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Tiny black holes may be exploding stars across the Milky Way

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Re: Tiny black holes may be exploding stars across the Milky Way

#101

Post by krapp »

idiotsecant wrote: post #100
cyberax wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Dark forest" doesn't work from a game-theoretical standpoint. It assumes that it's cheap to destroy entire planets and solar systems. Yet no-one seems to be colonizing other systems. The optimal strategy in this case is to expand as quickly as possible, before others can grab or destroy resources.

How do we know nobody is colonizing every system we can see? How would you detect if earth was colonized?

Entropy and thermodynamics exist. It would be impossible to colonize every system we see without the tremendous heat energy expenditure needed to do so being obvious, and obviously not natural. The background temperature of space is so regular and predictable that any deviation is noticeable.

Barring some magical woo-woo technology that someone will probably insist must exist because we foolish humans are simply too stupid to understand anything, this isn't something you can just cheat. There ain't no stealth in space[0].

https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect...

Re: Tiny black holes may be exploding stars across the Milky Way

#102

Post by shagie »

ttul wrote: post #98
shagie wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can one detect passage of small black hole through the Earth? - https://arxiv.org/abs/0710.3438v1 A physics stack exchange answer about it: https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/55184 The most relevant part: > The total energy created by a PBH roughly equals the energy produced by the detonation of one tonne of TNT, but this energy is the total energy it deposits along its path through the Earths diameter, not the ener…

Always the bringer of facts to rain on my factless fun. Thank you.

And in remembering another paper... it wasn't about a black hole but rather quark matter...

Two Seismic Events with the Properties for the Passage of Strange Quark Matter Through the Earth - http://www.geology.smu.edu/~dpa-www/sqm/pdf/sqm_lanl.pdf

It looks at pairs of seismic events that trace line through the earth and are timed correctly.

> Two sets of reports were found in the 1993 database that fit all the criteria for a linear source. The model and residuals (observed minus predicted arrival times) for the first event are given in Table 1. The RMS residual is 0.73 sec. This RMS value would indicate a good fit for a well-located earthquake.

A BBC article about the paper: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2502755.stm

Re: Tiny black holes may be exploding stars across the Milky Way

#103

Post by cyberax »

idiotsecant wrote: post #100
cyberax wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Dark forest" doesn't work from a game-theoretical standpoint. It assumes that it's cheap to destroy entire planets and solar systems. Yet no-one seems to be colonizing other systems. The optimal strategy in this case is to expand as quickly as possible, before others can grab or destroy resources.

How do we know nobody is colonizing every system we can see? How would you detect if earth was colonized?

If you're colonizing systems so stealthily that it's not visible, then why bother doing that at all? Even a single solar system has more than enough resources.

Re: Tiny black holes may be exploding stars across the Milky Way

#104

Post by cyberax »

aeve890 wrote: post #96
cyberax wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it's even weirder. Detecting planets around stars is trivial, yet nobody is running to get that prime real estate? Still makes no sense.

In the book, the trisolarans aren't coming to earth just because is the only habitable planet, it's because it's the closest one too. The don't have FTL and they spend the full resources of their dying civilization to build a fleet that will reach earth in ~400 years. So yeah, a lot of prime real state but no way to reach it.

400 years is nothing. At this speed, all the Galaxy would have been colonized long ago.

This subplot in the book is at least reasonable. Somehow aliens capable of pico-scale engineering can't make a telescope to observe the nearby solar systems, but OK, whatever. Cultural blindness and all that.

It's the later plot with the "dark forest" that makes no sense. There are ships capable of moving at relativistic velocities and spacetime-altering weapons.

Re: Tiny black holes may be exploding stars across the Milky Way

#105

Post by idiotsecant »

krapp wrote: post #101
idiotsecant wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we know nobody is colonizing every system we can see? How would you detect if earth was colonized?

Entropy and thermodynamics exist. It would be impossible to colonize every system we see without the tremendous heat energy expenditure needed to do so being obvious, and obviously not natural. The background temperature of space is so regular and predictable that any deviation is noticeable. Barring some magical woo-woo technology that someone will probably insist must exist because we foolish humans are simply too…

Ok great, but you didn't answer the central question. How would you detect earth civilization from interstellar distances?

Re: Tiny black holes may be exploding stars across the Milky Way

#106

Post by shagie »

cyberax wrote: post #103
idiotsecant wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we know nobody is colonizing every system we can see? How would you detect if earth was colonized?

If you're colonizing systems so stealthily that it's not visible, then why bother doing that at all? Even a single solar system has more than enough resources.

David Webber - Safehold series. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safehold

The first book is Off Armageddon Reef - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off_Armageddon_Reef

    In the 24th century, 8 million people flee to distant Safehold after barely escaping from the destruction of civilization by a genocidal alien foe, the Gbaba. Because the enemy tracked signs of advanced technology to hunt down other emergency colonies, the plan is to enforce a pre-industrial society until the danger passes. Administrator Eric Langhorne, a megalomaniac and neo-Luddite, instead has the colonists' memories erased and replaced with the belief they are the first humans, "Adams" and "Eves," the creations of God upon Safehold with "Archangel Langhorne" anointed as prophet and leader of the Church of God Awaiting.
The first chapter can be read at the publisher's site: https://www.baen.com/Chapters/0765315009/0765315009.htm
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