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We continue our discussion of surveying for habitable exoplanets by touring our possible option for interstellar probes, dumb and smart, flyby and protracted orbital.
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Credits:
Interstellar Probes
Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur
Episode 347, June 16, 2022
Written, Produced & Narrated by Isaac Arthur
Editors:
David McFarlane
Keith Blockus
Sig’Unnr
Cover Art:
Jakub Grygier https://www.artstation.com/jakub_grygier
Graphics by:
Jeremy Jozwik
Rapid Thrash
Sergio Botero
Udo Schroeter
Music Courtesy of
Stellardrone, https://stellardrone.bandcamp.com
“Red Giant”, “Billions and Billions”, “Cosmic Sunrise”, “The Night Sky in Motion”
Miguel Johnson, https://soundcloud.com/migueljohnsonmjmusic
“Expedtion” & “So Many Stars”
source
Why is your content consistently more engaging than pretty much any scifi show these days.. What is happening with tv making industry? Its devoid of soul, this aint and you seem like a single guy. 😀 Crazy
Oh goodie. You are suggesting that we make sure that the sensor usually attached to a thermonuclear bomb is adjusted in some way? I am quite confident that I will be poking my screwdriver into the electronics controls attached to a 10 mega-ton bomb. Oh, sure I will. You betcha.
Even the idea of doing such a thing makes my skin want to vomit.
oh great content creator. would you maybe leave a tiny image in the introduction as to which playlist your videos will end up? thank you great content king! just need that +2 to guidance 😀
I love all of your videos, but those that come along with a framing story are always my favourites. I can't wait to find out what's going on at the planet!
I really think we can do better than 10% SoL.
Have u heard of the Orion project from the 60s? Perhaps im being too Sci-Fi here but 10% SoL..Especially for a Robo-carrier? I think we can do ALOT better; if we Gave a poop. ^Would love input from Theoretical-Astro-Engineers! (given our current tech in +20yrs)
@Isaac Arthur – I'd like to recommend to you the Old-sk00l DOS Video Game "Alien Legacy". Published by Sierra. U may ask why. but srsly, This fits SO WELL with your ideas. All I can say is – it's like an Interactive Novel & the Development is Exquisite. the production was overseen by Ybarra(dude behind Starflight, another Beautiful project ahead-of-it's-time). Please Look Into it, the Story of our Colonyship 'Calypso' could be told by U. I'll collaborate on this if you wish, i need Purpose. shoot me a Message
Imagine we put a probe in orbit of a primitive civilization, we meticulously study them and send the data back to earth (while also keeping all the data in the probe for them to discover when they advance)
Interstellar probes? You mean UFOS?
It amazes me how much your description of the Louis probe mission sounds like the trajectory of Oumuamua from a few years back…
It's great how one guy can beat old broadcasters at entertainment these days, But it's not a surprise.
If you're gonna spend all those resources on an interstellar Probe, you might as well spend 3 mana on the Interstellar Kicker and make a rival alien discard something.
Who are these people who would leave everything that means anything to them behind to be shot off into space toward some star system which has only a small possibility of being a place with life, or place that might be habitable for humans?
It strikes me as romantic to send physical probes at 10% of light speed in response to an ambiguous signal.
We can learn if there is a civilization there by sending a message at 100% of lightspeed using a bank of carefully synchronized lazers. That would be the same sort of tech used to accelerate probes but synchronized to flash in unison (or at least in unison as would appear at the intended destination). And send a 'Hello There' message. If they are civilized enough to produce a 'wow' signal, they are probably as curious as we are and have radio or optical telescopes watching each likely neighbor that is within an appropriate volume of interest. By only sending photons, we eliminate any potential for accidentally creating destruction.
I am thinking that if I were to design a physical probe, I would give serious consideration to smart fog as part of the architecture. This also reduces the mass of accidental impacts to a level of micrometeors. Thus relatively harmless.
Stellaris: we discovered an anomaly 😊
Hopefully they never find the gold disc, and come visit this “peaceful” species. As this “peaceful” species will meet them at the door with a gun pointed at their faces.
They are going to think we are jerks lol.
Whig futurism is dangerously naïve. There's no such thing as aliens that we'd be safe communicating with.
As evidence of our biosphere has been out there for quite some time,…..maybe we should look at the concept of Lurker Probes being here…from out there ?(unmanned) It just makes more sense. (in my humble opinion.) We're just learning how to find planets and biospheres(oooh we're so smart !) Others could have found us hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago, thusly giving a probe plenty of time to get here,hide, and hang out.
14:17 Are you sure that impression is a wrong one?
5 we dont want to just give away intel on our AI tech needlessly
Very nice..
These episodes that revolve around little stories are the best!
Can’t wait for the next in this series, and hoping we’ll get more like these in the future!
We're getting a signal! decoding now…
"Hello, we have been trying to reach you about your probes extended warranty "
13:57 It is striking to me how some religions do actually have sentients being sent to or born on Earth by their masters for a specific role, who end up having an unavoidable tendency to die due to this role they are given.
Jesus, from Christianity. Barbarik from Hinduism. Ganesha, also Hinduism. Barbarik was allegedly a sentient robot whose head could detach from the body, fly around with "three arrows" while giving his master live reports about the battlefields.
I feel like the concept of a time lag is not discussed in much detail here. Once the probes arrive and collect the data, it will still be years until the data actually gets back here. I feel like this aspect should drasticly modify the way you collect the data
Me as an interstellar probe: Wait, so….we're NOT crushing the xenos scum? Okay 🙁
Accidentally deadly space probe… Makes me think of Space 1999 Season 1 Episode 6 Voyagers Return
@Issac Arthur any chance we could get an episode on children in space? With the advancement of space flight and the interest in interplanetary colonization, it seems inevitable that children will eventually enter the frontier directly and I can see many interesting ways life could be very different for them, both in terms of adaptability and in social structure.
Sending a detonation code is easily interpreted as a cynical ploy. The target civilisation could have a lot to learn from a visiting probe so it might be hesitant to detonate it because what it could learn could be of highly strategic importance for the future. But not detonating could be interpreted as 'you had your chance, you didn't take it, so now you and your civilisation are fair game'. Unfortunately there is no in-between option.
o7 to Louie
Thanks for another great video
The problem is that without constant maintenance, including the retooling of the fission core, the thermonuclear bomb will not work over time.
love your content but skeptic about those raycons, and sorry you promote them -> https://youtu.be/iyzMSevpT2I , the more something is advertised the worse it is
Isaac (Asimov), Arthur (C. Clarke)
If I had a trillion dollars for interstellar probes I would spend the first 500 billion on telescopes. Really BIG ones that can make out continent-size objects on nearby exoplanets. Know where you are going first!
bookmarking 3:00, 6:20, 12:00
Isaac: You have covered the topic completely thrice. Write some fiction. Please. Two or three sci-fi magic tricks you already have covered. Five characters. Some sex. Some murder. Leaving and coming home.
10:24 not really…. the relative speed of the Star makes every trajectory unique… to get from Star A now to Star B in 1000 years might be very far away from the path you need to take to get from Star B now to Star A in 1000 years and it's more likely not to overlap at any point, than it is to do so… same for interplanetary travel within a solar System, especially talking about far below light speed, where you take curved paths anyway.
i think it would be a good idea for the space probe to detach the nuke before reaching the alien system because if the aliens dont order a self destruct and find a probe with a nuclear bomb inside of it they might see it as an act of aggression
If someone sends us a bomb more powerful than anything we can make and detonate it harmless next to our garden, I imagine we will assume they are advising us to surrender. Perhaps that's for the best, under most contexts?
Just imagine us, humankind right now, discovering by chance, because a "wow" like signal came from there before, a relativistic-speeded needle probe headed towards our solar system, coming from the heliopause, looking like a darn cosmic stealth cruise missile, with a trajectory implying coming near earth.
So we scramble to send our own probe towards it, as all planetary defence directives are activated, , and we send the same signal it sent, since we cant yet decypher it, and the probe almost already reached us, hoping its "hello"..
But the "wow" was the self-destruct code preceding it, and it blasts in a nuclear flare, sending intensive signals towards the direction it came from, just before it blasts to pieces that we cant even study for technology right away, since its microdebris.
An nuclear armed, half-sentient kill vehicle, that what it looks like.
And when we point our JWST towards that direction, we observe multiple blushifted objects, all bigger than the first, going our way…
That is NOT a very friendly sounding and unthreatening story.
And thats merely our psyche, we do not know what aliens think like… all this bomb-fused AI outreach in the stellar neighborhood really sounds like us, a flashy toy for virtue-signaling space primates…
but we better muster something better by the time we send something out.
BTW, it would be comical, if the Voyager probes collides with something belonging to an alien civilizations, we left a visit card aboard..
It's an interesting debate as to the use of AI to run these probes and unmanned vessels. We're discussing theoretical technology, but I would guess that a highly intelligent AI would be far more ethically trustworthy than any human commander. And far less likely to disobey protocols or put itself ahead of other life forms. Plus if we develop that technology we will be able to control its emotionality, its personality, and its temperament, all of which can then be stress tested in virtual environments, have it live the equivalent of thousands of years and see how it handles it, very quickly inside a computer.
Ai robots as slaves… you mean we arent going to do that?
You strike me as the type of person to read Atomic Rocket articles for fun.
And I respect that.
Louie’s cousin Omuamua wishes he’d write….
Thought it said sponsored by Raytheon at first lol