Interesting theory - ThanksFlex wrote: ↑06 May 2022, 1:11pmFunnily, enough I just read an article speculating why we may not have ever (or ever will be) visited by alien life (apologies for the Daily Mail link):Full article: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech ... laims.htmlDr Michael Wong, of the Carnegie Institution for Science, and Dr Stuart Bartlett, of California Institute of Technology, claim that extraterrestrial civilisations may grow so large and technical that they hit crisis points, missing the chance to visit new worlds.
[...]
In a new study, published in Royal Society Open Science, Dr Wong and Dr Bartlett set out to crack the 70-year-old puzzle.
The pair analysed previous studies which have shown that cities grow 'superlinearly' – at a faster rate than linear – thanks to their social nature.
This superlinear scaling results in crises called 'singularities', where population and energy demands supersede innovations, leading to the system's collapse.
For example, on Earth, the researchers say that ozone depletion, the escalation of weapons of mass destruction and whaling could have led to burnout, had they not been mitigated.
The researchers suggest burnout is likely to happen to alien civilisations too.
'We hypothesize that once a planetary civilization transitions into a state that can be described as one virtually connected global city, it will face an "asymptotic burnout", an ultimate crisis where the singularity-interval time scale becomes smaller than the time scale of innovation,' they wrote.
Makes sense to me!
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
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NoMoreHugh
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Re: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
Re: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
God, what a mess, on the ladder of success
Where you take one step and miss the whole first rung
Where you take one step and miss the whole first rung
Re: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
My favorite hypothesis for why aliens haven't and won't be here while we're around is that the chances of an alien society advancing to that point at the same time we exist are (heh) astronomical. It's far more likely that a civilization either had that ability before or will have it after we're gone, but the idea that it would coincide with our existence is crazy unlikely.
"Suck our Earth dick, Martians!" —Doc