[AR] Re: Fast radio bursts as light sail propulsors
- From: Dave McMillan <skyefire@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2017 16:14:14 -0500
On 3/10/2017 1:46 PM, Henry Vanderbilt wrote:
Consider the possibility of such a civilization that has insufficient
tendency toward continuous growth to saturate this galaxy, and/or
insufficient interest in places like here to have bothered dropping by
during the relatively narrow time-window we might have noticed such.
I think it's worth keeping such possible explanations in mind as we
come across various odd cosmological phenomena. Let the evidence rule
explanations out (or in), not the lack of evidence...
Heck, it's entirely possible that *we* are the first sentient life
in the universe. Some people try to call that "astronomically
unlikely," but *someone* had to be first -- given how much (or, rather,
*little*) that we know right now about how/when/where/why such life
comes into being, that possibility doesn't seem much less likely than us
being the last, or in the middle of the pack.
Or the kind of curiousity/greed/paranoia that we assume all
sentient life would have (and lead to galaxies swarming with Von Neumann
probes) may be exceptionally rare. Or the odds of a sentient species
surviving the "gap" between the time it gains the ability to exterminate
itself and the time it spreads out enough to make that much harder is
depressingly low.
More likely the truth is something we haven't even guessed at yet,
and (sadly) we're unlikely to find out in our lifetimes (dangit).
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