[ExI] Interstellar message decontamination is impossible

[John Clark]

On Sat, Mar 3, 2018 at 11:05 AM, Jeff Davis <jrd1415 at gmail.com> wrote:

> *> I mused over the Von Neumann probe notion, pondering the hows and whys
> of such a "colonization" effort,  I envisioned the probe as the tiniest
> little beastie. You know, ultra-low mass, speeding along as close to the
> speed of light as possible. How then to deal with the deceleration issue? *

There is no need for a Von Neumann  Probe to be moving anywhere near the
speed of light, the speed we've already achieved with the Voyager
spacecraft would be sufficient, and given that the payload would weigh less
than an ounce you wouldn't need a very big rocket to decelerate it,
especially if you were on a clever trajectory that used the gravity of the
planets in orbit around the star to help it slow down. Or maybe, because
its so small, it would be better to put a heat shield around the payload
and just let the planets atmosphere slow it down.

By sending just one such probe to one star ET could completely reengineer
the Galaxy beyond recognition by placing A Dyson Sphere around ever star in
it in just 50 million years, a very short time astronomically speaking. But
our galaxy has not been engineered nor has any in the observable universe,
that makes me conclude one of two things must be true:

1) We are the first.

2) Something always destroys a civilization at just about the point we’re
at right now.

If the answer is #2 that something in our case may be a thing called
"Donald Trump". The night after Vladimir Putin announced he had a nuclear
powered cruise missile and showed a video of it dropping H-bombs on Florida
Trump couldn’t sleep, so at 6am he tweeted what was troubling him, Alex
Baldwins impersonation on Saturday Night Live.

I don’t know about you but having an imbecile be the most powerful man in
the world is really starting to scare the hell out of me.

 John K Clark
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