Suppose a civilization somewhere in the cosmos is approaching Kardashev type III status. In other words, it is already capable of using all the power resources of its star (4*1026 W for a star like the Sun) and is on the way to exploiting the power of its galaxy (4*1037 W). Imagine it expanding out of its galactic niche, turning stars in its stellar neighborhood into a series of Dyson spheres. If we were to observe such activity in a distant galaxy, we would presumably detect a growing void in visible light from the area of the galaxy where this activity was happening, and an upturn in the infrared. Call it a ‘Fermi bubble.’
That’s the term used by Richard Carrigan (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) in his latest work on what he calls ‘interstellar archaeology,’ the search for cosmic-scale artifacts like Dyson spheres or Kardashev civilizations. A Fermi bubble would grow as the civilization creating it diffused through space. Carrigan notes that, as Carl Sagan and others observed, the time to colonize an individual system is small compared to the travel time between stars. An expanding front of colonization might then move forward at a rate roughly comparable to the space travel velocity. A civilization could engulf its galaxy on a time scale comparable to the rotation period of the galaxy, and perhaps a good bit shorter.
Evidence for Artifacts?
You might think a galaxy like the M51 Whirlpool galaxy would be ideal for such study, but Carrigan says a rough qualitative estimate shows there are no unexplained ‘bubbles’ at the level of 5 percent of the M51 galactic area. The quest is tricky because spiral galaxy structure includes natural voids — even if a void in visible light with infrared enhancement were traced, it would be hard to regard it as anything other than natural. In fact, James Annis has suggested that elliptical galaxies , which exhibit little structure, might be a better place to look for Fermi bubbles than spiral galaxies. Whatever the case, we’ve moved a long way from conventional SETI, listening for intentional transmissions from other civilizations.
Image: M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy. A so-called ‘Fermi bubble’ might appear as a void in visible light here. NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Acknowledgment: N. Scoville (Caltech) and T. Rector (NOAO).
Where else could we turn in the study of interstellar archaeology? Theoretically, synthetic or unnatural constituents in an exoplanet atmosphere could one day show us a sign of ETI. We’re already managing to study the atmospheres of particular gas giants, but thus far we lack the spectral sensitivity to clearly identify atmospheric signals of life or intelligence. A better bet might be stellar spectral signals, looking for example for signs of nuclear fission waste products that have been disposed of inside a star. More intriguing still is the idea of spectral modulation in stars nearing the end of their lives. Writes Carrigan:
…in the red giant phase Earth will most likely be swallowed as the sun expands. On the other hand if there was some possibility of life continuing the situation might engender a spirit of grand engineering and also an urge to communicate. In many cases the red giant environment generates varying maser signals. Modulation could emerge from dust clouds… moving and transforming in the spirit of weather systems on the Earth. (“Dust clouds” here is used to describe dust clumps around a star.) Modulation could also arise from linking the magnetic field from a Jupiter-scale planet and the stellar equivalent of the solar wind.
Dyson Spheres as Markers
As to those Dyson spheres, their use would greatly expand the useful area for activities for any culture that could build them, absorbing most or all visible light and re-radiating the energy of the star at lower temperatures. Various searches for infrared excesses around visible stars –hoping to target a partial Dyson sphere, perhaps a ring — have been attempted, but no candidates emerged from searches of several thousand stars. Even a pure Dyson sphere, completely surrounding its star, is a tricky catch because there are natural objects that mimic it, especially since dust clouds surround stars as they are born and as they die.
Carrigan used data from the IRAS spacecraft’s database of low resolution spectra, discarding objects that had been previously well categorized and narrowing the sample to sixteen sources that he calls ‘mildly interesting.’ The result:
Only three of these had relatively low spectral statistical fluctuations. All of the sixteen sources have some feature which clouds their identification as a Dyson sphere. In practice, most of the LRS candidates have higher temperatures and just don’t look much like the spectrum expected from a Dyson sphere. The search suggests that there are few if any even mildly interesting candidates within several hundred light years of Earth.
What can we do to sharpen the search for objects like Dyson spheres? Carrigan adds:
…a Dyson sphere does not require intent to communicate on the part of a civilization. The current detection reach is comparable to a SETI search. However there is a problem of confounding signatures from mimics such as carbon stars. Searches for potential Dyson spheres would be sharpened by developing more realistic pictures of construction scenarios including such factors as time to build and approaches to stability… Finally it would be interesting to consider how stellar evolution might stimulate the necessity of such large scale structures with a view to looking at candidate objects in the later stage of evolution along the main sequence.
A Parallel Track for SETI
When we contemplate the kind of structures or effects sought by the interstellar archaeologist, we acknowledge they demand technologies so far beyond our own that their construction seems all but miraculous. We can look for Dyson spheres, for example, but scarcely imagine how a culture could build at this scale. But these are limitations of our own state of development, and they don’t keep us from extrapolating to what civilizations far older than our own might be capable of developing.
Image: A Hubble Space Telescope view of the diverse collection of galaxies in the cluster Abell S0740, some 450 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Centaurus. The giant elliptical looms large at the cluster’s center. Would we be able to detect signs of interstellar engineering in such an object? Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration.
As we supplement existing SETI searches with the search for interstellar artifacts, we have much to do to separate natural signatures from possible signs of intelligence, but engineering on a stellar or even galactic scale should be observable if our imaginations give us a serious hint of what to look for.
The paper is Carrigan, “Starry Messages: Searching for Signatures of Interstellar Archaeology” (preprint available). Highly recommended especially for its overview of current scholarship on the subject, including the fascinating work of James Annis and his search for Kardashev Type III civilizations. Note this on Annis’ work:
The distribution of galaxies on a plot of galactic optical brightness or luminosity versus the maximum rotation velocity or radius of the galaxy follows a fairly consistent pattern. Cases lying below the typical galactic trend line reflect visible light that has been absorbed and emitted somewhere else in the electromagnetic spectrum. Annis examined existing distributions for spiral and elliptic galaxies and looked for sources below the normal trend lines where more than 75% of the visible light would have been absorbed. No candidates were found in a sample of 137 galaxies. From this Annis inferred a very low probability of a Type III civilization appearing that would be found using this search methodology.
But Carrigan goes on to say:
With more recent information it is possible to extend the search to samples that are considerably larger and also more robust. It may be time to revisit this possibility. In particular with a sample ten to one hundred times larger one could examine the nature of a handful of outliers in more detail looking for any unique features such as a higher than normal infrared component. These outliers might be candidates for a radio SETI search.
Be aware as well of Martyn Fogg’s Planetary Engineering Bibliography, another useful source for sharpening our understanding of what future engineers might do.
Hi Folks;
Interstellar archeology is indeed a fascinating subject. I am also interested in any prospects of finding smaller scale ETI civilization artifacts right here in our own solar system as well.
With all of the interstellar and intergalactic hydrogen and helium which has yet to be incorporated into stars, galactic scale engineering may be an important infrastructure program in the 10s of trillions of years to follow, via the construction of red dwarf stars.
I think that if we find the signature of a biosphere on an extrasolar planet, a very real prospect over the next few years to couple of decades, the race will be on to develop probes and then manned missions to get there.
Project Icarus is a bold and directed effort to eventually realize hardware on both these fronts. It is up to folks like us to keep the dream of manned interstellar space flight alive. As I like to say, this is our time and our call. This is humanity’s calling.
Thank You;
Jim
I don’t think 137 galaxies is enough.
If an culture spread out across our galaxy at 0.01c, it would take only 20 million years, wheras the age of the galaxy is around 12 billion years. This would mean that the galaxy would have been visibly partially converted to dyson spheres for only 1/600th of it’s visible age. For faster speeds, an even smaller fraction, perhaps 1/6000. Furthermore, the early peroids would create only a small change in visibility, wheras the later peroids would create a larger change, whilst also being the peroid of higher technological capability, and presumably higher speed.
Finally, a multigalactic culture could presumably have very fast ships / Charles Stross style colony seed pods, potentially very close to light speed. Such a system might demonstrate a higher ‘virtual’ speed moving towards us, where visibility time of the englobement of each star is very close to those of stars even quite far away. Example – two stars, 1ly and 2ly from your present location, and the other side’s probes travel at 0.9c – if the outer star is englobed at time 0, the it becomes visible to you at time 2 (years), wheras the inner star would be englobed at 1.1111 years, but become visible at 2.1111 years – which looks very similar to a speed of 9c, although the actual speed was only 0.9c.
The recent interest in brown dwarfs makes me wonder how we would distinguish them from Dyson spheres. For the most part we see brown dwarfs as objects with a primarily infrared spectrum — isn’t this what we would also expect from a Dyson sphere? How can we tell them apart?
I think there is at least as good as an even chance that our first detection of an ETI will be extra-galactic. If intelligent life is so rare as to only arise once as a galactic civilization in any one galaxy, then at some point those mature but lonely civilizations could easily choose to reach out over the vastness of intergalactic space in the hope of one day encountering other intelligent beings.
It’s a stretch, of course, given the amount of time involved, but one has to think that a galaxy-wide civilization is likely to be a very long lived one, one to whom the concept of millions of years isn’t as daunting as it is to us.
As far a galactic-scale engineering is concerned, triggering a pattern of supernovae would, I think, be on the easier end of the scale. I would be a pattern through time as well as space (the odds of being face on to “Drink Coca Cola” sign made up of exploding stars are too long to be worth considering) but when you add the dimension of time — perhaps a straight line of supernovae exploding at regular intervals (depending on the angle at which you are viewing it) would eventually gain the attention of the keener observers.
I can imagine an undergraduate astronomer some day finding such a straight line of three supernovae in a computer database separated by, say, 50 years at a time, and hunting though old pre-computer plates 50 years further back and finding a fourth right where and when it should be.
Of course, such a signal could only be a “we are here” sign. But you can just imagine the how much attention it would get from the world’s telescopes as they sought to snare other, weaker signals from those who triggered the supernovae.
I agree. I have always subscribed to the notion that we are alone in our own galaxy. This makes ETI, by definition, extra-galactic. I think the first detection of such will be where astronomers observe a galaxy that appears “abnormal” in some respect and that the abnormality cannot be explained by any known natural process. I also agree that such a galactic-scale civilization will be effectively immortal.
BTW, I read somewhere that many astrobiologists and SETI people have a problem with the concept of an “immortal” civilization.
On the other hand, I think its possible that an advanced civilization develops the technology to create new universes that are better than ours and that they leave our own universe for the newly created one before converting their entire galaxy into artifact.
Interesting post. A year or two ago, I started writing a short-story with effectively this same premise – a nation of humans in the future discovers such an “infrared void” expanding towards Earth. Hijinks ensue.
The referenced paper should be extremely helpful in fleshing things out, so cheers for that.
It will be interesting to see how this pans out in the long run. I imagine discovering such a thing would be far more profound than a radio signal bearing messages of peace and good will.
I don’t believe in dyson spheres of the shell type. There is no way to build them, and there is not enough matter around a star to build such things. They would have to tear the star apart and build a dyson sphere from its matter. But if they do, there would be no reason to not to disintegrate the star completely, and fuse the hydrogen in reactors controllably, and more efficiently and without the need for a material that is almost surely physically impossible to produce.
But dyson swarms are a completely different beast. They can be easily built incrementally, don’t require impossible technologies, but unfortunately they are completely indistinguishable from asteroid belts.
Consider that we see none of these structures because the Kardashev model can be wrong. I see it as little better than a simple (simplistic?) extrapolation of the predominant economic model of our current civilization: growth at any cost. About the only departure I’ve seen from this model over the previous several centuries is that now we seem to be transitioning to: growth at almost any cost.
Implicit in the assumption is that the technology available to ET is constrained by our own current understanding of physics and species’ objectives. I believe we need to consider some different possibilities:
1. An advanced civilization may have the ability to do large works with other than brute-force, energy-intensive technologies. For example, ways may be found to transmute and transport large quantities of mass with only small energy inputs.
2. Advances in small-scale complexity will create opportunities for a civilization to develop a rich, inner life that will tend to focus their peoples’ interests inward rather than outward, perhaps with AI and constructed “worlds”. Please note that this is not about species decadence, complacency or that ET will become obsessive meditators!
3. In respect to the above, the main drive outwards may not be a continuation of acquisitiveness (territory, resources, etc.), but more toward finding the “other” and scientific curiosity. Even now we find ourselves encountering a large barrier to outward expansion into space because of its high cost and uncertain or fragmented objectives. Some of these very questions are being asked, sometimes in a combative tone, over NASA’s recently announced direction shift. These are good questions to ask.
I don’t believe we really know what signature an advanced civilization would leave for us to stumble across. Their traces may be nothing much at all.
The telltale of a K2+ civilization is visible lines connecting the stars. Out of an energy budget comparable with a developed star’s natural output, a fraction will be spent on domestic uses, and the rest on interstellar transport and communication.
Transport will include all acceleration and deceleration of hardware in transit. Changes in kinetic energy might possibly capture 50-90% of provided energy; that is, transport might be 0.50-0.90 % efficient; but that leaves 10-50% of the transport energy to got to waste, radiated in the infrared (I presume the hardware will have big radiators as part of providing those high efficiencies). Our own IR telescopes will see the radiators, strung out along every transport lane between two stars.
Transport of massive hardware might be a small fraction of the interstellar commerce, communication much larger. But still, communication requires large antennas. If there are relays amplifying incoming signals, or computers processing information en route, they also will radiate their waste energy.
The reason I think transport and communication will be a significant fraction of captured stellar output is, simply, redundancy. If domestic use of energy yields a product, in terms of life, data, technology or the like, that product can (1) just sit there, (2) be backed up in compressed form, (3) be replicated, star to star. So, if there is a K2+ civilization which creates not only subsidiary outposts but colonies sharing all the resources of the mother-star, then the resources transported will add up to a significant fraction of those in process at home.
Thus, we should expect to see not only a deficit of natural radiation from a civilized star, but a re-radiation of some of the captured energy along its lanes of commerce.
I am by no means “read up” (past tense) on Dyson Spheres and other engineering projects… but a lot of it seems sort of out of date.
Does anyone have a good link/source/article that concisely outlines pros and cons to the Dyson sphere (or other astrophysical) engineering? I saw the bibliography above, but I think that is a little above me considering I just want an introduction into current thinking on the topic.
Also, I agree with a couple of the later posters who perhaps counter with “why would we see Dyson spheres”… It is not really clear to me what the support would be for a civilization to encase their star (or stars). What is the practical implications? Also, what scale of society hegemony must there be to complete such a project? Is this a Hoover dam project ? Manhatten projet? Pyramids? Great Wall of China?
And would a society (which goes through economic expansions and contractions) be stable enough to build it or to build an entire galaxy full of them? The mindset of a society/civilization that would build a galaxy full of dyson spheres would be what exactly?
I think, looking at trends on Earth, recent decisions by the USA to not favor expansion into space (not short term). China and India are being far more aggressive in terms of paving new roads in manned space flight. Granted, there may be fewer scientific benefits to such programs, but the effects of such choices on society should not be underestimated. What country’s children will dream more of going into space? I don’t know. But it seems likely to me that the questions of continued expansion (on a planet or in space or in a galaxy) and the engineering that accompanies such expansion of society/civilization is not so simple as “they would have Dyson spheres, duhhhhhhh”
-Zen Blade
I came here to post a similar response to Ron S… My first thought was, why should the Kardashev model be the only way? What if civilizations discover ways to power increasingly complex systems using less and less energy? In other words, a drive toward increasing energy efficiency. Look at our own technology for example. Our vehicles get much better MPG compared to those of just 40 years ago. We have powerful computers that run on batteries now. 40 years ago large rooms full of computing machinery drew down serious amounts of AC power. Solar cells get more and more efficient, as the systems they are asked to power demand less and less. At some point I have to question if we’ll ever need to capture all the energy from the sun. Couldn’t we just head out to the stars without building a sphere around the sun? Couldn’t any advanced civilization do this, and wouldn’t it make more sense? Just thinking out loud here…
I want to say that I enjoy reading articles such as this. One thought along these lines though, if we can create materials that exhibit negative refraction and literally bend light to where we want it. Wouldn’t a more advanced civilization be-able to do this on a much larger scale, literally capturing all of the stars light, in several wavelengths, directing it to a planet. This would drastically cut down the materials required. The only way one could detect this type of Dyson sphere would be the waste heat from the planet. Just a thought.
A Dyson Swarm of giant solar-powered habitats has to leave a minimum of unintercepted starlight for the outermost shell, and no shell can be leakproof. Expect a Swarmed Star to have a visible residual (1%) with very high-speed flickering.
One SF future you can count out is interstellar empires of people living on Earth-like planets, with one around nearly every solar star (linked by convenient FTL). But we already know that EarthWorlds are probably incredibly rare. Worse yet, living on planets is laughably inefficient, given that population is power. A Dyson Swarm could have a thousand trillion habs with a billion people each (a trillion trillion per K-II), vs. a few billion on a planet orbiting inside it (K-I). Gee, I wonder who runs that solar system?
Long before our system is Swarmed, Preservationists will halt the blotting out of the stars. Expansionists will then go to the nearest stars, looking for those with dispersed matter rather than planets. Young stars with no planets as yet, but with some differentiation of metals in a high-mass disc, will be the most valued. Stars with little orbiting matter, such as white dwarfs, will be the dregs, settled last, and then only by a low-population, static society of galactic losers, eking out a bare existence harvesting meager stellar winds. A K-III society would be a loose confederation of K-II Swarms of very long-lived, very high-IQ people, mentally united by light beams. We all agree that such a galaxy would Go Dark in a cosmic eyeblink. (I just can’t picture what they do with their spare time.)
Since nothing like that has happened anywhere in the visible cosmos over the last ten billion years, I’d say that’s a pretty good indication We Are Alone, at least out to several billion light years. Any race that doesn’t end up Swarming its own SuperCluster, but stays on one planet, is an inconsequential loser, a no-account species that flunks the Cosmic Significance Test. It would be best if we never even talk to such. Humans are still too much a species of winners for such degeneracy to easily happen here. Our considerably interstellar potential will require active squelching, which can come from only one source–statism. If we can stay free of the clutches of Giant Government (notice how the Moon Program has been cancelled?) we will settle the Solar System, then the Solar Neighborhood. Soon (3000 AD), the Great Star Race will be ignited, and quickly all our Galaxy’s young stars will be claimed by the Fastest. It would take only a few million years to have a Galactic Population of 10^35. Such a race elsewhere would be targeting every last galaxy they can see, including this one. Enrico, forget our Galaxy. Your Paradox is truly Cosmic.
A dyson sphere should be distinguishable from a brown dwarf – the surface area is so large that the signal intensity would be much higher for a particular temperature.
In the MACHO microlensing project, they did not discover enough “missing mass” to account for dark matter, but they DID discover a substantial population of stellar-mass objects with much lower luminosity than they should have, considering their mass. I remember thinking at the time, why are they not thinking “Dyson swarm” ?!
Unfortunately, the outer orbit of a dyson swarm need only receive the minmum if it’s inhabited, otherwise it may as well consist of a large number of thin flat solar panels. Assuming that these can be renewed reasonably.
I agree with Ron S and some other posters that the Dyson sphere approach is based on some very certain if not outright flawed premises. And, I think, so is the idea of a galactic (K3) civilization as being more visible than a stellar one.
To begin with the latter, galactic/K3 civs:
First of all, if intelligence and technological civilization are (extremely) rare, and space faring civs are probably even rarer, then it is only a logical consequence that galactic civs are even much more rarer still. Each step in this game seems to be like a next level with its own challenges and barriers. I.e. if a techno-civ is found near (less than) one in every x billion stars, how much rarer will a galactic civ be?
Secondly, it is not at all a matter of course, that a civ that has managed to reach and colonize other stars, even to the farthest reaches of its galaxy, will therefore consequentially be a *galactic-wide* civ, i.e. the numerous offspring of the original civ and species may and will probably not all be around at the same time. Immortality does not imply simultaneous existence of all shoots (civs), but rather immortality through risk-spreading: some planetary civs will have been extinguished by disaster, others will survive, again others will just have been established. Rather like a (very) scattered archipelago than one coherent ‘super-organization’.
The combination of the two above arguments makes the logic of looking for galactic-wide signatures to me somewhat like islanders in the Pacific saying ‘we haven’t found diamonds on our island, apparently they are rare; let’s aim binoculars at other islands, they may be covered with them’.
With regard to Dyson shells, there have been many criticisms, also in other threads on this site, with regard to its technical feasibility and efficiency (a Dyson swarm seems so much more feasible), but there is another, maybe more fundamental question (also put forward in a way by Ron S): to what extent is (more) energy harnessing a primary and ultimate objective of a truly advanced civ, as indicated by the Kardashev scale? Maybe there is a fundamental flaw in some of its premises. Though of course of fundamental importance, the availability of abundant energy may simply no longer be a *limiting factor* to an advanced civ. It is therefore possible that beyond a certain level, a civ turns to other goals, that are more fundamentally important in its long-term cultural view.
I have therefore sometimes proposed that the Kardashev scale should be modified (K*) and, rather than focus on brute energy consumption per se, indicate the *dispersal* of a civilization across the cosmos, from planetary (K*0), via multi-planet within own planetary system (K*1), multi-planetary system (K*2), galactic (K*3), to multi-galactic (K*4), etc(?). For which purposes required energy harnessing is just a means, and no more than that. Question then remains to what extent, if at all, such civs would become more visible, as they advance on the scale.
@Bill Parkyn, for reasons I have explained several times before in several threads, I strongly disagree with things you state with such decisiveness, particularly in the second paragraph;
“One SF future you can count out is interstellar empires of people living on Earth-like planets”
On the contary, why? Planets, particularly the earthlike type, are proven to be quite durable and potentially pleasant.
“with one around nearly every solar star (linked by convenient FTL). But we already know that EarthWorlds are probably incredibly rare.”
Oh, do we really, think not. On the contrary, there are already many indications that planets are probably extremely common, and more so the smaller they are, which probably extends into earth-sized realm.
“Worse yet, living on planets is laughably inefficient”
No, again quite wrong, the adaptation (terraforming) of a potentially habitable planet and of suitable lifeforms for it (genetic engineering) is highly investment-efficient and long-term secure. Contrary to (swarms of) tiny habitats, which run extremely high stochastic risk of disaster. Beside sthe fact that humans seem to like planets, it is part of what makes us human (and you were talking about ‘people’).
“given that population is power”.
The most wrong, sooo outdated. Technology and efficiency are power. Large populations are probably not the ultimate objectives per se of any developed civ. We can already see this on earth. Probably, it is with populations as with energy: fundamental and a threshold level, but no goal per se.
“A Dyson Swarm (…)” nice and futuristic for energy collection, but for long-term habitation?
Obvious mistake in my first post:
“I agree with Ron S and some other posters that the Dyson sphere approach is based on some very *certain*…”
Of course should have been *un*certain.
Has anyone bothered to take a really good look at galaxy NGC 5907?
I have to pile in with Ron S, Ronald and others by saying that I simply do not believe in Dyson Spheres (why does the concept have any credibility at all?). I also suspect that Kardashev Type (II and above) civilizations don’t exist anywhere in the universe. I can’t see what would motivate a civilization to wish to harness all of the power available from its primary star. It would be far easier to build starships and practice birth control. I might add that a similar argument works about the practicality of terraforming Venus. People argue that terraforming Venus would happen due to Lebensraum motivation. I counter-argue that it would be far cheaper and easier to transport out surplus people on slow radiation shielded interstellar generation ships than to terraform Venus. I should also add that slow radiation shielded interstellar generation ships is also an impractical concept. If you want to colonize another star system then just send a fully automated star ship to the target system with the human genome digitally stored in ship’s autopilot memory. Then reconstitute human colonists from in-situ resources after the star ship is in-system.
Concerning interstellar archaeology: I think this is a very exciting concept mainly from the prospect of finding ancient extraterrestrial artifacts in our Solar System. I’ve been watching the results from the Cassini spacecraft closely in the hope that Cassini might find an extraterrestrial artifact in the Saturn system. The planet Saturn would appear like a flashing neon light to an extraterrestrial spacecraft entering our Solar System. The ring orbiting Saturn cries out “Free and abundant deuterium!”. There should be ancient relics in the Saturn system left over from extraterrestrial spacecraft repairing and refueling themselves.
That’s is such a bizarre statement give the fact that the only reason the US has been to the Moon at all was because of the “giant” government-led space program of the 1960s.
And what is more “statist” than putting another massive injection of tax-payers money into a centrally controlled and operated Moon program that is woefully over-budget, behind schedule, short on innovation and is unpopular with many manned-spaceflight advocates? You should be cheering from the rooftops that the program is to be canceled (if it can get by the vested interests in Congress). Not only that you should also be cheering the fact that much of the money that would continued to be sunk into the program will be available to private enterprises involved in developing alternative launch vehicles.
Maybe Dyson Shells are banned because they would make for a
very powerful and deadly weapon:
http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/48fe49fe47202
And if you guys don’t like even the idea of Dyson Shells, you really won’t
like the idea of an artificial structure 1.2 light years across:
http://www.paulbirch.net/CustomPlanets.html
I wonder how long it would take to utilize and modify the entire galaxy?
Tacitus said:
“Not only that you should also be cheering the fact that much of the money that would continued to be sunk into the program will be available to private enterprises involved in developing alternative launch vehicles.”
I’ll start cheering if-and-when SpaceX produces more hardware and less vaporware. The Falcon-9 ELV and Dragon capsule have not yet flown. The Falcon-1 ELV offers little more launch capability than the old Scout rocket or a Sandia Strypi. There’s been lots of sizzle about private space launch capability but very little steak.
The hard truth about getting stuff into space is it is very difficult and expensive to do. The utter failure of the Space Shuttle to achieve Cheap Access to Space has been a serious blow against Space Exploration. The US government really dropped the ball when it failed to develop a second generation space shuttle that addressed the engineering flaws discovered in the current and soon to be decommissioned Space Shuttle. I might add in passing that no private aerospace firm has seen fit to develop its own reusable launch vehicle replacement for the Space Shuttle. Of course, the reason was simple, no private firm has the huge amount of capital necessary for such an undertaking.
Anyone have some more perspective on Dyson spheres and their origin… or rather, how they would fit into a society’s life?
also, trying to avoid the Ronald vs Bill Parkyn debate… but I was going to write some counter points to Bill’s comments before reading Ronald’s counter points (which I tend to agree with).
I’m well aware that the NASA — i.e. the US govt. — has made plenty of mistakes regarding the development of launch vehicles — some would argue that the whole shuttle program was an unnecessary distraction and expense.
And you are correct that for the foreseeable future, big government is still needed for the large ticket items. I just thought it was ridiculous to claim that “statism” is the biggest threat to our future in space, especially considering the scale of big government involvement just to get us where we are today!
(“Statism” seems to be the name the far right is calling mainstream liberal policies in order to make them sound scary now that they have worn out the words “communism” and “socialism.”)
And more to the point, there is no obvious market for such a vehicle.
Zen Blade said on February 3, 2010 at 19:26:
“Anyone have some more perspective on Dyson spheres and their origin… or rather, how they would fit into a society’s life?”
Perhaps the problem here is assuming that a Dyson Shell would be
used for an organic society like our own. What would we do with a
structure that has a surface region equivalent to five billion Earths?
See here for an alternative vision of why such a structure might be built:
http://www.aeiveos.com/~bradbury/MatrioshkaBrains/index.html
@Gary Allen: “People argue that terraforming Venus would happen due to Lebensraum motivation. I counter-argue that it would be far cheaper and easier to transport out surplus people on slow radiation shielded interstellar generation ships than to terraform Venus.”
Interesting point, which I am not even going to counter, simply because I cannot tell (can anyone yet?).
But I am glad that you did not say ‘terraforming’ in general, but limited it to the terraforming of Venus, in which case you may be right.
From what I have understood (Zubrin, Fogg, and others), terraforming of Mars would be an entirely different story altogether, way more feasible (though maybe not entirely sustainable in the very long run, because of its low gravity-hold onto an atmosphere). And indeed that terraforming of Venus would be a heck of a job, energetically, because of the truly enormous water import requirements in the form of Kuiper/Oort comets.
I noticed many times, here and elsewhere, that when future human space settlement and habitation are concerned, what people favor usually comes down to one (or a combination) of the following options (I am missing one?):
– Colonization and terraforming of our own solar system bodies (planets, moons).
– Artificial space habitats within our solar system (O’Neill-like, Kuiper belt, Oort coud, asteroids, etc.).
– Dyson swarm/ring/sphere.
– Interstellar travel and colonization/terraforming of other planetary systems.
Which one(s) it is/are going to be depends, I suppose, on future technological development, plus fundamental physical facts and the scientific discovery of those (particularly in the case of other planetary systems), plus economics/energetics.
Which brings me back to Gary Allen’s other interesting statement (and my own post about Kardashev and maximum power harnessing):
“I can’t see what would motivate a civilization to wish to harness all of the power available from its primary star. It would be far easier to build starships (…)”.
I fully agree with the first part and, again, the second part I (we?) just don’t know.
But I am becoming more and more convinced that (maximum) power harnessing, let alone complete solar/stellar (Dyson), will not be the ultimate goals per se of an advanced civ (K1+), but just means to an end. And that the level of energy harvesting per system will stop around the threshold level for achieving those goals.
So the real question then becomes: what are those ultimate goals? Hard to guess for an alien mind. From a fundamental biological perspective I dare to say: survival. Which in turn would plead for risk-spreading and dispersal to other stellar/planetary systems (K2).
But culturally, mentally, spiritually? I would say the pursuit of happiness, fulfillment, and the spreading of the spark of (our) life and beauty. But I admit that is my human bias. What makes a squid happy and fulfilled?
I forgot another very fundamental goal and drive, probably innate to any intelligence: sincere curiosity and the longing to study and understand.
Given self replication machines, close orbit dyson shell may actually be easy enough to be done by a single company – smaller with a developed technology base than the Apollo project was. Plus, I’m sure they could find a use for that much power.
@ LJK
Interesting link… “within the next century” is just completely wrong. That’s kinda like saying we have the technology to travel to Alpha Centauri.
But an interesting idea.
Based upon the rise and fall of society and the continuation of certain values, at the expense of other values, I have come to doubt the prospects of any large scale and long term project (either on Earth or above). The focus of mature society’s on Earth has inevitably led to transitioning resources from future growth to present day comfort and care.
So, unless a society is developing on Earth (such as the USA from roughly 1800-2000) it is difficult for me to imagine the construction of these incredibly large scale projects.
Granted, in times of war and crises (mainly war/survival) there develops an incredible amount of goodwill and focus to solve a specific problem… but essentially, I am a pessimist with regards to why or how a society/civilization would ever convince itself to build these theoretical artifacts.
-Zen Blade
Tacitus said:
“I’m well aware that the NASA — i.e. the US govt. — has made plenty of mistakes regarding the development of launch vehicles — some would argue that the whole shuttle program was an unnecessary distraction and expense.”
It’s cliche but true: The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Many of the early shuttle design proposed in the 1970s probably would have achieved the magic number of $1000/kg to LEO. However the development costs were too high. In 1972, the people opposed to Space Exploration had a circle drawn around NASA and were prepared to deliver the death blow. Even though it was a seriously flawed design, it was the Space Shuttle that kept NASA alive. Also, the people behind the Space Shuttle knew from day one that the Shuttle could not deliver on the promise of Cheap Access to Space (CAtS). However there was always the intention of developing a second generation shuttle that could achieve CAtS. The tragedy was that no one could figure out how to design and build that second generation shuttle.
Ronald said: “But I am glad that you did not say ‘terraforming’ in general, but limited it to the terraforming of Venus, in which case you may be right.”
I strongly believe that Mars can be “terraformed”. However I’m using the word “terraform” in the loosest possible sense. What I actually believe is that self sufficient human settlement can be established on Mars based entirely upon Martian in situ resources. Assuming the population doubles every twenty years, it would only require a few centuries before there were so many people out-gassing (polluting) on Mars that terraforming would be impossible to prevent. To some extent this is an extension of the “Gaia Hypothesis” on Mars.
Ronald also said:
“Which one(s) it is/are going to be depends, I suppose, on future technological development, plus fundamental physical facts and the scientific discovery … So the real question then becomes: what are those ultimate goals? ”
This is one of those profound questions along the lines of “Is the universe a designed artifact?” or “Are we alone in the galaxy?”. First the anthropic principle pokes its nose in and then becomes the “elephant in the room”. After first making the existential leap of assuming the universe is indeed a designed artifact then one is left with the question of what is the designed objective. That designed objective might be connected to some “loop hole” or “back door” in the Laws of Physics, i.e. the universe is designed to engender sentient beings who then proceed through some hidden back door towards some intended objective. This gets very metaphysical and is probably nonsense. However my vote is to continue playing along, keep our civilization advancing forward, ultimately move off planet and maybe we’ll get lucky.
Coming this far into the Comment Queue I hesitate to post much, only to find that nobody has read it, but what the hey, I can always cut and paste for another time.
Sorry for the brazen certainty. (I don’t get out enough.) Just because something is obvious to me doesn’t mean it’s true, so allow me to amplify on Space-Habitats, about which I have written a little (link below) and thought much. I’m confident of my vision of our Space Future, so please read it all and do comment.
See my brief SPIE paper, posted at http://www.orionsarm.com/fm_store/SpaceRings.pdf
I stand by my assertions on the rarity of EarthWorlds. I’ve been following astrobiology and SETI since 1960, and every piece of news since then has reduced the liklihood of finding planets just like this one. If we could travel to one, don’t you think we have an ethical Imperative to leave it alone? Even a landing would contaminate it. Colonization would constitute wanton interplanetary aggression and could trigger an attack from a ‘nearby’ K-II, its aroused population eager to preserve its scientific value. I expect that a Swarm around a massive star could afford to dominate everything within hundreds of light years, so hands off those EarthWorlds, even if they aren’t so rare. Planetary colonization is last century’s science fiction, as obsolete as going to the Moon in a cannon shell. David Weber eat your heart out, all those huge FTL ships and Jump Gates, with nowhere to go.
I stand by my statements on the demographic puniness of planets, which are based on ideas that originate with the late Gerard O’Neill. It’s just that his habs were too small. In the 90’s, Forrest Bishop originated the concept (which I have slightly elaborated) of an Open-Air Space Habitat, built with the same carbon nanotube cables as a Space Elevator, which by the way includes a Trans-GEO Space-Sling, extending to 100,000 km (where cable stress equals value at Earth surface). A Sling-Fling delivers 7kps, starting most of the way out of the Well. A Dawn Fling goes to Solar L1, a Dusk Fling goes to L2, Noon to Inner System, Midnight to the Outer. It only pulls a twentieth gee, easy on delicate zero-gee spacecraft.
The same Elevator cable technology enables huge habs to be built at Solar L1 & L2. Picture a scaled-down version of Niven’s RingWorld, 2000km in diameter and 500km wide, with 100 km walls (diamond) to hold an Earth-type atmosphere. With a spin of two revs per hour giving it one gee, it has the land area of India and could easily support a billion people and a luxurious ecosystem. Too bad the ‘Sun’ is always overhead and fades out like a light bulb, and you might miss rainbows, hills, or bodies of water deeper than 20 feet, as well as ultra-tall buildings, but unlike small habs there’s blue sky, weather, and stars at ‘night’. To get a K-II just keep building Rings, until some of them weary of the stars going out and Leave, having stockpiled lots of Deuterium and Helium 3 for the Ultimate Generation Ship. Seed ships with hibernating crew would, however, be the chief component of the Expanson.
A SpaceRing’s spn axis is perpendicular to its orbital plane so its outer walls can be covered completely with solar cells. (Sunlight doesn’t reach the inside, which instead has a central lamp, the putative subject of my paper.) Such an enormous (100 TW) power source can be coupled to an interior lamp or to military laser banks, and could easily be augmented by co-orbiting lenses and mirrors to operate beyond the asteroid belt. Unlike a planet, this mega-hab has no gravity well, only one time zone, and can be built from a few asteroids, at first at Solar L1 and L2, our gateways to the solar system. Space Rings can easily block laser attacks with co-orbiting maneuverable mirrors and have at least rudimentary maneuvering, unlike planets. After being eco-stocked they would depart for an Earth-indendent existence. Maximum signal latencies of only 6 milliseconds make a Mental Internet that much easier to implement, for the Ultimate Democracy. The Family SpaceShip is at the bottom of a 40-foot tunnel–just cast off and be Hurled away.
As for population power and the comment mentioning birth control, there will always be those who don’t believe in it, and thus will end up outnumbering those who do. Once if Free Space, they will continue to have unrestrained population growth, and will undertake the construction of more and more Space Rings, until tens of thousands have been filled with wealthy expansionist emmortals (thousand year life spans). It is they who will preclude the terraforming of Mars because so many of them tour it or establish cemetaries there. It is they who will pull all the CO2 off of Venus to make enough carbon nanotube cables and oxygen for ten thousand Rings. Through all these centuries of expansion, their Earth-like living experience will keep them spiritually loyal to the Mother World, still studying her history. Otherwise, space people would just live in small habs and become genetically adapted to zero-gee, with legs changed to arms and with augmented capacity to withstand radiation. They could care less about GroundHogs, As long as the Space Ring population grows rapidly, however, their peoples’ loyalty to the basic human species would be preserved, and such sub-races would remain just one freak minority among many.
It is the Peoples of the Space Rings who will fling Seeds to the Stars and grab systems with dispersed matter (no pesky gravity wells to fight, no wastefully engravitated metals locked in planetary cores. ) Imagine the glorious movies that could have been made with the cinematic resources wasted on Star Wars, which in parting I say has a fraud in its title, since it has no stars, only paint splats.
I have a question, semi-topic:
Is it along similar lines also possible to establish the metallicity of entire galaxies and in this way determine whether a galaxy is suitable for planets at all?
It seems that some galaxies are metal-poor (similar to galactic halos) and hence possibly/probably fundamentally unsuitable for planetary formation.
@Bill Parkyn: ok, interesting speculative reading (as SF), but still very unconvincing (to say the least).
“I stand by my assertions on the rarity of EarthWorlds.”
Depends entirely on your definition of ‘Earthworld’. A near-copy of Earth: Ok, I agree, but we are talking *earthlike* here (i.e. small, rocky, water, amiable temperatures, preferably but not necessarily oxygen-rich atmosphere).
“I’ve been following astrobiology and SETI since 1960, and every piece of news since then has reduced the likelihood of finding planets just like this one.”
Ah, *just like this one*, I agree, but see my previous comment. about what earthlike means, actually a rather flexible concept.
“If we could travel to one, don’t you think we have an ethical Imperative to leave it alone?”
If that means inhabited (which you probably mean by Earthworld), yes, I agree. But if uninhabited and easily terraformable, let’s pick it.
“Planetary colonization is last century’s science fiction, (…)”
Not at all, most experts on this (astronomers, etc.) will not agree with you, on the contrary: planetary colonization has, thanks to advancing technology, only come closer. Self-sustaining ‘free-floating’ space habitats have not. In fact I am quite surprised about such a statement, after reading your own (not bad though) SF in the rest of the post and the link.
“it has the land area of India and could easily support a billion people and a luxurious ecosystem”
Sounds suspiciously like India :-)
You could easily have such a land area on a (partially) terraformed or even incrementally domed earthlike planet for a minute fraction of the investment of such a space ring, and, what is even more important, with a minute fraction of the risk.
It may sound corny, but it’s really no coincidence that planets mostly come as solid spheres and so seldom as rings ;-) A ring shape would constitute *enormous* risk with regard to chance events (s..t happens) and malfunctioning.
Another disadvantage of a space ring and similar mega space construction is that they are an ‘everything-or-nothing’, ‘big-bang’ thing: they will only function properly when completed as gigantic as they come, and as long as they stay intact (which again refers back to my above-statement about risk).
Terraforming and particularly habitation of domed areas on an earthlike planet are an incremental and relatively low-risk exercise.
In fact, there is probably nothing that a space ring can offer, that a simple habitat dome can’t, and much (MUCH) cheaper. The only real advantage of a space habitat is the lack of gravity, which is a disadvantage for most habitation purposes, but of course advantageous for space travel.
As I said before: sheer population as power is a completely antiquated concept. Unless you are a rabbit or a rat. But not an advanced intelligence/civilization.
And if you really want to store huge numbers of people, you would still be much cheaper off doing that in layers, either building up or down into the ground, on a (terraformed) earthlike planet.
The rest of your post I will not comment on, because I presume it was just meant as entertaining SF.
Maybe I should have summarized the core of my argumentation to Bill Parkyn:
just as you are convinced about the concept of space rings and the like, I stand by my argumentation that:
– such mega space structures are *extremely* high-investment (per unit area) and high-risk (because of complexity, relative vulnerability and lack of redundancy).
– provided we find that more or less earthlike, terraformable planets are common, those will constitute the future of space colonization. This will start with Mars: serious plans for its settlement already exist, there are no such plans for the construction of a mega space habitat.
A common eror in thinking is the idea that, because something will ultimately be technically *possible* to do, it will also be *feasible* to do it.
Not so, some things will never be done, not because we can’t but because they are insensible and there are much better (= cost-efficient) alternatives to achieve the same goal.
We could probably fly a castle across the ocean, but never will, because we found are so much better means, we call them airplanes.
The what, where and the how of living off-Earth are all very interesting (really!) but are not what makes things happen. That will take an acceptable answer to the question: why? By acceptable, I do not mean a carefully reasoned and correct argument, but one that will motivate our societies to act, and take on the enormous expense and risk.
Want to ensure species survival? Ok, but few people find this sufficient, no matter how true it may or may not be. Even were it a motivating reason, I suspect it would be far more effective to install a robotic perimeter defense system to detect and clear out NEO and similar threats than to move to space or another planet, or even further out.
Population expanding or we want more elbow room? It is more feasible to “terraform” Antarctica in comparison to off-Earth alternatives.
Profit? This motivated most of the past great explorations, enticing many even at the high risk of life and limb to cross the oceans and take the Silk Road. I have yet to hear a realistic way for anyone to profit from living or traveling off-Earth. It’s true that some companies are now attempting to profit from launches to low Earth orbit, but even that is very doubtful.
Right now the only answers I see to “why” that are inciting actual space ventures are scientific exploration and variations on the puerile theme of “my rocket is bigger than your rocket.”
The economics of moving into space will likely have to wait until we have the science and technology to make the simple act of getting out of our gravity well far less expensive and risky. That will open up many new avenues to profitability and expansion that are merely enticing dreams of the present. For now and the near future, exploration is the only actionable answer “why” that I can see with any certainty.
Thanks to everyone who read my last comment.
As for my ideas being only ‘SF’: so was Tsiolkovsky in 1890.
So far no SF has come anywhere near my scenario, which I regard not as SF but as the inevitable future.
Ronald thinks that population power is an antiquated concept, and that growth is only for rabbits and lemmings. Tell that to the American Aboriginals or the Spanish Californians, both vastly outnumbered by white immigrants. We beat the Indians by numbers, not guns. People in India aren’t poor because of crowding (numerous richer countries are denser) but because of fifty years of statism, retarding the natural growth Indian emigrants display everywhere else but home.
Furthermore, I quote Ronald on ring construction:
*extremely* high-investment (per unit area) and high-risk (because of complexity, relative vulnerability and lack of redundancy).
True for now, but not forever. You airily assume terraforming is quick and easy yet something far smaller and much more controlled is somehow ‘risky’. By 2350 (the original IPCC-cooked date for Indian glacier-death, before being typoed to the infamous 2035) , Rings will be routine. Your idea of risk is only true in this century, rather like asking Benjamin Franklin how ‘risky’ it would be to build the Panama Canal. My only assumption is the eventual construction of space elevators. Who ever builds those won’t stop there.
I don’t expect Rings to be built with Earth resources, but by ambitious Spacers wishing to recruit Earth people who wouldn’t like small habs. All that Earth need provide is people, animals, and plants. The Elevator will supply those. A starter Ring could be run by a few tens of thousands of people, not a billion.
As for terraforming Mars, only a slight warming or atmo-endensification would keep its huge dust load permanently aloft. Adding water will result in all of Mars’ splendid arid scenery become a muddy mess buried in a dust fog. That’s why the Mars Tourist bureau will enforce a no-warming policy. The dust will force everybody off the planet due to spacecraft malfunction.
These kinds of discussions say more about our assumtions than our knowledge.
My last comment to Bill Parkyn on space rings and the like, otherwise I will just be repeating myself too much (and I will leave the last word on this to you Bill ;-)).
I do not mean to say that we cannot and will not ever construct large space structures. This all depends on future technologies and humans have made the mistake of sayer ‘never ever’ too often.
What I do mean to emphasize, however, are a few much more fundamental and physical facts, independent from any technology;
– a typical characteristic of planets, and one I personnaly appreciate very much, is their extreme long-term stability. This is not the result of any super-smart technology, but an intrinsic physical given inherent to being a planet, apparently energetically and ‘entropically’ favorable. In other words, once you have the right amount of rubble arounf the right type of star, you all set for at least a couple of billion years. It isn’t just sheer area, it is area times habitable period. Plus it seems to be a reasonable given that, generally speaking, the larger the (earthlike) planet, the more stable it will be.
– a, any, space structure, no matter how clever, is always an artificial structure which would not have originated by itself under the given physical conditions and is, therefore almost per definition not inherently stable. Further to this, it is reasonable to state that, contrary to natural planets, the larger the structure is, the greater the risk of disaster will be. I realized this just after my yesterday’s post, but I I think that this is a very relevant and fundamental difference: with (eartlike) planets the risk of total disaster diminishes with size, with artificial space constructions it increases, statistically.
Practical example: a (very) large meteorite will nog wipe out a large planet, but will be absolutely terminal for a large space ring, and the larger the ring, the greater (not smaller) the chance of such a total disaster. The larger size, contary to the planet, will not reduce its risk not the impact of the disaster.
Don’t misunderstand me, I am not against space rings or Dyson structures, on the contrary, some of my best friends are Dyson fans (and I am definitely a Niven fan myself) ;-)
But of I had to put my money either in the terraforming of Mars or in a large space station, and this investment to be made with a view to future generations, I would not hesitate where to put it.
I rest my case, last word for you Bill.
Bill,
Several of your assumptions that you state as fact are NOT fact, but opinions. Granted, there is evidence to support those opinions, but that’s like me saying my hometown is the best because I love it, or because we have a great high school or x, y, z… Those are opinions, not conclusive argument-ending facts.
You wrote: “Ronald thinks that population power is an antiquated concept, and that growth is only for rabbits and lemmings. Tell that to the American Aboriginals or the Spanish Californians, both vastly outnumbered by white immigrants. We beat the Indians by numbers, not guns.”
This is way too oversimplified. Disease, technology, greed, and population deficiencies combined to destroy the American Indians. One fact against your argument would be the fall of the Aztec Empire, initiated by a few dozen Spanish conquistadors in the midst of a 1 million-strong city/empire.
A much better argument for population would be the American Civil war, where the union was much larger in terms of population and in terms of industrial base, and these natural advantages (and other advantages that I am not mentioning) allowed them to out muscle and outlast the south. Another example would be the Soviet union when the Nazi regime invaded. Lots of people that can fight, but literally not enough guns, so… “you over there, when he dies, pick up his gun and fight”. But again, this is an oversimplification. These are war-specific time periods/examples. In economic terms, population is important because of the economy that builds around the population both in terms of production and in terms of consumption.
You also said:
“People in India aren’t poor because of crowding (numerous richer countries are denser) but because of fifty years of statism, retarding the natural growth Indian emigrants display everywhere else but home.”
This is just not true… this is a ridiculous argument. India 50 years ago was no where near what it is now in many many ways and comparing the population that has remained to the emigrants who left for wealthier, more developed countries is just stupid. This is akin to comparing a scientist who works in a well funded and well established university to a scientist who is at a new university with no funding… They are “poor” (your word, not mine) because they weren’t a rich, developed nation that was able to further propel its own growth through imperialistic policies as the European powers did (and manifest destiny in the USA).
Literacy in India, just to completely rebuff your argument:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:India_Literacy_Rate_1901-2001.jpg
Notice that once India establishes independence, literacy begins to make very large increases.
Presumably, you would agree that education and not-being-poor tend to correlate pretty well?
-Zen Blade
Ronald
Since you believe in the Leninist fable of ‘imperialism’ helping the home country, may I guess that you think the higher the top tax rates go the better, always?
In actual fact, India benefited far more from the British than the relative pittances the Brits actually took home. There’s very few colonies that didn’t go downhill after independence. There were no colonies that turned a profit for the mother country.
As for India, you seemed to have missed the astonishingly damanging effects of India’s economic policies, from independence to the nineties, with vast government ownership, a huge government ‘work’ force that mostly squelched private entrprise with vast paperwork requirements, and stupefyingly destructive tax policies. If you project India’s GDP from 1945 to 2000 at the ‘normal’ free-entrprise growth rate of 5+% per capita growth, they would have caught up to us by now. By ‘normal’ I mean what obtains in the absence of high taxes and punitive bureacracies, rather like America before the cursed Sherman act. And don’t blather like the fraudulent Upton Sinclair about social conditions, which were symptons of poverty, not the capitalism that was ending it. America didn’t get rich by stealing from the poor, from blacks, or from Mexico. It got rich because our Constitution prevented America from being governmented to death like it is now.
As for the Amerinds, if we hadn’t outnumbered them they would have won. Even then it took the near-extermination of the buffalo to make them give up.
The first Spanish battle with the Aztecs was won by technological surprise: horses, guns, and armor, as well as the ‘prophecy’. Subsequent battles, however, were won by armies of the Aztecs’ enemies, not the Spaniards, who only led them. Otherwise the Spanish would have been overwhelmed and driven out, just as a few boatloads of Vikings were from 11th-century Newfoundland (inhabited by only 10,000).
Ronald said on February 4, 2010 at 7:25:
“I noticed many times, here and elsewhere, that when future human space settlement and habitation are concerned, what people favor usually comes down to one (or a combination) of the following options (I am missing one?):
– Colonization and terraforming of our own solar system bodies (planets, moons).
– Artificial space habitats within our solar system (O’Neill-like, Kuiper belt, Oort coud, asteroids, etc.).
– Dyson swarm/ring/sphere.
– Interstellar travel and colonization/terraforming of other planetary systems.”
How about genetically engineering beings to be perfectly adapted to the
variety of worlds, most of which are quite hostile to nativ Earth life?
It has to be cheaper and easier than remaking an entire planet into
another Earth. Plus we can ensure the survivability of life on this
planet on other worlds.
As for Space Rings, Dyson Shells, and such, I will feel more confident
about their future existence when we eventually get back on track
about placing human colonies on the Moon and Mars, which we all
may have noticed were recently given a major setback.
Bill Parkyn February 6, 2010 at 18:57
Ronald
Since you believe …
I presume you mean Zen Blade?
ljk (Larry): “How about genetically engineering beings to be perfectly adapted to the variety of worlds, most of which are quite hostile to nativ Earth life?”
OK, I put those under my 4th option: “Interstellar travel and colonization/terraforming of other planetary systems”.
Terraforming can take place in different forms and to different degrees. I consider genetically adapted lifeforms as part of that. In fact, I foresee a future of a combination of planetary engineering and genetic engineering. No contradiction, but rather a combination.
Even right here and now on earth we modify the land but also adapt our crops.
The majority of the views expressed here are very posisitve in the belief that we (humans) will move out to the cosmos, in rings or tins, and spread our collective seed. Either way this would require vast improvements in our understanding of the sciences as we know them. Instead of “wasting” our time spreading outward, we could just as easily spread “inward”. In a similar way to the matrix but with a more positive finish – literally build heaven on earth… Who knows, as in a book by Greg Bear (I think – Eon) spreading inward could also mean building a neverending corridor to everywhere in the universe within an astriod of here on earth!
disclaimer – I do not advocate this point of view myself.