From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Sat Sep 11 1999 - 14:39:45 MDT
Robert J. Bradbury made several thought provoking comments
not restricted to but including:
> ...Fundamentally it comes down to the fact
> that we do not have the nano-capabilities to detect
> nanobots if they are here and we either do not have or only
> barely have the astronomical capabilities to detect SIs in space
> and to detect them you would have to look in "counterintuitive"
> locations (where we don't see stars)...
An even stronger argument could perhaps be fashioned thus:
Most would agree that interstellar travel is just damn difficult
any way you look at it. However we could, using only current
technology, accelerate a payload to a reasonable fraction of c,
then decelerate it once at its destination, if! that payload is
on the order of a microgram, preferrably less.
The same thought process would surely occur to ET intelligences,
therefore, they would likely undertake interstellar travel only
*after* developing strong nanotech. Any holes in the reasoning
so far? If this is the case, and an intelligence has managed to
tinkerbellize [I believe that is the term {8^D] there would be
no *advantage* to untinkerbellize or inverse-t-bell back up to
meter scale, where they may have evolved intelligence in the
first place. Is there? What advantage would that be?
If intelligence is generally on the micro or nanometer scale,
this would explain why we dont see Dyson spheres. They
would become unnecessary to micrometer scale intelligence,
since they could gather all the energy they need without such
mega-engineering projects. It could perhaps explain why
the cosmos appears radio-quiet: the interstellar signals are
at such high data rates [made possible by nanoscale computing]
that we do not detect them. Furthermore, it would explain
why we dont find alien lifeforms among us: we would
not recognize them as alien. On the micrometer scale
*everything* looks like the creature from Tralfamadore.
Im covering ground here that surely has been worn out years
ago, now that I realize how obvious is this line of reasoning. spike
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