Age of the Galaxy in MM

The latest research on MM indicates that gravitons are capable of depositing so much energy in an arbitrary body of matter that it would heat up and explode in milliseconds if most gravitons were absorbed.

Normally most gravitons aren't absorbed, so matter is stable over long periods of time.

We know that the graviton wind "blows" at a very steady rate (because gravity is very steady). and we know that gravitons have an average velocity that is above 20 billion c. But we don't know how much above.

===

Suppose that a "gust" of gravitons hits our galaxy. Briefly, the density of gravitons goes up by a factor of 100.

This gust will cross the entire galaxy in less than a day. All stars and most planets will suddenly be absorbing 100 times as many gravitons as normal.

Suppose it only takes 30 times the normal absorbtion rate to make a star or a planet go pop?

In one day, the galaxy is toast. Even if we have colonized hundreds of thousands of nearby star systems, so are we.

Bummer,
LB

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Astrodelugeologist</i>
<br />Wait a minute...did somebody mention ENTIRE GALAXIES EXPLODING? Would you mind elaborating on that?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I was speaking hypothetically because we have no specific knowledge of what happens at the end of a galaxy's existence. However, the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort (of Oort cloud fame) proposed the theory that M82 is a galaxy in the act of exploding. This was popular for about a decade, but has since fallen into disfavor, largely because no mechanism was then known. But as LB pointed out, if the matter were rethought today, we might not be so glib about it. -|Tom|-

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by tvanflandern</i>
<br /><blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by 1234567890</i>
<br />Nowadays, you can carry the whole library of congress on
a laptop so the human race can never be in danger of losing
their technology. ... All you need is one person who can read.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Is that so? Suppose you are that one literate person. Who will teach you how to use the laptop? Or how to access its knowledge base? Or language, math, history, science, and logic on top of all the food, clothing, and shelter skills you must have?

Then one day the laptop needs technical support. Did you learn how to be your own tech support guy before it gave out? Do you have spare circuit boards with you to do the repairs? Or will you simply take a few crash courses in tool design, manufacturing, electronics, circuitry, miniaturization, electron microscope design, and all the other contributing fields so you can make your own spare parts and install them?

And while you are picking up all these skills, who will be learning health, medicine, and surgery, and developing all the machinery for diagnosis and tech-aided medical procedures to keep you (and any companions) healthy? I could list thousands of similar examples of things that would be needed to maintain a technological civilization, couldn't I?

In truth, if we consider any expert in any area of human interest, some of these experts are truly unique. Others have a few peers, but only a handful. In still other cases, hundreds, thousands, or millions may have developed a particular skill, such as building and maintaining the internet for the whole society. But when there are many replaceable individuals, it is because there is a need for many, not because they are redundant.

Now suppose a major asteroid strike occurs in middle of your civilization. The immediate blast kills millions, including many irreplaceable people. It also knocks out all computers from the electromagnetic pulse, and all communications are disrupted. If it is a big enough impact, most entire species go extinct during the global fire that ensues. That is followed by a prolonged nuclear winter or even an ice age. Food is extremely scarce, the weather is intolerable, and the organization of society has broken down. Your Library of Congress becomes a luxury available to only a few survivors, with little of use in connection with immediate survival issues. Offspring are no longer tutored in the arts and sciences, but rather in how to hunt and farm and find/build shelters in caves and how to make fires from sticks. Because resources remain scarce, conditions do not improve. In a few generations, no one has any further use for experts in rocketry or space travel or Mars rovers or home theaters or stock market investments or most book knowledge. In a few more generations, the past becomes a fantasy and fades into legends in the face of a harsh reality.

The lesson of a variety of books written in just the last decade or so is that civilization apparently proceeds in fits and starts, frequently set back or wiped out by natural and man-made disasters. Several authors have stressed the theme that apparently, several ancient civilizations on Earth were quite advanced before getting k.o.-ed. Apparently, our success is more due to a fortuitous gap in such disasters than it is to our "smarts". Our current "golden age" could end forever later today. Any anyone still claiming that nothing could drive us extinct because we could always colonize other planets would be judged insane. -|Tom|-
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Sure, there are all kinds of disasters that our technology cannot
defend against. If the Sun stopped shining tommorrow, we would surely become extinct for example. But if such cosmic scale catastrophes happened only every million so years, we should have enough time to spread out through the galaxies. I also disagree with
your opinion that newly formed civilizations would shrug off
knowledge from more advanced civilizations like it
was nothing important. That doesn't
seem very natural, assuming they did not devolve into
Cro-Magnon men as a result of the natural disaster. Smart
apes would not try to reinvent the wheel. Surely they
would realize the great benefits to their livelihood and
survival from learning from the advanced civilization.

If there are several thousands of planets that have developed a civilization capable of colonizing the galaxy in the past two billiion years ... then ... <b><i>the idea that the galaxy is not completely explored is statistically untenable</i></b>.

There are few rational options here. These are ... 1) There are not many civilizations that have developed in that time ... and 2) Space travel to other solar systems is not technically feasible or 3) Some UFOs are really from other planets and the galaxy is, in fact, completely explored.

Nothing in this thread has contradicted the thesis that once a civilization has colonized very many other solar systems over a period of a few million years, it is statistically impossible (by any means we know of) to prevent that colonization from going to conclusion, i.e. the entire available galaxy should be colonized already many times over.

TVFs position is that the above is not so but there is no counter argument presented except at the single planet scale, i.e. the earth may be destroyed. Obviously, any one planet can be destroyed but not 1000s of earth colonies and certainly not the 1000s of those thousands of other alien planets.

If a colony is dependent on the home planet, is it dependent on that home planet forever? Are we to assume that colonization itself is impossible? If colonization is indeed possible and that colony can develop to be independent of the home planet after some time ... what is there to destroy the 1000s of 1000s of such independent colonies and prevent them from <b><i>inevitably</i></b> reaching us?

My reasoning is exactly that of Fermi and many others. I see no way to evade its conclusions (though anyone may continue to try ;o)

There is always the retard quarantine. With us being the retards.

It appears to us that N = 1. But that may be nothing more than appearance. The Galactic Federation would have no trouble at all arranging things so that we can't find a single clue until they want us to find one.

LB

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by EBTX</i>
<br />If there are several thousands of planets that have developed a civilization capable of colonizing the galaxy in the past two billiion years ... then ... the idea that the galaxy is not completely explored is statistically untenable.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Of course. But if no civilization can ever develop that capability, then it hasn't happened.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">There are few rational options here. These are ... 1) There are not many civilizations that have developed in that time ... and 2) Space travel to other solar systems is not technically feasible or 3) Some UFOs are really from other planets and the galaxy is, in fact, completely explored.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">You omitted my argument: No civilization is ever able to send enough individuals to their colonies to create a colony that is technologically self-sufficient and capable of generating further technologically self-sufficient colonies. The hardships would just be too great to attract large numbers because the individuals would not be adapted to the gravity, atmosphere, radiation environment, and biosphere of the new planet and would have to live and work in space suits and/or protective domes. Moreover, every colonization attempt would require not just the intelligent species, but a genetically viable number of plant, animal, insect, and many other species too -- a Noah's Ark with hundreds of each species, not just two of each.

In short, the idea of what it would take to create a self-sufficient colony able to create other self-sufficient colonies has simply not been thought through.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Nothing in this thread has contradicted the thesis that once a civilization has colonized very many other solar systems over a period of a few million years, it is statistically impossible (by any means we know of) to prevent that colonization from going to conclusion, i.e. the entire available galaxy should be colonized already many times over.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">This glibly treats "getting there" as the equivalent of creating a self-sufficient colony able to continue the process. Few people can be persuaded to permanently abandon their country of residence, let alone their home planet. Christopher Columbuses are rare. And one must take so much more than just vast numbers of humans specialized in all needed tasks -- all deciding to live out their existence, and their children's existence, in protective domes on a hostile world.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">TVFs position is that the above is not so but there is no counter argument presented except at the single planet scale, i.e. the earth may be destroyed. Obviously, any one planet can be destroyed but not 1000s of earth colonies and certainly not the 1000s of those thousands of other alien planets.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Planet explosions were simply indicators that no civilization lasts forever because the explosion of any body around that star would set civilization back millions of years, requiring a complete restart. My primary argument is that technologically self-sufficient colonization is not feasible except perhaps under the rarest of circumstances -- finding a biospherically almost identical planet relatively nearby. And even in that most favorable case, one would not get viable numbers of individuals and species transferred until they realized that their own coming destruction was assured.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Are we to assume that colonization itself is impossible?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">If we distinguish "colonization" from "technologically self-sufficient colonization", then I do indeed argue that the latter is so rare as not to permit exponential continuation.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">My reasoning is exactly that of Fermi and many others. I see no way to evade its conclusions (though anyone may continue to try ;o)<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Fermi was bright enough that he probably would not have had any problem changing his mind if given a sufficient reason to do so. -|Tom|-