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.

Comments

Re:What if... human's just weren't cut out for it?

[CaptainDork]

The end goal is survival.

cross space by cooperation!

[anwyn]

Have a good reputation by practicing ahinsa, and always helping and not hurting the civilizations one visits. Send a copy of your self to other civilizations and get them to build it, giving them detailed instructions. (Use error correcting codes for the instructions.) In return perform same service for others with good reputations! Using this method one can cross space at the speed of light or better. You can cross space at the speed a message can travel.

If you hurt anyone your reputation will be damaged and with it the ability to travel.

well

[hamburger lady]

i would think that if another star decided to get close enough to perturb the oort cloud, we may have other issues to deal with.

Re:What if... human's just weren't cut out for it?

[Immerman]

What was the point of colonizing anywhere? A small percentage of the population finds the potential of carving out a new life for themselves in a hostile, untamed environment more appealing than the life they could have where they are. Generally speaking I suspect they're not so much going towards something, as trying to escape the problems in their original home. Be that a shortage of food, uncomfortable population pressure, or oppressive leadership they lack the power to overthrow.

Keep in mind that our species has been the apex predator on the planet for probably 100,000 to 1,000,000 years, and still hasn't completely colonized the surface. That's a lot of generations where those individuals who hungered to colonize far-off places to populate new lands with their progeny - such wanderlust is likely encoded deep in our genes by now.

As for traveling 3 light years, I fail to see the problem. So it takes you a few decades or even centuries to cross between stars. So what? Assuming our civilization doesn't collapse in the next century or two we will likely have gotten a pretty good grip on maintaining small-scale closed ecosystems in space. LOTS of readily accessible resources right in our own solar system - plenty of new frontiers for the bold to make their fortunes or try to carve out a life free from oppression. And once we've mastered living in space indefinitely, then getting to another star is just a matter of wanting your independence more than you want to have close neighbors - well, that and gathering enough energy to survive the journey between stars. A generation ship may remove the need for speed, but you've still got to have enough power available keep the lights on for a very long journey.

As for humanity surviving on Earth - aside from a "grey-goo" scenario, or malevolent AI bent on human extermination, I can't think of anything that would actually present a credible threat to the species. Now lot's of things could bring about the collapse of our civilization, or even *almost* wipe out the species, but even a 99.9% extermination rate would leave 7+ million people - twice the population that is estimated to have existed before the birth of agriculture. Even a 99.9999% extermination rate would leave 7+ thousand people - more than the estimated population during the worst of the last major ice age. And those few survivors would have access to a wealth of knowledge and technology undreamed of by our ancestors - I doubt they'd have trouble eventually rebuilding a new civilization, at worst it might take a few thousand years - and we've been tool-makers for over a million already.