[ExI] SETI for Post Singularity Civs

[Stuart LaForge]

On 1/17/15 John Clark wrote:

"Having the entire energy output of 100 billion stars radiate uselessly into
infinite space is very thermodynamically inefficient indeed, and yet that
is exactly what we observe."

Not so. We can't *observe* 100 billion stars in our galaxy; not even with the HST. We can infer their existence and estimate their numbers using statistical methods but we can only *see* maybe a billion at best. 

Most of the stars in the Milky Way are not visible to us because they are dim due to being on the other side of the galactic disk and our view is blocked by clouds of dust and bright stars in the bulge and disk in between.


 "If ET had sent just one single Von Neumann
Probe to a nearby star at a speed no faster than what our spacecraft can
travel at today then a Von Neumann Probe could be sent to every star in the
galaxy in just 50 million years, a blink of a eye cosmically speaking."

I am not altogether certain that ET would want to launch a fire and forget probe to virally copy himself across the cosmos. That would make ET an r-strategist and that doesn't fit the profile of intelligent organisms which are usually K-strategists.

After all, if there is any chance that you might outlive your host star, why would you spawn potential competitors all over your galactic neighborhood that would make it difficult to relocate when the time came?

 "And
if that had happened a blind man in a fog bank could detect ET. But we
don't see the slightest hint of ET despite having looked for him with our
largest telescoped for over half a century. So where is everybody?"

Come now. Half a century is a laughably small light cone to base any sort of conclusion on when you can't see 99% of your own galaxy.

Assuming ET would want to blot out stars, instead of harnessing black holes, dark energy, or other exotic energy sources, ET could have assimilated 2/3 of the galaxy already and you would have no way of knowing. Wouldn't it be a hoot if astronomers someday noticed a dark nebula like Barnard 68 was *growing*
instead of collapsing into a star like it was supposed to?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnard_68

Stuart LaForge


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