Airbrush

That's a good point Arch. A One-Million-Years-Beyond-Us (OMYBU) ETI would have a hard time controlling their own countless numbers who are so far apart that their colonies declare independence. Decentralization would become more likely over time. Some rebels, no matter how few, may choose to expand out and never stop colonizing. So I propose the reason we don't see these rebels is because they decided we don't need to know about them. The distances are so great, and resources so abundant, that even OMYBU-ETI would expand out far slower than your optimistic estimate. Even the rebel ETI may have better things to do than colonize galaxies. Maybe there are a few OMYBU-ETI in our galaxy, but they just haven't reached us yet.

Your assumption is that an ETI one million years more advanced than us must necessarily "colonize" their entire galaxy. The only reason they would need to spread to nearby stars would be to avoid a disasterous death of their own star. That does not require colonizing an entire galaxy. At some point in their expansion they simply notice that the energy required to spread out further than some limit, such as 1,000 light years, is a wasted effort. Better to just practice safe sex and control population growth. They may choose to channel their energy towards improving living condition in the areas they already are living in. At some point in their growth they may turn inward and practice meditation and cultivate their arts and science. Or they can play around with parallel universes!

The most advanced ones, the ones that can harvest every bit of energy from their home star, have no limits on creating safe, comfortable habitats in their own neighborhood. They could use material from planets, moons, and asteroids, in their solar system to create space-cities on barren planets, or inside hollowed out moons or asteroids that rotate creating the kind of gravity they are accustomed to. They would have unlimited resources for building such mega-cities within maybe a few dozen light years from their home planets. If they need more space, they simply create more space-cities. They have no need for traveling a thousand light years, maybe not even 100 light years. Why should they send robotic probes on longer missions? They have seen enough. They are happy with what they have closer to home. If their star is going nova, or supernova, they simply move to other nearby stars, just far enough away to be safe. They don't even need to live near a star. They could build anywhere, or move stars to suit themselves. When it gets too crowded locally, they just restrict population growth. No need for long distance travel.

It only seems like we are alone. Even if there is an ETI (at least as advanced as we are) about every 1,000 light years around our galactic habitable zone, that is enough distance to effectively isolate all the ETIs in the Milky Way. Long-distance space travel may be more difficult than we imagine. The more advanced ETIs have nothing to gain by letting us know they are around. Why should they come to our solar system when they could create unlimited numbers of habitats closer to their home star? Or they have been here for thousands of years, but they are very good at hiding from us.

I have an opposable thumb bias. Maybe on other planets there are a myriad of ways intelligent creatures can evolve to find more effective ways of manipulating their environment. There could be unimaginable kinds of environments that foster creatures that get around in different ways. Spiders spins very strong fibers, bees build hives. We cannot produce building materials from our own bodies. But spiders and bees don't have the intelligence to make space ships or transmit signals into space.

...if you can find a bird that can build a space-ship by stripping bark off a twig using its' beak.

Technology requires more than just intelligence. It also requires hand-eye coordination and an opposable thumb. Dolphins may never develop any technology. Maybe technology is rare in the universe. It requires animals that evolved from creatures living in trees that evolved digital dexterity, before they can make tools and other things, and conduct physical experiments necessary for their knowledge to grow exponentially, the way it did for humans. Success as a species does not require technology, only adaptation, such as with cockroaches and sharks.

My guess is that the only reaction known that can produce that much energy is matter-antimatter annihilation. Does that also account for the energy release of a supernova or hypernova? Maybe the long GRBs, that are thought to be collapsing giant stars, must be rapidly rotating in order for a GRB jet to form. Otherwise the beam cannot break through the surrounding gas and dust?

Interesting stuff Arch. Does it also require rapid rotation of the death star and extreme magnetic fields to create antimatter?

That was a fascinating new episode of "The Universe". That is my favorite program. The giant binary is estimated at 8,000 light years away. I would also suppose the GRB beam, when the star goes supernova, would diffuse somewhat over such a great distance, but the experts think that the effects of that GRB would be very bad for Earth. It could be an ELE (extinction level event). The other estimate I heard was GRB may hit Earth about once every Billion years. We see them in other galaxies every day! The threat of NEOs is greater, but the threats of global warming and nuclear weapons detonation are much greater yet. About the mechanics of a GRB, did they say something about the jets are powered by matter-antimatter annihilation? How is antimatter created during a supernova? There is discussion about this on the History Channel discussion board, though the quality of discussion is not as good as here. http://boards.history.com/forum.jspa?forumID=800000060&start=0

Is there ANY region in the sky where we can see only empty void, all the way out to the edge of our visual horizon? Or do they need to do a long-term Hubble image of any possible "empty" region to make sure 10,000 galaxies are not hiding there?

How did you arrive at a sample of 50 quadrillion? My calculation is 10 sextillion stars (100 billion galaxies X 100 billion stars approx per galaxy = (10^11) X (10^11) = 10^22 = 10 sextillion). Maybe they ARE here but are so beyond us that they are good at picking up their beer cans and not be seen. Some photos of UFOs may be genuine, but I propose that most UFOs are either mistaken identity, delusion, or phantom projections by ETs that are later proven bogus, as a ET disinformation campaign, and the real ETs sneak around here using super stealth. Maybe they are smart enough to not be detected, because what would they have to gain by announcing their existence, or position in space? Nothing.

Fascinating clip! What I gathered was they said they could see 10,000 galaxies in a region of space as large as a grain of sand held at arm's length. Is that correct? Did they say the galaxies were 47 Billion ly away? I think that is wrong. The furthest galaxies or quasars visible are around 30 Billion ly. The CMB is at about 45 Billion ly.

Great stuff Arch. I like those kind of ideas. But I think it is easy to explain, Rare Earth. Conditions for intelligent life to evolve are few and far between. Maybe our solar system is uniquely gifted with favorable conditions protecting it from the deadly energy and conditions that exist throughout space. Maybe asteroid impacts are far more common in the universe than in our little oasis. And cosmic rays may be bad too.

Not spanning galaxies. Even the most massive black hole known, OJ287 at 18 Billion Solar, has an accretion disk only a little larger than our solar system, about 1/5 of a light year (extending out to about the middle of the inner Oort Cloud), and superimposed over our solar system it has an event horizon extending only to within the orbit of Mercury. More correct to say "spanning interstellar space". http://stardate.org/resources/news/blackholes/200801a.html My favorite bit of trivia: If the Earth was crushed down into a black hole the event horizon would form a sphere less than one inch in diameter! It would look like a small flat-black super ball.

Are we in a spiral arm? Where are we located with respect to the nearest spiral arm? How long does it take us to pass thru a spiral arm? Will the distance to the nearest stars increase, and by how much, when we pass out of a spiral arm?

My questions about the WMAP all-sky image is what is the significance of that cold blob area near the center? It resembles the Atlantic Ocean with the Americas on the left and Europe/Africa on the right. I thought the WMAP proved that the CMB was almost the same everywhere indicating that inflation had to happen. Or are the variations in temperature very tiny?

Do you believe in the Big Bang? Correct me if I am wrong but it seems to me at the time of the Big Bang all matter began relative motion apart from a state of very high density. After that everything was coasting with its' original momentum which was enough to overcome the universes combined gravity. At first it may have slowed relative motion, because of gravity, but then dark energy overcame that and then expansion of space increased. In addition to that original inertia of all matter, space also expands adding to the relative motion speed apart. Or how would you describe it?

Thanks for the correct terminology. Everything has Big Bang inertia, so what we see is a combination of the original inertia of everything, which implies motion thru space, plus the expansion of space, or cosmological constant, dark energy. Right?

There is no void, because "nature abhors a vacuum". Lots of evidence for things, but no evidence for nothing. However, just to be difficult, there is no way to detect space expanding, only the markers (e.g. galaxy clusters, CMB) are moving apart.

How can you be so sure it is not expanding into anything, or into new areas, when we know nothing about the region beyond the edge of the visible universe?

Your title says little about your post which is all about "frame shifting". Would you like to explain how we can see to the edge of the universe? How is it so obvious? Do you mean we can detect the CMB (cosmic microwave background) which is NOW at a distance from us of about 45 or 46 Billion LY away? I totally agree with you about "frame shifting". Whenever distances to the edge of the universe are discussed the distances should be qualified by WHEN. The distance now or when the light began its' long journey here?

What the universe is expanding into is unknowable. For all we know it is expanding into a sea of green with yellow submarines.

Any volunteers for a one-way mission to Gliese 581 at only 20.5 ly?

I don't think there is a paradox. The Fermi Paradox is based on too many optimistic assumptions about how many intelligent space-traveling civilizations there are. Perhaps they are so very rare and far apart, that they haven't found us yet. Or they don't explore space as much as we like to think. Maybe long-distance space travel is more difficult than we think. We were brain-washed by scifi to think it is easy. They may have explored out to a few hundred light years, and called it quits.