Well we can for sure say that in our Universe interstellar travel is not hard. It’s extremely easy, once you take humans out of the picture. With current technology we have the means to push spacecraft to 60 km/s. This isn’t hypothetical tech, it’s stuff that’s sitting in the shed. At such velocities, craft could traverse the milky way galaxy 20 times over during the (current) lifetime of the galaxy (estimated at around 13 billion years). The galaxy is big, but it’s not that big, not compared to the time scales involved here.
Unfortunately this only makes it much more likely that the second possibility is true: Evolution of AIs that spread outward and colonize the galaxy must be extremely unlikely.
Well we can for sure say that in our Universe interstellar travel is not hard. It’s extremely easy, once you take humans out of the picture. With current technology we have the means to push spacecraft to 60 km/s. This isn’t hypothetical tech, it’s stuff that’s sitting in the shed. At such velocities, craft could traverse the milky way galaxy 20 times over during the (current) lifetime of the galaxy (estimated at around 13 billion years). The galaxy is big, but it’s not that big, not compared to the time scales involved here.
Unfortunately this only makes it much more likely that the second possibility is true: Evolution of AIs that spread outward and colonize the galaxy must be extremely unlikely.
Can the 60 km / s spacecraft in question slow down again (I honestly don’t know).