says “And the geek shall inherit the earth”.  So meek geeks for the win?

Offline laszlo

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 920
  • Liked: 1235
  • Likes Given: 530
I also wonder if seeing signs of highly advanced aliens is overstated. It assumes that as aliens advance, their artifacts get larger and more visible. What if it's the opposite? We see some of that right here on Earth. Compare the pile of 19th-century explosives it would have taken to completely flatten London and its environs in Queen Victoria's time with a staged thermonuclear weapon that could so the same today to the even larger London. Or compare the size and contents of the RMS Titanic's engine room, all to produce 38 MW to the Raptor 2 which fits on a forklift pallet and produces multiple GW. Or a 1950's 4-story SAGE blockhouse to a modern truck-mounted air-defense control center.

As tech gets better, it gets smaller. Modern computer chips have more transistors than our brains have neurons. Nano machinery is so small that it's invisible. A truly advanced alien may be microscopic, powered by cosmic radiation and manipulating space-time directly with some kind of quantum effectors. They may move have flooded their local space with uncountable numbers of these tiny bodies and be moving their consciousnesses between them at the speed of light. If there are enough of these tiny but highly absorptive creatures out there, we may only "see" them through their net gravitational effects. They could be the explanation for dark matter.

Even if that's not the case, if advanced aliens have moved their tech to the quantum scales, they could be all over the space that we see but still be invisible to us. We could be the primitives standing under the cell towers looking for the giant drums that the civilized folks signal with and wondering where they all are.


Online DanClemmensen

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5484
  • Earth (currently)
  • Liked: 4316
  • Likes Given: 1758
I also wonder if seeing signs of highly advanced aliens is overstated. It assumes that as aliens advance, their artifacts get larger and more visible. What if it's the opposite? We see some of that right here on Earth. Compare the pile of 19th-century explosives it would have taken to completely flatten London and its environs in Queen Victoria's time with a staged thermonuclear weapon that could so the same today to the even larger London. Or compare the size and contents of the RMS Titanic's engine room, all to produce 38 MW to the Raptor 2 which fits on a forklift pallet and produces multiple GW. Or a 1950's 4-story SAGE blockhouse to a modern truck-mounted air-defense control center.

As tech gets better, it gets smaller. Modern computer chips have more transistors than our brains have neurons. Nano machinery is so small that it's invisible. A truly advanced alien may be microscopic, powered by cosmic radiation and manipulating space-time directly with some kind of quantum effectors. They may move have flooded their local space with uncountable numbers of these tiny bodies and be moving their consciousnesses between them at the speed of light. If there are enough of these tiny but highly absorptive creatures out there, we may only "see" them through their net gravitational effects. They could be the explanation for dark matter.

Even if that's not the case, if advanced aliens have moved their tech to the quantum scales, they could be all over the space that we see but still be invisible to us. We could be the primitives standing under the cell towers looking for the giant drums that the civilized folks signal with and wondering where they all are.
In the case of communications signals specifically, if the SNR is >0 dB, then the signal is inefficient and implies a civilization that is not highly advanced. But a signal with a low SNR is hard to detect unless you know how it was encoded in the first place.

Offline Bob Shaw

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1427
  • Liked: 727
  • Likes Given: 676
Alien civilisations which transmit on radio, light etc may just be a passing phase before some other methods are embraced (gravity waves, neutrinos, quantum magic). Perhaps Drake is actually conservative, and we're just not aware of the chatter that's out there? I think not.

If Drake is correct, there are a couple of points arising from that even if nobody is using our level of communication technology: firstly, what should we see that implies no formal communicatiion? The answer is simple: pollution, changes in chemistry in stars, odd IR signatures. We don't so far as I know, see any of these so far and this suggests that in fact we may be 'early'. A second point must be that machine civilisations are not time-constrained in the way that organic ones are, and should be able to simply and cheaply colonise *everywhere* over relatively short timescales - and again, we see no signs. It really looks like we are in a universe where intelligence has not yet spread.

Life, of course, is everywhere - but it is highly evolved, perfectly adapted, slime.

Offline tea monster

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 635
  • Across the Universe
    • My ArtStation Portfolio
  • Liked: 861
  • Likes Given: 182
We could be the primitives standing under the cell towers looking for the giant drums that the civilized folks signal with and wondering where they all are.
I use a similar analogy. Imagine a curious native islander climbing to the top of the central peak of his known world. He raises his hand to his eyes and squints, hoping to see a wisp of smoke that will reveal that his isn't the only inhabited island. As he peers across the horizon, radio waves from the global civilisation criss-cross through his body.

We haven't sent biologists to any other planet and examined it directly and extensively for life. We have good reason to think it should be everywhere, but we don't really know this. We could be missing something vital.

Offline whitelancer64

*snip*

The answer is simple: pollution, changes in chemistry in stars, odd IR signatures. We don't so far as I know, see any of these so far

*snip*

Life, of course, is everywhere - but it is highly evolved, perfectly adapted, slime.

We haven't had tools powerful and sophisticated enough to potentially pick out such signatures in starlight or in exo-atmospheres until the James Webb Space Telescope.

JWST will tell us whether or not there is life on other planets, and provide an initial data set on how common (or not) it is, within the next 5 years.

Your conclusion is likely correct. I fully expect to see biosignatures of simple life virtually everywhere we look. I'm looking forward to seeing if JWST finds this to be the case.
"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 sanman

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5974
  • Liked: 1312
  • Likes Given: 8
The issue is not about us physically meeting them. It’s about us SEEING (or rather NOT seeing) evidence of their civilizations  in their home galaxies.

The older they are the more visible an effect these “grabby aliens” should have on their stellar neighbourhood. To explain this lack of detection, the Grabby Alien hypothesis says that those old enough to have visibly changed their stellar environments HAVE to be far enough away that the light of their civilization has not had time to reach us yet.

So a “mega structure / stellar engineering capable” civilization could have arisen 500M years ago in a galaxy 1B light years away, but it is not allowed to have arisen in the next door Andromeda galaxy more than 2.5 million years ago. Or in the Milky Way itself more than ~100K years ago. Else we would see evidence of it.

So the theory requires that the older a civilization is, the farther away from Earth it has to be. That’s a weird, rather Earth-centric condition that has no logical or natural reason for existing, other than to make the theory work.

But the reason why the grabbies have to be farther away, is because if they weren't, then they'd likely have already grabbed us by now. The older they are, the grabbier they can be, since their engineering capabilities only grow with time, and their Von Neumann swarms have more time to grow in size and voraciousness (provided their own swarms don't swarm back at them)

Why is it that "the simpler alternative is that they’re just not there in the first place" ?? Why is that simpler?
Simpler that they're not there? Or simpler that they're just not grabby?
« Last Edit: 12/01/2022 05:13 am by sanman »

Online M.E.T.

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2313
  • Liked: 2912
  • Likes Given: 508
The issue is not about us physically meeting them. It’s about us SEEING (or rather NOT seeing) evidence of their civilizations  in their home galaxies.

The older they are the more visible an effect these “grabby aliens” should have on their stellar neighbourhood. To explain this lack of detection, the Grabby Alien hypothesis says that those old enough to have visibly changed their stellar environments HAVE to be far enough away that the light of their civilization has not had time to reach us yet.

So a “mega structure / stellar engineering capable” civilization could have arisen 500M years ago in a galaxy 1B light years away, but it is not allowed to have arisen in the next door Andromeda galaxy more than 2.5 million years ago. Or in the Milky Way itself more than ~100K years ago. Else we would see evidence of it.

So the theory requires that the older a civilization is, the farther away from Earth it has to be. That’s a weird, rather Earth-centric condition that has no logical or natural reason for existing, other than to make the theory work.

But the reason why the grabbies have to be farther away, is because if they weren't, then they'd likely have already grabbed us by now. The older they are, the grabbier they can be, since their engineering capabilities only grow with time, and their Von Neumann swarms have more time to grow in size and voraciousness (provided their own swarms don't swarm back at them)

Why is it that "the simpler alternative is that they’re just not there in the first place" ?? Why is that simpler?
Simpler that they're not there? Or simpler that they're just not grabby?

That’s a bit like arguing the reason the boogeyman has to be on Easter Island rather in New York is because if he was in New York he would have attacked us by now.

EDIT

If you don’t see any aliens, surely it is simpler to argue they are not there (until evidence proves otherwise), than to contrive an answer where they HAVE to be there, but they all just happen to be at a distance where their age does not allow their light to have reached us yet.

There could be multiple 5 billion year old civilizations, but according to this theory they just happen to all be more than 5 billion light years away. When in reality their distribution should be random, as the Milky Way or Andromeda is just as old as galaxies 5 or 10 billion light years away.
« Last Edit: 12/01/2022 08:12 am by M.E.T. »

Offline Yiosie

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 456
  • Liked: 635
  • Likes Given: 97
The issue is not about us physically meeting them. It’s about us SEEING (or rather NOT seeing) evidence of their civilizations  in their home galaxies.

The older they are the more visible an effect these “grabby aliens” should have on their stellar neighbourhood. To explain this lack of detection, the Grabby Alien hypothesis says that those old enough to have visibly changed their stellar environments HAVE to be far enough away that the light of their civilization has not had time to reach us yet.

So a “mega structure / stellar engineering capable” civilization could have arisen 500M years ago in a galaxy 1B light years away, but it is not allowed to have arisen in the next door Andromeda galaxy more than 2.5 million years ago. Or in the Milky Way itself more than ~100K years ago. Else we would see evidence of it.

So the theory requires that the older a civilization is, the farther away from Earth it has to be. That’s a weird, rather Earth-centric condition that has no logical or natural reason for existing, other than to make the theory work.

But the reason why the grabbies have to be farther away, is because if they weren't, then they'd likely have already grabbed us by now. The older they are, the grabbier they can be, since their engineering capabilities only grow with time, and their Von Neumann swarms have more time to grow in size and voraciousness (provided their own swarms don't swarm back at them)

Why is it that "the simpler alternative is that they’re just not there in the first place" ?? Why is that simpler?
Simpler that they're not there? Or simpler that they're just not grabby?

That’s a bit like arguing the reason the boogeyman has to be on Easter Island rather in New York is because if he was in New York he would have attacked us by now.

EDIT

If you don’t see any aliens, surely it is simpler to argue they are not there (until evidence proves otherwise), than to contrive an answer where they HAVE to be there, but they all just happen to be at a distance where their age does not allow their light to have reached us yet.

There could be multiple 5 billion year old civilizations, but according to this theory they just happen to all be more than 5 billion light years away. When in reality their distribution should be random, as the Milky Way or Andromeda is just as old as galaxies 5 or 10 billion light years away.

There's a video on YouTube from one of the co-authors of the paper proposing the grabby aliens hypothesis that shows a 3D simulation of a median scenario in their model:



The first grabby alien civilizations only appear about 6 billions years after the Big Bang due to the lack of heavy elements in Population III and II stars formed in the early universe. After 13.8 billion years, the majority of the observable universe is within a grabby alien civilization, but large gaps still exist where observers would see no obvious sign of aliens in their observable universes. To your point about multiple 5 billion year old civilizations, this particular sim shows only about 8-10 existing grabby alien civs in the observable universe 5 billion years ago; if evenly distributed, their origin points would be separated by over 5 billion light years on average today, and when randomly distributed there would be smaller and large gaps. "Older civilization far, newer civilization closer" is therefore unsurprising, given how incredibly rare grabby aliens are (only 87 appear in total for this particular simulation over the 20 billion years it takes for the observable universe to be full).

The grabby aliens model doesn't "contrive an answer where they HAVE to be there", it hypothesizes the existence of grabby aliens (defined as civilizations that expand quickly and radically modify stars and galaxies for their use) specifically and explicitly to explain why humans have appeared very early in the universe's history without rejecting the Copernican principle: it proposes that we aren't special, and have in fact appeared close to the end of the time in the universe when we could have possibly spawned before the universe is filled. The model then constrains the appearance rate and expansion speeds of these grabby aliens due to the fact that we don't currently observe them.

Of course, everything here assumes that we are not, in fact, extremely special or unique in the timing or presence of our civilization. That we are not alone, and that we have not appeared early due to luck.

Online M.E.T.

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2313
  • Liked: 2912
  • Likes Given: 508
The issue is not about us physically meeting them. It’s about us SEEING (or rather NOT seeing) evidence of their civilizations  in their home galaxies.

The older they are the more visible an effect these “grabby aliens” should have on their stellar neighbourhood. To explain this lack of detection, the Grabby Alien hypothesis says that those old enough to have visibly changed their stellar environments HAVE to be far enough away that the light of their civilization has not had time to reach us yet.

So a “mega structure / stellar engineering capable” civilization could have arisen 500M years ago in a galaxy 1B light years away, but it is not allowed to have arisen in the next door Andromeda galaxy more than 2.5 million years ago. Or in the Milky Way itself more than ~100K years ago. Else we would see evidence of it.

So the theory requires that the older a civilization is, the farther away from Earth it has to be. That’s a weird, rather Earth-centric condition that has no logical or natural reason for existing, other than to make the theory work.

But the reason why the grabbies have to be farther away, is because if they weren't, then they'd likely have already grabbed us by now. The older they are, the grabbier they can be, since their engineering capabilities only grow with time, and their Von Neumann swarms have more time to grow in size and voraciousness (provided their own swarms don't swarm back at them)

Why is it that "the simpler alternative is that they’re just not there in the first place" ?? Why is that simpler?
Simpler that they're not there? Or simpler that they're just not grabby?

That’s a bit like arguing the reason the boogeyman has to be on Easter Island rather in New York is because if he was in New York he would have attacked us by now.

EDIT

If you don’t see any aliens, surely it is simpler to argue they are not there (until evidence proves otherwise), than to contrive an answer where they HAVE to be there, but they all just happen to be at a distance where their age does not allow their light to have reached us yet.

There could be multiple 5 billion year old civilizations, but according to this theory they just happen to all be more than 5 billion light years away. When in reality their distribution should be random, as the Milky Way or Andromeda is just as old as galaxies 5 or 10 billion light years away.

There's a video on YouTube from one of the co-authors of the paper proposing the grabby aliens hypothesis that shows a 3D simulation of a median scenario in their model:



The first grabby alien civilizations only appear about 6 billions years after the Big Bang due to the lack of heavy elements in Population III and II stars formed in the early universe. After 13.8 billion years, the majority of the observable universe is within a grabby alien civilization, but large gaps still exist where observers would see no obvious sign of aliens in their observable universes. To your point about multiple 5 billion year old civilizations, this particular sim shows only about 8-10 existing grabby alien civs in the observable universe 5 billion years ago; if evenly distributed, their origin points would be separated by over 5 billion light years on average today, and when randomly distributed there would be smaller and large gaps. "Older civilization far, newer civilization closer" is therefore unsurprising, given how incredibly rare grabby aliens are (only 87 appear in total for this particular simulation over the 20 billion years it takes for the observable universe to be full).

The grabby aliens model doesn't "contrive an answer where they HAVE to be there", it hypothesizes the existence of grabby aliens (defined as civilizations that expand quickly and radically modify stars and galaxies for their use) specifically and explicitly to explain why humans have appeared very early in the universe's history without rejecting the Copernican principle: it proposes that we aren't special, and have in fact appeared close to the end of the time in the universe when we could have possibly spawned before the universe is filled. The model then constrains the appearance rate and expansion speeds of these grabby aliens due to the fact that we don't currently observe them.

Of course, everything here assumes that we are not, in fact, extremely special or unique in the timing or presence of our civilization. That we are not alone, and that we have not appeared early due to luck.

Feels similar to the probabilistic Doomsday Argument, which makes no practical sense.

In this case SOMEONE had to be early. It might as well be us. It doesn’t need invisible grabby aliens to CAUSE our earliness to be normalised.

Just like SOMEONE has to win the Powerball lottery draw. However improbable it might be for any specific individual.

We just won the cosmic lottery. As will many others over the ensuing trillions of years of the universe’s existence. We just happen to be in the first 13.8 billion years.

Offline whitelancer64

Statistical we wouldn't be first or last. There are  trillions of planets out there. Life on earth has existed for few 100million years and we've gone from ape to spacefaring in 100,000years.

My argument here is the same as it has been in the many other similar threads on this topic.

Evolution does not have a purpose or a goal, and it does not necessarily select for complexity or intelligence. Simple / Bacterial life forms ruled the Earth for ~4 billion years. There is no particular reason, that we know of anyway, that they could not have continued to be the dominant life form for tens of billions of years.

There may be trillions of planets out there with such simple life, but that does not guarantee they will eventually produce an intelligent species that creates a civilization. Even using Earth as an example, it is statistically very unlikely. We are the only one of many billions of the complex species on Earth that has developed the high level of intelligence we have.

And even if a species develops intelligence, it may not have the capability or resources to produce technology. A human-intelligent dolphin could never smelt metals and build a radio, for example. Or their planet may not have a crust rich in workable metals, or they don't have any animals suitable for domestication, or crop plants that can be grown en mass with storable seeds for food during lean seasons / years. Humanity really hit the jackpot with a large amount of exploitable resources on our planet.

It's also possible also that supernovae and gamma ray bursts extinguish life in large areas of the galaxy (one of the several possible Great Filters).

Anyway, when I plug in my personal estimates into the Drake equation, I get maybe 5 technological civilizations in our galaxy. I don't think we are alone, but I think it may be a very long time before we find another intelligent, technology-making civilization. It is entirely possible we are the first (at least in our galaxy or in our region of the galaxy) to be able to leave our home planet.
"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 Yiosie

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 456
  • Liked: 635
  • Likes Given: 97
The issue is not about us physically meeting them. It’s about us SEEING (or rather NOT seeing) evidence of their civilizations  in their home galaxies.

The older they are the more visible an effect these “grabby aliens” should have on their stellar neighbourhood. To explain this lack of detection, the Grabby Alien hypothesis says that those old enough to have visibly changed their stellar environments HAVE to be far enough away that the light of their civilization has not had time to reach us yet.

So a “mega structure / stellar engineering capable” civilization could have arisen 500M years ago in a galaxy 1B light years away, but it is not allowed to have arisen in the next door Andromeda galaxy more than 2.5 million years ago. Or in the Milky Way itself more than ~100K years ago. Else we would see evidence of it.

So the theory requires that the older a civilization is, the farther away from Earth it has to be. That’s a weird, rather Earth-centric condition that has no logical or natural reason for existing, other than to make the theory work.

But the reason why the grabbies have to be farther away, is because if they weren't, then they'd likely have already grabbed us by now. The older they are, the grabbier they can be, since their engineering capabilities only grow with time, and their Von Neumann swarms have more time to grow in size and voraciousness (provided their own swarms don't swarm back at them)

Why is it that "the simpler alternative is that they’re just not there in the first place" ?? Why is that simpler?
Simpler that they're not there? Or simpler that they're just not grabby?

That’s a bit like arguing the reason the boogeyman has to be on Easter Island rather in New York is because if he was in New York he would have attacked us by now.

EDIT

If you don’t see any aliens, surely it is simpler to argue they are not there (until evidence proves otherwise), than to contrive an answer where they HAVE to be there, but they all just happen to be at a distance where their age does not allow their light to have reached us yet.

There could be multiple 5 billion year old civilizations, but according to this theory they just happen to all be more than 5 billion light years away. When in reality their distribution should be random, as the Milky Way or Andromeda is just as old as galaxies 5 or 10 billion light years away.

There's a video on YouTube from one of the co-authors of the paper proposing the grabby aliens hypothesis that shows a 3D simulation of a median scenario in their model:



The first grabby alien civilizations only appear about 6 billions years after the Big Bang due to the lack of heavy elements in Population III and II stars formed in the early universe. After 13.8 billion years, the majority of the observable universe is within a grabby alien civilization, but large gaps still exist where observers would see no obvious sign of aliens in their observable universes. To your point about multiple 5 billion year old civilizations, this particular sim shows only about 8-10 existing grabby alien civs in the observable universe 5 billion years ago; if evenly distributed, their origin points would be separated by over 5 billion light years on average today, and when randomly distributed there would be smaller and large gaps. "Older civilization far, newer civilization closer" is therefore unsurprising, given how incredibly rare grabby aliens are (only 87 appear in total for this particular simulation over the 20 billion years it takes for the observable universe to be full).

The grabby aliens model doesn't "contrive an answer where they HAVE to be there", it hypothesizes the existence of grabby aliens (defined as civilizations that expand quickly and radically modify stars and galaxies for their use) specifically and explicitly to explain why humans have appeared very early in the universe's history without rejecting the Copernican principle: it proposes that we aren't special, and have in fact appeared close to the end of the time in the universe when we could have possibly spawned before the universe is filled. The model then constrains the appearance rate and expansion speeds of these grabby aliens due to the fact that we don't currently observe them.

Of course, everything here assumes that we are not, in fact, extremely special or unique in the timing or presence of our civilization. That we are not alone, and that we have not appeared early due to luck.

Feels similar to the probabilistic Doomsday Argument, which makes no practical sense.

In this case SOMEONE had to be early. It might as well be us. It doesn’t need invisible grabby aliens to CAUSE our earliness to be normalised.

Just like SOMEONE has to win the Powerball lottery draw. However improbable it might be for any specific individual.

We just won the cosmic lottery. As will many others over the ensuing trillions of years of the universe’s existence. We just happen to be in the first 13.8 billion years.

I also thought of the Doomsday Argument when first reading about this, and saw that Robin Hanson had previously rejected it comprehensively. So I guess there must be some distinction between it and the grabby aliens hypothesis that I don't understand.

Yes, it is very possible that we are early due to luck (that's my personal stance on the question too). Just wanted to focus the discussion back to the hypothesis that inspired the video in the first post. The authors of the paper thought that "someone has to be early, and it might as well be us" ought to be countered with an explanation rooted in the Copernican principle to consider before leaving it up to dumb luck. Their answer is "we're actually not early; we're in the middle of the distribution of emerging spacefaring civilizations", and grabby aliens is their attempt to take that possibility to a logical conclusion.

In any case it was fun to put aside my own priors and explore this hypothesis here.

Online M.E.T.

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2313
  • Liked: 2912
  • Likes Given: 508
The issue is not about us physically meeting them. It’s about us SEEING (or rather NOT seeing) evidence of their civilizations  in their home galaxies.

The older they are the more visible an effect these “grabby aliens” should have on their stellar neighbourhood. To explain this lack of detection, the Grabby Alien hypothesis says that those old enough to have visibly changed their stellar environments HAVE to be far enough away that the light of their civilization has not had time to reach us yet.

So a “mega structure / stellar engineering capable” civilization could have arisen 500M years ago in a galaxy 1B light years away, but it is not allowed to have arisen in the next door Andromeda galaxy more than 2.5 million years ago. Or in the Milky Way itself more than ~100K years ago. Else we would see evidence of it.

So the theory requires that the older a civilization is, the farther away from Earth it has to be. That’s a weird, rather Earth-centric condition that has no logical or natural reason for existing, other than to make the theory work.

But the reason why the grabbies have to be farther away, is because if they weren't, then they'd likely have already grabbed us by now. The older they are, the grabbier they can be, since their engineering capabilities only grow with time, and their Von Neumann swarms have more time to grow in size and voraciousness (provided their own swarms don't swarm back at them)

Why is it that "the simpler alternative is that they’re just not there in the first place" ?? Why is that simpler?
Simpler that they're not there? Or simpler that they're just not grabby?

That’s a bit like arguing the reason the boogeyman has to be on Easter Island rather in New York is because if he was in New York he would have attacked us by now.

EDIT

If you don’t see any aliens, surely it is simpler to argue they are not there (until evidence proves otherwise), than to contrive an answer where they HAVE to be there, but they all just happen to be at a distance where their age does not allow their light to have reached us yet.

There could be multiple 5 billion year old civilizations, but according to this theory they just happen to all be more than 5 billion light years away. When in reality their distribution should be random, as the Milky Way or Andromeda is just as old as galaxies 5 or 10 billion light years away.

There's a video on YouTube from one of the co-authors of the paper proposing the grabby aliens hypothesis that shows a 3D simulation of a median scenario in their model:



The first grabby alien civilizations only appear about 6 billions years after the Big Bang due to the lack of heavy elements in Population III and II stars formed in the early universe. After 13.8 billion years, the majority of the observable universe is within a grabby alien civilization, but large gaps still exist where observers would see no obvious sign of aliens in their observable universes. To your point about multiple 5 billion year old civilizations, this particular sim shows only about 8-10 existing grabby alien civs in the observable universe 5 billion years ago; if evenly distributed, their origin points would be separated by over 5 billion light years on average today, and when randomly distributed there would be smaller and large gaps. "Older civilization far, newer civilization closer" is therefore unsurprising, given how incredibly rare grabby aliens are (only 87 appear in total for this particular simulation over the 20 billion years it takes for the observable universe to be full).

The grabby aliens model doesn't "contrive an answer where they HAVE to be there", it hypothesizes the existence of grabby aliens (defined as civilizations that expand quickly and radically modify stars and galaxies for their use) specifically and explicitly to explain why humans have appeared very early in the universe's history without rejecting the Copernican principle: it proposes that we aren't special, and have in fact appeared close to the end of the time in the universe when we could have possibly spawned before the universe is filled. The model then constrains the appearance rate and expansion speeds of these grabby aliens due to the fact that we don't currently observe them.

Of course, everything here assumes that we are not, in fact, extremely special or unique in the timing or presence of our civilization. That we are not alone, and that we have not appeared early due to luck.

Feels similar to the probabilistic Doomsday Argument, which makes no practical sense.

In this case SOMEONE had to be early. It might as well be us. It doesn’t need invisible grabby aliens to CAUSE our earliness to be normalised.

Just like SOMEONE has to win the Powerball lottery draw. However improbable it might be for any specific individual.

We just won the cosmic lottery. As will many others over the ensuing trillions of years of the universe’s existence. We just happen to be in the first 13.8 billion years.

I also thought of the Doomsday Argument when first reading about this, and saw that Robin Hanson had previously rejected it comprehensively. So I guess there must be some distinction between it and the grabby aliens hypothesis that I don't understand.

Yes, it is very possible that we are early due to luck (that's my personal stance on the question too). Just wanted to focus the discussion back to the hypothesis that inspired the video in the first post. The authors of the paper thought that "someone has to be early, and it might as well be us" ought to be countered with an explanation rooted in the Copernican principle to consider before leaving it up to dumb luck. Their answer is "we're actually not early; we're in the middle of the distribution of emerging spacefaring civilizations", and grabby aliens is their attempt to take that possibility to a logical conclusion.

In any case it was fun to put aside my own priors and explore this hypothesis here.

Thanks for the interesting discussion. Much appreciated.

Offline Vahe231991

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1689
  • 11 Canyon Terrace
  • Liked: 462
  • Likes Given: 199
Statistical we wouldn't be first or last. There are  trillions of planets out there. Life on earth has existed for few 100million years and we've gone from ape to spacefaring in 100,000years.
Evolution does not have a purpose or a goal, and it does not necessarily select for complexity or intelligence. Simple / Bacterial life forms ruled the Earth for ~4 billion years. There is no particular reason, that we know of anyway, that they could not have continued to be the dominant life form for tens of billions of years.

There may be trillions of planets out there with such simple life, but that does not guarantee they will eventually produce an intelligent species that creates a civilization. Even using Earth as an example, it is statistically very unlikely. We are the only one of many billions of the complex species on Earth that has developed the high level of intelligence we have.

And even if a species develops intelligence, it may not have the capability or resources to produce technology. A human-intelligent dolphin could never smelt metals and build a radio, for example. Or their planet may not have a crust rich in workable metals, or they don't have any animals suitable for domestication, or crop plants that can be grown en mass with storable seeds for food during lean seasons / years. Humanity really hit the jackpot with a large amount of exploitable resources on our planet.

It's also possible also that supernovae and gamma ray bursts extinguish life in large areas of the galaxy (one of the several possible Great Filters).

Anyway, when I plug in my personal estimates into the Drake equation, I get maybe 5 technological civilizations in our galaxy. I don't think we are alone, but I think it may be a very long time before we find another intelligent, technology-making civilization. It is entirely possible we are the first (at least in our galaxy or in our region of the galaxy) to be able to leave our home planet.
Tetrapod species usually exist for a timespan of 4-5 million years, and Homo sapiens will be no exception (a paper by Gregory Paul published in 2008 considers it impossible for species to exist for tens of millions of years).

Your semi-pessimism about intelligent, technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations existing in the Milky Way is probably legitimate because, back when my grandparents and parents were born, most people believed that the "canals" on Mars were waterways built by an extraterrestrial civilization, yet the Mariner 4 mission refuted that narrative by demonstrating that the "canals" were mere illusions created by craters and other Martian features previously undetected by the telescopes used by many astronomers in the early 20th century.

Offline daedalus1

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 929
  • uk
  • Liked: 477
  • Likes Given: 0
This question is too big, I wouldn't bet against other civilizations in the universe as it is effectively infinite.
The question should refer just to our galaxy.
I would, given all the available evidence bet against another civilizations apart from out own.

Online JayWee

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 997
  • Liked: 984
  • Likes Given: 1836
...
And even if a species develops intelligence, it may not have the capability or resources to produce technology. A human-intelligent dolphin could never smelt metals and build a radio, for example. Or their planet may not have a crust rich in workable metals, or they don't have any animals suitable for domestication, or crop plants that can be grown en mass with storable seeds for food during lean seasons / years. Humanity really hit the jackpot with a large amount of exploitable resources on our planet.
...
And don't forget availability of cheap energy - fossil fuels. You can't really build industrial civilization without them (going straight from burning wood to renewable/nuclear is next to impossible). So yet another small factor to multiply the already small probabilities...

Offline Robotbeat

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 39270
  • Minnesota
  • Liked: 25240
  • Likes Given: 12115
...
And even if a species develops intelligence, it may not have the capability or resources to produce technology. A human-intelligent dolphin could never smelt metals and build a radio, for example. Or their planet may not have a crust rich in workable metals, or they don't have any animals suitable for domestication, or crop plants that can be grown en mass with storable seeds for food during lean seasons / years. Humanity really hit the jackpot with a large amount of exploitable resources on our planet.
...
And don't forget availability of cheap energy - fossil fuels. You can't really build industrial civilization without them (going straight from burning wood to renewable/nuclear is next to impossible). So yet another small factor to multiply the already small probabilities...
Sure you can. Early in the industrial Revolution, motive power was primarily provided by water power, and the US tended to rely mostly on wood for power (even for making steel) until around the second industrial Revolution. It would’ve taken longer, but could’ve happened anyway. IMHO, it was actually the development of gunpowder (with iron, almost exclusively made with charcoal early on) that fundamentally led to the Industrial Revolution (stored chemical power used as motive power… and optimization of that eventually led to the science that enabled steam power). And that used sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter.

Could’ve bootstrapped from the first industrial Revolution to hydro power, wind, eventually nuclear and solar, etc, using wood instead of fossil fuels. Would’ve taken longer and probably would’ve meant longer periods of human misery, but it could’ve still happened.
« Last Edit: 12/02/2022 02:09 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 daedalus1

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 929
  • uk
  • Liked: 477
  • Likes Given: 0
Gunpowder was invented in ancient China and resulted in no industrial revolution.
Wood has been around a long time.
The use of the dense power of fossil fuel was crucial to the industrial revolution and still society is finding it difficult to replace them.
« Last Edit: 12/02/2022 02:43 pm by daedalus1 »

Offline Robotbeat

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 39270
  • Minnesota
  • Liked: 25240
  • Likes Given: 12115
Gunpowder was invented in ancient China and resulted in no industrial revolution.

It did once spread all over the old world. It took centuries for all the pieces to fit together, but again, gunpowder driven machines predated the steam powered versions by a few decades (a century or two in the case of Leonardo DiVinci writing down an idea).
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 daedalus1

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 929
  • uk
  • Liked: 477
  • Likes Given: 0
Gunpowder was invented in ancient China and resulted in no industrial revolution.

It did once spread all over the old world. It took centuries for all the pieces to fit together, but again, gunpowder driven machines predated the steam powered versions by a few decades (a century or two in the case of Leonardo DiVinci writing down an idea).
What gunpowder driven machines?

Offline whitelancer64

Gunpowder was invented in ancient China and resulted in no industrial revolution.

It did once spread all over the old world. It took centuries for all the pieces to fit together, but again, gunpowder driven machines predated the steam powered versions by a few decades (a century or two in the case of Leonardo DiVinci writing down an idea).
What gunpowder driven machines?

An idea that was experimented on in the late 1600s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder_engine

Fire driven steam engines were considerably easier to work with and took off shortly thereafter.
« Last Edit: 12/02/2022 03:39 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 whitelancer64

Gunpowder was invented in ancient China and resulted in no industrial revolution.
Wood has been around a long time.
The use of the dense power of fossil fuel was crucial to the industrial revolution and still society is finding it difficult to replace them.

We could transition to 100% sustainable power (especially nuclear) over the course of a few decades, if we, as a whole, made it a priority to do so. The main difficulty is, as it has been for decades, the political power of the fossil fuel industry blocking any such efforts.
"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 Barley

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1008
  • Liked: 669
  • Likes Given: 369
Gunpowder was invented in ancient China and resulted in no industrial revolution.
Wood has been around a long time.
Coal has been around a long time.

Coal was used in ancient China, perhaps before the invention of writing.   It was certainly mined in Roman Britain, not only burned but used for metallurgy.  If coal caused an industrial revolution it took a while, and causation would be hard to prove.

Nobody quite knows what caused the industrial revolution.  It could even be that it's just noisy exponential growth and there is no industrial revolution.  Which fits nicely with the Copernican principle.

Offline daedalus1

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 929
  • uk
  • Liked: 477
  • Likes Given: 0
Gunpowder was invented in ancient China and resulted in no industrial revolution.
Wood has been around a long time.
The use of the dense power of fossil fuel was crucial to the industrial revolution and still society is finding it difficult to replace them.

We could transition to 100% sustainable power (especially nuclear) over the course of a few decades, if we, as a whole, made it a priority to do so. The main difficulty is, as it has been for decades, the political power of the fossil fuel industry blocking any such efforts.

Not that simple. Renewables are unreliable and require large areas,  nuclear although neither of those things has to overcome the problem of nuclear waste , fear of radiation leaks and not in my back yard.

Offline aperh1988

  • Member
  • Posts: 13
  • Liked: 12
  • Likes Given: 3
Gunpowder was invented in ancient China and resulted in no industrial revolution.
Wood has been around a long time.
The use of the dense power of fossil fuel was crucial to the industrial revolution and still society is finding it difficult to replace them.

We could transition to 100% sustainable power (especially nuclear) over the course of a few decades, if we, as a whole, made it a priority to do so. The main difficulty is, as it has been for decades, the political power of the fossil fuel industry blocking any such efforts.

Not that simple. Renewables are unreliable and require large areas,  nuclear although neither of those things has to overcome the problem of nuclear waste , fear of radiation leaks and not in my back yard.

The problem of nuclear waste was solved decades ago. You bury it. But uneducated NIMBYism and environmental groups, some of which are ultimately funded by fossil fuel interests, will not accept this.

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
Grabby aliens again. Don’t like that theory.

Dunno what "grabby" aliens are, but let me dust off my "3 Civilizations Conjecture".  [3CC]

There are three civilizations in the universe; the ones who achieved sentience the day before mankind did, us, and the ones who achieved sentience the day after we did.  We all have about the same tech, and cannot see each other because we're so widely dispersed.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline daedalus1

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 929
  • uk
  • Liked: 477
  • Likes Given: 0
Gunpowder was invented in ancient China and resulted in no industrial revolution.

It did once spread all over the old world. It took centuries for all the pieces to fit together, but again, gunpowder driven machines predated the steam powered versions by a few decades (a century or two in the case of Leonardo DiVinci writing down an idea).
What gunpowder driven machines?

An idea that was experimented on in the late 1600s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder_engine

Fire driven steam engines were considerably easier to work with and took off shortly thereafter.

It wasn't a working useful machine. The earliest experimental steam engine was demonstrated 2000 years ago and I didn't count that either.  The point is fossil fuels are energy dense.  For the huge amount of power needed to industrialise the world, wood supplies would have run out very quickly.

Offline whitelancer64

Gunpowder was invented in ancient China and resulted in no industrial revolution.
Wood has been around a long time.
The use of the dense power of fossil fuel was crucial to the industrial revolution and still society is finding it difficult to replace them.

We could transition to 100% sustainable power (especially nuclear) over the course of a few decades, if we, as a whole, made it a priority to do so. The main difficulty is, as it has been for decades, the political power of the fossil fuel industry blocking any such efforts.

Not that simple. Renewables are unreliable

That's patently untrue.

Quote
and require large areas, 

Not all of them.

Quote
nuclear although neither of those things has to overcome the problem of nuclear waste , fear of radiation leaks and not in my back yard.


Modern nuclear reactor designs are essentially meltdown-proof and there'd only be a radiation leak if there was a military attack on them to breach the core.

Every major nuclear reactor disaster resulting in radioactive materials released has happened in reactor designs from the 1950s and 60s.
"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 whitelancer64

Gunpowder was invented in ancient China and resulted in no industrial revolution.

It did once spread all over the old world. It took centuries for all the pieces to fit together, but again, gunpowder driven machines predated the steam powered versions by a few decades (a century or two in the case of Leonardo DiVinci writing down an idea).
What gunpowder driven machines?

An idea that was experimented on in the late 1600s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder_engine

Fire driven steam engines were considerably easier to work with and took off shortly thereafter.

It wasn't a working useful machine. The earliest experimental steam engine was demonstrated 2000 years ago and I didn't count that either.  The point is fossil fuels are energy dense.  For the huge amount of power needed to industrialise the world, wood supplies would have run out very quickly.

It says right in the Wikipedia article that experiments validated the concept was workable, with some small scale engines made. The development of steam engines, which were a lot easier to work with, superseded the gunpowder engine.

There was no reason to solve the engineering problems to make larger gunpowder engines work since steam engines became widespread, but there is no reason that could not have been done.
"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 daedalus1

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 929
  • uk
  • Liked: 477
  • Likes Given: 0
Gunpowder was invented in ancient China and resulted in no industrial revolution.
Wood has been around a long time.
The use of the dense power of fossil fuel was crucial to the industrial revolution and still society is finding it difficult to replace them.

We could transition to 100% sustainable power (especially nuclear) over the course of a few decades, if we, as a whole, made it a priority to do so. The main difficulty is, as it has been for decades, the political power of the fossil fuel industry blocking any such efforts.

Not that simple. Renewables are unreliable

That's patently untrue.

Quote
and require large areas, 

Not all of them.

Quote
nuclear although neither of those things has to overcome the problem of nuclear waste , fear of radiation leaks and not in my back yard.


Modern nuclear reactor designs are essentially meltdown-proof and there'd only be a radiation leak if there was a military attack on them to breach the core.

Every major nuclear reactor disaster resulting in radioactive materials released has happened in reactor designs from the 1950s and 60s.

You are welcome to state a compact renewable and a reliable one.
Fukushima. The designs being built now are hugely expensive and typically overrun the budget massively. Why aren't lots being built  and don't say fossil fuel industry, that's a cop-out. It's because of the concerns I outlined above.

Offline Timber Micka

Considering the sheer size of the Universe (infinite), I think there must be several extraterrestrial civilizations, but it is very, very rare. I think faster-than-light travel is physically impossible and that's what prevents these civilizations from making contact.
I do hope mankind will find extraterrestrial life at some point in history, as I believe that life itself, especially microbial life, is not as rare as intelligent life.
I think the reason Earth is home to intelligent life is because it's a very specific place (ideal star, ideal solar system, ideal galaxy, ideal distance from dangerous objects like quasars and pulsars), and we should cherish it. I think terraforming is a fantasy and no physical body in the solar system can replace Earth.

Offline whitelancer64

Gunpowder was invented in ancient China and resulted in no industrial revolution.
Wood has been around a long time.
The use of the dense power of fossil fuel was crucial to the industrial revolution and still society is finding it difficult to replace them.

We could transition to 100% sustainable power (especially nuclear) over the course of a few decades, if we, as a whole, made it a priority to do so. The main difficulty is, as it has been for decades, the political power of the fossil fuel industry blocking any such efforts.

Not that simple. Renewables are unreliable

That's patently untrue.

Quote
and require large areas, 

Not all of them.

Quote
nuclear although neither of those things has to overcome the problem of nuclear waste , fear of radiation leaks and not in my back yard.


Modern nuclear reactor designs are essentially meltdown-proof and there'd only be a radiation leak if there was a military attack on them to breach the core.

Every major nuclear reactor disaster resulting in radioactive materials released has happened in reactor designs from the 1950s and 60s.

You are welcome to state a compact renewable and a reliable one.
Fukushima. The designs being built now are hugely expensive and typically overrun the budget massively. Why aren't lots being built  and don't say fossil fuel industry, that's a cop-out. It's because of the concerns I outlined above.

Hydropower, solar, and wind are all very reliable. By the way, they currently generate about 30% of the global supply of electricity.

The reactors at the Fukushima power plant were designed in the 60s, the construction of the facility was started in 1971.

Cost overruns would be far less of an issue if they were being built en masse, instead of as one-off builds. This is also largely a US problem, other countries that build nuclear power plants on a more regular basis don't see such issues.

Why aren't lots being built is because lots of people are dumb and are scared of nuclear power. We should ignore them and just build lots of nuclear power plants.
"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 daedalus1

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 929
  • uk
  • Liked: 477
  • Likes Given: 0
Gunpowder was invented in ancient China and resulted in no industrial revolution.
Wood has been around a long time.
The use of the dense power of fossil fuel was crucial to the industrial revolution and still society is finding it difficult to replace them.

We could transition to 100% sustainable power (especially nuclear) over the course of a few decades, if we, as a whole, made it a priority to do so. The main difficulty is, as it has been for decades, the political power of the fossil fuel industry blocking any such efforts.

Not that simple. Renewables are unreliable

That's patently untrue.

Quote
and require large areas, 

Not all of them.

Quote
nuclear although neither of those things has to overcome the problem of nuclear waste , fear of radiation leaks and not in my back yard.


Modern nuclear reactor designs are essentially meltdown-proof and there'd only be a radiation leak if there was a military attack on them to breach the core.

Every major nuclear reactor disaster resulting in radioactive materials released has happened in reactor designs from the 1950s and 60s.

You are welcome to state a compact renewable and a reliable one.
Fukushima. The designs being built now are hugely expensive and typically overrun the budget massively. Why aren't lots being built  and don't say fossil fuel industry, that's a cop-out. It's because of the concerns I outlined above.

Hydropower, solar, and wind are all very reliable. By the way, they currently generate about 30% of the global supply of electricity.

The reactors at the Fukushima power plant were designed in the 60s, the construction of the facility was started in 1971.

Cost overruns would be far less of an issue if they were being built en masse, instead of as one-off builds. This is also largely a US problem, other countries that build nuclear power plants on a more regular basis don't see such issues.

Why aren't lots being built is because lots of people are dumb and are scared of nuclear power. We should ignore them and just build lots of nuclear power plants.
Hydropower doesn't work in a drought,  solar doesn't work at night, wind doesn't work when the wind stops.
All of them take up a large area compared to the wattage output.
By the way Germany just dug up a wind farm to get to the fossil fuel coal underneath it.

Offline sanman

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5974
  • Liked: 1312
  • Likes Given: 8
Statistical we wouldn't be first or last. There are  trillions of planets out there. Life on earth has existed for few 100million years and we've gone from ape to spacefaring in 100,000years.

My argument here is the same as it has been in the many other similar threads on this topic.

Evolution does not have a purpose or a goal, and it does not necessarily select for complexity or intelligence. Simple / Bacterial life forms ruled the Earth for ~4 billion years. There is no particular reason, that we know of anyway, that they could not have continued to be the dominant life form for tens of billions of years.

There may be trillions of planets out there with such simple life, but that does not guarantee they will eventually produce an intelligent species that creates a civilization. Even using Earth as an example, it is statistically very unlikely. We are the only one of many billions of the complex species on Earth that has developed the high level of intelligence we have.

Darwinism promotes dominance, because in the survival of the fittest, the dominant prevail. Clearly intelligence would be an eventual outcome of that, since intelligence helps dominance. We don't see bacteria actively seeking ways to become multiplanetary, like we humans are doing. It's just that it takes time for Darwinism to do its work, and evolve organisms up to our level.



 
Quote
And even if a species develops intelligence, it may not have the capability or resources to produce technology. A human-intelligent dolphin could never smelt metals and build a radio, for example. Or their planet may not have a crust rich in workable metals, or they don't have any animals suitable for domestication, or crop plants that can be grown en mass with storable seeds for food during lean seasons / years. Humanity really hit the jackpot with a large amount of exploitable resources on our planet.

Intelligence finds a way, because of what we like to call "the human condition", which may in fact just be "the intelligent condition". All human (read: intelligent) beings seek to have their cake and eat it too - that means trying to get more work done with less effort, and all that. Which means developing tools, instruments, and all the rest. Just like everything else in the universe, we living things seek conserve our energy.
 
Quote
It's also possible also that supernovae and gamma ray bursts extinguish life in large areas of the galaxy (one of the several possible Great Filters).

These are random uncorrelated random events which can indeed strike down the evolved through no fault of their own.
Although, just like humans striving to develop planetary defense against asteroids, one could imagine sufficiently advanced civilizations surveying for these even larger astrophysical phenomena to guard against them as well.

Quote
Anyway, when I plug in my personal estimates into the Drake equation, I get maybe 5 technological civilizations in our galaxy. I don't think we are alone, but I think it may be a very long time before we find another intelligent, technology-making civilization. It is entirely possible we are the first (at least in our galaxy or in our region of the galaxy) to be able to leave our home planet.

We are living in a very small timeslice of our overall evolutionary history, and if we succeed in becoming multiplanetary or even interstellar, then our evolutionary history could extend for a lot longer. If we continue on for long enough, we may eventually come upon signs of other technological civilizations, who could quickly pop up out of nowhere.

But is it more prudent for us to try to detect them before allowing them to detect us first?

Offline sanman

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5974
  • Liked: 1312
  • Likes Given: 8
Grabby aliens again. Don’t like that theory.

Dunno what "grabby" aliens are, but let me dust off my "3 Civilizations Conjecture".  [3CC]

There are three civilizations in the universe; the ones who achieved sentience the day before mankind did, us, and the ones who achieved sentience the day after we did.  We all have about the same tech, and cannot see each other because we're so widely dispersed.

But are you taking into account the idea that there are those who achieve sentience and civilization after we do, but whose pace of advancement was fast enough to overtake us? Likewise, there could be those who achieved sentience and civilization before we did, and their pace of advancement was slow enough for us to overtake them.

Maybe there's some other Earth out there that didn't have an asteroid impact like the one that killed off our dinosaurs. So they got to evolve farther much sooner, without suffering as many setbacks. Or is it maybe because we suffered an asteroid extinction event, that we got to evolve to higher levels of intelligence sooner?

Offline whitelancer64

Hydropower, solar, and wind are all very reliable. By the way, they currently generate about 30% of the global supply of electricity.

The reactors at the Fukushima power plant were designed in the 60s, the construction of the facility was started in 1971.

Cost overruns would be far less of an issue if they were being built en masse, instead of as one-off builds. This is also largely a US problem, other countries that build nuclear power plants on a more regular basis don't see such issues.

Why aren't lots being built is because lots of people are dumb and are scared of nuclear power. We should ignore them and just build lots of nuclear power plants.
Hydropower doesn't work in a drought,  solar doesn't work at night, wind doesn't work when the wind stops.
All of them take up a large area compared to the wattage output.
By the way Germany just dug up a wind farm to get to the fossil fuel coal underneath it.

LOL. Hydropower definitely works during droughts, that's why hydroelectric dams produce huge reservoirs to provide power during dry years.

Intermittent power does not mean it is unreliable. There's these newfangled things called batteries that can hold power generated during the day, or when the wind blows, that can release that power over time when it's night or the wind doesn't blow.

About 30% of the world's electricity is produced by renewable energy sources, roughly split between the big three - hydropower, wind, and solar.

Your backwards thinking is being replaced with the wave of the future. Catch up with the times.
« Last Edit: 12/05/2022 04:11 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 whitelancer64

Statistical we wouldn't be first or last. There are  trillions of planets out there. Life on earth has existed for few 100million years and we've gone from ape to spacefaring in 100,000years.

My argument here is the same as it has been in the many other similar threads on this topic.

Evolution does not have a purpose or a goal, and it does not necessarily select for complexity or intelligence. Simple / Bacterial life forms ruled the Earth for ~4 billion years. There is no particular reason, that we know of anyway, that they could not have continued to be the dominant life form for tens of billions of years.

There may be trillions of planets out there with such simple life, but that does not guarantee they will eventually produce an intelligent species that creates a civilization. Even using Earth as an example, it is statistically very unlikely. We are the only one of many billions of the complex species on Earth that has developed the high level of intelligence we have.

Darwinism promotes dominance, because in the survival of the fittest, the dominant prevail. Clearly intelligence would be an eventual outcome of that, since intelligence helps dominance. We don't see bacteria actively seeking ways to become multiplanetary, like we humans are doing. It's just that it takes time for Darwinism to do its work, and evolve organisms up to our level.

You are falling into the anthropic fallacy. Evolution DOES NOT have a goal. It does not have a purpose. It does not "level up" species. Intelligence is not an inevitable outcome of evolution.

Intelligence does come with drawbacks. Humans have a much larger brain than other primates, this actually causes problems like death during childbirth being more common (for both mother and child). Humans have to give birth at an earlier stage of fetal development than most other animals, requiring a lot of support during early years of life. The human brain also requires a lot of caloric intake to support.
Quote

 
Quote
And even if a species develops intelligence, it may not have the capability or resources to produce technology. A human-intelligent dolphin could never smelt metals and build a radio, for example. Or their planet may not have a crust rich in workable metals, or they don't have any animals suitable for domestication, or crop plants that can be grown en mass with storable seeds for food during lean seasons / years. Humanity really hit the jackpot with a large amount of exploitable resources on our planet.

Intelligence finds a way, because of what we like to call "the human condition", which may in fact just be "the intelligent condition". All human (read: intelligent) beings seek to have their cake and eat it too - that means trying to get more work done with less effort, and all that. Which means developing tools, instruments, and all the rest. Just like everything else in the universe, we living things seek conserve our energy.

That's not possible if you don't have the resources to do so. For example if humanity didn't have any storable grains, large concentrations of people forming complex societies could never have developed, since we'd be spending so much more time and energy gathering food and much less time thinking about other things, developing writing, tools, etc.
Quote


Quote
It's also possible also that supernovae and gamma ray bursts extinguish life in large areas of the galaxy (one of the several possible Great Filters).

These are random uncorrelated random events which can indeed strike down the evolved through no fault of their own.
Although, just like humans striving to develop planetary defense against asteroids, one could imagine sufficiently advanced civilizations surveying for these even larger astrophysical phenomena to guard against them as well.

Quote
Anyway, when I plug in my personal estimates into the Drake equation, I get maybe 5 technological civilizations in our galaxy. I don't think we are alone, but I think it may be a very long time before we find another intelligent, technology-making civilization. It is entirely possible we are the first (at least in our galaxy or in our region of the galaxy) to be able to leave our home planet.

We are living in a very small timeslice of our overall evolutionary history, and if we succeed in becoming multiplanetary or even interstellar, then our evolutionary history could extend for a lot longer. If we continue on for long enough, we may eventually come upon signs of other technological civilizations, who could quickly pop up out of nowhere.

But is it more prudent for us to try to detect them before allowing them to detect us first?

We're already doing both.
"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 sanman

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5974
  • Liked: 1312
  • Likes Given: 8

Online M.E.T.

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2313
  • Liked: 2912
  • Likes Given: 508
Prof David Kipping on the issue:

« Last Edit: 12/21/2022 10:50 pm by M.E.T. »

Offline llanitedave

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2286
  • Nevada Desert
  • Liked: 1545
  • Likes Given: 2052
All these discussions about extraterrestrial civilizations ultimately go back to relying on the Fermi paradox, which is based on a simple fallacy.  It assumes that once a civilization becomes spacefaring, it will choose to focus on finding other planets to exploit and/or colonize.
I don't think this is a compelling assumption.  Once a civilization achieves the technology to leave its home planet and visit other bodies in space, it will find that other planets are not economically desirable.  When humanity begins its expansion into the outer Solar System, Mars and Jupiter will not be the ultimate destinations.  Neither has abundant easily accessible quantities of the elements that humans need to sustain life and industry.  But the small bodies do.  Asteroids will for some time be the primary sources for wealth accumulation in the solar system:  they are relatively undifferentiated, valuable elements are not sequestered in difficult to reach locations, and the energy requirements for arriving and departing are minimal.  Big planets are gravity wells, it takes huge amounts of valuable energy to go back and forth between them, from asteroids the push required is far more gentle.
As humanity spreads further out, it becomes the small icy bodies, the comets, the Trojans, Centaurs, Kuiper belt bodies, and eventually the Oort cloud reservoir that contain the easily extractable wealth.  If our descendants move on to other star systems, the same economics applies.  It will be the small icy bodies in the outer parts of the system, away from the deep gravity wells close to the star, that will be the most attractive and efficient sources of material.
The implication here is that if other civilizations do exist, we will not see them on Earth, because Earth is not a good source of economic materials for anything coming from beyond the solar system.  The Oort Clouds are where the money is.  This implies other predictions about spacefaring civilization, including that they would emphasize efficiency in energy expenditure rather than the generation of raw power.  Energy requirements for mining and moving among small icy distant bodies are small, and the availability of vital elements is large, compared to venturing inward towards Earth.
The huge distances between star systems, and the length of time required for communication between them, regardless of the energy expended to do so, also implies that each exploration entity will be relatively independent and self-contained.  Rather than a massive, monolithic galactic civilization, one would be more likely to encounter smaller, self-contained outposts, each of which has had abundant time to evolve its own variations on the culture, technology, and even biology of its own instance.  I would also argue that for an individual organism, it's far easier to evolve very long lifespans than to support very high travel velocities.  It would be difficult for a central, planet-centric administration to control and coordinate such far-flung outposts.
So the fact that we see no evidence of other civilizations doesn't mean they don't exist.  It's more likely that, if they do exist, the ways of living that are optimal for prospering beyond the home planet do not include involvement with inner planets.
"I've just abducted an alien -- now what?"

Offline tesh90

  • Member
  • Member
  • Posts: 74
  • Liked: 7
  • Likes Given: 1
Whether we are one of the first or not, our destiny is to eventually go dark - and not expand forever. If we avoid self destruction and attain a sufficient understanding of the universe, we will immerse into virtual or alternate universes.  What would be the point in exploring/living in a much of a muchness?

Offline gdelottle

  • Full Member
  • *
  • Posts: 117
  • Chile
  • Liked: 48
  • Likes Given: 78
All these discussions about extraterrestrial civilizations ultimately go back to relying on the Fermi paradox, which is based on a simple fallacy.  It assumes that once a civilization becomes spacefaring, it will choose to focus on finding other planets to exploit and/or colonize.
I don't think this is a compelling assumption..
This is incorrect: actually, you just mentioned one of the many hypotesized solutions to the Fermi Paradox, that as such - a "paradox" - can't contain a fallacy.
« Last Edit: 12/27/2022 08:52 am by gdelottle »

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
Asteroids will for some time be the primary sources for wealth accumulation in the solar system:  they are relatively undifferentiated, valuable elements are not sequestered in difficult to reach locations...

Asteroids are not in "difficult to reach locations"?

That's good to know.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline llanitedave

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2286
  • Nevada Desert
  • Liked: 1545
  • Likes Given: 2052
Asteroids will for some time be the primary sources for wealth accumulation in the solar system:  they are relatively undifferentiated, valuable elements are not sequestered in difficult to reach locations...

Asteroids are not in "difficult to reach locations"?

That's good to know.
Compared to planets, no.  I'm not talking about our current state of technology, this thread references "spacefaring civilizations."  For a civilization that is capable of being spacefaring, asteroids are easy.
"I've just abducted an alien -- now what?"

Offline llanitedave

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2286
  • Nevada Desert
  • Liked: 1545
  • Likes Given: 2052
All these discussions about extraterrestrial civilizations ultimately go back to relying on the Fermi paradox, which is based on a simple fallacy.  It assumes that once a civilization becomes spacefaring, it will choose to focus on finding other planets to exploit and/or colonize.
I don't think this is a compelling assumption..
This is incorrect: actually, you just mentioned one of the many hypotesized solutions to the Fermi Paradox, that as such - a "paradox" - can't contain a fallacy.
The fallacy is in thinking of it as a paradox at all.  If it has plausible solutions, it's not a paradox.
"I've just abducted an alien -- now what?"

Online M.E.T.

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2313
  • Liked: 2912
  • Likes Given: 508
All these discussions about extraterrestrial civilizations ultimately go back to relying on the Fermi paradox, which is based on a simple fallacy.  It assumes that once a civilization becomes spacefaring, it will choose to focus on finding other planets to exploit and/or colonize.
I don't think this is a compelling assumption..
This is incorrect: actually, you just mentioned one of the many hypotesized solutions to the Fermi Paradox, that as such - a "paradox" - can't contain a fallacy.
The fallacy is in thinking of it as a paradox at all.  If it has plausible solutions, it's not a paradox.

Your explanation is not a plausible solution, though. For it to be valid it has to address EVERY civilization, not merely most, or 90% or even all except one. Every single civilization needs to act in this way.

Offline gdelottle

  • Full Member
  • *
  • Posts: 117
  • Chile
  • Liked: 48
  • Likes Given: 78
The point is that is just "a" solution, but for the very reason you pointed out, every single solution is logically hard to trust, whence the paradox.

The problem is we have a single data point available, so we cannot draw any evidence based conclusion but just speculate starting on that data point: ourselves.
« Last Edit: 12/28/2022 08:33 am by gdelottle »

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
Asteroids ... are not sequestered in difficult to reach locations...

Asteroids are not in "difficult to reach locations"?

That's good to know.
Compared to planets, no.  I'm not talking about our current state of technology, this thread references "spacefaring civilizations."  For a civilization that is capable of being spacefaring, asteroids are easy.

We all, from time to time, handwave into existence hypothetical technologies, and civilizations even, to support our assertions.
« Last Edit: 12/28/2022 10:36 am by JohnFornaro »
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

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
Dunno what "grabby" aliens are, but let me dust off my "3 Civilizations Conjecture".  [3CC]

There are three civilizations in the universe; the ones who achieved sentience the day before mankind did, us, and the ones who achieved sentience the day after we did.  We all have about the same tech, and cannot see each other because we're so widely dispersed.

But are you taking into account the idea that there are those who achieve sentience and civilization after we do, but whose pace of advancement was fast enough to overtake us? Likewise, there could be those who achieved sentience and civilization before we did, and their pace of advancement was slow enough for us to overtake them.

Maybe there's some other Earth out there that didn't have an asteroid impact like the one that killed off our dinosaurs. So they got to evolve farther much sooner, without suffering as many setbacks. Or is it maybe because we suffered an asteroid extinction event, [AEE] that we got to evolve to higher levels of intelligence sooner?

It's entirely possible that the dinos would have continued evolution without an AEE.  Here's a fun clip showing them reading newspapers, shopping and such:



But the 3CC aims merely to illustrate that while a civilization can get pretty well evolved, the neighborhood is sparsely populated.
« Last Edit: 12/28/2022 10:49 am by JohnFornaro »
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

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
Gunpowder was invented in ancient China and resulted in no industrial revolution.

It did once spread all over the old world. It took centuries for all the pieces to fit together, but again, gunpowder driven machines predated the steam powered versions by a few decades (a century or two in the case of Leonardo DiVinci writing down an idea).
What gunpowder driven machines?

Um, cannons?
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline daedalus1

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 929
  • uk
  • Liked: 477
  • Likes Given: 0
Gunpowder was invented in ancient China and resulted in no industrial revolution.

It did once spread all over the old world. It took centuries for all the pieces to fit together, but again, gunpowder driven machines predated the steam powered versions by a few decades (a century or two in the case of Leonardo DiVinci writing down an idea).
What gunpowder driven machines?

Um, cannons?

We are talking machines to do useful work for the benefits of humanity eg grinding flour.

Offline Robotbeat

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 39270
  • Minnesota
  • Liked: 25240
  • Likes Given: 12115
Cannons are simple gunpowder driven machines. People had the idea of replacing the cannonball with a piston (or just creating a vacuum), using gunpowder sequentially, and using this to pump water or drive machinery. This concept predated the steam driven Savery pump patented in 1698.

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

Huygens and Papin did experiments to this effect in the 1670s, and an invention for using gunpowder to pump water appeared as early as Samuel Morland’s 1661 invention.

Hooke also mentioned the idea in the 1670s. Da Vinci mentioned the idea in 1508.
« Last Edit: 12/28/2022 01:14 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 daedalus1

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 929
  • uk
  • Liked: 477
  • Likes Given: 0
Cannons are simple gunpowder driven machines. People had the idea of replacing the cannonball with a piston (or just creating a vacuum), using gunpowder sequentially, and using this to pump water or drive machinery. This concept predated the steam driven Savery pump patented in 1698.

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

Huygens and Papin did experiments to this effect in the 1670s, and an invention for using gunpowder to pump water appeared as early as Samuel Morland’s 1661 invention.

Hooke also mentioned the idea in the 1670s. Da Vinci mentioned the idea in 1508.

Did someone use one to do actual productive work?

Offline Robotbeat

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 39270
  • Minnesota
  • Liked: 25240
  • Likes Given: 12115
Cannons are simple gunpowder driven machines. People had the idea of replacing the cannonball with a piston (or just creating a vacuum), using gunpowder sequentially, and using this to pump water or drive machinery. This concept predated the steam driven Savery pump patented in 1698.

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

Huygens and Papin did experiments to this effect in the 1670s, and an invention for using gunpowder to pump water appeared as early as Samuel Morland’s 1661 invention.

Hooke also mentioned the idea in the 1670s. Da Vinci mentioned the idea in 1508.

Did someone use one to do actual productive work?
Other than weapons, not that I’m aware of, but that’s irrelevant. The ideas developed by the development of gunpowder and experiments with it directly led to steam power, which was much more practical (as wood & coal are much cheaper than gunpowder).

Using fire to do physical work is THE principle, and it started with the first gunpowder weapons which launched projectiles.
« Last Edit: 12/28/2022 02:58 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 daedalus1

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 929
  • uk
  • Liked: 477
  • Likes Given: 0
Cannons are simple gunpowder driven machines. People had the idea of replacing the cannonball with a piston (or just creating a vacuum), using gunpowder sequentially, and using this to pump water or drive machinery. This concept predated the steam driven Savery pump patented in 1698.

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

Huygens and Papin did experiments to this effect in the 1670s, and an invention for using gunpowder to pump water appeared as early as Samuel Morland’s 1661 invention.

Hooke also mentioned the idea in the 1670s. Da Vinci mentioned the idea in 1508.

Did someone use one to do actual productive work?
Other than weapons, not that I’m aware of, but that’s irrelevant. The ideas developed by the development of gunpowder and experiments with it directly led to steam power, which was much more practical (as wood & coal are much cheaper than gunpowder).

Using fire to do physical work is THE principle, and it started with the first gunpowder weapons which launched projectiles.

I think we're losing the plot of our particular thread.
My only argument has been that the invention of gunpowder didn't directly cause an industrial revolution.  That happened hundreds of years later with the invention of other technologies.

Offline Robotbeat

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 39270
  • 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: 39270
  • 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: 39270
  • 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: 39270
  • 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

Offline edzieba

  • Virtual Realist
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 6104
  • United Kingdom
  • Liked: 9328
  • 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.

Offline RoadWithoutEnd

  • Full Member
  • **
  • Posts: 283
  • Liked: 340
  • Likes Given: 442
If we are the first (or among the first), we are obligated from two ends:

* Obligated to make the future more benign for subsequent prospects.  But also...

* Obligated not to waste our own opportunity, since there is no guarantee there would be any other.
Walk the road without end, and all tomorrows unfold like music.

Offline Greg Hullender

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 608
  • Seattle
    • Rocket Stack Rank
  • Liked: 443
  • Likes Given: 338
When people talk about a "grabby" civilization "conquering" the Earth, I think it's important that they realize we're not talking about aliens attacking Earth as it is. For most of its history, Earth didn't even have multicellular life, much less intelligence. So the question is, why didn't the Earth get "grabbed" hundreds of millions of years before humanity evolved?

To offer a reason someone might have wanted to "grab" the ancient Earth, imagine that, in the future, humanity starts exploring the stars at, say 10% light-speed (maybe using hibernation). Suppose we find a world like the ancient Earth: oxygen atmosphere, no life on the land, nothing in the oceans except bacteria (including photosynthesizing cyanobacteria). We'd be delighted. It'd be well worth investing a few centuries to stock it with Earth life. Given how long it takes to get between stars, we couldn't afford to be picky, so such a world would be a promising, empty vessel. Over the next million years or so, we'd grab all such worlds in the whole galaxy.

What the original post was trying to do was put a bound on how common that kind of grabby civilization could be. By definition, they're the kind who would have grabbed the Earth, had they found it. Since the Earth hasn't been grabbed yet, that lets us put a ceiling on how common that sort of civilization could be.

 

Advertisement NovaTech
Advertisement Northrop Grumman
Advertisement
Advertisement Margaritaville Beach Resort South Padre Island
Advertisement Brady Kenniston
Advertisement NextSpaceflight
Advertisement Nathan Barker Photography
1