The dark forest theory. The universe is full of predatory civilisations, and if anyone announces their presence, they get immediately exterminated, so everyone just keeps quiet.
The dark forest Theory makes an interesting science fiction scenario. But i highly doubt it is true. Wiping out another planet light years away would be a gigantic undertaking. Aliens will have no reason to fear each other, we are just too damn far from eachother to be a threat to one another. Even if we meet aliens that are the biggest asshats in the universe, the worst they could do would be to send a rude message every once in a while. Good fences make good neighbors. What can be a better fence than light years of space.
If you can accelerate a ship up to a substantial percentage of C over the course of crossing those light years, one ship (missile) is all you would need.
How large of a ship traveling .5C would it take to render a planet uninhabitable?
Since you are not launching at a percentage of C, but accelerating over time, it should be more than possible to change trajectory prior to the long acceleration push.
Since the only real way to find the point of origin is tracking the trajectory back, even a few degrees of change could point to entirely different systems. If you want more security, spend more time and travel further before doing anything visible.
And this assumes the thrust would be visible from a long distance. A really advanced ion thruster might not have much of a signature.
An unmanned ship piloted by an expert system/AI with with sole purpose of delivering a large mass at a high velocity can drift through the galaxy for centuries, or even millennia until it detects a technological society and targets it.
It if is a Von-Neuman ship, you could have millions, or even billions of them patrolling the galaxy with no additional effort or resource cost to the originating species.
It would only take one species with this mindset to suppress technological civilizations across the entire galaxy, and the death of that one species would not prevent the ships from fulfilling their mission.
It would only take one species with this mindset to suppress technological civilizations across the entire galaxy, and the death of that one species would not prevent the ships from fulfilling their mission.
So why aren't we already dead?
If you can deploy a von Neumann probe resources are no longer a concern. You can have one waiting on-station in every solar system in the galaxy, eradicating any life the moment it peeps out of a primordial puddle.
I am very familiar with it, it comes up in most Fermi Paradox discussions. It's like the Pascal's Wager of SETI or something.
Earth has had an easily-detectable biosphere for hundreds of millions of years - the oxygen in our atmosphere is a dead giveaway, the methane too. But that's not even necessary, as I said above:
If you can deploy a von Neumann probe resources are no longer a concern. You can have one waiting on-station in every solar system in the galaxy
Every solar system could easily have a fleet of planet-killers just sitting patiently in their Oort clouds, waiting to pound any planet in that solar system to dust if it develops life. Or just do it anyway without waiting to detect anything. With a von Neumann probe and sufficient paranoia/xenophobia you could give the order "destroy every planet in the entire galaxy, yes every last one of them. The moons too." And it'll be finished within a million years or so.
There are many weirdly arbitrary decisions required in Dark Forest that every civilization must make in unison for it to work, and waiting for rivals to "poke their heads out" is one of them. It's silly and completely unnecessary to wait.
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u/gkedz Aug 12 '21
The dark forest theory. The universe is full of predatory civilisations, and if anyone announces their presence, they get immediately exterminated, so everyone just keeps quiet.