Original Message: ----------------- From: Gwern Branwen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 23:39:06 -0500 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: New take on Fermi Paradox
>This seems way too pessimistic, or I'm missing something. If there are >only 8^2 probes (each one builds 8 more, and the making stops there), >that might make sense, but if each probe can make another 8 - which >the article doesn't seem to clearly specify either way - then it >doesn't take too many generations before the limit is something more >reasonable like how long it takes to cross the galaxy: at ~100,000 >light-years in diameter, and travelling at .10 c, one would expect to >see visitors within one or 2 million years of the first batch of >replicators sent out. If we were a long lived (in terms of millions of years) civilization and it were important to us to explore the galaxy, then one obvious solution would be the development of Von Neumann machines: self-replicating machines to explore the galaxy. Even if it took each machine a century to build two more, being used up by the process, within 5000 years, there would be > 10^15 of these machines, spread through the galaxy. Thus, this type of solution to the Fermi Paradox asumes that there is a very good reason that advanced civilizations do not build Von Neumann machines to explore the galaxy. I bet many of us could write short stories explaining why. Dan M. -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
