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How Civilizations Can Spread Across a Galaxy
New submitter kanweg writes: If you look at the Milky Way at night, it appears not much is changing. But over time, stars get closer and further to each other. Coryn Bailer-Jones, an astrophysicist at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, found that of 14 stars coming within three light-years of Earth, the closest encounter is likely to be HIP 85605, which now lies some 16 light years away in the constellation of Hercules. It will get a close as the Oort cloud.
This could be a (very long-term) method for human or alien civilizations to practice star hopping. Why travel 16 light-years through space when you can just wait until a star with a suitable planet gets close enough that you only have to cover the last stretch with an artificial spaceship? Take your time for a thoughtful response; it will take another 250,000 to 470,000 year before the close encounter.
This could be a (very long-term) method for human or alien civilizations to practice star hopping. Why travel 16 light-years through space when you can just wait until a star with a suitable planet gets close enough that you only have to cover the last stretch with an artificial spaceship? Take your time for a thoughtful response; it will take another 250,000 to 470,000 year before the close encounter.
Let me just blacklist you in AdBlocker and I'll get back to you. Oh and with regards to the topic, well you'll have to wait a whole lot longer for a suitable planet than any old planet. Unless you got terraforming so under control you can build your own planet it's a lot easier to go where you at least get an earth-like rock to start with.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Any species that is willing to wait 250,000 years to avoid a 16 LY trip would never get to space at all. A race needs the drive to challenge obstacles and overcome them if its going to make it to space, not look for excuses to not try.
Also, wouldn't a star near the oort cloud mess up our entire solar system?
Yes, but three lightyears is not "near".
Anyway, traveling 16LY is only trivially more difficult than travelling 3LY. The hard part is getting up to speed, and slowing down at the destination. The long coast in the middle is easy, and if you are going fast, it is time dilated anyway.
I very much doubt that NASA's budgets will get any better over the next 450,000 years.
Dunno. I think a real spaceship might be more practical.
Anyway, traveling 16LY is only trivially more difficult than travelling 3LY. The hard part is getting up to speed, and slowing down at the destination. The long coast in the middle is easy, and if you are going fast, it is time dilated anyway.
Getting up to speed is really really hard. So much so that you can largely forget about taking advantage of time dilation. Unless you can salvage a Bussard Ramjet (current thinking is that it won't work) you are not going to get that fast. Traveling 3LY instead of 16LY means only having to reach 1/5 the speed to arrive in a "reasonable" time. That's a big help. It might be the difference between doable but hard and hopeless.
Even with current technology we could theoretically make a 16 ly journey in somewhere around 1,000 years.
No, we couldn't. We don't have the technology right now to build a multi-generational ship. We don't even have the technology right now to send an unmanned probe that would still be powered by the time it got there. We don't even have the technology right now to build an unmanned probe that would shut itself down and bring itself back up after 1000 years. Hell, it's hard to find a motherboard from the 80's that doesn't need capacitors replaced before it can be booted up again.
Who knows what kind of technology we'll have in 300,000 years, though. And the closest the destination, the more likely something can actually get there.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
what are the odds of it having an M-class planet?
Not needed. We just need enough metal to build a Dyson Sphere. Any rocky planet, or even a few moons can supply the raw material. People shouldn't get so fixated on inhabiting planetary surfaces. That is not necessary or even desirable.
That said, if we have to wait 400,000 years for the "quick" jump to open up, I imagine we would have made the "long" trip thousands of times over by then.
True, but it's a matter of relative comfort. Do you want to do the long trip by canoe, or take the leisurly route via cruise ship (aka your home planet) for most of it?
Chances are, if nobody does it by canoe to prove it can be done, nobody else will want to invest in building a cruise ship at all.