/sci/ - Science & Math

There is no other intelligent life, at least not in this galaxy. Allow me to explain.

First lets get this out of the way, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion can get us to the stars at a maximum velocity of 0.1C assuming that you have to decelerate again, if not you can reach 0.15C which will be important for latter. Also we will assume that there is no faster than light travel. Because that would open up another can of beans since humanity could convert an amount of mass equal to the observable universe into human flesh in 6,000 years if the 1994 population growth rate could be maintained. And it could be maintain if the superluminal travel would allow humans to access new resources fast enough.

So assuming that you could send out self replicating probes that would travel at an average velocity of 0.1C and that it would take each probe 100 years to make a 100 copies of itself each time that they entered a new stellar system, you could still visit every stellar in the Milky Way in under 1 million years. If theses probes carried humans or mechanized human descendants then our civilization could also spread as quickly.

If you programmed these probes to seek out life bearing exoplanets and crash into them an top speed, which for nuclear pulse propulsion is .15C if you burn all the fuel and don't plan on decelerating, you could purge all the life bearing planets in the galaxy and keep yourself safe from aliens forever. And if you programmed those same probes to accelerate toward any repeating, terminating radio signal and crash into the source body you could all target intelligent species. For that matter you could have them detonate there bomb stockpile before impact to scatter relativistic shrapnel cones at space habitats.