I can come up with a hypothesis about the behaviour of the sources: the drones you send to observe and explore a planet might be disposable. (Eg we’ve left rovers behind on Mars because it’s not worth the effort to retrieve them from the gravity well.) Although if the even-wilder rumours about bio-alien corpses are true, that one fails too.
But the broader picture: that there are high-tech aliens out there who we haven’t observed doing things like building Dyson spheres or tiling the universe with computronium? They’re millions of years ahead of us and somehow didn’t either progress to building mega-tech or to AI apocalypse? They’re not millions of years ahead of us and there’s some insane coincidence where two intelligent species emerged on different planets at the same time but also there are no older civs that already grabbed their lightcone? I’m as boggled as you.
I’m kind of hoping this whole thing is a hoax or deliberate disinformation operation or something because I have absolutely no idea what to think about the alternative. But after the amount of leaks about UAPs over the last few years, I’m at at least 10% that there are literal alien spacecraft visiting our planet.
I don’t know much about astronomy. But is it possible a more advanced alien civ has colonized much of the galaxy, but we haven’t seen them because they anticipated the tech we would be using to make astronomical observations and know how to cloak from it?
I feel like it’s very easy to miss signals from advanced civilizations because there is so much noise in the universe. There are also a lot of practical concerns with colonizing large swathes of space. A Von Neumann probe is very risky because it can “get cancer” and replicate out of control.
If high-tech aliens did visit us, it would not seem inconceivable that the drones they would send might contain (or are able to produce prior to landing) robotic exploration units based on some form of nanotechnology that we might mistake for biology and more specifically, for pilots. A very advanced robot need not look like a robot.
I also do not find it too worrisome that we do not see Dyson spheres or a universe converted into computronium. It is possible that the engineering obstacles towards either goal are more formidable than the back-of-the-envelope assessments that originated these concepts suggest and that even the grabbiest of aliens do not execute such programs. Maybe even very advanced civilizations convert only a small part of their local system’s mass into civilized matter, just like our biosphere has only converted a small part of Earth, despite billions of years of trying to reproduce as much as possible. These are things where people probably overestimate the amount of information we can wring out of the Fermi paradox.
However, a sizable number of recovered craft would suggest that there is a population of craft in the solar system suffering from some rate of attrition. If so, where would they be coming from? A steady supply line maintained over at least several light years? Or a factory somewhere in the system?
I’ll be intrigued if evidence at least the verifiability of the Snowden files comes along, not before.
I can come up with a hypothesis about the behaviour of the sources: the drones you send to observe and explore a planet might be disposable. (Eg we’ve left rovers behind on Mars because it’s not worth the effort to retrieve them from the gravity well.) Although if the even-wilder rumours about bio-alien corpses are true, that one fails too.
But the broader picture: that there are high-tech aliens out there who we haven’t observed doing things like building Dyson spheres or tiling the universe with computronium? They’re millions of years ahead of us and somehow didn’t either progress to building mega-tech or to AI apocalypse? They’re not millions of years ahead of us and there’s some insane coincidence where two intelligent species emerged on different planets at the same time but also there are no older civs that already grabbed their lightcone? I’m as boggled as you.
I’m kind of hoping this whole thing is a hoax or deliberate disinformation operation or something because I have absolutely no idea what to think about the alternative. But after the amount of leaks about UAPs over the last few years, I’m at at least 10% that there are literal alien spacecraft visiting our planet.
I don’t know much about astronomy. But is it possible a more advanced alien civ has colonized much of the galaxy, but we haven’t seen them because they anticipated the tech we would be using to make astronomical observations and know how to cloak from it?
Possible yes, but if all advanced civs are highly prioritising stealth, that implies some version of the Dark Forest theory, which is terrifying.
I feel like it’s very easy to miss signals from advanced civilizations because there is so much noise in the universe. There are also a lot of practical concerns with colonizing large swathes of space. A Von Neumann probe is very risky because it can “get cancer” and replicate out of control.
If high-tech aliens did visit us, it would not seem inconceivable that the drones they would send might contain (or are able to produce prior to landing) robotic exploration units based on some form of nanotechnology that we might mistake for biology and more specifically, for pilots. A very advanced robot need not look like a robot.
I also do not find it too worrisome that we do not see Dyson spheres or a universe converted into computronium. It is possible that the engineering obstacles towards either goal are more formidable than the back-of-the-envelope assessments that originated these concepts suggest and that even the grabbiest of aliens do not execute such programs. Maybe even very advanced civilizations convert only a small part of their local system’s mass into civilized matter, just like our biosphere has only converted a small part of Earth, despite billions of years of trying to reproduce as much as possible. These are things where people probably overestimate the amount of information we can wring out of the Fermi paradox.
However, a sizable number of recovered craft would suggest that there is a population of craft in the solar system suffering from some rate of attrition. If so, where would they be coming from? A steady supply line maintained over at least several light years? Or a factory somewhere in the system?
I’ll be intrigued if evidence at least the verifiability of the Snowden files comes along, not before.