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Or, the blackboxes might not emit the radiation we expect because of some technology or physics that we don't know about yet.
Plot twist: the "dark matter" in the universe actually consists of Type III societies harnessing the electromagnetic radiation of their galaxies by a means as-yet unknown to us.
Wow I've actually never even thought of that before. I smell a sci-fi novel...
Plot twist: the "dark matter" in the universe actually consists of Type III societies harnessing the electromagnetic radiation of their galaxies by a means as-yet unknown to us.
Plot twist: the "dark matter" in the universe actually consists of Type III societies harnessing the electromagnetic radiation of their galaxies by a means as-yet unknown to us.
Or, the blackboxes might not emit the radiation we expect because of some technology or physics that we don't know about yet.
Like maybe there is a very good reason NOT to be emitting radiation at that obvious wavelength, because we might not be the only ones looking...
I'm unconvinced by the Kardashev assumption that energy is the limiting factor for civilisation. It's more likely that beyond a certain point you have all the energy you can use, and the limiting factor becomes collective intelligence. I'd guess that in the same way that processors keep getting more efficient, so do civilisations. At the highest levels the energy signature of a civilisation is virtually indistinguish…
Plot twist: the "dark matter" in the universe actually consists of Type III societies harnessing the electromagnetic radiation of their galaxies by a means as-yet unknown to us.
Unfortunately, this idea has been explored and discarded. Thermodynamics requires the emission of detectable EM energy from such shells, just at longer wavelengths. We'd expect to see dark matter emitting in microwave or IR, but we don't.
I'm unconvinced by the Kardashev assumption that energy is the limiting factor for civilisation. It's more likely that beyond a certain point you have all the energy you can use, and the limiting factor becomes collective intelligence. I'd guess that in the same way that processors keep getting more efficient, so do civilisations. At the highest levels the energy signature of a civilisation is virtually indistinguish…
> It's more likely that beyond a certain point you have all the energy you can use, and the limiting factor becomes collective intelligence. Why is this more likely?
Why would technologically advanced species explore the (mostly empty) universe, when they can sit inside their holodecks and have much more fun?
1. Advanced societies have probably solved the aging problem, leading to either extremely long lives or effective immortality. As long as these societies keep reproducing (and they will, unless they deliberately engineer out the urge to procreate, which I consider to be unlikely), they'll need space to spread out. Sure, they could probably pack themselves like sardines into a single solar system, but that only works if they'll be spending 100% of their time in virtual reality, and that would be begging the question.
2. A need for resources. Type III societies can capture 100% of the output of a star, but even this amount of energy might not suffice once society grows large enough. And even at that level it's still probably easier to manipulate matter than it is to convert energy into matter, so it'll be more efficient to harvest planets and asteroids and whatnot for raw building materials, which means leaving the solar system.
3. Even assuming they manage to create virtual reality that is 100% indistinguishable from reality, it's likely that there will still be a lot of beings that will reject the idea of living 100% in virtual reality simply because it's virtual. Even if it's indistinguishable from reality, they'll still know it's not real. So they may visit VR, but will want to actually live in the real world. Or in other words, humans have shown a tendency towards the perverse, and it's not unreasonable to assume aliens will too.
4. Any kind of scientific research still being done at that level will likely require the use of reality instead of VR. VR is a simulation, and even if it's indistinguishable from reality to your senses, it's still presumably not actually simulating reality down to the planck level (because it's part of the universe, it cannot simulate the entire universe at the same fidelity that the universe itself operates at, as that would presumably require more information than the universe contains), and so there's probably a fair amount of research at that level that simply can't work in simulation and requires testing against actual reality.