From: Eugene Leitl (eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Sun Jul 25 1999 - 20:37:04 MDT
Rik van Riel writes:
> A few mails back the (IMHO sensible) idea was mentioned
> that supersocieties have space as their living environment
> and only use planets to get building materials.
They probably only mine planets when more easily accessible materials
have run out. There might be technomagical tricks how to crack a
planet quickly, then there might be not. Obviously, there are upper
limits to how much energy can be deployed on the planetary surface
without destroying the mining/launch structures. Fragmentation by
impact makes for a better surface/volume rate, but will probably
result in lossage of volatiles, and require some cooling off period.
> If that is the case, why should they be in a hurry when
> they're travelling from one star to another?
Some of them are not in a hurry. Some of them are. These who travel
and reproduce fastest will obviously very quickly overwhelm any
sluggards in sheer numbers. There might be a couple of sluggard
civilisations nuclei out there in the Andromeda somewhere (unless the
rapid travellers have starved them out of their resources, or eaten
them alive, which is the more logical conclusion), but they will be
sure difficult to find.
> The obvious answers would be population expansion or the
> 'need' to expand their living quarters or get material
> for scientific tests.
They don't have living quarters, space is their native habitat (this
form doesn't like anything other than hard vacuum). They may do no
more sience than the Amazon jungle: some humans in some university
somewhere might be doing some experiments, but the rest of the ecology
_just is_.
> But that answer can be effectively countered because:
> - advanced species very probably master birth control
Advanced species almost certainly rely on evolving autoreplicators,
and it is impossible to contain freely evolving autoreplicators. The
intelligent forms might have no interest in harming us, but some of
their symbionts/parasites will not be so docile. A mature stellar
ecology might be immune to gray goo type of autoreplicators, but a
virgin system as ours certainly isn't. Oops, there go the natives.
Probably the best argument against such type of aliens is that our
system seems to be in pristine shape, and bits of graphene
nanomachinery are not raining from the skies.
> - advances in science and building means you can do
> more with the same amount of material, so you don't
> usually need to get more and more raw materials
Advances in science and building means is that you can mine more more
quickly. A civilisation that is essentially a bit pattern coded as
electronically excited states can grow essentially hard at the edge of
the light cone. It is not hard to imagine that easily accessible
material in a stellar system can be entirely converted in the course
of a few months/years. Only the kinetically less accessible materials
> - a huge ecology bubble needs a very good social system
> to start with -- and such a near-perfect society
> probably doesn't have the same urge as we have to have
> more and more possessions
Then the more expansive cultures will win.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:04:34 MST