[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Hello Gail and Roberta,
A couple of my thoughts which you may find worthy of a peek.
As a "technical civilization", we Earthlings are utter newborns. Consider:
we have been capable of talking across the void (radio) for about a hundred
years. This represents a miniscule portion of Earth's life presence; 100/+-
2, 000, 000, 000.
Au contraire, how do we know we are utter newborns? We have no other
presence to compare ourselves to. If we ARE the oldest civilization in the
galaxy (which may be possible, considering the improbability of
civilization), then we are setting the standard right now for life spans of
civilizations. We don't know that we'll destroy ourselves tomorrow... we may
just be worrying in the dark. After all, Australopithecines roved about for
about 2 million years, Homo Erectus for another 1 million... humans, as
recognizably human, have been around for about 200,000 years. That's doing
alright, I think. Besides, the game's not over yet, so don't shut out the
lights just yet.
If a civilization has technology, it is unlikely that we'll find them at the
very time where their capability winks into existence. Instead, we are
likely to find them well along down the technology road.
Again, I disagree. Civilization is a fluke, from what I can tell. For 95%
of the existance of Homo Sapiens, we were hunter gatherers. Agriculture
likely only came about as a result of an environmental catastrophe... just
10,000 years ago. If you jumped in a time machine, and went back to 11,000
years ago, you'd likely find very advanced hunter gatherers, who were
practicing a form of life similiar to what their ancestors did for 100,000
years, and continued well into the 20th century.
My point is, if we do discover an intelligent species, odds are they'll be
hunter gatherers. Why? Because this lifestyle works well enough, and that's
good enough for evolution.
Ergo, the probability is that any technologically advanced race in the
heavens would, in all probability, be perhaps 100's of thousands or, more
likely, millions of years into technology.
Your biases are showing. We don't really know how high technology impacts
our own sociology yet, so we don't know what's possible for it. Perhaps
technology hits a level of development, then stops in a plateau, before being
forced to 'march' again by outside forces. That's been the case in Earthside
technologies, for most of human history.
A big part of any technology is the movement knowledge; communication. A
civilization on this scale would likely be moving a lot of information
around over significant distances, spanning their empire. It should give
off a pretty significant glow, over a fairly wide spectrum.
Presuming a semi-galactic species... if their lifespans are limited, their
communications must not be, or they must be able to go without
communications. In other words, tachyon communications (which we can't
detect yet, if ever), or perhaps such a species would be content to expand,
without needing to share information amongst themselves. Why not?
Your point is a little like suggesting a tribesman suggesting that since he
can't see any campfires on the next shore, there must not be intelligent
people there -- it never enters his mind that perhaps people on the other
shore don't use campfires.
One point though. Sending information around by spherical or radial
transmission is not particularly efficient. In truth, transmitting
outwardly in the shape of a ball is the best possible way to cause a signal
to weaken as quickly as possible. It is reasonable to assume that a good
part of an advanced civilization's long distance transmission technology
would be aimed. Why light up the entire sky just to illuminate a few
selected points? As a result, I think there is a good chance that we will
see these occasional flashes as we pass through these concentrated beams of
communication.
So, you're suggesting that our place in the galaxy is to be a moth in the
headlights?
I am a bit troubled by the possibility that these advanced technical
civilizations may be transmitting their communiqués in media with which we
are utterly unaware. It may be that they are sending out our equivalent of
radio, and we are listening in our equivalent of sound waves. Ships in the
night, if you will.
Like two ships, crashing in the night.
In all seriousness, I recall an old science fiction story, about two alien
ships meeting in space. One is shiny silver, the other utterly black. Why?
They're both reflective. One reflects visible spectra, the other infrared.
-- John Harlow Byrne
Regards,
Jack
