
Odds of communicating with 36 other possible intelligent civilizations are small - imheretolearn
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/there-may-be-36-other-intelligent-civilizations-in-the-galaxy-but-odds-of-communicating-with-them-are-small-1.5618194
======
simonkafan
I read the paper and I find it highly unserious how frivolously they assigned
some probability to the question how many intelligent civilizations there are
in the universe.

Their key assumption is: "We assume that if an SP remains in the circumstellar
Habitable Zone (HZ) for a time equal to the current age of the Earth it will
develop intelligent, communicative life." (page 5 at
[https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2004/2004.03968.pdf](https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2004/2004.03968.pdf))

Why? Why do you assume a planet will develop intelligent life when it remains
in the Habitable Zone long enough? Just because it happend on Earth?

And they continue with: "[...] according to the Copernican Principle – we
propose that the likelihood of the development of life, and even intelligent
life, should be broadly uniformly distributed amongst any suitable habitats"

We have no clue how likely it was at Earth that life developed at all. Maybe
it was just a chain of many lucky coincidences that happen once in 10 billion
years. How is distribution any relevant then?

~~~
dahfizz
One thing that bothers me is that papers like this always assume alien life
will look _exactly_ like life on Earth. It must be the same distance from the
sun as us, have water and proteins like us, etc.

If we effectively limit the definition of "life" to "the types of organisms we
see on Earth", then of course we will never find life anywhere else.

Maybe there are aliens that live on a gas giant and they "eat" the lighting
rather than food, and their bodies look more like circuitry than the chemical
life on Earth.

Maybe there is a planet with a very strong magnetic field, and the life there
is kind of like an electromagnet. They have bodies high in copper and the
current of the ocean moves them through the magnetic field and generates
electrical energy.

It makes sense that we restrict our search for life forms we know to be
possible while we are stuck with limited tools at our disposal. But I don't
want us to overlook some amazing discoveries because we have put blinders on.

~~~
fennecfoxen
The start of life is basically a statistics game waiting for a system to
spontaneously enter the right self-reproducing state, and it is relatively
easy for a system combining water and various mostly-carbon-based molecules to
enter into that state.

We thus suppose that life looks like life on Earth because life on Earth has
several properties which allowed it to come into existence. By contrast, there
are no known states that cause a strong planetary electromagnetic field to
rearrange copper into self-reproducing patterns: if anything, such
electromagnetic fields are more likely to disrupt any spontaneous order that
happens to arise.

So it's true there may be other systems of life out there, but too much
handwaving about that fact can obscure the fact that the other candidates for
ordered systems arising from chaos are weak candidates. It would be unwise to
rely on this wild speculation while trying to responsibly and conservatively
estimate how much life there is.

~~~
teknopaul
Right now there is a lot of active search for life based on the habitable zone
theory. I also think that we should open up our ideas. We might find something
of intellect and of interest closer than 17000 light years. If nearest carbon
based life if so far there is not much to be learned. If we can find even a
mildly interesting self supporting system in our own solar system we may not
be able to play golf but we might be able to communicate and learn. I also
think we are foolish to not look for intelligence on earth. We killed off the
neanderthals. There is more hope of bringing them back and asking for an
opinion than finding little green men.

~~~
fennecfoxen
We might indeed find something of intellect closer! It would indeed be
interesting! It is not, however, something we have reason to expect would be
particularly probable.

I am unsure what variety of "opinion" you hope to extract from your
hypothetical Neanderthal, and take the opportunity to note that, as social
mammals with large and adaptable brains, the opinion systems of intelligent
hominids are substantially shaped by their upbringing and how they relate to
the society around them, particularly as regards the more complex systems of
thought.

------
nine_k
Cetaceans are considered sentient, the way humans are sentient, by a wide
scientific consensus, e.g. [1]. Some degree of sentience is also assumed by
the scientific community to be present in a lot of other animals [2].

Still the successes in contacting these nonhuman sentient beings, even if they
gladly support such contacts, like dolphins, is very limited at best. And
those are our close relatives, fellow mammals, sharing the planet with us.

Now imagine an attempt to contact a sentient being which developed and lives
in an environment totally alien to humans.

[1]:
[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-17116882](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-17116882)
[2]: [http://www.animalcognition.org/2015/03/25/the-declaration-
of...](http://www.animalcognition.org/2015/03/25/the-declaration-of-nonhuman-
animal-conciousness/)

~~~
mannykannot
This concept of sentience is too broad to be relevant. For there to be
linguistic communication between species, both must have language.

When the issue is interstellar communications, the minimum requirements are
language and the technology to send and receive information between stars.

~~~
317070
But Cetaceans do have language? And we do have communication to some level.

> Experiments have shown that they can learn human sign language and can use
> whistles for 2-way human–animal communication. Phoenix and Akeakamai,
> bottlenose dolphins, understood individual words and basic sentences like
> "touch the frisbee with your tail and then jump over it" (Herman, Richards,
> & Wolz 1984). Phoenix learned whistles, and Akeakamai learned sign language.
> Both dolphins understood the significance of the ordering of tasks in a
> sentence. [0]

Maybe this definition of sentience is too broad, but it is worth evaluating
what you can hope to achieve, by looking at the closest approximation
available and what you are achieving there. And in this case, I would say "not
much". We know e.g. dolphins have a language and communicate, we can very
coarsely decipher it, and they can learn to broadly decipher a language we
engineered for them. But the most we are achieving with this communication are
party tricks in a circus.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacean_intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacean_intelligence)

~~~
3131s
The only reason that most people do not accept the obvious sentience of many
animals is that they want to keep killing and eating them. It's as simple as
that.

------
pjdorrell
The authors of the paper do various calculations to arrive at 36.

How do they determine f_l, the probability of life originating on a suitable
planet?

They follow the "Principle of Mediocrity", ie life exists on Earth, and we are
not special, so probably it exists anywhere it can exist and f_l = 1.

This is the exact opposite of the Anthropic Principle, which says (correctly)
that we cannot deduce anything about the probability of life originating from
the fact of our own existence.

If f_l isn't 1, and it's some smaller number, like 1^-1000, then there won't
be 36 alien civilisations in the galaxy - there will only be zero.

Even in the observable universe, there will be zero alien civilisations.

~~~
kranner
> This is the exact opposite of the Anthropic Principle, which says
> (correctly) that we cannot deduce anything about the probability of life
> originating from the fact of our own existence.

Your definition of the Anthropic Principle seems to clash with the Wikipedia
definition [1], which states:

> The anthropic principle is the philosophical premise that any data we
> collect about the universe is filtered by the fact that, in order for it to
> be observable at all, the universe must have been compatible with the
> emergence of conscious and sapient life that observes it.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle)

Also you use the word "correctly" for your definition, but as it isn't self-
evident, some sort of proof should probably be required.

~~~
cthalupa
Well, even within the wikipedia article you see quite a few definitions under
'variants'. It's also nearly a word for word copy of how it is defined in
contrast to the mediocrity principle (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediocrity_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediocrity_principle)
)

Either way, his point is fundamentally pretty close to even the WAP definition
in the summary.

I think it's fairly self evident, though. If there is only one set of
observers in the entirety of the observable universe, those observers would be
inaccurate in assuming that they are unlikely to be special because they exist
and therefor others likely to as well. We just can't make a deduction about
the probability of life based on the fact we exist, because for us to make
that observation we have to exist, regardless of (im)probable it was. You can
reach the same conclusion just thinking about selection bias - we have
selected for intelligent life out of necessity, because if we hadn't, we
couldn't be around to make the argument either way.

------
jasonlfunk
> Of course since no one knows how long intelligent civilizations last, (given
> our current trajectory, some might guess not very long)

These people must have a very short sighted view of history? Our current
trajectory for almost everything that matters is positive. Longer life spans,
fewer wars, better medicine and technology, average base-level knowledge, etc.
Barring some global unavoidable catastrophe, there is no reason to think we
are going anywhere very soon.

~~~
kristopolous
Cosmic timescales are different. Do you think humans will be around for the
next say 100,000,000 years? I think we'd be lucky to survive another 10,000.

We've only had organized societies for somewhere around 20,000.

There could have been say, intelligent life on Venus, then they triggered a
runaway greenhouse effect, everything died, the oceans boiled, and then
700,000,000 years pass before we started talking pictures of the dead planet
with all signs of previous life completely erased.

~~~
Stupulous
If we burned this planet down and waited 700,000,000 years, would remnants of
our civilisation remain? On the one hand, we have structures that are massive
blocks of concrete and metal that I find hard to imagine fading away. We've
got stuff in space and on the moon. On the other hand, there's weathering and
erosion which would be amplified by chaotic weather patterns. And 700 million
years is a long time.

I'm leaning towards us leaving some evidence behind, but it's such an
inconceivable amount of time that I'm not really sure.

~~~
pharke
In the case of Venus there's likely little left due to extreme volcanic
activity[0]. Even if we didn't create a hellscape like Venus on Earth, over
700,000,000 years geological processes would grind those structures to dust.
Repeated glaciation every 41,000 years or so would act the fastest but over
hundreds of millions of years the surface would be significantly altered by
tectonic movement. Add to that all the insults of rain, oceans, rivers, wind,
volcanism, and biology. Practically nothing would be left except for maybe the
fossilized remains of some junk thrown into rivers that managed to sink into
the mud and then ride the tectonic waves up onto some high escarpment. Even
the orbits of satellites decay. The few artifacts we left on the Moon would
stand the best chance. This is why the only hope we have is to spread out into
the solar system and beyond. If we stay in our tiny ecological niche on this
island we're doomed to extinction and erasure.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus#Surface_geology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus#Surface_geology)

~~~
fennecfoxen
> Even the orbits of satellites decay.

Near-Earth satellites, yes; the thinnest wisps of the edge of the atmosphere
slow them down. Further out, however, in geostationary orbit, satellites are
not subject to such forces. They may be disrupted long-term by the
gravitational influence of other distant bodies, but I think I'd worry more
about the potential impact from micrometeorites.

------
hliyan
Forget travel. Even radio communications seem unlikely. I recently got
depressed trying to calculate how much energy would be required to establish a
radio link with a colony on a planet orbiting the nearest star (about 5 light
years).

Even if we use the entire output of a nuclear reactor to power the
transmitter, even if we tighten the beam ten times beyond what's currently
possible and even if the receiving collector is square kilometers wide, the
signal is still going to be very weak.

I can't even fathom how to make this work at 10K light year scale.

~~~
akiselev
The receiver would be much, much bigger than a square kilometer by many (>6)
orders of magnitude. Any civilization capable of interstellar travel would be
very capable of setting up a planetary or solar system sized astronomical
interferometer (aka hypertelescope [1]) using a large fleet of synchronized
satellites. These satellites can be prototyped with today's technology and any
interstellar civilization would be capable of both receivers and transmitters
with far more power than we have attempted today.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_interferometer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_interferometer)

~~~
hliyan
Yes, but isn't interferometry only useful in increasing the angular
resolution? It doesn't necessarily boost the signal.

~~~
akiselev
That's if you're trying to reconstruct a "picture" of what the interferometer
is pointed at. If you control both the transmitter and receiver, you can use
many different techniques to pack more information into the same amount of
power. 2G cellular radios, for example, were 2 watts max power while 3G and 4G
radios are 500 milliwatts max power despite being orders of magnitude faster
thanks to better encoding due to radio sensitivity and spatial resolution due
to MIMO - the cellular equivalent of an astronomical interferometer.

The technical term is space-time block coding [1]. The speed negotiation would
take at least 3x the distance between the two start systems though, until
which time they'd be limited to a conservative estimate based on the channel
impairment between the star systems, aka max expected noise between the two
astronomical phased arrays.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space%E2%80%93time_block_code](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space%E2%80%93time_block_code)

------
dvduval
Some civilizations may be able to populate multiple planets in their solar
system and increase the chances that they will survive for perhaps thousands
of years at a technologically higher level. During this time they may even be
able to reach other solar systems. If they do that and can repeat it then they
may be able to keep going millions of years. This may already be happening
somewhere.

~~~
duxup
What are the odds of having enough overlap of suitable planets each suitable
enough with overlapping periods?

~~~
adrianN
If you look at our solar system, humans can survive on Earth, Mars, Venus and
likely some larger moons without too much fictional technology. The universe
seems to be full of rocky planets. The only insurmountable problem to living
on a rocky planet with hydrogen, oxygen and carbon in some form really is
gravity, if the planet is too big. But species that can travel interstellar
distances must have the technology to live in space and only send robots to
nearby planets or asteroids to mine raw materials. That increases the range of
suitable systems considerably.

~~~
ncmncm
"Humans can survive on Mars"?

Check your priors.

~~~
adrianN
What?

~~~
ncmncm
There is no evidence of humans surviving on Mars. Venus is more likely, but
even Antarctica, thousands of times easier, only sustains visitors.

~~~
adrianN
We have a pretty good idea of the environment on Mars and safe for potential
long-term effects of the different gravity there there is no reason to believe
that humans can't survive there using technology we already have, or could
likely build.

------
rkagerer
_Then they assumed that these civilizations retained [communication] capacity
for about 100 years — again about as long as we 've had it._

Does that part of their calculation seem awfully conservative?

~~~
yummypaint
I wouldn't find it surprising if self destruction were a common occurence
after intelligent life changes its environment enough to develop long range
communication. Unless the technology develops at a comparable rate to
evolution, there will always be a sharp discontinuity associated with
industrialization that suddenly grants the ability to manipulate things on a
planetary scale. The lifeforms will be placed in a completely novel situation
without evolved mental hardware needed to see the danger. Just like how
posting to facebook while driving doesn't feel dangerous in the way standing
near the edge of a cliff does. I often wonder if this is where the great
filter is located.

------
jacobush
Explode a number of nukes in space, which forms a prime number pattern. For
instance by cadence.

That should get the attention of any listeners out there. There should be no
natural process which could explain that.

Bonus:

An incredibly strong, directional and short pulse could be directed by placing
a mylar parabolic shape behind the bombs. Just before being vaporised, the
mylar would reflect the initial energy.

The same could be done with the radio energy by a thin copper mesh.

Edit - downvoter thinks it’s untenable or just a bad idea in case it works?
:-)

~~~
javajosh
Or one better: build Dyson spheres around your sun, or ideally around several
local suns. This would be a clear signal of a very mighty civilization indeed!
But even this signal would propagate outward at a snails pace in comparison to
the size of the galaxy, let alone the universe. At that point I think it's
interesting to wonder what such long-lived and powerful civilizations would
want to talk about, and indeed how the conversation would take place. The
time-scales are unimaginable; it would require something like a slowed-down AI
living in a physical substrate maintained by short-lived AIs and/or
biologicals, somehow maintaining a stable (or at least meta-stable) social
structure for millions of years. It would be an incredible achievement, but I
would worry that the "human cost" would be immense -- I'm thinking of the very
stable but stagnant (and totalitarian) Egyptian civilization. Were the
pyramids worth the cost?

~~~
beamatronic
You need some kind of shutter that orbits the sun, which can be opened and
closed rapidly to modulate the existing light. At least we can send the
message that we were here and you’re not alone.

~~~
javajosh
I don't believe this is necessary. First, the construction of such a sphere is
itself a kind of "blinking" \- over time, imagine the stars blinking out,
replaced by a dull red glow of infrared. Second, I believe it is possible to
infer the existence of stars by gravity and other effects, such that it's lack
of emitted light in the visible range would be a clue to an observer that they
are, in fact, observing an artificial phenomena.

------
cmenge
Meh. According to
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergalactic_travel](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergalactic_travel),
it takes a mere 28y to get to Andromeda if you have the tech to do constant 1g
acceleration. You could say that is not "communication" from a civilization
point of view, but if they can send us a live messenger it would sure be
interesting?!

~~~
goatlover
The energy requirements to accelerate go up as you reach relativistic speeds,
and you need to be able to decelerate as you reach the target.

~~~
jacobush
I don’t understand how it goes up, how does the rocket “know” it’s going
faster relative us?

~~~
landryraccoon
The rocket doesn't know, but an outside observer will. If you're on the
rocket, you experience a constant 1g force. The rocket doesn't "feel" that
it's harder to accelerate, but an observer that remains at rest relative to
the rocket's starting point will see it speed up less and less the faster it's
going as it approaches the speed of light.

------
mchusma
Issac Arthur's podcast is the best resource on these matters.

Amazing work, and makes this paper seem very week. He identifies many possible
filters beyond the Drake equation.

If you like this sort of discussion, you will almost certainly like the
podcast.

Relevant playlist

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIIOUpOge0LulClL2dHXh...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIIOUpOge0LulClL2dHXh8TTOnCgRkLdU)

------
millstone
The plan seems to be "to find intelligent civilizations, look for Earth-like
planets that can harbor life." How terribly narrow minded.

> you'd think the chance that there is intelligent extraterrestrial life in
> our galaxy seems enormous

"And the Earthling rocket ships departed Planet X3, having found no life, only
an advanced civilization of extraterrestrial robots."

> Another study out of the University of British Columbia looked at the number
> of sun-like stars in the galaxy and estimated that one in five of them could
> have an Earth-like planet

On Earth, Life has embarrassed us by being found in the most inhospitable,
acidic, saltiest, hottest places. And then embarrassed us again, by turning up
in the cold black energy-poor ocean depths, sipping sulfur from vents. Life is
surely bigger than Earth-like planets. And Intelligence is surely bigger than
Life.

In Sagan's book Contact, the hard problem was not finding intelligence, but
recognizing it. By the end, we learn that the arrangement of the stars and the
digits of pi itself carry a message. This is the level of thinking that our
search calls for.

~~~
tsimionescu
> On Earth, Life has embarrassed us by being found in the most inhospitable,
> acidic, saltiest, hottest places. And then embarrassed us again, by turning
> up in the cold black energy-poor ocean depths, sipping sulfur from vents.

And yet, all life on Earth has the same basic structure. The most likely
reason for this is that life only originated once, and in one "place". This
observation significantly reduces the probability we should ascribe for life
to appear, and/or the specificity of the conditions required. For example, we
know for sure that a planet like the Earth today is completely inhospitable to
the emergence of life (there has not been an abiogenesis event for billions of
years).

The other option is that life has emerged in many places/times on Earth, but
with the exact same structure. While unlikely, this would suggest that life
must have a very specific structure, that at least on Earth-like planets we
should also expect RNA and DNA based life at least. This would also suggest
that the likelihood of other kinds of life existing is smaller than initially
could have been conceived. And even with this assumption, it would still not
be clear that life is appearing on Earth today anymore, as the life forms
we've looked at seem to have a phylogenetic link with other life (though our
methods may be weak if the possibility of abiogenesis were correct). And even
if abiogenesis was still occurring on Earth, it would have to be in some
remote place in extreme conditions, as we have tried in all regular places
with no success.

Overall, my belief is that the emergence of life is likely a vastly improbable
event, and that we shouldn't expect to "see" a living (or formerly living)
being that is not related to life on Earth in the lifetime of the Earth.

> And Intelligence is surely bigger than Life.

This seems a mystical belief, given all we know of the world.

~~~
baq
> > And Intelligence is surely bigger than Life.

> This seems a mystical belief, given all we know of the world.

if you assume that intelligence comes from the brain and if you assume that
the brain is just a very highly optimized computer, there's no need for an
intelligent entity to be alive. it just needs an adequate computer to exist.

~~~
tsimionescu
Sure, but the computer must have been built by some form of life ultimately
(possibly through a long line of other computers). If your point was only that
artificial life created by a form of life could vastly outlast that form of
life, then I agree that that is a very good point.

------
networkimprov
For great interviews with leading scientists on this and other astronomy
topics, see Event Horizon podcast

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz3qvETKooktNgCvvheuQDw/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz3qvETKooktNgCvvheuQDw/videos)

(I'm just a happy listener.)

------
joegibbs
Why do they assume that an alien civilisation could only hold communication
technology for a hundred years? Surely there’s nothing really holding them
back from it unless they wiped themselves out, and is there any reason to
believe that at least some of them couldn’t last for thousands or even
millions of years?

~~~
bhaak
The problem with long lasting alien civilisations is that if they do exist,
why aren't they here already? Colonizing the galaxy only takes a few millions
years even with 0.1c.

So far, we only have proof that civilisations can exist for at least several
thousand years if you consider the Human civilisation.

But so far, the data on civilisations capable of interstellar communication
doesn't look too promising. The "unless they wiped themselves out" is the big
question. Are we behind or in front of the Great Filter.

~~~
tzs
> The problem with long lasting alien civilisations is that if they do exist,
> why aren't they here already? Colonizing the galaxy only takes a few
> millions years even with 0.1c.

Suppose it turns out that there is nothing faster for interstellar travel than
rockets or light sails. No wormholes stabilized with exotic matter. No warp
drives. No other tricks.

I'm not sure in that case that those long lasting civilizations would bother
trying interstellar colonization. The round trip transport time between the
home world and colonies would be so long that it is hard to come up with any
economic benefit establishing such colonies provides to the home worlds.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
The problem with these discussions is everyone seems to assume colonising a
galaxy is just like colonising a planet - so you have an Age of Exploration,
and then you set up colonies, and stuff happens, and you have an Empire or a
Federation, or something.

This is really, really unlikely to be true, for all kinds of reasons.

There's a huge difference between colonising a galaxy - which assumes some
kind of uniform culture, and common strategic goals - and simply throwing more
or less living/sentient stuff around a galaxy and hoping some of it sticks.

We've gone from barely being noticeable on Earth to being in danger of being
responsible for a planetary extinction event in around 12,000 years.

We know _nothing_ about building a stable culture that can last for millions
of years. It's unlikely any sentient species will be able to learn that skill
without making a lot of mistakes - some of which will be terminal.

So galactic colonisation requires a lot more than solving the mechanics of
transportation. And the "few million years at 0.1c" estimate is going to be
Not Even Wrong.

~~~
bhaak
You don't need to build a stable culture for a galaxy wide colonisation.

We colonized the whole planet without that. Likewise a locust-like swarm of
colonizing ships without any central control or common culture would also be a
possibility.

------
karl11
Hasn’t anyone read The Dark Forest?

~~~
X6S1x6Okd1st
What probability do you think that a civilization will decide they are in a
dark forest?

So far our only example doesn't seem to act like we are.

~~~
s1artibartfast
There might be some crossover between civilizations that take dark forest
precautions and the type of civilization that doesn’t kill itself on accident.

~~~
magicsmoke
Or it could be possible that a civilization pessimistic and risk-adverse
enough make dark forest precautions a significant part of their culture
wouldn't have the risk-taking needed to advance their technology to
interstellar levels. Technological advancement and the possibility of self-
destruction might go hand in hand.

------
pp19dd
At this point of theoretical speculation, it's perhaps just as creatively
interesting to visit sci-fi on first contact situations and evaluate their
approaches to see how they mesh with our astronomical observations.

The book that came to mind is a classic, "The Mote in God's Eye." Though there
are dozens of delightful variations and imaginative situations, such as with
"The Saturn Run." There's an entire spectrum that's been imagined and
explored.

------
robodale
I worry that other far more advanced civilizations out there routinely stamp
out any new "pest" civilizations....much like how I handle ant colonies behind
my house. They get too large or too close...then I knock them out.

------
smartmic
Civilizations fail. Here is more on that and the related Fermi paradox :
[http://t3x.org/bits/doomed/index.html](http://t3x.org/bits/doomed/index.html)

------
LatteLazy
Isn't the who point of the drake equation to discuss the factors? And most of
the factors can't actually be measured until you've met a few dozen other
civilisations and compared histories?

------
loudouncodes
How can this article, as well as the hundreds of comments here, not
acknowledge that all they are doing is solving the Drake Equation for new
values they are estimating?

------
person_of_color
Are there any scientific paradigm shifts to make FTL possible?

~~~
MertsA
Best chance of anything hypothetically being possible in the very very far
future would be not going faster than light, but contracting and expanding
space. There's plenty of problems with that theory, one of many would be that
it would hypothetically have an event horizon at the front while "moving"
faster than light, which would be a big problem because the Hawking radiation
from it would kill stuff. It's called an Alcubierre drive and it's a fun
thought experiment at the very least. Due to the energy constraints if it was
ever hypothetically possible it would need to envelop the vessel in a bubble
that's downright infinitesimally small. You could pass right through a planet
and not hit anything.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive)

But the only scientific method to exceed the speed of light is to loosen the
fiber optic cables on your neutrino detector.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-
light_neutrino_ano...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-
light_neutrino_anomaly)

------
planetis
Im disappointed they did't arrive at 42, but 36

------
historyremade
This is intellicist. Aliens should protest!!

