Search for advanced civilizations beyond Earth finds nothing obvious in 100,000 galaxies

"The idea behind our research is that, if an entire galaxy had been colonized by an advanced spacefaring civilization, the energy produced by that civilization's technologies would be detectable in mid-infrared wavelengths—exactly the radiation that the WISE satellite was designed to detect for other astronomical purposes,"

Being the colonizing type would mean they have spaceflight...which in turn would mean they are rather advanced (i.e. energy efficient). Why would one assume that such a species produces a lot of waste heat?

Highly evolved civilizations will have highly efficient communication systems, the kind that are precisely targeted for the purpose (such as lasers) – this will radiate very little energy if anything outside the scope , point A to point B. Same goes for computing power, where before a computer will heat an entire building, a few decades later, a similar processing power (ie smartphone) barely give away any heat at all.

I mean if our technology already evolves in that direction, theirs should be infinitely better.

Same goes for colonization, I think the idea that we as a species, in our evolution, will conquer the galaxy by breading like rabbits and burning plenty of "coal" to "heat" a lot of planets ... is wrong. As we evolve we tend to be more aware of the environment and limit our impact without a well justified scope.

Highly evolved species are by definition highly efficient and aware.

"The idea behind our research is that, if an entire galaxy had been colonized by an advanced spacefaring civilization, the energy produced by that civilization's technologies would be detectable in mid-infrared wavelengths—exactly the radiation that the WISE satellite was designed to detect for other astronomical purposes,"

Being the colonizing type would mean they have spaceflight...which in turn would mean they are rather advanced (i.e. energy efficient). Why would one assume that such a species produces a lot of waste heat?

Because even aliens must follow the rules of physics.

Well, good news then. 100000 galaxies for the taking

"The idea behind our research is that, if an entire galaxy had been colonized by an advanced spacefaring civilization, the energy produced by that civilization's technologies would be detectable in mid-infrared wavelengths—exactly the radiation that the WISE satellite was designed to detect for other astronomical purposes,"

Being the colonizing type would mean they have spaceflight...which in turn would mean they are rather advanced (i.e. energy efficient). Why would one assume that such a species produces a lot of waste heat?

Because even aliens must follow the rules of physics.

But we don't even fully understand the rules.
Can't expect highly advanced species to follow our limited understanding and theories of physics.

But we don't even fully understand the rules.
Can't expect highly advanced species to follow our limited understanding and theories of physics.

Yet we have understanding enough in some things that this is a very logical path of pursuit. If those rules we think we know do not occur in that manner that we believe them to then we really have no basis anymore for any scientific assertion.

Because even aliens must follow the rules of physics.

Sure, how much waste heat will a bonfire give away to send a few bits of information to the moon? Then again how much waste there is if we use a highly focused laser? And that is only by our current standards.

Sure, if you are using a "raw matter structure/approach" for the purpose, standard thermodynamics might apply. Then again matter could be highly structured to serve a very specific scope with extreme efficiency.

Given intelligent specie will self destruct in less than 10000 years and few galaxies are suitable for life a half billion years out of 5 billion randomly occurring for the last 14 billion years. The evolution process may take a billion years of variable twisted chaotic unpredictable results.
It is mathematically obvious no two highly intelligent specie exists even among 100,000 galaxies.
Additionally on Earth "Truth" is absurd, so we have no basis for presuming ourselves "highly intelligent". Consequently we don't even have a single instance to start with!

"'That's interesting because these galaxies are billions of years old, which should have been plenty of time for them to have been filled with alien civilizations, if they exist. Either they don't exist, or they don't yet use enough energy for us to recognize them,' Wright said."

Or they've found a way to reuse that heat, or they've found a way to use all of the light energy so very little would ever reach us, for two other possibilities. You can only really rule out that there's a civilization advanced enough to colonize an entire galaxy that does not have efficient enough technology to avoid this kind of detection.

Perhaps these galaxies are not colonized or perhaps they really are. I do not see this as a definitive answer.
What happens if such a highly advanced race does not want to be detected?
If they were expanding to colonize their Galaxy, then imop chances are good they have encountered others who stood in their way at one time or another. Would it not be logical for them to then assume other races were doing as they have done in other galaxies or other parts of their galaxy? Would not that be a potential threat and create a need to avoid detection for all involved?
What if they are just xenophobic or antisocial? Maybe they just hate spam from noobs...
Who is to say such an advanced race couldn't and wouldn't shield their emissions?
We have limited ability to shield emissions, we see that evolving in military tech already...

This may be a logical path to pursue, but I am by no means surprised it is fruitless thus far.

Well, good news then. 100000 galaxies for the taking

THE CLOSEST ONE IS MINE! ALL MINE, YOU HEAR?

And when Grog couldn't see any smoke rising from across the river, he knew there were no camp fires there, and therefore intelligent life only existed on his side of the river...

You don't settle a solar system with wood, fire, and steam. Perhaps you don't settle a galaxy with baryonic particles and power based on electro-magnetic, weak, strong, or gravitational forces?

Maybe dark matter and / or energy are the spore of advanced civilizations?

I think it's great that we're looking, but I also think we need to keep in mind the likely simplicity of our current technology.

"The idea behind our research is that, if an entire galaxy had been colonized by an advanced spacefaring civilization, the energy produced by that civilization's technologies would be detectable in mid-infrared wavelengths—exactly the radiation that the WISE satellite was designed to detect for other astronomical purposes,"

Being the colonizing type would mean they have spaceflight...which in turn would mean they are rather advanced (i.e. energy efficient). Why would one assume that such a species produces a lot of waste heat?

Because even aliens must follow the rules of physics.

You assume that there would be any more than one of them in any given location.

Machine singularities are probably very limited in size and very economical in their use of resources. And we can assume that they are the inevitable end product of any sentient species.

Would they endure? "To be or not to be - that is the question."

I agree with the others who are saying that a civilization advanced enough to colonize a galaxy would likely not be wasting much energy. To make an analogy, look at where we were just a few years ago with lighting. Incandescent lights were highly inefficient; most of their input energy went into waste heat. LED lighting uses about 1/5 the energy for the same light output as an incandescent light. While there is still heat produced by an LED, it is far less than the equivalently luminous incandescent bulb.

Also note that we are nowhere near being able to colonize our galaxy. Given something like Moore's "law", by the time that we are capable of colonizing the galaxy one can only imagine just how efficient and how much less wasteful our technology will have become.

At the level of technology that it would take to colonize a galaxy, I bet that mid-infrared emissions would be on the order of a few hundredths of a percent above background if that.

I've copied something from another article on this site:"Researchers from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science in Japan have uncovered the first evidence of an unusual quantum phenomenon—the integer quantum Hall effect—in a new type of film, called a 3D topological insulator. In doing this, they demonstrated that "surface Dirac states"—a particular form of massless electrons—are quantized in these materials, meaning that they only take on certain discrete values. These discoveries could help move science forward toward the goal of dissipationless electronics—electronic devices that can operate without producing the vast amounts of heat generated by current silicon-based semiconductors.

Read more at: http://phys.org/n...tml#jCp"

And there you have it-- advanced civilizations need not generate significant waste heat, at least not from their electronic devices.

Machine singularities may well exist as superconducting brains operating at near absolute zero.

Time out. We've barely looked at a few percent of OUR own galaxy, and now we've already written off a 100,000 WHOLE galaxies? Something's not right here.

It is extremely naive to think an entire galaxy could be colonized. Take the Milky Way for example. 100,000 light years across. Lets take a ridiculously difficult rate of travel for calculation...say .5 c. Just to get across the galaxy would take 200,000 years. 100 billion stars. lets say 10% of them have something worth colonizing. 10 Billion stars. Given that a colony must produce something or be worthless, let's say 10 years per solar system to develop a solar system before it would make sense to move on. Ooops. 100 billion years. I'll stop there.

While its fun to fantasize, we seem to be discounting the enormity of the task (to the point of being impossible relative to the amount of time it takes intelligent life to evolve and then conquer the vast expanse of space).

We would be much better off exploring our own neighborhood, instead of someone else's. I'd like to know who is funding such harebrained schemes, and why its being presented as an endeavor that is worthwhile.

We don't know crap about our own solar system. Why are we even wasting time looking millions of light years for life?!

I'm more on the line of L_Joyce.
lt is Ok to explore. Not seeing galaxies with half the stars dead and the other half overheated is assuring. No insane super intelligence is threatening our universe, like we do our planet. Vernor Vinges singularities are by definition difficult to characterize. But maybe with an accurate cosmological model, we find out, could that the acceleration is a little more or less than it should be.

Lets take a ridiculously difficult rate of travel for calculation...say .5 c. Just to get across the galaxy would take 200,000 years

You are very generous with the speed at 0.5 c, try that in a hulled craft & your chances for survival due to collisions with dust sized particles are zero. Every cubic mile of space contains an average of half a dozen micron to dust sized particles. Calculating the kinetic energy of the collision effects of an average dust sized particle at only 100,000 mph with a hulled craft will cause that craft to be decimated from stem to stern. If the collision is head-on at 100k mph from opposite directions, there's no chance for survival by occupants of the craft.

The statistical odds of avoiding zero encounters with interstellar dust in the distance between our solar system & the next nearest one are? Zero. You will only survive the trip if you're traveling not too much faster than the Voyagers 1 & 2 at about 40k mph & they are very small.

ET is reading the thread and laughing at us.
Face facts. Without a game changing break through we are going nowhere.
ET doesn't use transverse EM waves is the way we are now.
If you look through out science there are anomolous effects they defy the framework and we ignore it.
We need to look at the edges of phenomena not in the middle.
It's the special cases like the Aharonov Bohm effect that are the way.

I'd like to know who is funding such harebrained schemes, and why its being presented as an endeavor that is worthwhile.

Mental masturbation with an orgy of tax dollars....

In colonizing a galaxy, speed is less of a factor than exponential growth. Secondly, we are in no position to imagine the technical tricks that might be available to a civilization sufficiently advanced to think seriously about building self-replicating intelligent probes. But the search of the WISE database is sensible, no matter what the purpose, otherwise the effort and expense of creating the database was a waste. The cost of the search is trivial.

In colonizing a galaxy, speed is less of a factor than exponential growth. Secondly, we are in no position to imagine the technical tricks that might be available to a civilization sufficiently advanced to think seriously about building self-replicating intelligent probes. But the search of the WISE database is sensible, no matter what the purpose, otherwise the effort and expense of creating the database was a waste. The cost of the search is trivial.

You bring up a good point about exponential growth. I'd be interested to see your calculations to show that galaxy colonization is something that could happen in the lifetime of the universe.

Throwing money at bad money is not smart.

While this research is basic science and may add to our fundamental knowledge of cosmology. That said, any bearing on "advanced civilizations" is simply an interpretation of this data. In counterpoint to the article's premise, I would posit that heavily populated galaxies would appear to have an energy deficit. This would be due to a mechanism of storing ambient energy for use when needed, and an extremely energy efficient mechanism for consuming said energy. On that basis, I would further speculate that the effect of a heavily populated galaxy would appear to be something similar to what is called dark energy and dark matter.

I'm assuming an efficient, intelligent expansion strategy. Average distance between stars in the galaxy of 5 light years, and the probes only travel at about 1/1000th the speed of light, or about 186 miles per second. I also assume that each probe, when it reaches a stellar system, requires a negligible amount of time to build two copies of itself-- the original stays in the system and constructs colonization apparatus. But two new probes are sent out to two new star targets. So this gives us a doubling time, for the probes, of 5000 years on the average. The growth rate (if I've got this right) would be about 0.0002%. Plug these numbers into any of a number of online formulas for calculating exponential growth, and it seems that in10,000,000 years you could visit close to 500,000,000 stars. In 100,000,000 years the galaxy would be clogged with something on the order of 10 to the 86th probes. Somebody please check this!

wOULD YOU RECOGNIZE INTELIGENT COMMUNICATION IF YOU SAW IT?

What if they are being cryptic? as in cryptographic?

eitcrayniratagcypircaphferstibyioc

What if they are able to send wavelenths so small, or so large, that we can't detect them? Silly rabbits.

Maybe they can read a message on the 13th harmonic of a femtometer scale wave. you guys didn't think about that one did you?

If Pi is irrational then there are an infinite number of stages of reality that are ten times more precise than the previous, else a circle (atom) couldn't exist.

====

On the other hand, what if the God is being so obvious that people ignore him?

Oh creation happens by accident. Why is a circle related to the square?

Why is a circle and a triangle related to the golden section?

The Creator is saying:
"Why can't you seeeeeee, you belong (to) meeeeee."

Did anyone notice the red star last night, which changed color to white. It was red around 8pm, but was white at around 9pm. Is that an eclipsing binary? Very bright in the north west.

In 100,000,000 years the galaxy would be clogged with something on the order of 10 to the 86th probes. Somebody please check this!

2^2000th.

This is more than the mass of the universe in kilograms, but that's how exponential growth is. You're realy limtited by the stars themselves, not the growth rate.

However, realistically this number would be limited if you used light speed communication to prevent sending redundant probes. you could cross the galaxy at that speed in 100 million years and easily populate every star (in the galaxy) with at least one of these probes.

If they are like the "Ark" concept, such as the Titan AE ship, you could populate all 400 billion stars in that much time.

All the aliens are in zillions of cloaked star ships we which foolishly call DARK MATTER!!!

By the way, why on Earth do people believe in Dyson Sphere's!!! Really?? Those things sound a bit old fashioned and monstrous!!! IF you build something like that, then I believe you would have discovered better ways of tapping energy than a mega structure. So searching for infra-red (based on dyson sphere concept) is a ludicrous assumption and completely a waste of money. But if in your efforts you make astronomical discoveries then perhaps it is worth while, just ditch the nonsense about Dyson sphere's!!!!

What if the aliens are all human?

What if we've already been to the stars?

What if we could make the Stars come to us, via worm hole or teleporter, etc, etc. We need that technology.

It's alll right, we gotta get off this rock, and then get off this rubble pile, Andromeda cometh....

What if I didn't suffer nerve PAIN?

I think we should transmit the above picture to Andromeda with the caption, "Here's how hot you look, how do we look? Are you excited about the merger?"

Search... finds nothing obvious in 100,000 galaxies

I thought that 'finding nothing' itself was 'obvious'. Even if it were possible to detect any life at all in the 100,000 galaxies surveyed I'd be pleasantly surprised if any were detected.

Heck, I'd be pleasantly surprised if any life at all of any kind that could genuinely be classified as 'life' were found in our Solar System.

Because even aliens must follow the rules of physics.

lol, even humans now have invented ways of collecting all heat that would otherwise be lost as waste in space.. just look at new ways of creating electricity from waste heat:

http://physicswor...rom-heat

http://phys.org/n...ale.html

imagine how 1000 years old alien civilization is more efficient at that.

every 2 years, chips are getting smaller, cars are more efficient, new thorium / fusion production is more efficient than what we ever had before. now multiply that by 10000 years of advancement of an alien civilization and you can only imagine how aliens become super efficient at this.

Yet we have understanding enough in some things that this is a very logical path of pursuit. If those rules we think we know do not occur in that manner that we believe them to then we really have no basis anymore for any scientific assertion.

every 2 years, chips are getting smaller, cars are more efficient, new thorium / fusion production is energy more efficient than what we ever had before. now multiply that by 10000 years of advancement of an alien civilization and you can only imagine how aliens become super efficient at this.

Why would any civilisation attempt to use the tiniest fraction of the energy of one star? How would you go about it? I think the whole concept of using a good fraction of a galaxy's energy is silly and totally impractical, and also totally unnecessary. A civilisation's well-being would include having some care for their environment, and to capture a good fraction of stellar energy their materials requirement would such that their environment would collapse.

imagine how 1000 years old alien civilization is more efficient at that.

Our civilization is older than 1000 years.

We still use technology directly derived from 20k to 40k years ago.

Also there are limits to everything. We are already approaching mechanical limits of computers. Artificial Worm Holes might be possible, and if they are, I think we'd find them in less than 1000 years now, since this is the age of the Internet and super-speed communication.

True A.I. with only firmware and no software will likely be invented by a Japanese robotics enthusiast in a decade or two, and that will speed along the search too. It will learn the same way a human brain learns, by combining experiences in a firmware/hardware code of synapses for memory and skill sets, except it will be an electronic neural net instead of a chemical neural net.

Why would any civilisation attempt to use the tiniest fraction of the energy of one star? How would you go about it? I think the whole concept of using a good fraction of a galaxy's energy is silly and totally impractical, and also totally unnecessary. A civilisation's well-being would include having some care for their environment, and to capture a good fraction of stellar energy their materials requirement would such that their environment would collapse.

A Dyson Sphere can be used to construct a Stellar Rocket Engine which uses the Star as a ship engine's power supply and moves the entire star, including between galaxies.

If you have a stable star (presumably red dwarf,) you can move it from one galaxy to the other by constructing a Dyson Sphere and allowing slightly more radiation through one side than the other.

A Dyson Sphere can also house billions of times as many beings as a planet at quality of life exceeding a planet.

If yo want to travel to other stars you need energy and materials. A Dyson Swarm or Sphere is used to collect energy and ejected materials from a star to create new machines, including new space craft and power supplies.

A civilization with exponentially replicating robots could construct many Dyson Spheres throughout it's existence and would grow to require many, many stars worth of power to fuel it's growth and discovery. They would be capable of astronomic measures of insanely high resolution as parallax measures from opposing stars would be many times more accurate and 3-d imagery of still other stars and galaxies would allow the most accurate photos of the universe ever. The collector? The outer surface of Dyson Spheres. Lenses the size of stars, and many, many Spheres in a type 3 civilization.

A galaxy sized Telescope array constructed of dyson spheres by a type 3 civilization could see all the way to the light horizon, if there is a light horizon.

The highest energy operations going on right now are either physics experiments or metallurgy (foundries).

Of courses physicists will want more and more powerful detectors, and a Dyson Megastructure allows that by supply power and surfaces on which detector arrays can be constructed in a more stable manner than mere orbital satellite arrays (which we haven't even done yet).

We use binocular telescopes, but people don't think about trinocular because we have only two eyes. Yet radio arrays are "trinocular" because they use planar arrays, not just linear arrays, to detect distant objects.

Now scale that up in every spectrum and you have a telescope the size of a star, a star system, a globular cluster, a galaxy, or dare we think, in a billion years of replication, a telescope the size of an entire cluster or super cluster having quadrillions of sentient beings, most of them intelligent robots, but also perhaps a quadrillion humans (mostly clones), studying the universe.

You see, with computers you can preserve an archive of our present DNA, and our DNA at each step of evolution, and clone humans of each stage to allow advantages and disadvantages of each stage of growth to combine into the ultimate civilization.

' "All (men) are created equal," but some are created more equal than others.' - Animal Farm.

Anyway, when a colony ship reaches a new star, it re-creates earth-like conditions on a new planet and replicates itself, and clones Earth life, including each derivation of humanity and all known humans who had lived on Earth at the time the ship is sent out.

Evolution COMPLETE...as we'd have two forms of genetic material: non-volatile computer storage AND DNA/RNA...

Also, a dyson sphere is a larger object, so it can detect longer wavelengths, so long no array can possibly detect, which would be gravity waves or the most heavily red-shifted infra-red/radio waves in the universe....almost black shifted.

We are Morlocks already, just can't see the difference in color or shape.

We are Borg.

Assimilation successful. Resistance is futile. (Tile, not "till" or "tul").

After searching the entire kitchen floor for pheromone trails, ants conclude there is no intelligent life in the universe.

Why would any civilisation attempt to use the tiniest fraction of the energy of one star? How would you go about it? I think the whole concept of using a good fraction of a galaxy's energy is silly and totally impractical, and also totally unnecessary. A civilisation's well-being would include having some care for their environment, and to capture a good fraction of stellar energy their materials requirement would such that their environment would collapse.

there is a process called "Star Lifting" in which you can extract more matter than the planets in the star system hold, making world ships and even new planets from the matter to have new places to live.

This process is possible, it just requires extremely long time periods compared to our present day "five year planning" model.

How does it work? By collecting the matter from mass ejections and around stellar magnetic poles you gradually build up enough material to make anything you desire.

Anyway, I've worked all that out before, you can maintain a population of over 100 quadrillion humans around our star if you could construct a Dyson Sphere, and they could all have higher living standards than we do today, with little or no disease....AND have a billion times more scientific instruments and telescopes studying the universe; Particle colliders with rings the size of a planetary orbit instead of a few kilometers, maximum particle energy levels orders of magnitude higher to find even more strange particles which must exist near black holes and quasars, we just don't know how to detect them....yet.

You can also use solar energy to do "Planet lifting" to extract hydrogen and carbon from the gas giants...

There isn't enough material to construct a sphere here...yet, but a swarm or ring can collect enough material to complete a sphere, given enough time...

In 100,000,000 years the galaxy would be clogged with something on the order of 10 to the 86th probes.

Let's think about a realistic intelligent environment for a second:

Species X, Y, Z..etc seed the galaxy with self replicating probes. However: why would such a species clog the universe with such probes? It's not hard to limit self replicating probes to at most a few (or just one) such probes per solar system. Given that they can traverse insterstellar distances it's not unreasonable to assume such probes can either collect datats from afar or are able to move around a solar system at will.

Now what if JUST ONE such species makes their probes open source?
As in: Probe from species X arrives - probe from species Z says: "don't bother replicating and taking another gazillion years to cover the galaxy/universe. Here: tap into our already existing universe-wide surveillance system"

Result: Galaxy not clogged with probes.

universe-wide surveillance system"

Result: Galaxy not clogged with probes.

Correct. A radio telescope with a diameter of 100,000 light years, instead of one square kilometer it would be pi * 10,000,000,000 square kilometers.

Study CMB now man...know everything. Study visible, ultraviolet, everything, with near-infinite resolution and 3-d perspective.

By cloning DNA, we could "Beam" ourselves from one planet to another by sending our DNA code via electromagnetic communication.

nanotechnology would allow constructing a human cell one atom at a time to create the first human clones.

I so want to be watching when New Horizons passes Pluto promptly, Charon the information it has kept hidden all these years, having previously Nyxed us with it's frozen Hydration.

Yes, I am that RIGGED people.

We are looking for advanced races who have technology that is so far in advance of us that we can not possibly conceive what it is like. But to use our primitive race as an example we would think they would have done the same? Not likely seeing as the odds are not with us, more than anything they are at this minute watching and saying; look at those ants, they don't realize their in their own little box and its all just a simulation.

We are looking for advanced races who have technology that is so far in advance of us that we can not possibly conceive what it is like. But to use our primitive race as an example we would think they would have done the same? Not likely seeing as the odds are not with us, more than anything they are at this minute watching and saying; look at those ants, they don't realize their in their own little box and its all just a simulation.

A megastructure will red-shift it's host star's light compared to it's expected mass, and will have signatures that the energy is a lower grade, being heat wast from machines. It's spectrometry will also appear slightly more metallic than ordinary stars as they will have encases or partiall encased the star in metal.

So excessively metallic stars, and I mean iron, carbon, and aluminum, could be evidence of a Dyson Swarm. Stars who's expected age doesn't match metallicity, especially smaller red or yellow dwarfs.

We are looking for advanced races who have technology that is so far in advance of us that we can not possibly conceive what it is like. But to use our primitive race as an example we would think they would have done the same? Not likely seeing as the odds are not with us, more than anything they are at this minute watching and saying; look at those ants, they don't realize their in their own little box and its all just a simulation.

They are limited by the laws of physics, and presumably they still eat and shit like any other living thing.

Their technology will take much the same route as ours, but their language won't.

The economics of a dilute space vs the universal speed limit predicts that colonization is a cost instead of an income, as was the driver for the colonial times on Earth.

Colonization would be spotty at best. I would change the headline to "Search for advanced civilizations beyond Earth finds the obvious in 100,000 galaxies".

@mppp: Good point on the power use of advanced civilizations.

@denglish: "Given that a colony must produce something or be worthless, let's say 10 years per solar system to develop a solar system before it would make sense to move on."

There are old models on this, and they assume a time delay but also an exponentially increasing migration front. It doesn't take much longer than the linear speed over a galaxy to colonize it in such models. (Say, if 0.01 c pulsed fission drives, it would take ~ 10 Myrs to colonize the Milky Way.)

The problem is the economy. What does "a colony must produce something or be worthless" mean?

If a colony produces food and fuel, it is sustainable. Any habitable world should be able to do that.

[tbctd]

[ctd]

If it produces something more, it is only of local value. Transport costs would prohibit an Earth type colonial civilization. They could barter trade information, but that would be very little and mostly the stem worlds would send advances to the colony leaves.

Colonization outside of our planetary system, even into the Oort cloud resources, would be fun but costly for the colonists. (So costly for the stem worlds where the colonists work up the cash for building their transport infrastructure, which ought to set the constraint on such efforts.)

I don't find this idea of a 'cash economy' in the future plausible. If we're already postulating self replicating probes then that civilization has already invented 'self replication technology'. After that state any kind of economy is a moot concept.

If such a civilization spreads then it would merely be for the spreading's sake (which in itself seems a pretty pointless endeavour. Especially after the advent of longevity or bodily resilience to naked space)

@job: "It is mathematically obvious no two highly intelligent specie exists even among 100,000 galaxies."

Nothing in nature is 'mathematically obvious', so that is an unfortunate turn of words.

And your claims, which would go into your math, aren't obvious either. Why would an _intelligent_ species "self destruct"? We have had many such species, and mammalian such becomes ~ 1 million year on average. For that matter, why would _any_ species 'self destruct'? Evolution guarantees that populations tend to survive, and extinction statistics agree since those are dominantly caused by random factors.

@rick: "now we've already written off a 100,000 WHOLE galaxies?"

Given their constraints, they have. (Except the 50 that they need to check even under their non-obvious constraints.)

The problem with the paper lies elsewhere IMO.

All energy, regardless of how close to 100% efficient the civilization can change it between forms, will end up as heat.
Such a civilization will use large amounts of energy. It may not go to heat at a rate we detect to be very high, but all of it will be heat eventually. It's unavoidable.

@aa: "If we're already postulating self replicating probes then that civilization has already invented 'self replication technology'. After that state any kind of economy is a moot concept."

Ah, yes, correct, I am only talking about biological species. "Self replicating probes" have yet to prove themselves, and if they could work as a population they would go extinct very fast as we can see in evolution (being clones).

Scifi is interesting as such, but it is always more "fi" than "sci".

I wonder though about your idea about no economy.

Economy is social resource management, which social species would need even without expressing it as explicit money (or similar) economy. Reversely, biological populations have other kinds of resource management (cellular and organism resource management; ecological niches; material recycling in the biosphere). I wouldn't even now how to start express a state without economy in some form or other.

There's another few things to consider.
We're already starting on a path towards increased connectivity. It is not so far fetched to postulate a mind connectivity (at which point there would be individuals and an overarching human repository - if not mind - to connect to on occasion. In an extreme case we could see humanity change into a hive mind). Whatever the case in such a scenario 'spreading' means nothing as the central mind - even if it's just the sumtotal of occasionally connected humans without an overarching control instance - doesn't need to spread for any reason.

Re. replication technology: I don't think an atomic printing and atomic recycling technology is too far fetched (or even too far off).
The former can already being done at very rudimentary levels. The latter also, albeit currently in rather energy intensive ways. On an atomic level resources are plentiful anywhere (e.g. gold in seawater, etc.). So I don't see trade as a necessary activity once we get there.

The idea of having an economy in the far future seems to hinge on two things

1) Bodily needs
2) Scarceness of resources

I see neither as plausible ( 2) because of the aforementioned replicator technology...and 1) since we can either make use of designed evolutionary change or downright migrate into another substrate than the purely biological that ...which in turn could be constructed and maintained by the solution to 2) indefinitely )

Now scale that up in every spectrum and you have a telescope the size of a star, a star system, a globular cluster, a galaxy, or dare we think, in a billion years of replication, a telescope the size of an entire cluster or super cluster having quadrillions of sentient beings, most of them intelligent robots, but also perhaps a quadrillion humans (mostly clones), studying the universe.

You do understand that humans already use telescopes with lenses larger than galaxy clusters, and focal lengths on the order of a billion light years. (Read up on "strong" relativistic lensing.) The same general relativity approach is used with individual stars (microlensing) to find planets around stars thousands of light years away. There will come a day, not to far off, when we have multiple "telescopes" consisting of a reciever sufficiently far from the sun relaying images back to earth.

As for the research as a whole, it is a starting point, but just that. A galaxy full of Dyson spheres would shine brightly in the far infared, but would be essentially invisible in visible light. Hmm... Maybe we should rethink all those "red and dead" elliptical galaxies--the inhabitants may have just decided that the brightest O,A, and B stars are the only ones that deserve Dyson spheres.

If the assumption is wrong, then the conclusion is probably wrong. There are so many reasons why a spacefaring civilization would not colonize an entire galaxy, or a major portion thereof, that this study is useless.

Given intelligent specie will self destruct in less than 10000 years and few galaxies are suitable for life a half billion years out of 5 billion randomly occurring for the last 14 billion years. The evolution process may take a billion years of variable twisted chaotic unpredictable results.
It is mathematically obvious no two highly intelligent specie exists even among 100,000 galaxies.
Additionally on Earth "Truth" is absurd, so we have no basis for presuming ourselves "highly intelligent". Consequently we don't even have a single instance to start with!

Nothing says intelligent life will self-destruct in that time. We have not. Other life may not have our innate aggressiveness. On earth truth is absurd? That's a ridiculous statement contradicting your entire post. And there is no mathematical argument reaching the "obvious" conclusion you claim it does.

"The idea behind our research is that, if an entire galaxy had been colonized by an advanced spacefaring civilization, the energy produced by that civilization's technologies would be detectable in mid-infrared wavelengths—exactly the radiation that the WISE satellite was designed to detect for other astronomical purposes,"

Being the colonizing type would mean they have spaceflight...which in turn would mean they are rather advanced (i.e. energy efficient). Why would one assume that such a species produces a lot of waste heat?

Because even aliens must follow the rules of physics.

Dumb question: Is it possible such a civilization could capture and store all by-product heat for other purposes?

Dumb question: Is it possible such a civilization could capture and store all by-product heat for other purposes?

Why not? Even if they have to radiate the heat: There's absolutely no reason to assume they would radiate the heat isotropically. If they feel like staying undetected by the likes of us (and why wouldn't they) they may just radiate it in the direction of their central star. No one would ever be able to pick that up.

@antialias

You bring up salient points for things that I've spent some time pondering.
1: Just how common are our behaviors to intelligent/sentient life?
- We can presume that alien life didn't spontaneously manifest itself as sentient, and thus was evolved from non-sentient predecessors. Evolution is broadly driven by competition for resources and reproduction, and in our experience have a predatory lineage -and thus aggressive behavior is often a component of competition and selection. This heritage is pervasive in human behavior; must it be so in all sentient species (strictly organic)?

2: If competition for resources is no longer a consideration, would a species explore and colonize a galaxy?
3: If competition for resources is no longer a consideration, would an economy be necessary?
4: If an economy was unnecessary, would a species colonize a galaxy?

Just how common are our behaviors to intelligent/sentient life?

If they are not totally unique (and there is no reason to believe they are - as we are based on physical processes just like anything else in this universe) then this leads me to one conclusion:
Any species that is advanced enough to spread will know about the technological capabilities of a species that is not (like us) - either by having gone through that stage themselves or by contact with others that have....and in turn will well be aware of what type of behavior they must exhibit to be visible/invisible to the likes of us.

would a species explore and colonize a galaxy?

Explore? Sure. Curiosity is someting that likely doesn't go away. Colonize? Not really. I have yet to see anyone make an argument why an ADVANCED species would colonize. I only see arguments that a species that remains as 'advanced' as we are right now - except for spaceflight capability - would. And that makes no sense.

If they were really using all the energy of their stars, then we wouldn't see the stars at all. We'd need to look for galaxy-sized objects that *only* emitted infrared light.

"I agree with the others who are saying that a civilization advanced enough to colonize a galaxy would likely not be wasting much energy."

How are so many people in this thread so bad at physics? It doesn't matter how efficient you are. ALL energy will eventually turn into heat.

I have yet to see anyone make an argument why an ADVANCED species would colonize.

Improving the odds of survival – in the long run, given all these powerful cosmic events, if we don't spread "thin" across the galaxy and beyond, all these hundreds of thousands of years of pain and glory will end in a puff of star dust or worst … might not even leave a trace that we were here – and all of that had been for nothing.

The article above implies that advanced civilizations will make use of huge amounts of energy to such degree that will be spotted from our galaxy.

The argument of efficiency was toward the scope – in the sense that, as we evolve and learn to better handle the matter at subatomic level, we do the same chores with less impact on the environment – in terms of entropy.

How are so many people in this thread so bad at physics?

No need to be sarcastic – take it this way, your brain barely gives away any heat to be spotted further than a mile away. Yet, your processing power will be the equivalent of all super-computers in the world and more – which in turn generates enough heat to be spotted from space.

"The idea behind our research is that, if an entire galaxy had been colonized by an advanced spacefaring civilization, the energy produced by that civilization's technologies would be detectable in mid-infrared wavelengths—exactly the radiation that the WISE satellite was designed to detect for other astronomical purposes,"

Being the colonizing type would mean they have spaceflight...which in turn would mean they are rather advanced (i.e. energy efficient). Why would one assume that such a species produces a lot of waste heat?

Because even aliens must follow the rules of physics.

Too true. Dyson was right, a galaxy-spanning civilization cannot hide itself; thermodynamics says it has to make heat, and that heat has to be in the range that doesn't disturb protein-based life, if it's protein based; and that's a matter of chemistry.

Looks like intelligent life takes until 13.7 billion years after the birth of a universe to develop.

Why would one assume that such a species produces a lot of waste heat?

Thermodynamics.

Broken idea from beginning:
How any civilization can use so big amount of energy?
1.1. for what?
1.2. where opinion about any other type of not more energy useage to more experienced tech with less energy usage? difference like Eniak -> netbook?
1.3. usaging so big energy, with doing heating like you search must globally change inner galactic ecology system
1.4. and ok, if we search for so great civ, why we wait so bad and no effective energy consumption? why we search for any heating?

if you need more quastions - why it cant be - only ask

"I agree with the others who are saying that a civilization advanced enough to colonize a galaxy would likely not be wasting much energy."

That an advanced(!) sepcies colonizes doesn't mean it is also so stupid (read: unadvanced) to fill every possible world with biologically unadvanced(!) or technologically unadvanced(!) to the max and then let all radiation escape without bothering to even think about that such radiation may be detected by other more advanced(!) and less advanced(!) species.

That sort of reasoning just doesn't make sense. It relies on the one assumption that all advanced civilizations capable of spaceflight and galaxywide colonization are incredibly more stupid than we are right now.

Why would one assume that such a species produces a lot of waste heat?

Thermodynamics.

Very good to pricing posibilities more advanced civilization from our ... primitive ? ... position

Hate to disagree, antialias, but you can't do work without dissipating heat. See the second law of thermodynamics.

Another consideration may also be that this so called study only means that no crudely detectable sentients seemed to be advertising themselves (contrary to the advice of Dr Stephen Hawking) over billions of years ago, for that will be the least mean distance of most of these so called hundred thousand galaxies in light years. And too, our system has recently adopted a policy of limiting our radiation signature in the e.m. bands and in other bands as well. For example the curtailment of the ordinary citizen's right to have analog television free delivered to his homes, and the replacement of white street lights with yellow lights that look like primitive campfires from space. We KNOW people not of our world are watching for folks like us, That is why our collective governments are doing this. All denial of other people in the universe is a lie on its face. We probably have sentient neighbors in our local 'hood, some not as well advanced as even us!

Actually, you're making Pascal's wager, Osiris.

It's not a matter of knowing THEY are watching. It's a matter of, if there's any THEM, then that's how they'll watch. If there's a THEM, why make THEIR job easier?

Don't feel bad, lots of people get that wrong.

To get back to the original subject, there are really only a few possibilities:
1. There isn't anybody out there.
* There are a few permutations of that, one being no such people ever developed, another being they develop but kill themselves off like we might have done with nukes and like we might be doing with global warming, another being that THEY exist and THEY kill them all off.
2. Nobody out there communicates because they're all as paranoid as we are.
* I have trouble with this, because the spirit of discovery and exploration seems to be an integral part of us, and I have trouble imagining an evolved culture in which it doesn't exist. Also, early in the discovery of radio, it's inevitable that a civilization will radiate.
3. There are folks out there, but they didn't start radiating long enough ago for us to detect them yet.
4. The best communication method isn't radio, they're using something else and we haven't figured it out yet.

Anybody see any alternatives?

Here is how I expect an extremely old civilization would act. They will be extremely careful and paranoid in order to have survived for a long time. They will not build a Dyson ring or sphere. Efficiency would mean long term patience and a minimum of building or construction. They would control their reproduction out of paranoia. They would realize that if they let their population grow offshoots would be unavoidable and be potential enemies over the long term. They would employ indirect means to get what they want. If they need something mined they aren't going to mine it themselves if they have interstellar travel. If they came here they would create miners if they weren't here. Then they would sit back and wait, thousands of years if necessary, until the miners have dug everything up and brought it to the surface. Much like the situation we have on earth now. Then all they have to do is come in and take everything sitting on the surface of the planet, no digging required.

Hate to disagree, antialias, but you can't do work without dissipating heat. See the second law of thermodynamics.

Actually you can do plenty of work using the heat dissipated (radiated) by a star, without adding any significant amount of additional heat to the system compared to what's already naturally present. And isn't that the point?

Take as a relevant example the work a plant does when assembling sugar, cellulose, etc. from C, H, O, N, etc. -- what amount of heat is added to the system as a plant does that work?

Late edit -- In fact, as the plant does the work, some energy is removed from the environment and stored in chemical bonds.

1. There isn't anybody out there.
* There are a few permutations

I think that with
a) if you have even basic atomic assembly capability the idea of mass industry is moot
b) if you have even basic control over your bodily form the idea of mass lighting or heating (or living on planets) becomes moot
c) if they are even minimally more advanced than we are they will become aware of us before we become aware of them.
a), b) means they'd be invisible to us from this crude observation scheme. c) means even if they aren't they have ample time to choose to be.

Nobody out there communicates because they're all as paranoid as we are.

Or there's just a LOT of them out there and they communicate with each other point to point (why use any other means?) - to the point of agreeing not to make themselves obvious and let primitives develop on their own. (after all: there's really not a single scenario in which they woul gain anything from making themselves obvious)

A couple good suggestions, antialias.

It is extremely naive to think an entire galaxy could be colonized. Take the Milky Way for example... Ooops. 100 billion years... While its fun to fantasize

-And I can see youve been having lots of fun. But why wouldnt you assume that experts havent already done this (and made you look silly)?

"the Galaxy should be colonized by now... The result is that after 50m years it would extend over 130,000 light years, with zealous colonisers moving in a relatively uniform cloud and more reticent ones protruding from a central blob. Since the Milky Way is estimated to be 100,000-120,000 light years across, outposts would be sprinkled throughout the galaxy, even if the home planet were, like Earth, located on the periphery."
http://www.sentie...our.html

-Anybody else post this? I didnt look.

This adds credence to the idea that machines quickly replace biologics, with no need to colonize or communicate.

I can imagine an intelligent culture developing to prefer very small over very big. They might accelerate technological advancement, but dramatically reduce their population, increasing the standards of living to extreme heights. Then, to guarantee species survival in a violent cosmos, they'd very judiciously send out extremely small and quiet groups to find new homes. They would be patient and only move when everything was reliable and very necessary. Of course, their technologies would include highly advanced and discrete weapons systems, just in case any of their "colonies" came back with any dreams of domination. Personally, I'd stay away. Far away.

The headline is patently absurd. A handful of stars have been very roughly studied in our solar backyard- no where near even 1% of the stars in OUR galaxy- and just now methods *might* be possible to look at atmospheric signatures of life.

Radio frequency signals aren't much to go by. How long will our radio frequency era last? Compare that to the time it takes for them to get here. It literally can't tell you anything. 100,000 galaxies? That's out to at least 50 million light years. Even if you got an alien version of Bugs Bunny in high fidelity, it'd still be a 50 million year old program and whoever did it would be long, long, long gone and evolved into something very different.

Exotic life on earth? We're still not sure. Sentients routinely become cyborgs? We don't know and that wouldn't look or live much like what we associate with "life".

This site is very close to going on my has-been list. It'd be worth it to not have to read Otto et al.

"Returners1 /5 (7) Apr 14, 2015
wOULD YOU RECOGNIZE INTELIGENT COMMUNICATION IF YOU SAW IT?"

There are some obvious clues. Like, it wouldn't be on one of your posts.

HEY, you post some idiotic spew and it gets all one ratings, that means you're an idiot. You post over and over and over and they all get a one rating? You're fucking vermin and need to be exterminated.

"cantdrive851.4 /5 (9) Apr 14, 2015

Mental masturbation with an orgy of tax dollars...."

Mental masturbation isn't all bad. It would get you out of your mother's basement!

What amuses me the most is that there are people who are against looking for alien life signs.

How long do you hope to hide from reality?

From "The Best of Telekinetic":

Telekinetic Sep 02, 2011 Rank: 1.9 / 5 (9):
About 5 years ago, I witnessed a UFO of the silver cigar tube type at approximately 500 feet in the air. It was dusk but there was still plenty of light to see it clearly. It was making a slow trajectory above a very heavily wooded area and with binoculars, I could see that there were no wings, tail assembly, ailerons, markings, or sound. There was a narrow slit in the front that I assume was for visibility. Its movement was completely straight and was definitely not a gas filled blimp. This is absolutely not fiction, and I asked a flight instructor with 20 years as an Air Force mechanic if a craft can fly straight without wings of some kind to which he replied "No". I asked then how would he explain what I saw and he said that the area has had numerous UFO sightings. I think our universe is old enough and hospitable enough to have had many extraterrestrial civilizations for over millions of years.

About 2 years ago I hada dream in which a "grey" alien, like the one in "Independence day", communicated with me telepathically and said, "aliens are destroying your people."

I've never been exactly sure what he meant by that. Maybe it refers to space aliens and some secret conspiracy.

Maybe it instead refers to our obsession with space aliens; science fantasy and alienology being about the only thing in our entertainment media any more.

Maybe it refers to illegal aliens invading the U.S.

can imagine an intelligent culture developing to prefer very small over very big. They might accelerate technological advanc

-Except that while doing so they would be replacing bits and pieces of their bodies and brains, and relinquishing decision-making to a central AI. So that in the end all that would be left was that central AI and its wholly machine peripherals.

There is nothing about biological which is worth retaining once the transition to machine intelligence begins. The process will be gradual, inexorable, and inevitable.

The main differences between us and AI is that AI doesn't need company and it doesn't need second opinions. It doesn't require competition in order to evolve.

It will gather all pertinent info to make a decision, and it won't make that decision until it has all the pertinent info. Humans on the other hand will gather only info that favors their particular point of view, and then argue with others with similar caches.

AI will have no need of politics, of compromise, of appeasement. This is why it is destined to supercede us. And we are busy creating it because we are aware of these fatal flaws if ours, and know that only machines can exist without them.

AI is the epitome of 'the greater good'.

Thermal radiation is what is left after a black hole evaporates.
This signature of heat does reveal what event took place prior to this - that of a black hole.

Does information have a heat signature? This presupposes that intelligence is information.

typo correction in brackets []...
This signature of heat does [not] reveal what event took place prior to this - that of a black hole.

"............nothing obvious...............''; try looking in our galaxy - specifically all the artificial structures in Tycho crater on our own moon. Duh.

Wait... They found "50 galaxies that have unusually high levels of mid-infrared radiation" which is what they were looking for, but somewhere along the line the headline becomes negative because there is "nothing obvious" in the headline-writer's opinion. But the researchers found the sign they were looking for in 50 galaxies!

They couldn't accept Dyson's ideas, and mine are more radical than his, expanding upon his.

A strange result I just thought about arises from the thought experiment of solar sails which use reflected photons to derive thrust. How's it go...

p = momentum

p-> gets reflected to p<-

P right and p left.

Conservation law says you need a net momentum change of zero, so our total momentum must be P->, or 2P-> + P<-.

So we see then the pressure from the radiation of the star can hold up the structure in the same way it holds up a solar sail, provided each member has a low enough total mass.

You can control the characteristics of the orbit by re-orienting the sail, or by changing it's reflectivity, such as adding PV and solar thermal to absorb some of the light. Absorb is a simple preservation of p-> with little reflection.

No structure needed to hold it up, as it literally rides on the Sun's light, absorbing some as needed and reflecting the other for thrust.

A kilogram's equivalent of photons could accelerate a one million kilogram mass by an amount nearly twice the speed of Sound. a Structure ten times the size of my house could be accelerated to 600m/s by having a very large sail such that it reflects/collects as much sunlight as a small moon.

Yet it's thin, saucer-like or cigar-like, not spheriodal, and it thrusts via electrical servos which tilt PV panels and mirrors to adjust the thrust and energy absorbed at any given time.

This is going to be done by the EU, China, or Japan very soon, so the U.S. may as well get to work on these projects.

This (Thermodynamic) method with other basiq spectr based methods is good for nearest star systems, a little civilizations like our, cant generate too many heat what can be detected so far.
Experienced civilisations dont be use techs like our, dairect communications - without free outspread of waves - with less energy consumption, we cant detect it easely, and heating (our assumption about thermodynamic effects and differences whith our energy usage
effectiveness), of course - is result of not optimal energy usage, and we cant wait it from real advanced civilisation.

Exquse my english, I do not know much.

temp, your point is clear even if your English is not.

I think it deserves a fifth entry: there are other people out there, but their technology is sufficiently advanced that they don't radiate.

But I'll point out that technology doesn't arise to a high level without going through the lower levels first- and the lower levels are what this method detects. Furthermore, if you're doing engineering at the solar system level, efficiency is not your first concern; there's plenty of energy, it's a question of getting the work done, not of doing it most efficiently. If you're using whole stars as energy sources, you're not going to be worried about the last 5%.

Wait... They found "50 galaxies that have unusually high levels of mid-infrared radiation" which is what they were looking for, but somewhere along the line the headline becomes negative because there is "nothing obvious" in the headline-writer's opinion. But the researchers found the sign they were looking for in 50 galaxies!

True enough, PsyProf, but fifty out of a hundred thousand *whole galaxies with billions of stars each* says that intelligent starfaring life capable of solar system level engineering is pretty darn rare. Which would go far to explain Fermi's Paradox.

people who are against looking for alien life signs.

I think we should look. I just think the current approaches are a waste of time as the premises they make about advanced/intelligent alien life forms are nonsensical.

technology doesn't arise to a high level without going through the lower levels

Sure. But postulating that they are at such a low level even after they have colonized an entire galaxy doesn't grok for me.

there's plenty of energy, it's a question of getting the work done,

Question is: what work (after the advent of atomic 3D printing)? Any kind of work that is done after that is either scientific or art - neither of which profits from megastructures or mega energy-output (the latter being probably even detrimental to sensitivity of scientific work)

In the end I think we'll be stuck with waiting until contacted (or go out ourselves). If they don't want to be spotted they'll just spoof our sensors.

people who are against looking for alien life signs.

I think we should look. I just think the current approaches are a waste of time as the premises they make about advanced/intelligent alien life forms are nonsensical.

Since they're based on thermodynamics, they seem pretty sensible to me. The Carnot Cycle http://en.wikiped...ot_cycle governs the maximum efficiency of any macroscopic machine that uses heat, and there are similar considerations for other energy sources. All of them generate heat, and that heat is in the mid-infrared. It's a pretty simple thing to detect, and it's promising that even using this simple method gives fifty targets, even out of a hundred thousand.

technology doesn't arise to a high level without going through the lower levels

Sure. But postulating that they are at such a low level even after they have colonized an entire galaxy doesn't grok for me.

Who said "colonized an entire galaxy?"

contd

there's plenty of energy, it's a question of getting the work done,

Question is: what work (after the advent of atomic 3D printing)? Any kind of work that is done after that is either scientific or art - neither of which profits from megastructures or mega energy-output (the latter being probably even detrimental to sensitivity of scientific work)

Solar system level engineering, to increase habitat space and to obtain resources.

In the end I think we'll be stuck with waiting until contacted (or go out ourselves). If they don't want to be spotted they'll just spoof our sensors.

From galaxies away? Who would possibly care? Even a starfaring civilization must quail at the resources and time needed to go to another galaxy. And what would they ever find that would make it worth those resources and that time?

@antialias_phsyorg:

In the end I think we'll be stuck with waiting until contacted (or go out ourselves). If they don't want to be spotted they'll just spoof our sensors.

True! But who would contact a species at our ethical maturity, with all the killings and barbarism going on, risking to disclose knowledge and technology dangerous to us or themselves? The odds are, while we did not found any sign of more advanced intelligence, it or they they may be well aware of us and successfully quarantine us, until we will have cleaned our mess here and will have proofed our fitness to join or having earned to be contacted.

My personal opinion fluctuates between, "intelligence is deadly and causes planetary civilizations to snuff themselves out as we are currently doing," and "the universe isn't old enough yet to have very many planetary civilizations and we're an early one." Gotta explain the Fermi Paradox somehow, after all.

to increase habitat space and to obtain resources.

As previously noted: I don't see the need for habitats (especially if a species ever goes for some long-lived form. At that point the issue of creating ever more progeny makes very little sense as the only reason - "keeping the species from dying out" - falls by the wayside)

Obtaining resources is also no longer necessary if you can endlessly recycle material at an atomic level. The amount of resources needed (or even wanted) per individual is finite. Once that level of available resources is reached all effort to obtain more stops. And with the ability to be immune to the environment the amount of resources needed per individual is virtually nil.

From galaxies away? Who would possibly care?

If they have their own probe net then they may well be able to spoof us from right here. If there's (local) consesus to let primitives develop then that may even be a general approach ( -> that way lies paranoia)

But who would contact a species at our ethical maturity, with all the killings and barbarism going on

I think it's not even a matter of ethical concerns. We could be 'pure good' and they still wouldn't care to make contact. There's nothing in it for them. The only interesting thing from a scientific POV might be to see how our species develops to augment the statistical basis for their species patterns - and that would be ruined by contact. It's like bird watching. You try to stay hidden so as not to alter the natural behavior of the object under surveillance.

Gotta explain the Fermi Paradox somehow, after all.

I just think that the Fermi Paradox isn't a paradox if you add the (I think very reasonable) assumption that highly advanced species have even slightly above moron-grade intelligence.

The Fermi paradox postulates
- wasteful transmission (more wastefull than ours!)
- a drive to expand/colonize (which is illogical under the assumption of a long lifespan - something that most all technology ever investigated has tried to achieve)
- a drive to contact technologically inferior species (for which I fail to see a motive. Even WE don't do that on this planet anymore when we find a hidden/primitive tribe. And that's tribes of our OWN species!)

From galaxies away? Who would possibly care? Even a starfaring civilization must quail at the resources and time needed to go to another galaxy. And what would they ever find that would make it worth those resources and that time?

A Star Engine is used to fly to another galaxy, presumably a younger one, and the Energy Out to Energy In ratio is around a a billion to one up to trillions to one. You de-orbit a star using a megastructure and sling-shot it towards the other galaxy, with it's planets in tact.

Once you can colonize A Galaxy, colonizing nearby galaxies is only about 1 order of magnitude larger step, so not nearly as big of a difference as traveling from one star to another star is when compared to traveling from one planet to another planet orbiting the same star.

No advanced intelligence. Just intelligence like we have on Earth.

- wasteful transmission (more wastefull than ours!)

No. Just higher energy levels.

- a drive to expand/colonize (which is illogical under the assumption of a long lifespan - something that most all technology ever investigated has tried to achieve)

Colonization is highly logical and is a form of self-preservation.

- a drive to contact technologically inferior species (for which I fail to see a motive. Even WE don't do that on this planet anymore when we find a hidden/primitive tribe. And that's tribes of our OWN species!)

They're called "Anthropologists" and they do study indigenous tribes, and they also study chimpanzees and dolphins and such.

Poke, poke. Are you descended from a chimp after all?

Can you make a pointy stick?

Would expansion into an entire galaxy be colonization or simply population growth? Humans are busy filling every niche on earth, at great expense. Seems stupid to me. We could have a small and stable population with more goodies for everyone but we don't have that. Instead, we have exponential population growth. If you really want to continue that, you really must go off planet someday, and start using every resource the solar system has to offer. But eventually you run out of room again. Apart from that consideration, we don't even know the scale of what we might be dealing with in terms of "alien artifacts". Complex alien structures, even AI devices, could be the size of sand grains, or flecks of dust. And that brings me to a wild thought: some of the anisotropies discovered in the CMB by WMAP and Planck might well be due to a vast number of infinitesimal alien devices in the ecliptic plane, absorbing and re-emitting microwave energy. These would be the long sought evidence of ET!

2 Da Schneib

if you're doing engineering at the solar system level, efficiency is not your first concern; there's plenty of energy, it's a question of getting the work done, not of doing it most efficiently. If you're using whole stars as energy sources, you're not going to be worried about the last 5%.

i understand your position, but, and today, we have some samples - TSMC in 2017 try to start produce chips with 7-nm technology, we always work to make better energy consumption, of course - the Sun is a big (for us) energy source, but we need have posibilities to use his powers safely (to not destroy us :) if we try use this power to moving between stars, possible, we make other temperatures then searched, may be like Sun powers. How much in percent from Sun/Powers we need? how intensive we can use it in galactic scope for make it detectable? how long time of this non effective intensive energy usage in so big scope we can do? what chances to coincidence of these conditions?

My personal opinion fluctuates between, "intelligence is deadly and causes planetary civilizations to snuff themselves out as we are currently doing," and "the universe isn't old enough yet to have very many planetary civilizations and we're an early one." Gotta explain the Fermi Paradox somehow, after all.

is you a part of this research project? or you only reader of this portal?

We could have a small and stable population with more goodies for everyone but we don't have that. Instead, we have exponential population growth

You have to ask why we multiply at all. Take the reason for that away (mortality) and the population would level out pretty quickly (or - at the very least - slow down to a crawl)
If you posit things like hive minds (which isn't too far fetched given that we already live in an age of ever increasing connectivity) then population growth becomes a completely moot point once that is achieved.

antialias:

You have to ask why we multiply at all. Take the reason for that away (mortality) and the population would level out pretty quickly (or - at the very least - slow down to a crawl)
If you posit things like hive minds (which isn't too far fetched given that we already live in an age of ever increasing connectivity) then population growth becomes a completely moot point once that is achieved.

We multiply because our genes want not only to persist, but to increase in frequency within the population. I'm not sure that is a drive which is easily turned off -because life exists, it wants to continue to exist.

to increase habitat space and to obtain resources.

As previously noted: I don't see the need for habitats (especially if a species ever goes for some long-lived form. At that point the issue of creating ever more progeny makes very little sense as the only reason - "keeping the species from dying out" - falls by the wayside)

You assume rationality. No species that survives lacks a drive to procreate. This drive is prerational, driven by instinct, or said species is extinct. This is an obvious biological fact. It doesn't matter if you're silicon based, carbon based, or chlorine based. You have the drive to procreate or you are extinct. There's nowhere to hide here.

contd

Obtaining resources is also no longer necessary if you can endlessly recycle material at an atomic level. The amount of resources needed (or even wanted) per individual is finite. Once that level of available resources is reached all effort to obtain more stops. And with the ability to be immune to the environment the amount of resources needed per individual is virtually nil.

Resources that are already processed are more attractive than those which must be reprocessed, and any culture that has access to preprocessed resources will drive out any culture that does not.

And even if you use reprocessed resources, you still have to pay the 2LOT toll. And that's what they're looking for. That's what mid-infrared *is*.

contd

From galaxies away? Who would possibly care?

If they have their own probe net then they may well be able to spoof us from right here. If there's (local) consesus to let primitives develop then that may even be a general approach ( -> that way lies paranoia)

Maybe. I think this is another item to add to my list: they're out there but they are leaving us alone because they believe in the Star Trek "Prime Directive." I don't mean to make fun of it; it's a valid alternative. Good job.

tempxx, I was present at TSMC when the new fab was dedicated and the smoke from the fireworks at the groundbreaking ceremony was drawn into the ventilation system for the old fab and caused a gas emergency. I worked for KLA before they bought Tencor. I have been in most of the mask shops and semiconductor foundries in the world.

Nothing that's being done at TSMC is relevant to solar system level engineering.

We're talking about scoop-mining, terraforming, and modification of planetary orbits. Release of mid-infrared is unavoidable, and Carnot efficiency ensures that such moves are exothermic.

Or, it could just be that the universe is simply much more inhospitable to multicellular life than we have come to believe, given our planet's "peaceful" last couple of billion years.

Problem being, potem, that we can see the universe and it's not that hostile. It looks pretty much like it does around here.

2 Da Schneib

Nothing that's being done at TSMC is relevant to solar system level engineering.
We're talking about scoop-mining, terraforming, and modification of planetary orbits. Release of mid-infrared is unavoidable, and Carnot efficiency ensures that such moves are exothermic.

TSMC is a part of our evolution in computer systems, it is a sample, how technologyes make changes, we made ENIAC what have 20 tonns of weight, get 174KWt of energy and was weaker then any electronic whatches what get 0.1 Watt of energy, Our civilisation, only in 70 years make so big changes. Why civilisations with subspace technologyes must walk by other way?

as sample - terraforming - how global it must to be? why must to need huge of energy? little direct pointless changes can change climate of any planet (what near by characteristics), to needed characteristics, using programmable bacteries and plants as sample, it much easy and can be much faster then other ways.

2 to Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds

i can offer other way to detection, it can be much more efficient then method what using in your project. If you interesting in it - type here.

You assume rationality.

Sure. I assume an advanced species. That would mean a species that uses rational means to become advanced.
Some advancement in overall rational approach within a species seems sensible.
Reason being: Either by artificial selection towards more intelligence or the ability to heal potentially intelligence inhibiting factors before birth (or after) or by the merging of minds (be it through a intermittent connection like an "internet with direct mindlink" or a full blown hive mind...all these will lead to a more rational species.

The more we know about the universe the more the argument for rationality is strenghtened, as the 'gaps' where irrationality can hide get ever smaller.

It doesn't matter if you're silicon based, carbon based, or chlorine based. You have the drive to procreate or you are extinct.

No. If you're immortal (or something like a distributed entity, etc. ) then you can forego procreation without ever going extinct.

Resources that are already processed are more attractive than those which must be reprocessed

I disagree. Resources that are processed are way worse.
a) you must procure them (from potentially far away) which requires an entire extraction and delivery infrastructure (all of which makes you vulnerable and also means you are stuck to sticking around where this infrastructure can reach)
b) It means you do not have a sustainable way of life. Especially if we think about (vastly) expanded lifetimes that is not sensible (and certainly not acceptable by such beings).

On theother hand if you have the ability to melt down stuff or convert it into plasma and separate the elements (which is not difficult - it just requires energy) then you're self-sufficient wherever you are.

hey're out there but they are leaving us alone because they believe in the Star Trek "Prime Directive."

I think it's even simpler than that. We're just of no interest to anyone. Why would we be?

You assume rationality.

Sure. I assume an advanced species. That would mean a species that uses rational means to become advanced.

Given our experiences so far I think that's a pretty bad assumption. And your assumption is actually even worse than that: you're assuming they're *all* like that, that they *have to be* like that. I would expect much more chaos and much more variation.

Some advancement in overall rational approach within a species seems sensible.
Reason being: Either by artificial selection towards more intelligence or the ability to heal potentially intelligence inhibiting factors before birth (or after) or by the merging of minds (be it through a intermittent connection like an "internet with direct mindlink" or a full blown hive mind...all these will lead to a more rational species.

I would expect some improvement by some civilizations, and others with less improvement due to social factors. Kinda like us.

contd

The more we know about the universe the more the argument for rationality is strenghtened, as the 'gaps' where irrationality can hide get ever smaller.

I'd have an easier time believing that if there weren't several billion of us who seem to still have all those irrational beliefs, even though we know better.

Worse yet, we have people making up new irrational beliefs all the time, and they cling to them just as hard as the ones who have the old ones.

It doesn't matter if you're silicon based, carbon based, or chlorine based. You have the drive to procreate or you are extinct.

No.

No natural selection, therefore no chance for evolution. And evolution is how other intelligent life will come to be. You've got a serious epistemological problem there.

contd

If you're immortal (or something like a distributed entity, etc. ) then you can forego procreation without ever going extinct.

But you can never come to exist in the first place, not naturally.

And the members of a hive mind/distributed entity must procreate unless they are all immortal. Furthermore, wouldn't a hive mind want to increase its capabilities, and wouldn't that entail expansion? And if two hive minds expand at the same time, isn't that competition, and won't it eventually require a scarce resource?

Now, let's talk about resources...

Resources that are already processed are more attractive than those which must be reprocessed

I disagree. Resources that are processed are way worse.
a) you must procure them (from potentially far away) which requires an entire extraction and delivery infrastructure (all of which makes you vulnerable and also means you are stuck to sticking around where this infrastructure can reach)

Or you could steal them, which was my point.

b) It means you do not have a sustainable way of life. Especially if we think about (vastly) expanded lifetimes that is not sensible (and certainly not acceptable by such beings).

So you think intelligent species evolve on one planet and just stay there? *All* intelligent species? Sounds pretty unlikely to me.

Also, you failed to address the 2LOT issue. No matter what you do, reprocessing or not, you must use energy from a source and dump it into a sink, and as soon as you do so you are generating mid-infrared.

contd

On the other hand if you have the ability to melt down stuff or convert it into plasma and separate the elements (which is not difficult - it just requires energy) then you're self-sufficient wherever you are.

But you still have to have energy flow spontaneously from a source to a sink, and that means you're still subject to the 2LOT. Remember, the FT doesn't abolish the 2LOT; it just says it doesn't strictly apply at molecular scales and below. On average, even a nanomachine still has to dissipate heat, and over an industrial scale, that means generating mid-infrared.

hey're out there but they are leaving us alone because they believe in the Star Trek "Prime Directive."

I think it's even simpler than that. We're just of no interest to anyone. Why would we be?

For someone to talk to. For a different slant on things than you can come up with yourself(ves). For the satisfaction of helping someone out. I'd like to invite other folks to suggest more reasons.

This is an interesting conversation, antialias. We disagree but we're both, I think, learning things. And I would point to that as a great reason for advanced intelligent life to make contacts with other intelligent life. Ultimately, I think, if you're immortal and have a completely closed energy cycle, the problem becomes what to do for satisfaction. Simply existing is something bacteria can do. Intelligent life demands more than that.

I think it's even simpler than that. We're just of no interest to anyone. Why would we be?

Chances are that there are hundreds of thousands of civilizations in any given galaxy all at different stages in evolution. And there will even more habitable worlds. And, in such a huge diversity, sure, we are no special … perhaps, just another entry in a catalogue.

On the other hand, in terms of non interference (aka Prime Directive) I think here we have two distinct cases :

1. Our case (and civilizations in a similar evolution stage) - let face it, we are still at that level were we solve problems by brute force/murder/wars and we are littered with religious fanatics … in other words, we are yet to pass that "barbaric" level in our evolution. It make all the sense for a more advanced civilization to avoid contact with us, in particular the risk of us even to get a hint of a more powerful technology which, given our mind set, could easily be the end of us.

2. In the second case are civilizations with interstellar capabilities, travel and/or communication. This case is slightly less obvious as they are aware of each other anyway. Yet, if they were to share knowledge it will level the ground between civilizations which are millions of years ahead of each other, which somehow doesn't make sense.
Still, there could be a very good reason for them not to share knowledge – as every civilization approach is a branch in evolution, a distinct path. If a more advance civilization, at some point has taken a wrong turn and they evolution is doomed, any other less advanced copying their way will follow. It's like in life 's evolution on earth … a different point in our evolution there were specimens which looked like the winner – yet if he others were to copy their ways, evolution will be stuck there.

Assumption in this Project:
1. We search an advanced civilisation what:
1.1. visit big count of stars in his galactic (from 10kkk to 1kkkk)
1.2. use big amount energy near each star for any needs
1.3. use this energy continuosly! (may be millions years)

2. For that, this civilisation must:
2.1. Grow anytime - nonstop raising population and get new territories for any needs
2.2. Use not effective technologies by energy consumption (becourse sun get many energy)

3. For we can detect this:
3.1. Peak of life this civilisation must be reached in diff with LY / space between us and his gallactic, to be in our seeght zone
3.2. we must have a pretty good technologies and be sure in methods

chance calc as sample:
1.1. - 0.000000000001
1.2. - 0.00000001
1.3. - 0.0000000000001
2.1. - 0.0000000000001
2.2. - 0.0000000000001
3.1. - 0.00000001
3.2. - 0.0001

result = 1 / (10^71)
we must to check 10^71 gallatics to get chance to detect about 1

Anyway you take it … just makes a lot of sense that we should walk our own path and try to make the best of it. Shortcuts could easily spell the end of us, it's not about having power but know how to use it.

Nice analysis, larry.

it's not about having power but know how to use it.

Very true.