From: Thomas Buckner (tcbevolver@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Mar 07 2006 - 17:23:58 MST
--- alexboko <alexboko@umich.edu> wrote:
> How long is the time window during which a
> civilization relies on
> powerful radio broadcasts for communication
> before upgrading to cable
> and/or narrow-beam methods? There could be a
> high-tech civilization on
> Alpha Centauri for all we know, but either
> still in that long pre-radio
> phase that occupied most of our own history, or
> in a post-radio phase
> and not doing anything else we would notice
> from a distance.
I have made this very argument here before. We
are likely to abandon high-power broadcast very
soon, for most purposes, which would mean a
'radio bubble' with a wall only about 100 ly
thick.
> Why does a species have to be Human-like in
> order to have space-age
> technology?
Depends what you mean by humanlike. However, some
argue that life elsewhere would resemble life
here because certain chemistries and body
arrangements work and others don't; for instance,
most alien plants might seem very earthlike
because nobody has yet found a workable
alternative to chorophyll for what it does (turn
photons into sugars).
The SA could solve Fermi's paradox on the
assumption that the simulating entity came into
existence before (rare and distant) alien life
was detected; hence no examples of alien life to
simulate. Even if we assume technological
civilization spreads until it inevitably meets
another, someone had to be first, and why not us?
Tom Buckner
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