this post was submitted on 11 May 2024
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Dyson swarms are more likely. We even have a tiny one with our satellites using solar power in a heliocentric orbit. (Dyson spheres are basically impossible.) But we could theoretically detect either in infrared since if it doesnโt give off waste heat, itโd all heat up and melt.
That being said, Iโm personally of the opinion this is a waste of time. Not to get all Fermi Paradox but itโs pretty sci fi brained to think any other species out there is as dumb as we are. Space sucks. You die super fast there. Everything had to align just right for Earth to make a bunch of dumb fuck apes willing to strap themselves onto rockets, have a planet small enough that the rocket could even overcome gravity to enter orbit using chemical rockets, and a World War and Cold War to accelerate things.
Given the estimated number of planets in this galaxy alone, it's particularly guaranteed that very similar events have occurred on multiple worlds. Unless you're proposing that all theoretical alien races are Vulcan level logical then tensions and interstate conflicts will always exist that will advance technology. This is practically an inevitability unless the race question is a hive mind species.
I think my Fermi Paradox explanation is that space is really fucking big and hostile and protecting the planet you evolved on is the only real option.
Not to mention the problem of what life is even supposed to do beyond a certain point of development. The depressing fact is that there is a finite amount of knowledge to be gained, a finite amount of resources to harvest, a finite diversity of life to contend or thrive alongside with. Once a pocket of life in this massive universe begins to run out of things to do and stagnates, then what? What is there to think about; to feel; to experience?
There's little point in exploring space if one know how this universe works. One knows the rules, knows all the ways it can play out, and there's no surprise waiting on the other end of any venture one can imagine embarking on.
That's my theory. The Great Filter is just depressive boredom. We don't see other life because by the time a civilisation is able and ready to spend thousands of years travelling through deep space, they'll have already lost any motivation they might have had to do so.
I suspect that there's at best a very short window wherein a species is both knowledgeable enough to dream of space exploration and technologically capable of sending any significant amount of artificial constructions out there.
Not to mention that anything an alien species might send into interstellar space is unimaginably unlikely to be recorded exactly at precisely the moment they pass another lump of matter - especially if the window is as short as I fear.
Time will always be the great filter. Even if we did spot a Dyson swarm, we have no feasible way to contact anything on a practice timescale. Any speck of civilization we detect will be hundreds of thousands of years out of date at best, billions at worst. Life in the universe, imo, is basically guaranteed. If it happened once, it can happen again. Meaningful contact between separately evolved concurrent sapient species? Not likely.