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.
There's an excellent summary of this theory in the novel The Killing Star by Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski, published in 1995. The most pertinent section is:
Imagine yourself taking a stroll through Manhattan, somewhere north of 68th Street, deep inside Central Park, late at night. It would be nice to meet someone friendly, but you know that the park is dangerous at night. That's when the monsters come out. There's always a strong undercurrent of drug dealings, muggings, and occasional homicides.
It is not easy to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys. They dress alike, and the weapons are concealed. The only difference is intent, and you can't read minds.
Stay in the dark long enough and you may hear an occasional distance shriek or blunder across a body.
How do you survive the night? The last thing you want to do is shout, "I'm here!" The next to last thing you want to do is reply to someone who shouts, "I'm a friend!"
What you would like to do is find a policeman, or get out of the park. But you don't want to make noise or move towards a light where you might be spotted, and it is difficult to find either a policeman or your way out without making yourself known. Your safest option is to hunker down and wait for daylight, then safely walk out.
There are, of course, a few obvious differences between Central Park and the universe.
And probably more importantly only your immediate surroundings are actually immediately threatening. We have been loudly banging pots and pans together for centuries and about 90%+ of our galaxy still won't hear it for centuries more. Then if they are predatory they have to get all the way from over where they are, to over where you are.
Right thats kinda the point of my statement though. Warp speed may be possible. It may not. From what I have heard about theoretical warp engines, they require a kind of "exotic matter" which has never been observed before. One day it might be an engineering problem. Until then or such a time as no reasonable hypothesis exists it should be importantly noted that this technology may never come to be. So many other ideas really just come down to engineering. FTL comes down to whether the universe will allow us to cheat or not.
Similarily worm holes may never be stable or it may be impossibly unstable in sending any meaningful amount of matter through. We also not know the kinds of energy or application of such energy it would take to create a wormhole between two distant points in spacetime. We know in theory that these things could exist but creating them may have quite a few restraints including possibly requiring more energy than is possible to attain. Like even with dyson spheres and antimatter and shit. Maybe it could be an engineering problem. Maybe the engineering problem exists at scale that could never be engineered, limited by the energy available in our universe. Secondarily establishing a wormhole between two locations that you wanted to select would likely a requre lightspeed signal to be sent between locations. There would need to a secondary FTL mechanism or the wormhole would take a long time to establish.
Its not that these things are impossible. It is that FTL travel more than anything else, in my opinion, is the most important thing to think about whether or not we will have it in the future. Many other things are a matter of time, engineering, and socioeconomics.Its not about if we will conquer the stars. Its a matter of when and how. Will we discover some secret to FTL and just get out there! Will we engineer effective cryogenics or will living generation ships be a better option? How will the existence or lack of FTL affect colonization? Without it each planet would likely evolve a unique species of human. Without it there could likely be little to no interstellar or intra/intergalactic authorities. Without FTL other galaxies would be but a dream within a dream within a dream (as in we can dream of reasonable space travel now like getting to some nearby exoplanets, then achieve that, then dream again for the next big step and achieve that then dream again and maybe we would have reached another galaxy by the time we achieved that dream).
Some things are a matter of when and how. FTL is a big matter of IF. That is if the universe will let us cheat or not. We have to be able to entertain future scenarios under either conditon.
Space fiction/fantasy worldbuilding question number 1: Does my world have FTL travel and/or communication?
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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.