Aliens..

[3blake7]

In the seriousness of things, I did have a shower thought that considered that maybe aliens don't want to reveal themselves yet because they want to wait till we are ready to join a "galactic union" because of how f'd up we are at the moment. Question is if we will ever be ready for such a state of humanity. Though, whether this speculation is to be taken seriously is up to you guys.

 

I think the question of aliens really brings up a philosophical point of how we self-reflect on humanity. I remember Reagan stating how we would need an alien species to help unite us, whether it be from hostility or, even peace.

 

Maybe the idea of an intelligent, alien species is the creation of a society to help us observe ourselves more closely and how we interact from our prejudices, violence, and policy.

 

 

I've been wondering what THAT point would be. When a world government forms? When the entire planet unites in priorities, solving all the problems that can be solved instead of allowing problems that we created prevent us from solving them. The truth is, all the problems we have are problems we created from our ignorance of economic and governing truths and in our attempt to create a system to solve those problems we created new problems which prevented them from being solved. I think THE point would be, when we stop making more work for ourselves, lol, when we have a system that can solve a problem without creating new problems. To borrow a concept from physics: POWER, WORK and ENERGY. Maybe the point is when we maximize the WORK done with the ENERGY available and achieve the most POWER we are capable of.

Then again, we could be the first, and maybe we will be the ones expanding exponentially and stumbling upon a planet with life, watching it develop on reality TV for millions of years. lol

[Unity+]

 

 

I've been wondering what THAT point would be. When a world government forms? When the entire planet unites in priorities, solving all the problems that can be solved instead of allowing problems that we created prevent us from solving them. The truth is, all the problems we have are problems we created from our ignorance of economic and governing truths and in our attempt to create a system to solve those problems we created new problems which prevented them from being solved. I think THE point would be, when we stop making more work for ourselves, lol, when we have a system that can solve a problem without creating new problems. To borrow a concept from physics: POWER, WORK and ENERGY. Maybe the point is when we maximize the WORK done with the ENERGY available and achieve the most POWER we are capable of.

Then again, we could be the first, and maybe we will be the ones expanding exponentially and stumbling upon a planet with life, watching it develop on reality TV for millions of years. lol

That is definitely possible.

 

Either that aliens are just waiting for us to develop the first technologies that will benefit them. Then, they can steal it and end the human race.

[swansont]

Eat spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12VQXeNwbLyUAzzwgPj4Qman6c0pUwHcGeE51MLeg5fw/edit?usp=sharing

 

It uses a constant acceleration drive, which accelerates towards a star until the half-way point, then flips around and accelerates in the opposite direction the second half of the trip, to slow down just as it reaches the destination star. The propellant is Argon. The thruster is a particle accelerator and uses an exhaust velocity that the LHC is able to do.

 

The LHC accelerates protons to a speed of .999999991c, or a gamma factor of about 7460.

http://journal.batard.info/post/2008/09/12/lhc-how-fast-do-these-protons-go

Yours is about a factor of 50 million, give or take. But that's protons. The LHC also accelerates lead ions, but they don't go as fast as the protons. Protons make a transit of the LHC at 8 times the rate of the lead.

http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2013/01/preparing-lhc-lead-proton-run

 

So no, the LHC is not able to do this. Eat facts.

(I switched the thruster to 10kg/s at 99.9% exhaust velocity, a little more conservative)

 

 

 

299792455 is not .999c. That would be 299,492,665.5

[3blake7]

 

The LHC accelerates protons to a speed of .999999991c, or a gamma factor of about 7460.

http://journal.batard.info/post/2008/09/12/lhc-how-fast-do-these-protons-go

Yours is about a factor of 50 million, give or take. But that's protons. The LHC also accelerates lead ions, but they don't go as fast as the protons. Protons make a transit of the LHC at 8 times the rate of the lead.

http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2013/01/preparing-lhc-lead-proton-run

 

So no, the LHC is not able to do this. Eat facts.

 

299792455 is not .999c. That would be 299,492,665.5

 

You are giving me grief over decimals places? I wish more people were paying that much attentions, I'd have higher standards of my posts.

 

I haven't seen the Lead article yet. I'll check it out. I started off with Hydrogen originally but I switched to Argon to make the propellant storage tank smaller.

[swansont]

 

You are giving me grief over decimals places?

 

 

No. This is not so trivial as a quibble over significant digits. The difference between the speeds has huge implications toward the result. A gamma factor of 7500 (and that's for protons, not Ar) vs 50 million is the salient comparison from this "grief over decimal places". That's not a minor thing. This is a very nonlinear system.

[3blake7]

I did more research and came to the conclusion that some of my original assertions were false. I just wanted to update.

 

So, I started a thread on interstellar travel and realized that the particle accelerator based thrusters is a completely flawed idea so scratch that. However, with Beamed Core Anti-Matter Rockets you can get an exhaust velocity around 66% the speed of light according to new research. Also they found that you only need a magnetic field of 12 Tesla which is doable with current technology.

 

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1205.2281.pdf.

 

Now, you still need a lot of antimatter and the best conversion efficiency I could find was Dr. Robert Forward claiming that 0.01% was possible with current technology if we built a facility with the sole purpose of producing Anti-Matter. If we built a Dyson Swarm that covered 5% of the Sun, collecting power using solar cells with an efficiency of 68% (which is theoretically possible with multi-junction solar cells) then you could produce enough anti-matter in 30 years to send 1 million people to Alpha Centauri (4.2 lightyears away). The trip would take 75 years.

 

I created a spreadsheet for calculating the size of the Dyson Swarm and how much anti-matter it would produce a day:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1v2HqosYMZbY_RM7DjeIxC-m0qEo0lsC08b7RhSKzds8/edit?usp=sharing

 

I also created a spreadsheet for calculating the interstellar trip, I had to guestimate masses, I would need a NASA research team to be any more precise:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12VQXeNwbLyUAzzwgPj4Qman6c0pUwHcGeE51MLeg5fw/edit?usp=sharing

 

The galaxy is a 100000 lightyears across. If we divide that by 4.2 lightyears and then multiple it by the travel time of 75 years and the time it takes the colony to build a Dyson Swarm (200-500 years), we get 6-13 million years to colonize the entire galaxy. To build the Dyson Swarm, I suggested that they would have the technology for an Autonomous Self-Replicating Industry, which includes Surveyors, Excavators, Haulers, Loaders, Feeders, Crushers, Separators, Smelters, Mold Casters (like 3D printers), Part Casters, Grinders, Assemblers and Molecular Manufacturers. With all those different types of machines, they could mine asteroid belts and moons, then build more copies of themselves. Once the industry was big enough, they'd start manufacturing the Dyson Swarm.

 

Lets just assume that this is all possible.

 

I was reading about the Drake Equation and the Fermi Paradox. One of the hypothesis in the the Fermi Paradox is the Zoo Hypothesis, which is basically a Kardashev Type 3 civilization that has colonized the entire galaxy and has left us alone to develop. They are "radio silent", possibly using lasers to communicate instead. The only difference is, they would only need 5% of the galaxies light instead of a 100% like Kardashev suggested.

 

I created another spreadsheet which has the Drake Equation on one tab and my own equation on the second tab, which makes more sense for this type of problem:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fVLi9iapqKrlOqmpYNFc0FUnMWDTvrfTUS0g3UJFdqI/edit?usp=sharing

 

Even with EXTREMELY pessimistic numbers, far more pessimistic than Drake's Equation, I come to the belief that a technologically advance civilization would have come into existence over 4 billion years ago. That gives them plenty of time to colonize the entire galaxy. Hell, they could have seeded life on Earth and watched us develop for the last 3.6 billion years.

 

It's got me looking at all the UFO hunters a little differently, lol

Would we be able to detect a Dyson Swarm covering only 5% of the star?

Edited February 25, 2016 by 3blake7

[kisai]

The lack of any sort of alien architecture on Earth is a serious detriment to the speculation of previous or current colonization.

 

If it was a military type of alien, you'd think they'd build an enormous structure, visible from space, that symbolized "We own this planet. Do not touch" or "We own you plebians and we'll kick your bottoms if you get unruly".

 

If it was an alien species concerned with our well-being, you'd think a university, run by an AI, to assist humans into civilization would be helpful.

 

But no, creatures with unimaginable resources and concerns about our species can't be arsed to do anything.