Re: *Bzzzt* Fermi Paradox (was Re: >H Re: transhuman-digest V1 #562)

From: Emlyn (pentacle@enternet.com.au)
Date: Thu Jan 13 2000 - 02:49:01 MST


Robert Bradbury wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, 12 Jan 2000, Jeff Davis wrote:
>
> ... Commenting on the Fermi Paradox ...
>
> I'd agree with most of what you said. You have to factor in that the
> astronomy capabilities of advanced civilizations do let you very
> rapidly determine go (meaning really "dead") or no-go (posessing
> potential for or having life) status for observable objects.
Computational
> capacities probably let you project this into the future (at least
> the delivery time for any probes). So you likely know ahead of time
> whether you would be sending a "development" probe, or an "observation
> & potential contact" probe. This process extends out to the limits
> of dust limiting your observations and/or computational projections
> relative to probe delivery times. The constraint is the uncertainty
> thrown in by pre-tech civilizations going that are *nearer* to the
> destination going through the Spike before your probes can arrive.
> That probably limits your predictability and therefore your colonization
> horizon.

Is it feasible for the probes to be development & observation/contact,
designed to detect go/no-go status as they are closer to arriving? Then you
needn't worry so much about the problem at the end of paragraph above.

Emlyn
crispy fried solar boy



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:26:14 MST