The Feasibility of Intergalactic Colonisation and its Relevance to SETI.

Basing on the new physical approach in description of the characteristics of live matter, the author obtained a numerical values for mass of living matter in the Universe, quantity of biospheres in the Universe (N bio ~3.3·10 18), quantity of biospheres in the Galaxy (N~5·10 7). The calculated average distance between biospheres in the Galaxy is l ≤ 40 light years. However, the probability of disclosure of an extra-terrestrial civilization, analogous to Earth one, is too small, P~10 -5 . It is shown, that a paradigm of the expansive and extensive development of the modern technological civilization in the bounds of SETI is useless principally, as for planetary civilization exist demographic, power, destructive and genetic-adaptive natural barriers, and limits of continuous growth and cosmic expansion. A strategy of intensive growth of civilization using the low-energy quantum technologies is more realistic. In that case, the radiation of civilization becomes low and it is very diffi...

The emerging science of evolutionary developmental (“evo devo”) biology can aid us in thinking about our universe as both an evolutionary system, where most processes are unpredictable and creative, and a developmental system, where a special few processes are predictable and constrained to produce far-future-specific emergent order, just as we see in the common developmental processes in two stars of an identical population type, or in two genetically identical twins in biology. The transcension hypothesis proposes that a universal process of evolutionary development guides all sufficiently advanced civilizations into what may be called "inner space," a computationally optimal domain of increasingly dense, productive, miniaturized, and efficient scales of space, time, energy, and matter, and eventually, to a black-hole-like destination. Transcension as a developmental destiny might also contribute to the solution to the Fermi paradox, the question of why we haven't seen evidence of or received beacons from intelligent civilizations. A few potential evolutionary, developmental, and information theoretic reasons, mechanisms, and models for constrained transcension of advanced intelligence are briefly considered. In particular, we introduce arguments that black holes may be a developmental destiny and standard attractor for all higher intelligence, as they appear to some to be ideal computing, learning, forward time travel, energy harvesting, civilization merger, natural selection, and universe replication devices. In the transcension hypothesis, simpler civilizations that succeed in resisting transcension by staying in outer (normal) space would be developmental failures, which are statistically very rare late in the life cycle of any biological developing system. If transcension is a developmental process, we may expect brief broadcasts or subtle forms of galactic engineering to occur in small portions of a few galaxies, the handiwork of young and immature civilizations, but constrained transcension should be by far the norm for all mature civilizations. The transcension hypothesis has significant and testable implications for our current and future METI and SETI agendas. If all universal intelligence eventually transcends to black-hole-like environments, after which some form of merger and selection occurs, and if two-way messaging is severely limited by the great distances between neighboring and rapidly transcending civilizations, then communication with feedback may be very rare, an event restricted to nearest-neighbor stars for a very brief period prior to transcension. The only kind of communication that might be common enough to be easily detectable by us would be the sending of one-way METI or probes throughout the galaxy. But simple one-way messaging or probes may be not worth the cost to send, and advanced messaging or probes may provably reduce the evolutionary diversity in all civilizations receiving them, as they would condemn the receiver to transcending in a manner similar to that of the sender. If each civilization in our universe is quite limited in what they can learn given their finite computational resources, and if many civilizations evolve in parallel and in isolation in our universe for this reason, then a powerful ethical injunction against one-way messaging or probes might emerge in the morality and sustainability systems of all sufficiently advanced civilizations, an argument known as the Zoo hypothesis in Fermi paradox literature. In any such environment, the evolutionary value of sending any interstellar message or probe may simply not be worth the cost, if transcension and post-transcension merger are elements of an inevitable, accelerative, and testable developmental process, one that eventually will be discovered and quantitatively described by future physics. Fortunately, transcension processes may be measurable today even without good physical theory, and radio and optical SETI may each provide empirical tests. If transcension is a universal developmental constraint, then without exception all early and low-power electromagnetic leakage signals (radar, radio, television), and later, optical evidence of the exoplanets and their atmospheres should reliably cease as each civilization enters their own technological singularities (emergence of postbiological intelligence and life forms) and recognizes they are on an optimal and accelerating path to a black-hole-like environment. Furthermore, optical SETI may soon allow us to map an expanding area of the galactic habitable zone we may call the galactic transcension zone, an inner ring that contains older transcended civilizations, and a missing planets problem as we discover that planets with life signatures occur at a much lower frequencies in this inner ring than in the remainder of the habitable zone.

International Journal of Astrobiology, 2004

Perhaps the most straightforward solution to the Fermi paradox is that the distances between stars are too great to permit interstellar travel. Perhaps, no matter how technologically advanced a species becomes, it cannot overcome the barrier of interstellar distance. (This might explain why ETCs have not visited us, but not necessarily why we have not heard from them. But let us put this criticism to the side for the next few sections.) That the stars are far away does not in itself make interstellar travel unattainable. It is not impossible to build a vessel that can leave a planetary system and then travel through interstellar space. Take our Solar System as an example: its escape velocity, starting at Earth's distance from the Sun, is only 42 km/s. In other words, if we launch a vessel traveling at 42 km/s relative to the Sun, then it can escape the grip of the Sun's gravitational influence. It can become a starship. No problem: NASA has already built several such vessels! (With our present technology we have to cheat a little and use the gravity assist offered by the planets. The so-called "slingshot effect" is quite sufficient to boost a slow-moving craft to escape velocity.) Voyager 1, launched on 5 September 1977, toured the outer planets and then headed out into space. On 17 February 1998 it became the most distant man-made object, and it is now farther from the Sun than is Pluto. Unless alien probes pick it up, as happened to the fictional Voyager 6 in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, it will eventually make its closest approach to a star-it will drift within 1.6 light years of an unprepossessing M4 star called AC +79 3888. The trouble is, Voyager will take tens of thousands of years to reach its closest encounter with the star. And that is the difficulty with interstellar travel: unless you travel fast, the transit times are long. 71 The best way to rate a starship's speed is in terms of c, the speed of light, since c is a universal speed limit. 72 The speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792.458 km/s. So Voyager 1, which as I write is traveling at 17.26 km/s away from the Sun, travels at a mere 0.000058c. Now, the stars are so widely separated that a favored method of presenting interstellar distances is to use the light year: the distance light travels in one year. For example, the nearest star to our Sun is Proxima Centauri, which is 4.22 light years distant. 73 So the fastest possible "craft"-photons of light-would take more than 4 years to reach the nearest star; Voyager 1, were it traveling in that direction, would take almost 73,000 years to complete the same journey. The huge travel time involved when traveling at sub-light speed leads many commentators to conclude that interstellar travel, while perhaps not theoretically impossible, is impracticable.

Building on a new physical framework for describing the properties of living matter, the author derived numerical estimates for the total mass of living matter in the Universe, the number of biospheres in the Universe N_bio ≈ 3.3•10^18 , and the number of biospheres within the Galaxy N ≈ 5•10^7. The calculated mean distance between biospheres in the Galaxy is l ≈ 25÷40 light years. Nevertheless, the probability of detecting an extraterrestrial civilization comparable to that of Earth is extremely low (P ≈ 10^-5). The study demonstrates that the paradigm of expansive and extensive development characteristic of modern technological civilization, within the framework of SETI, is fundamentally ineffective, since planetary civilizations face inherent demographic, energetic, destructive, and genetic-adaptive constraints that impose natural limits on continuous growth and cosmic expansion. A strategy of intensive development based on low-energy quantum technologies appears more feasible. Under such conditions, the radiation emitted by a civilization becomes weak, making its detection in the electromagnetic spectrum exceedingly difficult. This offers a plausible resolution to the astro-sociological aspect of the Fermi paradox.

2000

There has been a recent upsurge of interest in ‘physical eschatology’ and, in particular, in the idea that, in the far–distant future, intelligent life will spread from earth to the rest of the universe. Although some of the early seeds were sown by Freeman Dyson, the main proponent of this idea has been Frank Tipler. Tipler (1995)—a book devoted solely to the elaboration of Tipler’s ‘Omega Point Theory’—was released with an enormous fanfare, and it spent many weeks near the top of the bestseller charts. In this paper, I cast a critical eye over some aspects of the theory which Tipler develops.