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Science News General; Stuff that doesn't need its own topic
Topic Started: Apr 9 2014, 07:11 AM (11,239 Views)
Tartarus
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The whole concept of exponential never ending expansion is extremely flawed.
There is no reason to assume that once a world is colonised the colonists first priority would be to start plans for colonising more worlds. Instead, it would make far more sense for these colonists to focus primarily on developing their colony and they could well spend centuries or even millenia on this. Indeed it may be that some colony worlds may never see any of the colonists' descendants head out to new worlds. Just because their ancestors did doesn't guarantee they will. If, as is likely the case, it turns out that finding new homes and exploring new worlds is a higher priority than just infinite colonising for the sake of colonising, then all the "the entire galaxy/universe will be colonised in X years" arguments collapse.

Also, on the whole thing about sending replicating machines to "colonise" I see no logic in this. It seems downright pointless as the machines in question seem to just be getting sent to other worlds for the hell of it and the beings who made them don't themselves get anything out of the whole project. More likely, colonising other worlds would only even be cared about by any civilisation if members of said civilisation can go to the other worlds themselves.
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LittleLazyLass
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Also, on the whole thing about sending replicating machines to "colonise" I see no logic in this. It seems downright pointless as the machines in question seem to just be getting sent to other worlds for the hell of it and the beings who made them don't themselves get anything out of the whole project. More likely, colonising other worlds would only even be cared about by any civilisation if members of said civilisation can go to the other worlds themselves.
Well, we send out rovers and telescopes, so it doesn't seem unlikely... but having it on that scale does.

Having it on the scale of a whole galaxy presumes they have the foresight to think about their descendants 3.75 million years+ after them. Many of us humans don't have to foresight to care about generations little over a century later than us, nevermind millions of years after our deaths.

Why have probes on every planet in your galaxy when you could be spending those resources on something that'll actually effect their own lives, on planets where they actually live? Why spend the time the monitor all of these probes? Ask even the most expansionist humans ever, would even they care about conquering an entire galaxy? It's just not a logical goal to set.

Also, they're still just machines, are they not? I don't see how machines are going to stop other sapients from expanding. An actual civilization being there, maybe, but not just their probes.
Should we give this "Conquer a galaxy in only 3.75 million years" thing its own topic? I could see a lengthy discussion come from this.
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Dr Nitwhite
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LittleIslander
Aug 4 2016, 06:58 PM
Should we give this "Conquer a galaxy in only 3.75 million years" thing its own topic? I could see a lengthy discussion come from this.
Given what just happened, yes.
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Tartarus
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LittleIslander
Aug 4 2016, 06:58 PM
Well, we send out rovers and telescopes, so it doesn't seem unlikely... but having it on that scale does.
The difference here is that rovers and telescopes are actually things we do get a lot out of. They collect lots of useful and interesting data that gets sent back to Earth within a fairly reasonable time frame. They don't just get sent out for the sake of just having stuff we built get to out into space and to other worlds.
With the hypothetical replicating machines, it is just said that every time they reach a world they set up things for reaching more worlds, with no mention of them actually doing anything meaningful like collecting information on these worlds to send back to the home world. Even if we assume they do collect information, you yourself pointed out a notable problem with the concept overall:
LittleIslander
 
Having it on the scale of a whole galaxy presumes they have the foresight to think about their descendants 3.75 million years+ after them. Many of us humans don't have to foresight to care about generations little over a century later than us, nevermind millions of years after our deaths.

Why have probes on every planet in your galaxy when you could be spending those resources on something that'll actually effect their own lives, on planets where they actually live? Why spend the time the monitor all of these probes? Ask even the most expansionist humans ever, would even they care about conquering an entire galaxy? It's just not a logical goal to set.

Well said. Space probes in our solar system give us useful stuff within just months or years. Waiting thousands or millions of years to learn of things that do nothing to help anyone back on the home world is indeed something it seems doubtful any civilisation would put so much effort into.
One possible solution to the whole long wait problem could be if it turned out that FTL travel and communication were possible, but if that were the case the whole need for using the machines instead of going oneself vanishes (why send probes when one has found a way of getting there oneself without too extreme travel times). In any case, regardless of whether a spacefaring civilisation uses sublight travel or some sort of FTL, the point would still remain that it makes more sense to just colonise a number of worlds and then have the colonists focus on setting up things on said worlds rather than just endlessly wanting more and more colony worlds just for the sake of having more colony worlds.
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LittleLazyLass
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/ice-free-corridor-north-americans-1.3715397
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Finally, they admit it.
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Ivan_The_Inedible
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Aug 11 2016, 10:00 PM
Finally, they admit it.
We all knew it was coming.
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Tartarus
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That the ice free corridor came too late to explain the earlier cases of human colonisation in the Americas is old news. Still, its good to see more people coming around to admitting it.
Also, incidentally, the early colonisation of the Americas was probably not any single event but rather something involving multiple waves of people.
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LittleLazyLass
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http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/deadthings/2016/08/29/lucys-demise-what-killed-the-most-famous-fossil/#.V8YYGeDr1dh

Apparently Lucy died from injuries sustained in a fall of about fourty feet, likely from a tree.
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Flisch
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A colony of all-worker ants barely clings to live in underground bunker.

Someone should make a movie out of it. That's gold.
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flashman63
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Flisch
Sep 5 2016, 03:17 AM
A colony of all-worker ants barely clings to live in underground bunker.

Someone should make a movie out of it. That's gold.
Wow
Travel back through time and space, to the edge of man's beggining... discover a time when man, woman and lizard roamed free, and untamed!

It is an epoch of mammoths, a time of raptors!

A tale of love in the age of tyrannosaurs!

An epic from the silver screen, brought right to your door!

Travel back to
A Million Years BC

-----------------------------------------------------

Proceedings of the Miskatonic University Department of Zoology

Cosmic Horror is but a dissertation away

-----------------------------------------------------

Some dickhead's deviantART
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Sayornis
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Eventually a massive colony of wood ants took up residence in the soil over the bunker. There was just one problem: the ants built their nest directly over a vertical ventilation pipe. When the metal covering on the pipe finally rusted away, it left a dangerous, open hole. Every year when the nest expands, thousands of worker ants fall down the pipe and cannot climb back out. The survivors have nevertheless carried on for years underground, building a nest from soil and maintaining it in typical wood ant fashion...
They produce no queens, no males, and no offspring. The massive group tending the nest is entirely composed of non-reproductive female workers, supplemented every year by a new rain of unfortunate ants falling down the ventilation shaft.


My gosh, this reads like something out of The Library.
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Dr Nitwhite
Aug 19 2016, 07:42 PM
As I said before, the Library is like spec crack.
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LittleLazyLass
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Wow, now that you mention that it really does. Weird adaptations to abandoned manmade structures can be really cool.
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HangingThief
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For a non- eusocial organism, the equivalent of the ant thing is if your leg fell off and kept on trying to walk.
Hey.


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Scrublord
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Tartarus
Aug 12 2016, 01:27 AM
That the ice free corridor came too late to explain the earlier cases of human colonisation in the Americas is old news. Still, its good to see more people coming around to admitting it.
Also, incidentally, the early colonisation of the Americas was probably not any single event but rather something involving multiple waves of people.
So what does this mean about the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna?
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