--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Combs, Mike"
>
> From: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of joe@...
>
> > On Jul 21, 2006, at 16:57 UTC, Douglas May wrote:
> >
> > > Despite the long odds, I would not be surprised at all to
someday
> > > encounter a spacefaring civilization at approximately the same
level
>
> > > of advancement as us.
> >
> > Then I think you haven't really contemplated how long the odds
are.
> > I would be astonished, since if you do the math, you find that
such
> > a situation is nearly impossible.
>
> A good analogy here might be that one might walk into a room of 20
> people, and, against the odds, find somebody else as old as you.
But
> the odds of them also being born on the same day as you are much,
much
> smaller.
>
> By extension, the odds of finding a civilization with only a 1
million
> year head start on us might not be terribly long. But the odds of
> finding one with only a thousand year head start on us are
vanishingly
> small. And I daresay a technology even a millennia more advanced
than
> ours would probably have the run of the galaxy.
>
> Regards,
>
> Mike Combs
>
I recall reading somewhere that the odds of finding someone with the
same birthday (not necessarily year) become 50/50 with a random
sampling of 23 people...two of the people will share birthdays, not
with you, necessarily.
Of course, we don't have the samples of other galactic societies to
compare ages or birthdates with.
The odds of a species being billions of years ahead of us is slim due
to the lack of heavy elements in the interstellar medium to form
planets much prior to the era of formation of our own 3rd generation
solar system.
Species millions of years ahead of us are more likely, but they seem
to be pretty much stay-at-home types or 'nature lovers', if they
exist.
I don't think we will know for sure for many generations.

regards,
Harvey

From: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of hetrevillion

> I recall reading somewhere that the odds of finding someone
> with the same birthday (not necessarily year) become 50/50
> with a random sampling of 23 people...two of the people will
> share birthdays, not with you, necessarily.

Perhaps, but I meant somebody born same year /and/ same day both, and
same as /you/, (since we're talking about the relative state of
advancement with us, and not just with any other civilization in the
galaxy).

> The odds of a species being billions of years ahead of us is
> slim due to the lack of heavy elements in the interstellar medium
> to form planets much prior to the era of formation of our own 3rd
> generation solar system.

True, which is why I usually confine my arguments to millions rather
than billions of years. Some have also made a case for 3rd generation
solar systems being necessary for metals, without which it's hard to see
how a civilization could advance much technically even if it had the
brainpower and manipulative abilities.

> Species millions of years ahead of us are more likely, but they
> seem to be pretty much stay-at-home types or 'nature lovers',
> if they exist.

But we have to assume that every subculture within that culture goes
along with this "stay-at-home" mentality, and even that every
/individual/ of those subcultures will agree. For example, let's say
that every race, creed, and culture on Earth agrees to ZPG and a
moratorium on space travel, with the single exception of Albania. The
obvious outcome millennias hence is a Milky Way overrun with Albanians.

Regards,

Mike Combs

why would they have to be billions of years ahead of us. why would
it necessate them taking over and colonizing the entire universe if
they are ahead of us. that would assume that they found a way past
light speed. if it cant be beaten, then they would be limited to the
distance they could travel.
our galaxy is 100000 light years in diameter. if they traveled even a
little bit slower than that and did not stop they could reach us in
about 80000 years (were about 2/3s from the center) from the opposite
side. thing is they would have to travel though the center of the
milky way, which is believed to have many black holes, and is known
to be full of radiation hazzard to most all known life. anything that
is not bothered by that would not likely like earth, but would be
more interested in jupiter. of they bother to take the time to look
at any stars between us and them that was interesting, it would take
many times that amount of time. assuming they bother to take time to
explore a new world before they took it over it could take several
hundred years for each planet.

one of the problems i have with the equations that the each planet
will ship off its population as fast as it can make it. it cant work
that way. there has to be a point where there is a limiting factor
of how much each planet can send out. basically each world can send
out the population for a short while, then it runs out of the ability
to send more and has to deal with the population other wise. that
means only the planet on the rim of a expansion would be able to have
anywhere to seen its population, after that, everytime the inner
worlds tried to send more, someone else would be there and it would
be a waste of resourses, eventually the sending planet would run out
of resourses to make the ships or what ever to send out new
populations.

another point is that each planet only has a certain amount of time
where its usable. the stars gradually expand. in so many billions of
years, earth will not be habitable, due to the expansion of the sun.
this means that finding planets to live on is not going to be easy,
and when you find them, most likely they will be uninhabitable.
therefore most of the popluation expansions will not be on planets,
they will be on spacestation or perhaps ring world type worlds. (read
ring world books, i think by larry nivens) or perhaps even dyson
spheres. it would take several milienias for a population to take up
all the space in a dyson's sphere. using things like O'Neil station
and you can use ever start in the known galaxy. (some might be a
little tricky, such as multi star systems and quasars, but still
usuable)

taking in to account these, and it would take many times longer for a
race to take over a galazy.

then again, maybe were the only one in this galaxy. how long would it
take to get from the nearest galaxy? ill bet even if a race was more
than a billion years older than us, they would still be on the way
from the nearest galaxy.

another point is that until the earth was hit by the planet that
created the moon, it could not have a population of land dwellers as
there was little if any land above the sea. how often do planets
collide. how far into the evolution of a star does the planets get
big enough to create a moon like ours.

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, joe@... wrote:
>
> On Jul 21, 2006, at 15:33 UTC, Robert wrote:
>
> > someone has to be the first race. we cant rule out that we are
the
> > first.
>
> Of course. That boils down to the "there's nobody else out there"
answer, and makes sense only if the evolution of technological life
is exceedingly rare and difficult.
>
> In my opinion, that is one of only two reasonable possibilities
(the other being that we're in some sort of nature preserve, and our
keepers will clearly introduce themselves when they're good and
ready).
>
> > also we cant rule out that if there is one faster, that it is
> > so far away the evidence of it will not reach us for a million
years.
>
> We pretty much can. If we're not the first, then probably whoever
was first was at least millions of years ahead of us -- more likely
billions. They would have had plenty of time to colonize the whole
galaxy by now.
>
> I did some detailed calculations on this a while back and found
that, under certain generous assumptions, it was just possible for 2
or 3 civilizations (of billions that would eventually evolve) to
achieve spaceflight before the first one filled up the galaxy. But
it was unlikely; far more common is for the first one to be
considerably ahead of civ #2. This is because at the tail ends of a
normal distribution, individuals tend to be quite far apart.

that is assuming that in a race will find a way beyound the light
barrier by the time they are a thousand years more advance than us.
what if they find the way to explore the galaxy is to leave their
bodies behind, and evolve into something that does not need planets
any more?

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Combs, Mike"
>
> From: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of joe@...
>
> > On Jul 21, 2006, at 16:57 UTC, Douglas May wrote:
> >
> > > Despite the long odds, I would not be surprised at all to
someday
> > > encounter a spacefaring civilization at approximately the same
level
>
> > > of advancement as us.
> >
> > Then I think you haven't really contemplated how long the odds
are.
> > I would be astonished, since if you do the math, you find that
such
> > a situation is nearly impossible.
>
> A good analogy here might be that one might walk into a room of 20
> people, and, against the odds, find somebody else as old as you.
But
> the odds of them also being born on the same day as you are much,
much
> smaller.
>
> By extension, the odds of finding a civilization with only a 1
million
> year head start on us might not be terribly long. But the odds of
> finding one with only a thousand year head start on us are
vanishingly
> small. And I daresay a technology even a millennia more advanced
than

On 7/21/06, Robert wrote:
(...)
> why would they have to be billions of years ahead of us. why would
> it necessate them taking over and colonizing the entire universe if
> they are ahead of us. that would assume that they found a way past
> light speed. if it cant be beaten, then they would be limited to the
> distance they could travel.
> our galaxy is 100000 light years in diameter.
(...)

You don't need FTL to colonize a galaxy in a few million years. The
numbers that I'll show here are from a diffusion model that I saw
years ago:

1) Assume that you have colonization ships able to travel at 10% of lightspeed.

2) Assume that you send some of those ships to a handful of systems
close to your own. Taking an average distance of 8 ly between stars in
the galactic periphery, they would take about 80 years in average to
reach those systems.

3) Assume that 500 years upon arrival in the new systems, the
colonists are now developed enough to send their own new colony ships
to nearby unoccupied systems.

4) Repeating this again and again and again, you basically have a rate
of expansion of the colonization sphere about 8 ly every 580 years.
This way, even a civilization in the border of the galaxy would
colonize the whole Milk Way in 7.5 million years.

Now you can say that the assumptions are too optimistic and assume,
say, ships travelling at 1% of lightspeed and a time of 1,000 years of
developing of a civilization in a new system before sending colonists
to another one. Even though Milk Way would be full in 22.5 million
years.

However, one interesting point in your analysis is the pretty
reasonable assumption that after some time - who knows, ten thousand,
one million years, whatever - the civilization in a given system gets
extinct. In that way, in fact the expansion sphere would be an empty
shell, with a thick layer of thriving systems in the surface and a
grim hollow of extinct systems inside. Those would be systems were the
resources used by the civilization, whatever they are, got exhausted,
and so the systems would not be recolonized.

However, after millions or billions of years, those systems could be
"recycled" by natural phenomena. For instance, systems were all
asteroids had been consumed when it was home to a space habitat
civilization could in time produce new asteroids by means of new
planetary collisions and the like. Systems with old stars would
eventually die and their matter would someday form new systems across
the galaxy. And so on.

So, I would not think inconceivable that perhaps Earth is inside one
of those "hollow shells". Although, if that is the case, our system is
pretty well recycled already, and ripe for supporting *our* expanding
shell.

On Jul 21, 2006, at 21:43 UTC, Robert wrote:

> why would they have to be billions of years ahead of us.

I thought I'd covered that, but I'll try again... Something like the evolution of a civilization involves a lot of random independent variables. Any combination of a bunch of random independent variables tends towards a normal (i.e. bell-shaped) distribution, by the Cauchy Mean Value Theorem. For examples, look at, well, almost anything in nature -- height, IQ, weight of sperm whales, etc.

So, the distribution of time-to-civilization is going to be a normal distribution, pretty much no matter how you measure it. Even if you assume that it was impossible for anyone to get started any earlier than Earth did -- which seems very unlikely to me (the first generation of stars lived fast & died young, spewing heavy elements into the universe within millions of years) -- then we've got one data point from this distribution, where a planet developed civilization in 4.5 billion years. With nothing else to go on, we must assume that this sample is somewhere near the mean, because in a standard deviation a random sample is almost always near the mean.

Now, the other thing you need to know about a distribution is its standard deviation. We don't know anything about that, but we can make reasonable assumptions about the ratio of the standard deviation to the mean, based on everything else in nature. If it takes (on average) 4.5 GY to develop a civilization, I'll guarantee you that the standard deviation is NOT a million years. That would just be ridiculous -- like everyone in the world being the same height to within 0.1%, or about 2 mm.

Most distributions have a standard deviation that's a sizeable fraction of the mean. A billion years would be reasonable, could be more. But let's be conservative and say it's only half a billion years. OK, so this means that only 0.1% of civilizations will develop faster than 3 standard deviations, or 1.5 GY ago.

But there are 100 BILLION stars in our galaxy. 0.1% of that is 100 million. So there should still be 100 million civilizations that developed more than 1.5 billion years ago.

> why would it necessate them taking over and colonizing the entire
> universe if they are ahead of us.

Because life ALWAYS expands into newly available niches. This is a direct result of selection; those individuals with the tendency to expand rapidly outnumber those with the tendency to limit their own numbers/area. Being civilized life doesn't change this.

> that would assume that they found a way past
> light speed.

No it doesn't. This assumes sublight travel. Even if you assume they never manage to travel faster than 1% of lightspeed, the argument still applies. (Go read a bit about the Fermi paradox for more details.)

> if it cant be beaten, then they would be limited to the
> distance they could travel.

There is essentially no limit to the distance they can travel, even if you limit their speed. At least, within a galaxy -- intergalactic distances are so great that I do think we can't say anything about civs in other galaxies.

> our galaxy is 100000 light years in diameter. if they traveled even a
> little bit slower than that and did not stop they could reach us in
> about 80000 years (were about 2/3s from the center) from the opposite
> side. thing is they would have to travel though the center of the
> milky way, which is believed to have many black holes, and is known
> to be full of radiation hazzard to most all known life.

Nonsense. Any civilization that is colonizing other stars is not going to be bothered by the need for additional shielding.

> anything that is not bothered by that would not likely like earth,
> but would be more interested in jupiter.

What? This is the spacesettlers mailing list -- I assumed we were all on the same page with regard to planets and gravity wells. Advanced civilizations will have little use for planets, as long as there are nice convenient asteroids and comets available.

> of they bother to take the time to look
> at any stars between us and them that was interesting, it would take
> many times that amount of time.

Yes. Assume they not only bother to look, but actually stop at every star and settle down for a thousand years before sending out more colony ships. It doesn't change anything. Within a few hundred million years, the first civilization to start this process will have colonized every star.

> one of the problems i have with the equations that the each planet
> will ship off its population as fast as it can make it.

No, the equations don't assume that. You're setting up (and knocking down) a strawman.

> another point is that each planet only has a certain amount of time
> where its usable.

There you go worrying about planets again. Who needs 'em?

> therefore most of the popluation expansions will not be on planets,
> they will be on spacestation or perhaps ring world type worlds.

Ringworlds seem unlikely, but space habitats, yes.

> taking in to account these, and it would take many times longer for a
> race to take over a galazy.

Hundreds of millions of years, yes. A very small amount of time compared to how long it takes for a civilization to evolve, and that is the whole point.

> then again, maybe were the only one in this galaxy. how long would it
> take to get from the nearest galaxy? ill bet even if a race was more
> than a billion years older than us, they would still be on the way
> from the nearest galaxy.

I agree. These arguments apply only within a galaxy.

> another point is that until the earth was hit by the planet that
> created the moon, it could not have a population of land dwellers as
> there was little if any land above the sea. how often do planets
> collide. how far into the evolution of a star does the planets get
> big enough to create a moon like ours.

Back to the "Rare Earth" argument, which is reasonable. My own belief is that this is exactly the case -- we don't see any ETs because they're not out there; we are the first (and possibly only) civilization in our galaxy. Because if we weren't the first, we would almost certainly see evidence of the ancients everywhere.

Best,
- Joe

Joe Strout -- joe@...

In the Drake equation, L ( I think) is the value for how long the
average civ lasts before dying out or lapsing into irrelevance. It
has been calculated that at 200,000 years for L, the galaxy would be
overrun with aliens.

Just because a civ exists, doesn't mean it is actively exploring. All
civs stagnate only to be reborn again in a new rejuvenated form
later. Western civilization didn't just appear out of thin air. It is
the continuation of a long line of older, worn out civs. It is highly
possible that civs that began exploring space soon ran into
insurmountable problems and bankrupted themselves trying to overcome
them. They might then withdraw, perhaps by choice, perhaps not. The
new colonies might sit in a dark age for a few hundred or a few
thousand years before picking up where the mother planet stopped. The
process of colonizing the galaxy doesn't have to be done all at once.
In fact I doubt any civ would be able to maintain that level of
activity for such a long time. Problems would inevitably arise at
home that would divert their attention, and the colonies would go
their own ways. Communication and travel difficulties would make many
of the colonies become isolated for a time once support from the
mother planet fizzled out. Technological progress might continue on
the Mother Planet, but at a slower pace than during their golden age.
But communications networks that have been allowed to deteriorate
would prevent some of the colonies from learning of many of the
latest technologies. Since each species is only adapted for one
planet, the abandoned colonies would likely have to take a pause of
perhaps hundreds or even thousands of years figuring out how to
survive/thrive on their new world without support. It's possible that
civs usually cease looking to expand once they realize how difficult
it is, or once they find a good system within reach that can support
their needs for millions of years. It's also possible that most
colonies fail to achieve a minimum threshold of energy needed to
continue colonization.

There are lots of reasons why colonizing other stars may be very
difficult, And the colonies need not be as technologically advanced
as their founders were. (look at Charlemagne's Empire compared to
late Republican Rome) Being cut off from needed supplies can render
long used technologies useless.

I think we are a long way off from colonizing the stars, if we even
last that long.

Step 1 is to colonize this solar system.

There's PLENTY of room here.

doug

> For example, let's say that every race, creed, and culture on Earth
> agrees to ZPG and a moratorium on space travel, with the single
> exception of Albania. The obvious outcome millennias hence is a Milky
> Way overrun with Albanians.

The obvious outcome in a couple of decades or less is the Albanians
blown away for not going along. Any philosophy with that moch
lock-step agreement behind it (at least outside of Albania) is not
likely to be very tolerant of those not toeing the line.

a few problems with this idea.

1) it assumes that all the planets are easily usable. imagine someone
trying to use mars for colonization. it would be hard to expand with
things as is on it, and would take much of that thousand years to
make it where you could expand quickly. even if they used the
asteroids to create habitats it would take a long time before they
could be able to build them on their own.

2) if these people are anywhere close to human, they will end up
with wars and such which will slow things down and would likely cause
it to take thousands of years before they could start to colonize a
new planet.

3) if they build space habitats there would be little reason to head
out to the next star for much longer than 1000 years.

4) any kind of natural disaster could happen to knock them back to
the stone age, and then it would be milieus before they even think of
heading to the next star.

5) after 500 years they will likely have forgotten that they came
from a different star, with only legend to tell them where they came
from. If they send out another colonizing ship, they would be as
likely to send it to a star that had already been colonize as not.

6) mutations would occur fairly quickly in new environment, meaning
the ones that left might not seem at all like the ones that arrived.
IF there are much like humans they will likely consider the mutations
as an affront, and treat them like lower class citizens leading to a
war between races. If the do end up sending a ship to a star already
colonized, it would likely be a situation of two alien races meeting,
with the likelihood of war.

the point is that the figures for expansion is very optimistic

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Lucio de Souza Coelho"
wrote:
>
> On 7/21/06, Robert wrote:
> (...)
> > why would they have to be billions of years ahead of us. why
would
> > it necessate them taking over and colonizing the entire universe
if
> > they are ahead of us. that would assume that they found a way
past
> > light speed. if it cant be beaten, then they would be limited to
the
> > distance they could travel.
> > our galaxy is 100000 light years in diameter.
> (...)
>
> You don't need FTL to colonize a galaxy in a few million years. The
> numbers that I'll show here are from a diffusion model that I saw
> years ago:
>
> 1) Assume that you have colonization ships able to travel at 10% of
lightspeed.
>
> 2) Assume that you send some of those ships to a handful of systems
> close to your own. Taking an average distance of 8 ly between stars
in
> the galactic periphery, they would take about 80 years in average to
> reach those systems.
>
> 3) Assume that 500 years upon arrival in the new systems, the
> colonists are now developed enough to send their own new colony
ships
> to nearby unoccupied systems.
>
> 4) Repeating this again and again and again, you basically have a
rate
> of expansion of the colonization sphere about 8 ly every 580 years.
> This way, even a civilization in the border of the galaxy would
> colonize the whole Milk Way in 7.5 million years.
>
> Now you can say that the assumptions are too optimistic and assume,
> say, ships travelling at 1% of lightspeed and a time of 1,000 years
of
> developing of a civilization in a new system before sending
colonists
> to another one. Even though Milk Way would be full in 22.5 million
> years.
>
> However, one interesting point in your analysis is the pretty
> reasonable assumption that after some time - who knows, ten
thousand,
> one million years, whatever - the civilization in a given system
gets
> extinct. In that way, in fact the expansion sphere would be an empty
> shell, with a thick layer of thriving systems in the surface and a
> grim hollow of extinct systems inside. Those would be systems were
the
> resources used by the civilization, whatever they are, got
exhausted,
> and so the systems would not be recolonized.
>
> However, after millions or billions of years, those systems could be
> "recycled" by natural phenomena. For instance, systems were all
> asteroids had been consumed when it was home to a space habitat
> civilization could in time produce new asteroids by means of new
> planetary collisions and the like. Systems with old stars would
> eventually die and their matter would someday form new systems
across
> the galaxy. And so on.
>
> So, I would not think inconceivable that perhaps Earth is inside one
> of those "hollow shells". Although, if that is the case, our system
is
> pretty well recycled already, and ripe for supporting *our*
expanding

--- In spacesettlers, "Robert" wrote:

> 5) after 500 years they will likely have forgotten that they came
> from a different star, with only legend to tell them where they came

Er... weren't we just talking about Columbus?

> from. If they send out another colonizing ship, they would be as
> likely to send it to a star that had already been colonize as not.

Not if they are getting signals from that star that let them know it's
already inhabited.

--- Douglas May wrote:
> Except, since they
> don't have NASA, they likely will not have Tang and
> velcro.
>

NASA isn't responsible for either Tang or Velcro.
Tang was developed by General Foods in 1957, and
Velcro was developed by a Swiss engineer in 1948.

Ed

--- "Combs, Mike" wrote:
> A good analogy here might be that one might walk
> into a room of 20
> people, and, against the odds, find somebody else as
> old as you. But
> the odds of them also being born on the same day as
> you are much, much
> smaller.
>

I was born on October 1, 1968. Anyone else in this
group share a birthday with me?

Ed

On 7/21/06, Robert wrote:
(...)
> 1) it assumes that all the planets are easily usable. imagine someone
> trying to use mars for colonization. it would be hard to expand with
> things as is on it, and would take much of that thousand years to
> make it where you could expand quickly. even if they used the
> asteroids to create habitats it would take a long time before they
> could be able to build them on their own.

I was preferably imagining space habitats. A civilization that for
some reason limits itself to planets will likely spread more slowly -
because a system with the "right" kind of planet is likely to be rarer
than *any* system with any kind of rocks around (habitats are not
picky with planetary systems).

(...)
> 3) if they build space habitats there would be little reason to head
> out to the next star for much longer than 1000 years.

Perhaps, but as I hinted even if you raise some of the assumptions but
one or two orders of magnitude the galaxy would be colonized in a
cosmically small time. Cosmic time is *really* beyond human scale.

(...)
> 5) after 500 years they will likely have forgotten that they came
> from a different star, with only legend to tell them where they came
> from. If they send out another colonizing ship, they would be as
> likely to send it to a star that had already been colonize as not.

Frankly I think that you are overestimating the capacity of people to
forget history. Last time that I checked I had not forgotten that
Brazil was discovered by Portuguese navigator Pedro lvares Cabral,
506 years ago. ;-)

Anyhow, in a long enough timescale - guess, 10,000 years - that is
likely to happen. But at a time like that I think that any such system
would be well inside the expanding shell of colonized systems, and
therefore they would not matter for SETI estimations.

> 6) mutations would occur fairly quickly in new environment, meaning
> the ones that left might not seem at all like the ones that arrived.
> IF there are much like humans they will likely consider the mutations
> as an affront, and treat them like lower class citizens leading to a
> war between races. If the do end up sending a ship to a star already
> colonized, it would likely be a situation of two alien races meeting,
> with the likelihood of war.

Again, this makes no difference for a SETI estimation of contact with
a truly alien civilization, for those warring groups mistakenly
thinking of each others as "aliens" would also be well inside the
expanding shell of colonized systems.

> the point is that the figures for expansion is very optimistic
(...)

Perhaps, but again even if you grow the numbers you end up with
cosmologically small times.

Also, you are perhaps being overly pessimistic if I am correct in
understanding that you suppose that *always* something will go wrong
with every colony. Lets picture another scenario in the first step of
the expanding shell. And I will use planets instead of habitats
because the chance of isolated, gravity welled planets going wrong is
far higher.

Suppose that in a not so distant future Earth finds (using
supertelescopes and the like) 12 nearby systems (yes, I am watching
too much BSG ;-) with somewhat colonizable worlds. By "somewhat
colonizable" I mean something at least as good as Mars, appropriate
for Zubrin-style colonization. Now lets see what happens in this
scenario - and beware, I will use some dramatic but not-so-plausible
pulp space opera cliches: ;-)

- Shortly after sending the ships, Earth itself reverts to the Middle
Ages thanks to a virus that kills 90% of Humanity, disintegrating the
network of knowledge and products that maintains our technology.

- Colony #1 is never reached because the ship going there hits a
meteoroid at thousands of kilometers per second and is destroyed.

- In Colony #2 they found out that remote estimation of resources in
the planet was far from accurate and everyone dies a few years after
landing there due to a shortage of the most basic elements for human
life.

- In Colony #3 the colonists successfully conduct a terraforming
process across a 200-years period. Unfortunately the system has too
much asteroids and one of them hits the planet. They revert to a
pre-historian civilization. Also, since the terraformation was not
that perfect, they quickly start to suffer adaptations developing
spidery legs and arms due to low gravity, barrel-chest for huge lungs
able to breath the thin atmosphere and huge black eyes able to see
well in the dim red light of their sun.

- A social engineer on board of the ship for Colony #4 purposely
erases all records of Earth history and invents some bullshit about
the ship being created by God to populate a new world. People in
Colony #4 develop a burgeoning civilization with the rest of knowledge
supposedly given by "God", and a thousand years later they send
spaceships to new worlds fulfilling God's plans of being fruitful and
multiply. However, they end up sending ships to Earth and Colony #3,
where the colonists conduct a genocide of those sentient creatures
that surely are sons of *Satan*! Specially those bug-eyed men from
Colony #3, not even human!

Even though, you still have eight healthy colonies that will thrive
and eventually colonize new systems. (I guess that Colony #4 sent some
ships to them to, but luckily they had the good sense to nuke those
pesky zealots still in outer space.) Heck, even Colony #4 *is*
contributing to the expansion of the shell (in their own twisted way)
if they sent ships in other directions.

On Jul 21, 2006, at 22:40 UTC, Douglas May wrote:

> In the Drake equation, L ( I think) is the value for how long the
> average civ lasts before dying out or lapsing into irrelevance.

Yes, and this is a good example of how the Drake equation is nonsense. It's like supposing that the lifespan of a bacterium is relevant to whether or not the world is overrun with bacteria. It really doesn't matter, as long as the bacteria reproduces at least as fast as they die off. So too for civilizations: as long as they are creating new colonies faster than the old ones die off, their growth is still exponential (up to the point where the galaxy starts to get crowded with colonies, of course).

> It has been calculated that at 200,000 years for L, the galaxy would be
> overrun with aliens.

Such calculations are nonsense too, I'm afraid, since they're based on an equation which is of completely the wrong form to describe reality.

> Just because a civ exists, doesn't mean it is actively exploring. All
> civs stagnate only to be reborn again in a new rejuvenated form
> later.

Exactly. Some parts of a civilization may go quiescent for a while, but that does not -- and CAN not -- stop the overall trend of continuous expansion. If some colonies do nuke themselves or universally adopt navel-gazing or whatever, they will simply be outcompeted by their neighbors who are more effective at growing and reproducing.

> In fact I doubt any civ would be able to maintain that level of
> activity for such a long time.

Then you must also doubt that life on Earth would be able to maintain growing and reproducing for billions of years. Yet that's exactly what it did. You're confounding the behavior of an individual (star system, in this case) with the behavior of the overall population (of all colonized star systems).

As soon as the first race is able to colonize another star, the cat is out of the bag. The toothpaste is out of the tube, and there is no putting it back. Some colonies will succeed, others will fail, but on the whole, over time, more and more colonies will be settled, because those successful at doing so are selected for. This is a simple and inevitable result of the way selection works.

> Since each species is only adapted for one
> planet, the abandoned colonies would likely have to take a pause of
> perhaps hundreds or even thousands of years figuring out how to
> survive/thrive on their new world without support.

Planets and worlds again? I thought this was the space-settlers list?

> I think we are a long way off from colonizing the stars, if we even
> last that long.

What is "a long way"? We're almost certainly hundreds, maybe a thousand years away from that. But a million? No. (If, as you say, we last that long.) And even if it took us another million years, that's a blink of an eye on a geological (or galactic) time scale.

> Step 1 is to colonize this solar system.
> There's PLENTY of room here.

Agreed.

Best,
- Joe

Joe Strout -- joe@...

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophile"
>
> Er... weren't we just talking about Columbus?
>

yes, but our civiliazation was already well established. it has
simple kept growing. if you had to start a new civilization on a new
planet, its likely that you would be too busy trying to survive for
the first few centuries to be bother with where you came from.

actually this brings up another point. there were several million
people on this planet when columbus discovered the america's, yet we
are still not to the point where we would have to send out more
colonizes. a colony ship that came from another planet would likely
have only a fraction of that. why would they want to expand to
another world so soon.

>
> Not if they are getting signals from that star that let them know
it's
> already inhabited.
>
that is assuming that the new planet had been colonized either short
enough time that it was still using the old equipment, or that it had
had the time to develop its own. the odds are it would be in between.

On Jul 21, 2006, at 8:54 PM, Robert wrote:
> 4) any kind of natural disaster could happen to knock them back to
> the stone age, and then it would be milieus before they even think of
> heading to the next star.

I think it would be rare for a colony to get blasted to the stone
age and still survive. Probably impossible if they're in an orbital
station. More likely is that you will see the economy of the new
system get destroyed, which means their existing technology falls
into disrepair and new technologies aren't readily developed.

During Europe's Dark Age, there wasn't a ton of new work going on in
the sciences and mathematics. In fact, they were forgetting more than
they were learning. But they had to deal with the fact that they did
not have access to unlimited slaves for manual labor like the Romans
did. Therefore, during this dark period they spent their time
developing new machines to harness energy and replace labor, like
advanced water mills and wind mills. They improved yokes and crop
rotations and lots of very practical things like that, without which,
we'd not be where we are today. In fact, they really had no idea they
were in the Dark Ages. Later historians longing for the military
glory of ancient Rome decided that for them.

If I can throw out another controversial statement:

The laws of entropy apply to life and civilization as well.

The only thing that keeps civilization from falling into entropy is
the input of massive amounts of energy from our sun. Future energy
sources will suffice as well (Fusion, antimatter, brane manipulation,
force-rifts in spacetime) The more complex the society, the more
energy required to hold it together. Traveling to another star will
require enormous amounts of energy, and starfaring civilizations will
be perilously addicted to energy. If the energy supply is disrupted,
the colony breaks down through entropy into a less energetic state.
Not necessarily all the way back down to the stone age, but to
whatever state the available energy supply can maintain.

Oil is just the beginning.

doug

On Jul 22, 2006, at 9:53 AM, Douglas May wrote:

> If the energy supply is disrupted,
> the colony breaks down through entropy into a less energetic state.
> Not necessarily all the way back down to the stone age, but to
> whatever state the available energy supply can maintain.

I guess I could pose a question here:

If a colony with perhaps a few thousand people in a hostile solar
system were forced to revert to a lower energy state (lower
technology state), how difficult would it be with their reduced
technology/ infrastructure and their severe labor shortage to re-
ignite themselves into a type II civ? Would they prove incapable of
even surviving without all their type II technology? Will the
complexity of an interstellar spacecraft doom any travelers that
can't maintain their energy/tech level? Should we plan on designing
interstellar spacecraft with contingency plans in case future
generations become more primitive than the initial travelers?

Presumably, these things won't be as big an issue for a type III civ,
but so far we have no evidence for any type III civs, which you would
think we would, since they would have to use massive amounts of
energy. Either they don't exist (in this galaxy), they are very good
at cloaking their energy fingerprints, we're not looking right, or
they've only been type III a few thousand years. At present we don't
know if type III civs are even possible. In fact, we don't even know
if a type I civ is possible since the only civ we know (us) is not
quite there yet.

Like I said before: There's plenty of room in this solar system.
Where can I buy a ticket to Saturn? Nowhere. Dang! Guess I'll build
my own spaceship. Is the Saturn-Titan L1 within Saturn's radiation belt?

doug

On 7/22/06, Robert wrote:
(...)
> yes, but our civiliazation was already well established. it has
> simple kept growing. if you had to start a new civilization on a new
> planet, its likely that you would be too busy trying to survive for
> the first few centuries to be bother with where you came from.

The point is that they would not have to bother, information would
simply be there, in computer records or even books. And likely being
taught in schools, supposing that their classes would have at least
some vague resemblance to ours.

> actually this brings up another point. there were several million
> people on this planet when columbus discovered the america's, yet we
> are still not to the point where we would have to send out more
> colonizes. a colony ship that came from another planet would likely
> have only a fraction of that. why would they want to expand to
> another world so soon.

When Australia was discovered, people in the Americas had already
technology to build ships and go there, if they wanted. But probably
they were not so motivated because England had already laid a claim.

(...)
> that is assuming that the new planet had been colonized either short
> enough time that it was still using the old equipment, or that it had
> had the time to develop its own. the odds are it would be in between.
(...)

Wouldn't be reasonable to assume that there would be no hiatus without
equipment? As stuff brought in the trip gets old, the stimulus for
colonist to develop replacements Made in Colony would be quite
persuasive.

On 7/22/06, Douglas May wrote:
(...)
> Oil is just the beginning.
(...)

I hope it is not the end as well.

On 7/22/06, Douglas May wrote:
(...)
> Like I said before: There's plenty of room in this solar system.
> Where can I buy a ticket to Saturn? Nowhere. Dang! Guess I'll build
> my own spaceship. Is the Saturn-Titan L1 within Saturn's radiation belt?
(...)

I don't think so, Titan is quite far away from Saturn, more than a
million kilometers apart.

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Lucio de Souza Coelho"
wrote:
>
> The point is that they would not have to bother, information would
> simply be there, in computer records or even books. And likely being
> taught in schools, supposing that their classes would have at least
> some vague resemblance to ours.
>
that is assuming that the computer records or book survived. how long
do you think a CD would survive if there was a biological plague like
Steven King wrote of. (forgot the name of the books or miniseries of
movies.) in those 99 percent or more of the human race was wiped out.
those in America had the use of the hoover dam, but for how many
years. most of the people would descend into preindustrial age within
a few generations. long ago i read a book about the same thing, save
that that book dealt with the survivors over a full generation. the
hero was a young man, but by the time that he died, the civilization
had fallen to the level that the native Americans had before
Columbus. they had little interest in what the American civilization
was. there was one scene that was important to this discussion. the
hero was going to have a class. he started it out be saying he was an
American, but before he could tell all the children that they were
too, he realized that they did not believe that. they did not live in
the American civilization, and had not interest in being called that.
they were more interested in learning to make bows and arrows and
learning to hunt and do things they needed to survive when they
became adults.

if a race colonized a new world and then lost their civilization's
edge, which could happen for thousands of reason, they could easily
revert to an native American or even a "savage" type tribal society,
which would take thousands of years to return to even the modern day
lvl of civilization.

the thing is that there are so many reason that this could happen
that i don't believe the majority would survive with their original
civilizations intact.
>
> When Australia was discovered, people in the Americas had already
> technology to build ships and go there, if they wanted. But probably
> they were not so motivated because England had already laid a claim.
>

why would they want to go there when they had so much space in
America that had not been explored yet. so much of it to fill up. why
bother going halfway around the world to something that was reported
to be rather hostile, when they can simply move a hundred miles in a
wagon and have open territory. its a lot easier to afford to buy a
wagon (if they did not have one) and horses and things to travel for
a few weeks then to buy all of that and the cost of a boat trip that
will take months.

>
> Wouldn't be reasonable to assume that there would be no hiatus
without
> equipment? As stuff brought in the trip gets old, the stimulus for
> colonist to develop replacements Made in Colony would be quite
> persuasive.
>

actually i think it more likely that they would have little time to
build new ones, if they even remembered how to build it. granted if
you live in a space station you would need to keep up a certain lvl
of technology, but not as much as you think. there have been many
stories of people in large station and in ships, losing their
technology, then later regaining it. by the time they did some of it
would have been lost and the data it had would not longer be good. In
addition another race could come across the station and see that it
had reverted to savagery, and decide to make themselves gods to
the "ungodly savage race". If there had been sufficient mutations in
the DNA, neither side would recognize the other as being from the
same parent race.

it depends on how good the equipment is. if it had to be replaced
every year or 5 or so, they would be force to keep it up, but then
they would be at a greater risk of a catastrophic breakdown of
multiple equipment. equipment that lasted longer or that had more
replacements/parts would increase the likelyhood of survival, but
also of them forgetting how to make the parts.

On 7/22/06, Robert wrote:
(...)
> why would they want to go there when they had so much space in
> America that had not been explored yet. so much of it to fill up. why
> bother going halfway around the world to something that was reported
> to be rather hostile, when they can simply move a hundred miles in a
> wagon and have open territory. its a lot easier to afford to buy a
> wagon (if they did not have one) and horses and things to travel for
> a few weeks then to buy all of that and the cost of a boat trip that
> will take months.
(...)

Like in many of your hypothesis, in this case you are also falling in
the fallacy of undue generalization, assuming that one answer will
serve for all cases, everywhere and at all times. But in that
particular case the historical fact is that even in partially
colonized Americas there were plenty of cases where people would
gladly take a ship in a trip of months instead of moving to a hundred
miles far from where they lived.

Take for instance the Jewish community living at the city of Recife,
in the Northeast of Brazil, in the 17th Century. They fled to Brazil
in the first years of our colonization (after the discovery in 1500),
running away from the Inquisition. Brazil was far away and at least in
the early times the Inquisition really was not that concerned about
which religions people followed here. Also, in the beginning of the
17th Century, Northeast Brazil was invaded and conquered by Dutch
Prince John Maurice of Nassau. The Dutch were very tolerant and for
many decades the Jews were happy under their new ruler.

Unfortunately that favorable state of affairs would not last forever.
In 1654 the Portuguese reconquered Recife. The Portuguese law demanded
that all Jews should be deported back to Portugal (were conceivably
they could be exterminated - and they even did not have gas chambers
at the time!). However, in a rare display of tolerance, the Portuguese
commander Barreto de Menezes gave to the Jews the option of simply
evacuate the city and go anywhere they wished.

The vast majority of those ancient Brazilian Jews moved to the
Caribbean, but a few families ended up farther away in... New
Amsterdam, which lately would become New York. In fact, as bizarre as
this may sound, they were the first group of Jews to arrive in North
America, and the founders of the now-huge Jew community of New York
City, over 350 years ago. You can find a somewhat explicative text
about that in English at
http://www.pousadapeter.com.br/judeusindex2.htm (I would say that the
best texts are in Brazilian Portuguese, though).

So, according to your reasoning, those Jews should just move away a
hundred miles from Recife. Instead that option apparently did not look
safe at all for them, and they chose to move thousands of kilometers
North, with ships. Some of them even moved to New Amsterdam, which for
them was a horrible, sterile, cold, and completely alien non-tropical
environment.

And I wonder that if Australia was known at the time, some of them
might even find it attractive to move half a world away, as far from
the Portuguese as possible...

totally different situation.

as i understand it they were basically kicked out of the country they
called home. If i understand the situation back there, there was
little area in South American that would have been better. also, i am
under the impression that there is a practically impenetrable jungle
there that would make any attempt at colonizing extremely difficult.
north America did not have that, nor were the people doing the
expansion leaving because they got kicked out (most of the time), but
instead were looking for a place of their own that they could make
into what they wanted it to be. For the most part they were leaving
crowded cities where everything was already owned by someone else who
wanted to keep it. In a few cases (Mormons as an example) they did
leave for religions reasons, but still they went west due to the fact
that there was land aplenty for the taking. Australia was a long ways
away, and there were lots of risk with taking a ship, risk that
passengers could do nothing about. heading west in a wagon train
meant they faced dangers that they were facing already, just a good
bit more extreme.

I'm sure if they had had a chance of going to Australia, many of the
Jews would have. for them, there was little difference in going to
New Amsterdam or Australia. for the american pioneers, there was a
major difference.

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Lucio de Souza Coelho"
wrote:
>
> On 7/22/06, Robert wrote:
> (...)
> > why would they want to go there when they had so much space in
> > America that had not been explored yet. so much of it to fill
up. why
> > bother going halfway around the world to something that was
reported
> > to be rather hostile, when they can simply move a hundred miles
in a
> > wagon and have open territory. its a lot easier to afford to buy
a
> > wagon (if they did not have one) and horses and things to travel
for
> > a few weeks then to buy all of that and the cost of a boat trip
that
> > will take months.
> (...)
>
> Like in many of your hypothesis, in this case you are also falling
in
> the fallacy of undue generalization, assuming that one answer will
> serve for all cases, everywhere and at all times. But in that
> particular case the historical fact is that even in partially
> colonized Americas there were plenty of cases where people would
> gladly take a ship in a trip of months instead of moving to a
hundred
> miles far from where they lived.
>
> Take for instance the Jewish community living at the city of Recife,
> in the Northeast of Brazil, in the 17th Century. They fled to
Brazil
> in the first years of our colonization (after the discovery in
1500),
> running away from the Inquisition. Brazil was far away and at least
in
> the early times the Inquisition really was not that concerned about
> which religions people followed here. Also, in the beginning of the
> 17th Century, Northeast Brazil was invaded and conquered by Dutch
> Prince John Maurice of Nassau. The Dutch were very tolerant and for
> many decades the Jews were happy under their new ruler.
>
> Unfortunately that favorable state of affairs would not last
forever.
> In 1654 the Portuguese reconquered Recife. The Portuguese law
demanded
> that all Jews should be deported back to Portugal (were conceivably
> they could be exterminated - and they even did not have gas chambers
> at the time!). However, in a rare display of tolerance, the
Portuguese
> commander Barreto de Menezes gave to the Jews the option of simply
> evacuate the city and go anywhere they wished.
>
> The vast majority of those ancient Brazilian Jews moved to the
> Caribbean, but a few families ended up farther away in... New
> Amsterdam, which lately would become New York. In fact, as bizarre
as
> this may sound, they were the first group of Jews to arrive in North
> America, and the founders of the now-huge Jew community of New York
> City, over 350 years ago. You can find a somewhat explicative text
> about that in English at
> http://www.pousadapeter.com.br/judeusindex2.htm (I would say that
the
> best texts are in Brazilian Portuguese, though).
>
> So, according to your reasoning, those Jews should just move away a
> hundred miles from Recife. Instead that option apparently did not
look
> safe at all for them, and they chose to move thousands of kilometers
> North, with ships. Some of them even moved to New Amsterdam, which
for
> them was a horrible, sterile, cold, and completely alien non-
tropical

On 7/23/06, Robert wrote:
(...)
> as i understand it they were basically kicked out of the country they
> called home. If i understand the situation back there, there was
> little area in South American that would have been better. also, i am
> under the impression that there is a practically impenetrable jungle
> there that would make any attempt at colonizing extremely difficult.
(...)

That's a wrong impression, for those Jews lived here for many
generations and were *used* to the Brazilian tropical environment.
(Which is not always a jungle. Close to Recife for instance you can
for instance find semi-desertic areas.) As I stressed, the environment
in New Amsterdam was the one completely alien to them, with
unimaginable stuff like snowfall and lakes freezing in the winter.
Most Brazilians consider the temperate zones inhabitable just part of
the year, to give you a more accurate idea.

Anyhow, the point was indeed to show that there *are* different
situations than the "colonists in a wagon" that you assumed to be the
only existing one. And so there is possibility of people migrating to
far away lands even though there are available lands "at home".

the thing is they would not go to austalia without knowing what was
out there. why should they when they knew what they were up against
in the american west. the same can be said about people going to
stars. why would they want to uproot and go, with no knowledge of
what was at the new start when they had all the materials they needed
there at home. if they have the material to build a ship capable of
traveling the intersteller space, they can easily build a new station
that is more to their liking. If they are planet bound they would
have to over come any fears of living in a closed space and having
no place for their dependants to expand to.

let me point to SF for more details of what I'm trying to say. in the
pern series, Anne Mccaffrey wrote of a planet that was 15 years away
from other stars systems of the federation. with the means of travel
they had, 15 years was not that far. a few years after settling on
the planet, they discovered that the planet was periodically
bombarded from space by a menace that they could not fight. they had
no ships to fight it, they had no means of escaping it. and they had
no means of getting any immediate help. a signal rocket was launched
to ask for help, against the wishes of the majority of the colonist.
It DID arrive, in the form of a single exploration ship some 20 years
later. the exploration ship was able to find a small family of
survivors still clinging to the area of the landing, still trying to
survive in the same style of the original colonist. they did not find
the civilization that had develop, moved to another part of the
planet, and began building back from the rubble, with a new way of
living. the children of that one family went back to live in a system
that was just as alien to them as if it had never been connected to
the colonist. several hundred years later, the new civilizations
found the remnants of that colonizing attempt, and found the
information about the other systems, and found that they could make
contact with that star spanning civilizations, IF they choose. the
did not do so (at least in the last book of the series i read) and
had no interest in doing so. that civilization would have been
considered alien by the federation from which they came, even though
for the most part they would still have been able to interbreed with
them. they even had the ability to leave the planet as it was. again
there was no desire at that time to do so.

any colonizing attempt to leave the home system of any civilization
that does not have faster than light travel, will have to go with the
knowledge that they are on their own. they will have to go with the
knowledge that they cant send home for more resources. they will go
with the knowledge that any thing that they create will be theirs and
theirs alone. with this as part of the main drive, why would they try
to maintain contact with the home world, other than to send and
receive news. Once faster than light travel becomes possible, they
might have a different outlook. as long as it will take more than a
generation for help to come, they will not be asking for it. with
nothing but news to share with the home world. the likelihood that
they will maintain their communication equipment needed to listen to
a far message will laps into near nothing. if there is any disaster
that sticks them (and there will be many) and they will either die or
become so self reliant that they have no interest of sharing with
the other stars. the exponential increases in populations is
completely dependant on there being no major catastrophes. that is
unlikely to happen.

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Lucio de Souza Coelho"
wrote:
>
> On 7/23/06, Robert wrote:
> (...)
> > as i understand it they were basically kicked out of the country
they
> > called home. If i understand the situation back there, there was
> > little area in South American that would have been better. also,
i am
> > under the impression that there is a practically impenetrable
jungle
> > there that would make any attempt at colonizing extremely
difficult.
> (...)
>
> That's a wrong impression, for those Jews lived here for many
> generations and were *used* to the Brazilian tropical environment.
> (Which is not always a jungle. Close to Recife for instance you can
> for instance find semi-desertic areas.) As I stressed, the
environment
> in New Amsterdam was the one completely alien to them, with
> unimaginable stuff like snowfall and lakes freezing in the winter.
> Most Brazilians consider the temperate zones inhabitable just part
of
> the year, to give you a more accurate idea.
>
> Anyhow, the point was indeed to show that there *are* different
> situations than the "colonists in a wagon" that you assumed to be
the
> only existing one. And so there is possibility of people migrating
to