I incline toward the latter.It takes no more than a hundred million years or so to completely explore the entire galaxy, every star, every planet. And not particularly advanced technology to do so. Begging the question... why hasn't that happened?
True enough, given SF-levels of engineering.
With 0.01 to 0.1 C being the fastest a realistic vessel can move in the real univese, given the limits of real engineering, relativistic tiime compression inside the vessel isn't much of a factor.
And you're entirely correct about the travellers not having great hopes of sending a postcard back to Cousin Suzy. After 10,000,000,000 years, assuming the mail ship isn't much faster than the habitat, Cousin Suzy would have evolved a little. Even with a laser communications system built withing a few millennia after they arrive, the stay-at-homes would be unlikely to be even remotely human.
As, indeed, would the travellers.
It would also be unlikely for the newly arrived travellers to care about Earth. We don't even know much about our ancestors a few millennia ago. Over millions of years the fog of loss would obscure almost everything once known and remembered.
The guys in the new galaxy wouldn't be "us".
Because we are "it"? We are the technological civilization of the Milky Way?
Because we are the first, or because the other technological civilizations of the Milky Way destroyed themselves before they were ready to send probes around the galaxy?
Ann
Statistics: Posted by Chris Peterson — Tue Jul 02, 2024 12:49 pm — Replies 24 — Views 10606
