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A Galaxy of trillion of worlds, all separated by vast gulfs of time and space, it is very easy for pioneers and colonists to disappear. But what happens to these lost space colonies?
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Credits:
Rogue Civilizations: Lost Space Colonies
Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur
Episode 342a, May 15, 2022
Written, Produced & Narrated by Isaac Arthur
Editors:
Curt Hartung
Jason Burbank
Keith Blockus
Graphics:
Darth Biomech
Jeremy Jozwik
Ken York
Sergio Botero
Tytus Grabowski
Udo Schroeter
Cover Art:
Jakub Grygier https://www.artstation.com/jakub_grygier
Music Courtesy of Epidemic Sound http://epidemicsound.com/creator
source
I firmly believe that Earth itself is a prison planet. A prison for our species. We are a highly aggressive and dangerous species and I can easily imagine a scenario where a galactic community of various races decided that we are better left alone somewhere desolated and far enough to not cause anyone any trouble but ourselves. But.. that just a theory
Thank you Isaac. Hope we get to see a future were we make and actual expanse into space.
I would like to suggest that if anybody going to like to look at colonies look at the show Battlestar Galactica 1978 that is all 13 colonies and 12 colonies that have been driven from their home by cylon robots and they decided when they left to find the 13th colony that had been lost when they finally reached the home no worries originally came from which is called planet of the gods they then find some information that leads right to the planet earth and the 13th colony please check out yes TV show also they had found clothes for me they were kept about the location which is true which was lost in the effort to find planets at the people or humans live on and 12 colonies settled in the world that were close enough to one other to maintain contact and communication until 100 years or so that annihilated most of the colonies and people door and tire ragtag fugitive fleet of various ships along with a battle star set out together to find the earth who knows this kind of thing may actually be real and what could be happening now of the 12 colonies trying to find us great science fiction show but this is one example of colonies that was settled out and follow directions together and the 13th with a totally different route further out so please check it out I encourage you can find it and you can find it here on YouTube and many other places possibly
you can call me 88. and I love this channel.(not the actor my IQ)…chest bursters!!!
smart people make em selve the black eyed bugs!
drinking tons of beers smoking weed, doing lines here and there, I wonder what Ive remember from your channel like no paragrahopes (unless you got a tyopiust and a 26 of whiskey) but shit multiple questions, as I only got grade 9.(1975)been watching since the second year.
Lost colonies are the bread and butter of my stories. Love this trope to death.
The general philosophical premise I work from is that a civilization doesn't need a ton of infrastructure to survive and thrive, especially on a world with half-decent conditions; a farm or a school or a town requires little more than plants, which themselves require little more than oxygen and a few generations of diligence. However, it DOES requires an enormous amount of resource and equipment to establish a fully industrialized colony capable of building and re-launching ships.
For this reason, the grand majority of colonies end up grounding themselves, turning into metaphorical dead ends in the path of man's expansion, and being forced into simpler lifestyles by the lack of industry. This not by mistake; most people who decide to move a few hundred lightyears away from Earth's niceties have their minds set on freedom, or peace, or a simpler life, rather than grand goals of colonizing the galaxy. Earth is one of the few locations that colony ships reliably spread from.
And then, (for the sake of the story and the feel of the world,) after only a few centuries of the colonial age, Earth runs into some kind of overpopulation-based great filter and falls into a dark age. And from that point on for many millenia, there were no more colonial ships.
And just a thought, perhaps at some point in man's technological and psychological advancement, he will learn that eternal expansion isn't always necessary or desirable, and will reach some kind of steady state short of filling the universe.
You made my week referencing the Coldfire trilogy! One of my favorite "fantasy oh wait it's really sci-fi" series that I've NEVER seen discussed by booktubers.
What if colonies are required to pay taxes to Earth, and the Intragalactic Revenue Service with their FTL ships never lose track of any? The ultimate dystopian future. Scenario 2 reminds me of some women with outrageously high standards holding out for decades for the perfect men that don't exist, until settling instead for cats.
Earth maybe a lost colony would explain why our adventures into our own system seems soooooo slow I mean we know there is plentiful resources in the system that dwarfs earth's yet we sit and wait it boggles my mind
"There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive, somewhere beyond the heavens."
— Battlestar Galactica (the original series)
So speed at max 0.1c- that is along the line I find plausible.
But long travel times? How long travel time is doable? 100 years long? 200 years? Because the technology decays quite fast. Factories on board enormous ark may be able to prepare new components out of old ones and repar critical ship structures as long as there is energy and the superstructure of ship is not critically damaged. In that case, I think a few thousands of years MAY be possible, but the superstructure would need to be very thick, overengineered, to survive that long. Just look on pyramids. If the ship superstructure was as good as pyramid then maybe 1000 years is realistic. Yes, I know pyramids are older, but they have already decayed significantly.
I find these ideas fascinating; however, personally, I think the second coming of Christ will happen long before humanity has time to colonize the galaxy.
About the fermi paradox…
I keep encountering a mindboggling assumption… The assumption that we would be capable of recognising the technology of anyone capable of colonising a galaxy…
Take a look at how far our technology has come in just 1 century. How far it has come in a millenium. Would anyone 1,000 years ago have been able to anticipate our level of technology and recognise it if they were searching for it? Now imagine technology a million years ahead of where we are now. You can't even imagine it. It's too far ahead.
So let's look at the universe. We observe many things going on which are strange and new to us. We call it natural because it is what we observe. We try to fit it into our models of the natural world, and quite often it takes place within natural mechanics.
Could it be that the technology of a civilisation a million years ahead of us would seem completely natural to us? Do we try to defy natural laws with our own technology or do we try to take advantage of existing mechanics and use them to our advantage?
Who is to say anything we observe is natural at all? The universe could be full of life working their magic on distant worlds for reasons inconceivable to use because they know things that we just don't.
As for looking for ships? Radio signals? First we can't even find everything in our own solar system, I think that we don't even see most of what there is to be seen. And the level of technology could render advanced technology completely invisible to us until we are able to zoom in deeply enough to make our fine structures in distant star systems.
And, radio communication is very primitive on such a large time scale. We would be able to see a bit of a blip for a period that an Alien Civilisation uses radio, but there would come a point where it had been longer since such a civilisation stopped using radio and moved on to something better, than their distance from us in lightyears. When technology is on a scale of million or billions of years, the scale of our own galaxy would put such civilisations past the point of their radio silence.
tl;dr Advanced Aliens would be totally invisible to us.
Lord Of Light, one of the first SCIFI books I read. Sam, short for his avatar name, able to control electro magnetics' at will. A powerful book I read at the age of six teen, thinking about it, I would love to hear an audio recording of the book, now. It made such an impression. Also, Gordon R. Dickson's Soldier, Ask Not. And the sequels. These changed my life when I was young. I would not be the same inquisitive person without reading them.
Very interesting episode. Love the Lord of Light recommendation – it's been one of my favs for decades!
Space spans space?
gtfo.
I've been slowly pushing myself to write the stories I've been working on since high school, many of which involve lost colonies. Just leaving this here in hopes of one day finishing a book and being able to look back at this comment to remember some of the things that inspired me.
To me, it seems more likely that we would send out nanoprobes, with the information embedded within them to build an entire civilization, from technology to genomes, as they build up ever larger machines and infrastructures to support that project, from natively sourced materials. Sounds a lot more efficient and plausible than sending giant sleeper ships with so much invested in their construction and so much more that could go wrong in their intricacies along the way.
I wonder what year we will get to before we drop the 'AD'.
There is a book serie Star Force: Origins where Eath was colonized by intelligent alien offworld dinosaurs and enslaved offworld humansv and where where Earth is lost at the outer edge from the galactic core where the bulk of their systems were. There was a cout attempt going on in the Empire,so half the folks on earth got word the civil war killed the members on other faction then put their base on earth into standby mode and left earth to join the civil war. Earth is not forgotten really just their empire exists to fight togather against space monsters that only livein center of galaxy and after the war it was decided not to retake the outer worlds because there are no giant space monsters there and still the survey data from when they found the other habible worlds in the fringe like earth. Humans find the alien outpost and hack it conving the AI they are still part of the empire and it starts teaching them science and engineering of extremely advanced empire that has crazy tech since it is one of the oldest surviving civilizations and it fights giant space monsters so has some, though the depot is out of touch with empire current.
Over 300 episodes, I think I've watched them all at this point. You are amazing man, hope you keep it up. As soon as my economy allows it I'm going to start contributing somehow, you are the only content creator in my life that I've ever wanted to just throw money at.
Legitimately better story telling in this 30 minute what if then 98% percent of current day Sci-Fi/ Fantasy 'entertainment'.
imagine if this guy ran a space agency
this is pretty much a main lore point in Kenshi
one of my favorite stories in this sub-genre is the classic The Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke.
No Terminus? Or BSG Planets? What if we forget where Earth is? A lot of stories have that theme. I wonder why.
Is it a given that intelligent aliens would spread and settle every decent spot?
What if a) they've decided to override their biological imperative (which we do frequently) and maintain a set population rather than spread infinitely, and b) have advanced enough tech, free energy etc that they do not require many resources. In that case there'd be no real imperative to settle, outside of exploration etc. I find this scenario quite easy to imagine.
A civilization it's not going to send a single probe to investigate a colony that dropped off the grid. It's going to send one and then 100 years later another and 100 years later another until there are several in line on the way there so when the first one makes the decision to either stay or turn around and go back it sends the signal backwards in order to reach the origination point in an exponentially less amount of time
Earth…colony lost and forgotten about, a file sitting on an administrators desk for 5 million years…then ships from the reclamation fleet arrive…
Is this the first SFIA episode with boobs? The cryophagus shot had boobs.
I think lost colony doesn't refer to the pioneers being lost but the earth having lost contact with them. The pioneers will know where they are, the earth would not implying we lost the colony, but not that the colonist themselves are lost.
Whether right or wrong, your particular. . . way of speaking is like nails on a chalkboard for me. I know its not something you can help and I wish it didn't bother me. However your knowledge, passion, and presentation of such interesting subject matter has rendered it a non-issue me as I enjoy your content. I'm not trying to be a dick or act like I'm being magnanimous, just being honest.
Roger pronounced his last name zee-Laney, the second zed being silent.
I'm excellent at listening through accents of all kinds, but the speech impediment combined with the accent and cadence makes me feel like I'm listening to a foreign language.
Speaking of Pern, did they every discover where the Thread came from and what created it and why?
What a great find this channel is! What is that accent tho? It’s charming and almost unintelligible all at the same 😂
Hate ur narration … Sorry to bring that up
Darvit. I wasn't expecting to hear about the Dragonrider series. My bad v.v
Another thing to consider is that if the "colonists" are a group of which Earth or another planet wants to be rid, perhaps criminals or a dissident group, the home-world may want to lose that colony and may not care if it maintains the modern technology of its day. The new colonial world may be viewed simply as a dumping ground for those who are not wanted at home.
RE: "Some even believe that Earth itself may be one such lost colony."
Not possible. Humans have much of their DNA in common with that of other Earth organisms. Humans share more than 50 percent of their genetic information with plants and animals in general. They share about 80 percent with cows, and 61 percent with bugs such as fruit flies. You'll even find human DNA in a banana – about 60 percent!
@Isaac Arthur
". . . but that's okay, because for some reason MAGIC works!" You lost me right there. In fact, I'm shocked.
@IssacArthur
This reminds me of a book I read a long time ago. Voyage From Yesteryear
By James Hogan.
When you named that the colony that fell back on primative tech, I thought you said Mcafee, I thought, 'Isaac must have bought a Dell.'
I don't usually have any disagreement with Isaac, largely because our fields of expertise don't overlap. He's highly educated in astrophysics and engineering. I've got more medical / genetics under my belt. Hence, I must disagree with his assertion that time and mutation will introduce more genetic diversity. In fact, all mutations so far discovered are deleterious, some are only contingently beneficial, in the sense that amputees would be safe from a plague that killed off all two-legged people. The reason why bottlenecking would not be a concern is that a) there are no genetic illnesses which can propagate and become fixed in the population as a result, or b) if such are present, you have access to retroviral gene therapy (not the jab, but something that actually works) which can fix mutated alleles, so your similarity doesn't necessarily result in more disease. But absent such gene therapies being developed in the future, the human race is on the verge of going extinct. No rush, it'll take about 300 generations to reach genetic error catastrophe, which is to say that we have +5,000 years to figure something out.
No real subtitles? 🙁 Not easy on us non-English speaking natives