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"Alexander Berezin, a theoretical physicist at the National Research University of Electronic Technology in Russia, has proposed a new answer to Fermi's paradox — but he doesn't think you're going to like it. Because, if Berezin's hypothesis is correct, it could mean a future for humanity that's 'even worse than extinction.'
'What if,' Berezin wrote in a new paper posted March 27 to the preprint journal arxiv.org, 'the first life that reaches interstellar travel capability necessarily eradicates all competition to fuel its own expansion?'" foxnews.com/science/2018/06/04/aliens-are-real-but-humans-will-probably-kill-them-all-new-paper-says.html
In other words, could humanity's quest to discover intelligent life be directly responsible for obliterating that life outright? What if we are, unwittingly, the universe's bad guys?
And if you are not sure what the Fermi paradox is then the link should help, and there is a long explanation of that one in the article.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by shrewdsheep on Wednesday June 06 2018, @02:24PM (10 children)
On a more serious note, these War-of-the-World scenarios simply do not make any sense whatsoever. How would there be a "home"? Space travel disconnects life-lines, there could not be any tribal sense of home. At best many competing entities which would aggressively spread and maybe fight each other and would be detectable more so. Why should there be any need to eliminate competitors? Being technologically far advanced enough to do space travel you have no need to exploit foreign worlds. Minerals: plenty on asteroids. Water: comets. Energy: fusion, fission, sun. Biological material: of no use as can be produced in the lab easily, also those space travelers would not be based on biological processes. So what to come for?
The best explanation I have read to explain the Fermi-paradox (cannot recall where) is that space traveling entities would be miniaturized to an extend to be undetectable by us. This would be required for quick enough space travel and also energy-wise. There would be no need for interaction as they could not tell us anything we could or should understand and we have nothing to tell them that they would be interested in.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday June 06 2018, @02:49PM (2 children)
"Home is where the heart is"
So long as wandering groups maintained a cohesive sense of culture, home is wherever they go, with maybe a legendary quality to their original homeworld. Or not-so-legendary if they have some form of FTL travel - in which case actually shipping loot home might be viable.
But really, what does "home" have to do with anything? Doesn't make any difference to the late human race if the invaders are looking to strip mine the planet to ship it "home", or strip mine it to expand their interstellar scavenging fleet or orbital habitat ring, or even use it as a base of operations.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Wednesday June 06 2018, @06:48PM (1 child)
Foolishness. Eliminating potential competitors is plausible. Strip mining the planet is not. You've got to pull the stuff up out of a gravity well. You sure can't use it in place unless you live in a sealed life support bubble. Native life would give you violent allergies. And the air is probably wrong anyway.
But why bother? Just strip mine the lighter moons and the useful asteroids of the system and the inhabitants won't be able to build a competing civilization. They sure can't stop you, or even bother you. They probably won't even notice you are there.
P.S.: Despite that argument, I don't believe it. Civilizations adapted to space will not be short on resources, except perhaps volatiles, and those they can easily get from the Oort clouds. The only way this wouldn't be true is if controlled fusion is impossible, in which case they might also need fissionables. If those are concentrated by ecological processes (as seems likely) they may be too dilute in space to be practical. Even so, it would almost certainly be more efficient to coerce local habitants to mine it for them than to do it themselves ... but I don't believe either part of that supposition, so I rate their combination as extremely unlikely.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday June 06 2018, @08:21PM
Because all the moons and asteroids combined are less massive than Earth alone? The entire asteroid belt is estimated to mass only about 0.012% of Earth - its comparative richness is due to the much greater surface-to-volume ratio and comparative ease of mining solid materials rather than the mantle and core with our current technology .
Meanwhile, getting stuff out of our gravity well is only expensive because we use phenomenally inefficient methods to do so (i.e. rocketry). Escape velocity is only 11.2km/s - or about 17kWh/kg: roughly half a gallon of gas per kg. That's all the energy that would be needed by any of a large number of efficient space elevator designs to lift material beyond orbit. Meanwhile the Earth is being hit by roughly 1.5*10^18kWh of solar energy every year, enough to lift 10^17 kg of material completely out of its gravity well. Granted, that's only 1/1000th the mass of the asteroid belt per year - but it's also only using a solar array the size of the Earth - no reason the material from Earth couldn't be used to rapidly build a much larger solar array.
Basically - if you're visiting a star system for it's resources, why *wouldn't* you strip mine the planets as well? What's the down side? Mild inconvenience for your automated mining robots?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday June 06 2018, @02:55PM (1 child)
Home is whoever invested in building automated interstellar probes to find and harvest other life bearing planets.
Perhaps more valuable then metals is the biosphere of Earth. New plants, animals, and thus new drugs and chemicals that might be useful.
Complex long hydrocarbon chains are probably useful anywhere in the galaxy. Either as food or fuel.
Or the biosphere is useful to setup "native" species from the homeworld onto the planet being harvested.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 07 2018, @09:26AM
Aye, lad. And when we get to yon stars belike there be whales in their oceans, and we'll all get richer than Croesus by harvestin' ambergris and whalebone.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 06 2018, @05:22PM
Matt Damon to the rescue again, see: Downsizing.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DutchUncle on Wednesday June 06 2018, @07:43PM (3 children)
Nomadic groups of humans traveled areas hunting and gathering as they went. Why is it hard to imagine people in ships doing the same?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by shrewdsheep on Wednesday June 06 2018, @08:04PM (2 children)
When you return home, everyone else is dead. Your "home" is where you are and your tribe is whom you are with. Space travel is incompatible with a biological makeup.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06 2018, @08:09PM
Hunter/gatherers didn't necessarily have a "home". The tribe mostly moved together.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday June 08 2018, @01:42PM
This is only true if anti-aging isn't perfected by that time.
I have a feeling we will conquer our biology before routinely traveling to other star systems.
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