Berserkers a threat to life on Earth?
Posted: Mon Jul 26, 2021 6:59 am
It's fun to speculate and this text shouldn't be taken too seriously.
I'm going to explore the idea of a civilization sending berserkers to Earth to kill off intelligent life.
It's not a new idea but I'm going to mix in some known science and technology, and technology that are possibly soon coming.
Recently I saw (again) the movie "Edge of tomorrow" with Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. Here part of the story is that Berserkers came with an asteroid and humanity is loosing the war against them.
Now, we know that interstellar objects regularly passes through our solar system, because we have detected Oumuamua (2017) and Borisov (2019). Borisov seems to be a normal object, comet like, while Oumuamua is nothing like we have seen before. Avi Loeb has speculated that Oumuamua could be made by extraterrestrials.
Last month, a paper was published in Nature where scientists have looked at how many stars close to the sun, could see Earth as a transiting planet, within the past 5000 years and the next 5000 years. We have found many exoplanets with the transit method, so if there are civilizations on any exoplanets nearby, they could equally find Earth that way. The result is that at 1715 stars within 100 pc, civilizations could have found Earth within the last 5000 years.
Furthermore, with the next generation of telescopes soon coming online, we can scan exoplanets for signs of life. So any civilization with a bit more advanced technology than we currently have, could see there's life on Earth. They could possibly detect that some life is intelligent.
A possible solution to Fermi's paradox, is "it's the nature of intelligent life to destroy others". The motivation for sending Berserkers could be that they know where our technology is headed. Soon we have AGI and maybe our technology will be a threat to the Galaxy. Can they do it? We are actually exploring concrete ideas to send small starships to our nearest star system, the "Breakthrough starshot project". Maybe as many as 1000 starships will be launched. Is Oumuamua such a starship that missed Earth? More likely I think, Oumuamua is a scout ( remember I'm just speculating, I'm not saying Oumuamua is sure to be an artificial object). So we have been spotted and Oumuamua has sent the message to the nearest Berserker base.
We need more data about the interstellar objects drifting through our solar system ( we have just found 2 so far). The Vera Rubin observatory will give us the data. Vera Rubin will map small objects in the solar system and it is expected that the number of cataloged objects will increase by a factor 10-100. The observatory should be fully operational by October 2023.
I'm going to explore the idea of a civilization sending berserkers to Earth to kill off intelligent life.
It's not a new idea but I'm going to mix in some known science and technology, and technology that are possibly soon coming.
Recently I saw (again) the movie "Edge of tomorrow" with Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. Here part of the story is that Berserkers came with an asteroid and humanity is loosing the war against them.
Now, we know that interstellar objects regularly passes through our solar system, because we have detected Oumuamua (2017) and Borisov (2019). Borisov seems to be a normal object, comet like, while Oumuamua is nothing like we have seen before. Avi Loeb has speculated that Oumuamua could be made by extraterrestrials.
Last month, a paper was published in Nature where scientists have looked at how many stars close to the sun, could see Earth as a transiting planet, within the past 5000 years and the next 5000 years. We have found many exoplanets with the transit method, so if there are civilizations on any exoplanets nearby, they could equally find Earth that way. The result is that at 1715 stars within 100 pc, civilizations could have found Earth within the last 5000 years.
Furthermore, with the next generation of telescopes soon coming online, we can scan exoplanets for signs of life. So any civilization with a bit more advanced technology than we currently have, could see there's life on Earth. They could possibly detect that some life is intelligent.
A possible solution to Fermi's paradox, is "it's the nature of intelligent life to destroy others". The motivation for sending Berserkers could be that they know where our technology is headed. Soon we have AGI and maybe our technology will be a threat to the Galaxy. Can they do it? We are actually exploring concrete ideas to send small starships to our nearest star system, the "Breakthrough starshot project". Maybe as many as 1000 starships will be launched. Is Oumuamua such a starship that missed Earth? More likely I think, Oumuamua is a scout ( remember I'm just speculating, I'm not saying Oumuamua is sure to be an artificial object). So we have been spotted and Oumuamua has sent the message to the nearest Berserker base.
We need more data about the interstellar objects drifting through our solar system ( we have just found 2 so far). The Vera Rubin observatory will give us the data. Vera Rubin will map small objects in the solar system and it is expected that the number of cataloged objects will increase by a factor 10-100. The observatory should be fully operational by October 2023.