An argument for creationism from an atheist

[trdsf]

I agree, I don't think interstellar travel will ever be fast, but I think it will be easy. Power is the biggest problem and antimatter would solve that, even before that constructing solar power stations very near the star at both ends that could use lasers to propel ships would solve most problems. Then again there would be very little need to send ships back and forth once a colony was established, there is nothing that is valuable enough to defray the cost of shipping it. Information would be the only trade good between stars. 

Even if we managed to create a warp drive, it is hard to imagine it being powerful and efficient enough to reach Star Trek speeds.

The main problem with the Alcubierre warp is that so far the only way to make it work on paper is to assume infinite amounts of energy.

The solar sail solution is one of the more plausible -- if you can send a probe on ahead that can set up the light concentrator on the target end so you can use it to decelerate.  The advantage of an automated probe is that its acceleration and deceleration limits are set by engineering, not by the physical needs of any passengers and crew.  If the target system has an asteroid belt of typical composition, then all the probe needs to carry are a few von Neumann robots, and the construction crew and light concentrator can be fabricated locally rather than being lugged all that way.

[Paleophyte]

So what happens if we survive through the next couple millennia and spread out through the stars and become less vulnerable to extinction. We might continue on for a long time developing a better understanding of the universe, developing greater technologies, and probably evolving ourselves by biological and technological means into something we would not consider to even be human anymore. What if our present 10,000-year-old civilization goes on for billions of years. What will we become and what will be able to do? It is simply unimaginable. But given all that time it can be presumed that we will be able to duplicate anything in nature artificially, including the big bang. As our galaxy dies of old age and with progress toward the heat death of the universe we would be highly motivated to do so. 

With this in mind, the possibility that our own universe started this way must be considered. Unfortunately, this is currently an untestable hypothesis as we are completely unable to explore even nearby space much less the vastness of the universe for any ancient civilizations responsible. Heck, much of the universe is outside the observable and impossible by our understanding to even see it. The probability is impossible to calculate but it is a possibility that requires nothing supernatural. It is possible that nature spawns enough new universes on its own and that a billion-year-old civilization would be able to navigate them making artificial universes entirely unnecessary. 

While these beings would appear godlike I doubt any of them would be even aware of our insignificant existence in the vastness of space and if they are I doubt we warrant any attention from them at all. They certainly aren't dictating books to tell us who we can have sex with and the other silly stuff. So while I do propose a credible creation story I doubt any of the many religions would find it very acceptable.

An interesting idea but, as I'm sure you've realized, you should have avoided the term creationism. It refers to the morally bankrupt abuse of scripture and science alike.

You might find Teilhard de Chardin's concepts of the Omega point and the Noosphere interesting. The reading is a bit dense, so for a lighter treatment of the topic you might want to try Dan Simmons' Hyperion and Endymion series, though only if you like Sci-Fi and books that are thicker than they are tall. For a much lighter-hearted treatment try Terry Pratchett's Strata.

[Inkubus]

It's still worth watching Tabby's Star just because it's doing something weird and we'll learn something about stellar (or planetary disk) evolution from it.

I really recommend Isaac Arthur's videos on Kardashev civilizations, Dyson spheres, and extreme engineering. 

You mentioned that lovely man up thread and I meant to get back.
Kardashev and Dyson are the Mozart I never got around to but extreme engineering as in the Space Elevadoor: 



This is Bach.

[Paleophyte]

Pretty cool thought experiment. It would also be a cool sci-fi story. Infinite regress problem when posed as a "creation theory" though.

On the contrary, a clever solution to the infinite regress would be exactly the sort of twist that separates good sci-fi from pulp rubbish with laser guns. I'd prefer the retrocausality solution but that's a matter of taste. Simply using a seed universe that is heterogenous with respect to the universal constants over very large scales and vastly larger than the observable universe eliminates the fine tuning problem, making life and intelligence highly likely if not inevitable. That gives you your first Kardeshev IV and V civilizations using nothing more than chance and unguided natural processes. It'd make for an interesting quest for our intrepid adventurers to seek them out.

[Paleophyte]

The Fermi Paradox asks: if intelligent life exists, why isn't it all over the galaxy by now?

If self-replicating molecules existed, why aren't they all over the planet by now?

Our intelligence is in its infancy and, assuming it isn't stillborn, likely wouldn't recognize its latter forms if they bit it on its ass.

[Inkubus]

I agree, Tabby's Star is very interesting and the explanations on what is happening there are not completely satisfying.... 

Without reading further, what explanations; for what observations; make you unhappy?

Edit: I did.

[Cubeology]

The main problem with the Alcubierre warp is that so far the only way to make it work on paper is to assume infinite amounts of energy.

I probably shouldn't have even mentioned the warp drive as even if the amount of power isn't infinite, it is certainly enormous considering that the only barely measurable waves through spacetime we've observed in nature require the collision of black holes or neutron stars.

[Cubeology]

Pretty cool thought experiment. It would also be a cool sci-fi story. Infinite regress problem when posed as a "creation theory" though.

On the contrary, a clever solution to the infinite regress would be exactly the sort of twist that separates good sci-fi from pulp rubbish with laser guns. I'd prefer the retrocausality solution but that's a matter of taste. Simply using a seed universe that is heterogenous with respect to the universal constants over very large scales and vastly larger than the observable universe eliminates the fine tuning problem, making life and intelligence highly likely if not inevitable. That gives you your first Kardeshev IV and V civilizations using nothing more than chance and unguided natural processes. It'd make for an interesting quest for our intrepid adventurers to seek them out.

I have often thought of turning many of my ideas into sci-fi stories. I am very good at worldbuilding and even character development but my attempts to write a novel have been aborted due to an inability to create a compelling plot to occupy worlds I might invent. Also, characters from far-flung billions of years future would be so unlike us their point of view would be so alien to us that we couldn't understand them. It would be like a dog trying to tell a story from a human point of view.

[trdsf]

It's still worth watching Tabby's Star just because it's doing something weird and we'll learn something about stellar (or planetary disk) evolution from it.

I really recommend Isaac Arthur's videos on Kardashev civilizations, Dyson spheres, and extreme engineering. 

I agree, Tabby's Star is very interesting and the explanations on what is happening there are not completely satisfying. It is too far away for us to get a clear look with our current telescopes. 

I think I've seen some of those videos and read about megastructures from many sources and most talk about the end product without considering the difficulty in the process of constructing them. There is very little mass in the inner solar system so you would have to find a way to sweep up all the small objects in the Ort Cloud which is 2000 au to three or so light-years away from the sun. All this matter would have to be collected and moved to the inner solar system in a controlled way as to not endanger inhabited planets and space stations and not have it fall into the sun or end up in some unwanted orbit. Then it would have to be converted to a material that is strong enough for this construction using some sort of futuristic alchemy, a process for we don't even have a theory, and do it on a massive scale. Then and only then could we try to construct a Dyson swarm using some sort of nanotechnology and/or other automated construction and place the components in a stable orbit.

Not really any future alchemy, just a lot of time and patience.  There are plenty of natural resources in the asteroids -- iron, nickel, iridium, silicon, etc. -- and probably the same in the Oort cloud and Kuiper belt.  The latter has bodies up to dwarf planet size; the former may also.

Stray thought about the Oort cloud -- the outer limits of which are estimated to be up to 3.2 ly distant.  That implies a fair amount of overlap with the Oort cloud of the Alpha Centauri AB system, which being similar mass and class stars should have a similar (if shared) Oort cloud.

However, this would require vast amounts of power for which we have no clue on how to produce. Antimatter probably isn't a solution because I think it will probably take as much power to produce as you get from the annihilation of it. So it will be a good way to concentrate a lot of power in a small space like a battery, but ultimately the power will have to come from somewhere else, probably the sun, so we will first have to construct massive solar collectors. Each of these steps will require technologies that we haven't even conceived of yet. I think we will have terraforming and interstellar colonies before megastructures as the required technology for those is already theoretically possible.

Solar is definitely the way to go for in-system uninterruptable power.  In the spaces between the stars, absent any sensible and economic way to farm antimatter, it's probably going to have to be fusion power, at least for crewed ships.  Automatic probes can use RTGs, and as power extraction technology improves, longer lived isotopes can be brought into play so that they can last centuries or even millennia rather than decades.

[trdsf]

The main problem with the Alcubierre warp is that so far the only way to make it work on paper is to assume infinite amounts of energy.

I probably shouldn't have even mentioned the warp drive as even if the amount of power isn't infinite, it is certainly enormous considering that the only barely measurable waves through spacetime we've observed in nature require the collision of black holes or neutron stars.

It's still an interesting idea, though.  Space is not limited to the speed of light in the way that objects are, so that if it were possible to create a moving bubble of space that was internally Euclidean, then faster-than-light travel becomes theoretically possible.

Of course, that's in Einsteinian gravity, which is classical physics.  We still need a quantum explanation of gravity, and that may have features that preclude the Alcubierre warp.  Yet another "we're working on it" question in physics. 

[Cubeology]

The main problem with the Alcubierre warp is that so far the only way to make it work on paper is to assume infinite amounts of energy.

I probably shouldn't have even mentioned the warp drive as even if the amount of power isn't infinite, it is certainly enormous considering that the only barely measurable waves through spacetime we've observed in nature require the collision of black holes or neutron stars.

It's still an interesting idea, though.  Space is not limited to the speed of light in the way that objects are, so that if it were possible to create a moving bubble of space that was internally Euclidean, then faster-than-light travel becomes theoretically possible.

Of course, that's in Einsteinian gravity, which is classical physics.  We still need a quantum explanation of gravity, and that may have features that preclude the Alcubierre warp.  Yet another "we're working on it" question in physics. 

Assuming it is possible, I wonder if some aliens were operating a warp drive nearby if we would be able to detect it using the LIGO detectors. It would be an interesting idea to use in a sci-fi story anyway.

[trdsf]

I probably shouldn't have even mentioned the warp drive as even if the amount of power isn't infinite, it is certainly enormous considering that the only barely measurable waves through spacetime we've observed in nature require the collision of black holes or neutron stars.

It's still an interesting idea, though.  Space is not limited to the speed of light in the way that objects are, so that if it were possible to create a moving bubble of space that was internally Euclidean, then faster-than-light travel becomes theoretically possible.

Of course, that's in Einsteinian gravity, which is classical physics.  We still need a quantum explanation of gravity, and that may have features that preclude the Alcubierre warp.  Yet another "we're working on it" question in physics. 

Assuming it is possible, I wonder if some aliens were operating a warp drive nearby if we would be able to detect it using the LIGO detectors. It would be an interesting idea to use in a sci-fi story anyway.

I would suppose that the space warping in an Alcubierre drive would have to be very carefully controlled to minimize that kind of leakage... but I like the way you think. 

[Paleophyte]

The main problem with the Alcubierre warp is that so far the only way to make it work on paper is to assume infinite amounts of energy.

I probably shouldn't have even mentioned the warp drive as even if the amount of power isn't infinite, it is certainly enormous considering that the only barely measurable waves through spacetime we've observed in nature require the collision of black holes or neutron stars.

Not necessarily that vast. Keep in mind the gravitational waves that we measure originate billions of light years away. Assuming you don't want your Alcubierre drive emissions to be picked up half way around the observable universe you may not need to collide stellar mass objects.

[Paleophyte]

Pretty cool thought experiment. It would also be a cool sci-fi story. Infinite regress problem when posed as a "creation theory" though.

On the contrary, a clever solution to the infinite regress would be exactly the sort of twist that separates good sci-fi from pulp rubbish with laser guns. I'd prefer the retrocausality solution but that's a matter of taste. Simply using a seed universe that is heterogenous with respect to the universal constants over very large scales and vastly larger than the observable universe eliminates the fine tuning problem, making life and intelligence highly likely if not inevitable. That gives you your first Kardeshev IV and V civilizations using nothing more than chance and unguided natural processes. It'd make for an interesting quest for our intrepid adventurers to seek them out.

I have often thought of turning many of my ideas into sci-fi stories. I am very good at worldbuilding and even character development but my attempts to write a novel have been aborted due to an inability to create a compelling plot to occupy worlds I might invent. Also, characters from far-flung billions of years future would be so unlike us their point of view would be so alien to us that we couldn't understand them. It would be like a dog trying to tell a story from a human point of view.

Anything that futuristic simply doesn't work as an actual character. Not only is it impossible to relate to but you'll probably get your predictions laughably wrong as well. Have a look at some of the old SF stories where people are flying atomic powered spaceships using slide rules to navigate. It's much more effective to use the deeply futuristic elements as largely unseen and ineffable plot devices that much more mundane characters have to interact with. Just be careful not to go Deus ex Machina with it. I know of at least one promising series that died a bad death that way.