Aliens Wouldn't Need Warp Drives to Take Over an Entire Galaxy, Simulation Suggests
A new computer simulation shows that a technologically advanced civilization, even when using slow ships, can still colonize an entire galaxy in a modest amount of time. The finding presents a possible model for interstellar migration and a sharpened sense of where we might find alien intelligence. From a report: Space, we are told time and time again, is huge, and that's why we have yet to see signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. For sure, the distances between stars are vast, but it's important to remember that the universe is also very, very old. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that, in terms of extremes, the Milky Way galaxy is more ancient than it is huge, if that makes sense. It's for this reason that I tend to dismiss distances as a significant variable when discussing the Fermi Paradox -- the observation that we have yet to see any evidence for the existence of alien intelligence, even though we probably should have. New research published in The American Astronomical Society is bolstering my conviction. The new paper, co-authored by Jason Wright, an astronomer and astrophysicist at Penn State, and Caleb Scharf, an astrobiologist at Columbia University, shows that even the most conservative estimates of civilizational expansion can still result in a galactic empire. A simulation produced by the team shows the process at work, as a lone technological civilization, living in a hypothetical Milky Way-like galaxy, begins the process of galactic expansion. Grey dots in the visualization represent unsettled stars, magenta spheres represent settled stars, and the white cubes are starships in transit. The computer code and the mathematical analysis for this was project were written at the University of Rochester by Jonathan Carroll-Nellenback. Astronomer Adam Frank from the University of Rochester also participated in the study.
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