@@meneither3834 It’s very difficult to have a completely original scientific idea that no one has considered before. Isaac does great work by popularising and discussing these ideas.
There was a story in Analog quite a while back about a civilization in the Ort cloud that ran a high-energy-use society by living one day and then hibernating for years while automatic mechanisms collected energy and matter. Multiple colonies had agreed to live in-synchrony, so even a multi-year low-energy transit between far distant colonies would effectively happen "overnight".
On a real note, its a real shame that selreplicating killswarms are rarely adressed in most of science fiction. Its such an efficient way to kill off your enemies.
@@KatyaAbc575 yeah , they would be efficient , but also self destructive : Even if tgey succed in wiping them out , what do you do afther ? And what if one of the bots has a copying error and starts attacking everything undiscriminatly ? And what if your enemy launch a killswarm of their own ? Killswarms are in that sense a lot like plagues and biological warfere : if you're an individual intrested in taking a nation down absolutly go for it , but in any other circumstance it's risky ... But there could be a story abt a small technologically advantaged force taking down a large spacefaring empire thanks to kill swarms , since you can make countermeasures to one entering in your o neil cilinder , but what appens when you have thousens spread all around your empire ?
This episode reminded me a lot of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri expansion with the Nautilus Pirates. By starting out in the void of the ocean away from everyone else, you started with an immense area to expand and it was much harder for potential enemies to even get to you. Most times you would be such a massive empire by the time first contact was made that you could steam roll over any other civilization. I see Exo-Stellar Civilizations with a similar potential.
Yeah starting as the Nautilus Pirates made the early game easy mode and it felt like cheating as nobody else could even reach you until they researched ocean vessels while you started with them from turn one.
Orion's Arm finally got mentioned in this channel! I wondered if he knew about it. It is a very recommendable collaborative sci fi universe for anyone who likes Isaac Arthur videos.
The original Borg (called Posbi, i.r Positronic-Biological entity) from the series Perry Rhodan usually live on so-called Void worlds because they don't like being where other beings would stumble across them. They could easily operate in pure darkness, but they tend to put a few thousand artificial mini suns up for aesthetic reasons.
Me too. One of the best games currently is Surviving Mars. It can be easy (like, super easy) or balllllsssss hard...put like 300 hours into it. If you like strategy and city builders and haven't played it, buy it.
@@Modern.Millennial none of those games are city builders, they are turn or grand strategy. Personally what i dislike about them, is that they fall incredibly short from truly depicting the megalomania and scale of true interstellar civilizations.
@@cynicalanon8784 Yeah what I had in mind was something like the space station portion of Anno 2205, but building self-sufficient O'Neil cylinders or something similar in interstellar space (hard mode, easy mode it's orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars). End game power plant would be an artificial black hole, with vanilla solar panels to start. But the key is to make it not "map" size limited, but limited by only how much ram your PC has like in modded versions of Factorio (and that is quite a struggle and takes years just to use up 16GB). One cylinder done = time to build another as a trade outpost.
I love how Isaac keeps saying “you’re gonna need this and that to build your O’Neill cylinder” like I’m actually going to be doing that. Thank you for the undeserved confidence boost 🙏🏻
I'd pay big money to see you, Lex Friedman, and Ben Goerzel on a podcast together I wonder if these future civilians will be similar to the nomadic civilizations of central asia. Bouncing back and forth in the spaces between solar systems.
Thanks. Now I'm imagining a space khan discovering the equivalent of super bows & arrows and siring a nonillion people while leading the conquest of a dozen dyson swarms.
Bouncing is a liberal word. Isaac's scenario sounds like there's nowhere left to go by the time he thinks this is worthwhile. I do wonder how densly populated interstellar space could be. I imagine a brownian jiggle of drifting habitats. Interesting scenario to create cultures in and contrast them with your typical belter folk. I'm picturing a ringworld feel of radically hetrogenous people all scanning for resources while hiding from pirates.
Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space features some neat extra solar civilizations (and is just a fantastic series to boot). Same with Peter Watts’ Blindsight (which is probably the best hard sci fi novel I’ve ever read).
Yep. If you want a country to do something you should look to China. I have a feeling corporations will just keep on getting more and more powerful in the US.
Yep. If you want a country to do something you should look to China. I have a feeling corporations will just keep on getting more and more powerful in the US.
@@MrNote-lz7lh This most OBVIOUS and essential thing is NEVER mentioned on this channel! Not by the host, and by very very very few of the guests. Most of us seem to be thinking that there will one day be some kind of king of Apps, that we'll just point and click and then presently we'll be mining asteroids... and SO ON. The idea of a mass organization occurs to NOBODY here, but you. This is a great responsibility, I hope it is not too much for you to bear! LIBERTARIANS in SPACE is what we're talking here, week after week. I do love the videos I have to say, but all the discussion is basically insane.
This clearly shows that issac needs to be a consultant on scyfy series and movies and games. The visual effects are awesome as well. Happy new year issac arthur.
an idea for some of your mid-month bonus vids : an omnibus of miscellaneous facts and tidbits left out due to editing for time of other episodes, or a collection of things that were too short to make a full video of on their own
Quick question... For an sci-Fi planetary defense, it more power efficient to use something like a rail gun or a mass driver over a large Laser? I’m in an arguement with a friend, I’m in the camp for a mass driver however he’s all about DEWs. I know both should be more effective as an orbital platform rather than a ground side installation, which is where we are basing our argument off of. A mass driver (as so far as I understand it) is limited by travel time primarily however the larger the mass you are accelerating the more power you need. And your effective range would be largely based up computational limits, but would be easy to dodge at ranges where it could take up to a minute or more for your projectile to arrive on target. A Laser or similar energy weapon would not have this issue, but as so far as I understand lasers, the farther out you have to reach, the power requirement starts growing exponentially, although I could very well be wrong on that.
If it were possible to convert heat directly into laser light (see Sun Diver) an interstellar craft would hide their heat by beaming it out in one direction where observers are unlikely, or so far away they cannot affect your foreseeable future.
You have given every /r/ student I teach extreme optimism. Your /r/ has improved so much from 3 years ago! Kudos dude for /r/ has broken many people but not sir Isaac Arthur
here's an idea thats been bugging me last night : Aliens that build illusory walls around a system with sentient life making no contact and treating it as a sanctuary as they harvest the rest of the stars.
Pretty impossible. Illusory walls would easily discovered by any civilization like ours because of our powerful telescopes. Illusory walls wouldn't be able to replicate fake planets around all the fake stars (light dimming) and gas composition, infared, etc all at once for all the stars we can observe that with telescopes like Hubble. Its just too much to fake let alone construct. They'd also have to create illusory gravitational lensing and a ton of other things. Much less effort to annihilate the civilization or just do nothing because they wouldn't be able to lift a finger even if a early space civilization like ours discovered some super mega civilization is literally harvesting whole stars.
@@Leo-ip3yx hypothetically, maybe our system was located inside their star farm. they harvest and grow stars at the same time while our low tech asses are just sitting in the middle of it and they just dont want to bring harm to us so they build an illusory picket fence out of courtesy.
@@fanuluiciorannr1xd212 holograms - thats the word i was looking for. these aliens are counting on our low tech for them to deceive us visually, until of course until we perfected space travel.
Hey Isaac. Would like to thank you for taking the time and energy to make these and inform myself and others. Have a suggestion for a video I’d love to see as well. If possible a video on the end of the universe as you see it and if w the expanse of the universe until it’s over would black holes slowly become the last things in the universe until the last two encounter each other ?
Don't wanna be this guy but: If you're talking about the super continent Pangea, how would that work? Its one big landmass, saying you made a vacation on Pangea is like going from Colorado to Florida and saying you went on vacation in America. Maybe you're talking about traveling back in time to the time when Pangea still existed but then the joke wouldn't really work. idk
Imagine the kind of energy available if anyone figured out total mass to energy conversion. And not just chucking stuff down a black hole, I'm thinking something more clarke-tech.
The calculations for collecting interstellar medium assume that relative speed of the collectors are are small, but if you shoot a high speed spaceship in the direction of a molecular cloud you can trade your velocity for collected material, and use higher density of the medium for a shorter deceleration path and smaller sizes for deceleration devices (the collector).
You know, when I first stumbled across Isaac's channel a couple or so years back I just quickly dismissed it. One of those quick "nope not for me" moments and moved right along. The second time I ran across it I stayed around just a little longer, and thought, "wtf is this?!" and moved on again. The third time was definitely the charm, I got it, loved it, and I was hooked from that moment forward.
I guess I have some vids to track down and watch, I wasn't aware of any amendment/compendiums of late. Life has had me rather distracted and I was going through the life in a colony series again, so maybe I just missed the memo, lol. Great vids Isaac and crew. B)
5:30 The size of a ship or habitat might be estimated by the thickness of shielding it needs. I'd say this might be even 100 m or more depending on speed and radiation strength. So supposing the shielding might be just 1% of the diameter easily diameters of 10km are reached. So anything from oil tankers to sky scrapers might not be considered as it does not even meet shielding needs.
happy to see interstellar gas collection! it always looked like a lot of useful materials that are continuously lost to space whenever thing leak or when spaceships travel around
Interesting... Escape velocity of our galaxy. So much to learn. So, a very fast ship in the future, an asteroid or other bodies would have to reach this same velocity to escape the Galaxy just the same as rockets today have to reach a certain velocity to escape the atmosphere of the earth or earth's gravity?
An invisible Dyson swarm or Matroska brain could be built around a black hole as a cold sink instead of a star as a heat source. Its outer surface can be kept at the background temperature and not look like a huge infrared beacon.
I think I heard on NPR this last week (I live in Northeast Ohio so it was WKSU, so maybe they do know your actual birthday) that March 9th was your birthday. If so HAPPY BIRTHDAY and Best Wishes.
Your videos are great. Do you have any plans to make videos on mathematics of Alien civilization ? I want to say basically if we use mathematics to build engineering product, technology & infrastructure on earth then what types of mathematics do you think alien civilization use for the development of their technology, product & infrastructure ? I am just curious about this thing. Sometimes I think do alien civilization also use algebra, calculus , probability etc like we do on earth ? Your You Tube channel is awesome.👍👍 All the best 👍
An interesting prospect in the local group intergalactic environment is the prospects of reaching Andromeda which is approaching the Milky Way as the galactic corona's of both galaxies are intersecting its low density but it offers a slower approach to getting to our nearest major galactic neighbor. There is also a higher density pit stop around a million light years out halfway between the giant spiral galaxies where the two coronal halos intersect compressing material and driving the beginnings of the star formation of Milkomeda. It is of course pretty far out and limited in terms of what is there now as we are only in the very early stages of the Merger but for an exostellar civilization it might very well be prime real estate You could not only offer boosts to colonists on their way to Andromeda but you also can be pretty sure you don't have any annoying neighbors to deal with. The communication lag is quite awful however hence it would be for the I want to get away from everyone crowd. Exostellar space hipsters basically. XD
17:50 Tricky part of fusion for us is largely keeping the plasma hot, something which space would help it two fold just off the top of my head making it so easy a baby could do it in space. First and foremost here on Earth we must contend with Atmosphere, Gravity, and Electromagnetic fields of our environment. This makes preventing the Plasma from touching the side cost considerably more than it would need to on Earth as the near perfect vacuum would be created in Space with almost Zero energy cost on our part. Further more the larger we make fusion reactors the easier it is to hit the break even point hence the reason we just keep going bigger here on Earth and in 30 years will reach break even point ;) . In space, when our Reactor could literally be made the size of a small astroid if we wished something as Basic as a Fusor design for Fusion would be more than enough to rapidly reach break even as the Time periods for Ions and Electrons to get from one grid to the other means we could run them in a Pulse mode such that packets bounce back and forth far easier. We would likely even be able to make it multiple layers of Grids in the Future timing them in such a way that the packet automatically avoids the inner grid through electrostatic repulsion( the number one damper in small fusors) . It would be simple, You Have the Grid charged with a Negative charge so it attracts the Positive Deuterium and just as the packets are passing through the grid you shut it down for brief instance then reverse charge such that it now uses repulsive forces to push towards another inner grid gaining power from the positive and negative electrodes. It Literally would be a small sun just sitting there in space producing materials and energy for us all the time.
One feels that latency will be an issue when creating a galaxy-wide computer. Considering there are whole 'sets' of 'scales' equal to or larger than the scales we experience that are 'larger' than the galactic/filament scales that permeate our universe and that are effected by more forces it is more likely that our mastery of the quantum universe has more to offer in the future of computing
For habitats and other structures, why not collect organic biomass and ferment to make methane? Crack the methane for hydrogen, you have a homegrown fuel source that is continually renewable.
Can you hide a civilization/colony by directing the waste heat? If you know where your enemy is likely to be, couldn’t you just put a giant mirror in that direction so that all the waste heat gets reflected away from that direction? As a follow up, how tightly could you send the waste heat? Is it only diffraction limited or does thermodynamics come into play here? Since the Entropy of a tight beam is lower? :s
Using excess energy from your star, black hole, or galaxy, to create dark matter could be thought of as creating batteries to increase your overall efficiency. Your interstellar ventures could be 'pseudo energy free' if you are talking your extra reserves which you would ideally have.
I don't know why but I feel like dark energy and dark matter might be a way to get a space craft close to the speed of light, or even FTL, If in the future we discover a way of using dark energy to power an engine that could collect dark matter while you travel to be used as your propellent, the faster you go, the more dark energy and dark matter you would collect and as it is spread evenly throughout the universe, I feel like this type of engine could reach light speed or even go faster than light, as long as you could keep getting more and more dark energy and dark matter as you go faster, it's kind of like having infinite energy and infinite propellent, that's saying if you could some how survive reaching these speeds without killing the crew or destroying the ship by hitting a dust particle, far as I know though, there might be a cap on the speed you could push the dark matter out the back of the engine
I think the one area you haven't touched on yet (which to me seems a pretty obvious omission) is non-civilizational or post-civilizational intelligences. Solo intelligences, whether organic or machine/AI based. For instance, how about advanced technological beings which do not exist as part of a civilization? Or those which once were, but have been living as independent beings for a very long time.
Did the math, apparently if you took all the matter and energy of the entire observable universe, and crunched it down to a cube the density of water, it'd be only about 20 lightyears on a side, though given I was dealing with dozens of orders of magnitude, that could be off by a fair bit.
To my knowledge there's only 3 ways to truly hide a civilization one is to give the laws of thermodynamics a big ol kardashev 3 sized middlefinger, figure out a way to dump all waste heat into a black hole. Or place the whole civilization inside a black hole... so I'm thinking its prolly impossible lol
The Caelier using Clarke tech drew energy directly from their star and their planet was hidden in a shell. No way of seeing them. Then again later their star went nova then they built the shell around the planet.
There is another option. Have we considered that some of these civilizations, when they reach a certain level of knowledge and wisdom, choose not to go the eternal growth route of building bigger and bigger hives and exploiting more and more natural resources at the planet-wide and system-wide scales? What about low industrial footprint civilizations, which still develop and use advanced technology, but have strict population controls, smart resource stewardship, an ecological mindset and a desire to maximize the comfort of the relatively few individuals living in them? I would think that given large spans of time, many of the few civilizations that actually survive would have chosen this route rather than incessantly trying to jump up the Kardashev scale.
@@jtinalexandria The flaw with that viewpoint is it implies that the civilization values barren rocks over other uses like ecological preserves or habitats for people away from sensitive ecologies. Space colonization is not like earth bound colonization in that we aren't displacing anyone, or any other species, even microbial forms.
@@danielhall271 Aren't we assuming most civilizations would want to maximize the number of individuals, though? That is an unstated assumption of the Kardashev scale and I think of much of what Arthur talks about when he discusses advanced civilizations and what they're likely to look like . I don't think it takes a great deal of social and political evolution beyond where we are right now to envision a society that limits population growth for sustainability and efficiency reasons, and does it in a humane and fair way. Hell, China did it by passing one law. (I am not advocating or supporting China's one-child policy, just pointing out that it CAN be done through simple means.) How about a highly advanced civilization of only 1 million members in an ecologically smart, low industrial footprint world that has chosen not to reproduce like bacteria and instead maximizes the quality of life for each individual, but doesn't generate an enormous technological signature that we can see?
@@jtinalexandria The notion is that civilizations will continue to expand their numbers when they can comfortably do so. Meaning new members are added at the same maximal quality of life as the old members and there are no sustainability concerns. With the astronomical resources of outer space this is completely possible.
Moon base for certain. Its out of the prediction stage now and in the pre-building stage, with massive industrial investment; 2024-2025 it will be online. And the cost to visit will be about $2,500-$5,000 in current currency. Cheap enough to set up mass production for shipping back to earth. RIP every single production industry. And every single economic theory.
@@allhumansarejusthuman.5776- Who’s going to set this up by 2024-25?!? NASA’s timeline has already slipped past 2026, and Artemis is slated to cost a total of $150B by 2028 (Constellation + SLS + Orion & ESM + Gateway + Suits, Habitats, Rovers & other equipment). I don’t now where you’re getting the $2500-5000 figure from. SLS will cost $22,000/kg (not person) to get stuff to LEO & >$80k/kg to TLI. ULA costs about the same. SpaceX (Falcon 9 & Falcon Heavy) are $2000-2500/kg to LEO & ~$10k/kg to TLI. Even Starship won’t be able to get that down below $20/kg to LEO & $120/kg to TLI, & that’s assuming a best case scenario. Given that each person will require ~1000 kg, that gives you an absolute minimum cost of $120,000 to TLI, assuming an absolute best case scenario & no added costs for things like spacesuits, rovers, habitats & other supplies. I agree that Starship will enable things not even the Falcon’s do, but it’s not going to be nearly as cheap as you might want to think it will be.
Isaac, I notice you occasionally mention dark energy as a potential source of power for a highly advanced civilization, but I don't understand how that would be even possible. To my knowledge, you can't produce any work unless there's an energy gradient, and dark energy is equally distributed everywhere in the universe, so you wouldn't be able to do any work with dark energy, no? Apologies if you've already addressed this in one of your episodes, it was just something that nagged at me a bit when you mentioned it. Anyways, please keep up the amazing content!
The Popuulation density problem does not exist with a waste heat using system which can grab energy from melcular motion. In principle those machines already exist.
I would still maintain that an Exo-Stellar civilization would be very hard to detect. There are brown dwarfs in our local stellar neighborhood we have only recently discovered, so a few thousand O'Niell cylinders may be too cold for us to detect currently.
Hey Isaac, 01-April is coming. You should post a video on April Fool's Day. Serious topic, played straight except for one thing. Colonizing Uranus, but - ah - 'accidentally' mispronounce it
Issac Arthur is going to be mentioned in future archives as one of the most powerful futurists and theorists, and a great all around person.
Amen, brother!
We would use the word "Influential" instead of "powerful" but yes you are right.
Although vast majority of what Isaac is talking about isn't new.
he's already among the greatest SciFi writers in Wikipedia
edit: Isaac Arthur is a futurist, not SciFi writer. my bad. he doesn't even write stories.
@@meneither3834 It’s very difficult to have a completely original scientific idea that no one has considered before.
Isaac does great work by popularising and discussing these ideas.
@@randomguy4167 and concentrating them too.
There was a story in Analog quite a while back about a civilization in the Ort cloud that ran a high-energy-use society by living one day and then hibernating for years while automatic mechanisms collected energy and matter. Multiple colonies had agreed to live in-synchrony, so even a multi-year low-energy transit between far distant colonies would effectively happen "overnight".
"...avoiding the law, taxes, or self-replicating killswarms..."
Ah yes. That little-remembered class of antagonists in western movies: the killswarms.
"There are two inevitable things : selfreplicating killswarm and taxes"
This is the way
@@rexmann1984 Clicking of agreement
On a real note, its a real shame that selreplicating killswarms are rarely adressed in most of science fiction.
Its such an efficient way to kill off your enemies.
@@KatyaAbc575 yeah , they would be efficient , but also self destructive :
Even if tgey succed in wiping them out , what do you do afther ?
And what if one of the bots has a copying error and starts attacking everything undiscriminatly ?
And what if your enemy launch a killswarm of their own ?
Killswarms are in that sense a lot like plagues and biological warfere : if you're an individual intrested in taking a nation down absolutly go for it , but in any other circumstance it's risky ...
But there could be a story abt a small technologically advantaged force taking down a large spacefaring empire thanks to kill swarms , since you can make countermeasures to one entering in your o neil cilinder , but what appens when you have thousens spread all around your empire ?
"Avoiding law, taxes, or self-replicated kill swarms seeking to wipe them out..." Story of my life.
You are either conservative or liberal
@@zippy-zappa-zeppo-zorba-etc Just a squirrel trying to find a nut
@@RCAvhstape Funny. Thank you :)
@@zippy-zappa-zeppo-zorba-etc except NatSoc is neither
This episode reminded me a lot of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri expansion with the Nautilus Pirates. By starting out in the void of the ocean away from everyone else, you started with an immense area to expand and it was much harder for potential enemies to even get to you. Most times you would be such a massive empire by the time first contact was made that you could steam roll over any other civilization. I see Exo-Stellar Civilizations with a similar potential.
Yeah starting as the Nautilus Pirates made the early game easy mode and it felt like cheating as nobody else could even reach you until they researched ocean vessels while you started with them from turn one.
@ exactly
Isaac Arthur; a steady star of the mind to steer by, in the darkest nights in the turbulent seas of humanity.
Dude, that is profound... wow...
Got to watch it on nebula yesterday, on my birthday! Thanks it’s always a great SFIA Video!
Happy birthday Tariq!
@@isaacarthurSFIA thanks!😄
Happy Birthday Tariq!
My dad introduced me to your channel. One of our favorite pastimes is to smoke a joint and launch ourselves into the future. Keep up the good work!
what about a drink and snack
@@u92element4 That probably follows the Fatty... 😁
A great father/son activity!
@@u92element4 nerd!
@@escape1777 hehehehe
Orion's Arm finally got mentioned in this channel! I wondered if he knew about it. It is a very recommendable collaborative sci fi universe for anyone who likes Isaac Arthur videos.
He's listed as a person who wrote for the scenario on some oages and in it's authors list.
In Orion's Arm these are called "Hider Civilizations".
The original Borg (called Posbi, i.r Positronic-Biological entity) from the series Perry Rhodan usually live on so-called Void worlds because they don't like being where other beings would stumble across them.
They could easily operate in pure darkness, but they tend to put a few thousand artificial mini suns up for aesthetic reasons.
It's currently 0:29 AM here in Singapore. My question: "What Sleep?"
4.56am Australia, I feel your pain.
Fell asleep on my desk at 3am mid-video here in India. Woke up at 8 and just continued watching xD
4:19 AM
00:52 am in west coast usa.
answer I don't know either
Imagine living near a star
-This post was made by the exo-stellar gang
👏 👏 👏
Imagine living in a galaxy lol.
-This post was made by the exo-galactic gang.
Imagine living in the universe
-This post was made by the exo-dimensional gang
imagine living...
-which gang made this?
@@daerk420666 undead gang
This makes me wish there were city-builder games based in space. SimCity and it's clones are so 20th century.
Me too. One of the best games currently is Surviving Mars. It can be easy (like, super easy) or balllllsssss hard...put like 300 hours into it. If you like strategy and city builders and haven't played it, buy it.
Stellaris, galactic civ iii, endless space 2 et al
@@Modern.Millennial none of those games are city builders, they are turn or grand strategy. Personally what i dislike about them, is that they fall incredibly short from truly depicting the megalomania and scale of true interstellar civilizations.
@@cynicalanon8784 Yeah what I had in mind was something like the space station portion of Anno 2205, but building self-sufficient O'Neil cylinders or something similar in interstellar space (hard mode, easy mode it's orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars). End game power plant would be an artificial black hole, with vanilla solar panels to start. But the key is to make it not "map" size limited, but limited by only how much ram your PC has like in modded versions of Factorio (and that is quite a struggle and takes years just to use up 16GB). One cylinder done = time to build another as a trade outpost.
Try Dyson Sphere Program. That's new game (early access) where you can build your own Dyson spheres and swarms :)
I love how Isaac keeps saying “you’re gonna need this and that to build your O’Neill cylinder” like I’m actually going to be doing that. Thank you for the undeserved confidence boost 🙏🏻
I'd pay big money to see you, Lex Friedman, and Ben Goerzel on a podcast together
I wonder if these future civilians will be similar to the nomadic civilizations of central asia. Bouncing back and forth in the spaces between solar systems.
Thanks. Now I'm imagining a space khan discovering the equivalent of super bows & arrows and siring a nonillion people while leading the conquest of a dozen dyson swarms.
Bouncing is a liberal word. Isaac's scenario sounds like there's nowhere left to go by the time he thinks this is worthwhile. I do wonder how densly populated interstellar space could be. I imagine a brownian jiggle of drifting habitats. Interesting scenario to create cultures in and contrast them with your typical belter folk. I'm picturing a ringworld feel of radically hetrogenous people all scanning for resources while hiding from pirates.
@@adriandeenedy6363 maybe
@@cartermclaughlin2908 maybe too small becuz space between every planet or stars are quite vast.. Sooo it may become just like 1/4 asteroid belt
Lex needs to interview him for sure!
Never grabbed a drink and a snack this quick.
Video watching speedrun: drink and snack %
I just had breakfast, I don't want a snack
If the videos come on early enough then I might have a coffee - black - and that's it.
@@alexandernorman5337Tea, Earl Grey, hot
The last time I grabbed a drink and a snack that quickly I still wasn't early enough.
Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space features some neat extra solar civilizations (and is just a fantastic series to boot).
Same with Peter Watts’ Blindsight (which is probably the best hard sci fi novel I’ve ever read).
An American city took two years and spent 500k to build a bike rake. Megastructures are a while a way
It took nothing to build it, all that money was for the vacation time for the planners. Wouldn't want them to get stressed would you?
Yep. If you want a country to do something you should look to China. I have a feeling corporations will just keep on getting more and more powerful in the US.
Yep. If you want a country to do something you should look to China. I have a feeling corporations will just keep on getting more and more powerful in the US.
@@MrNote-lz7lh This most OBVIOUS and essential thing is NEVER mentioned on this channel! Not by the host, and by very very very few of the guests. Most of us seem to be thinking that there will one day be some kind of king of Apps, that we'll just point and click and then presently we'll be mining asteroids... and SO ON. The idea of a mass organization occurs to NOBODY here, but you. This is a great responsibility, I hope it is not too much for you to bear! LIBERTARIANS in SPACE is what we're talking here, week after week. I do love the videos I have to say, but all the discussion is basically insane.
Exactly the same everywhere where did the money go?
I remember when all we had in UK was three tv channels and Sunday night TV was special. Well now it's special again thanks Isaac!
These episodes sure are special! (Usually it's Arthursday though;) )
yea yeay yea, tell it to the 16 quintillion human sims in the birch world in a few trillion years.
This clearly shows that issac needs to be a consultant on scyfy series and movies and games. The visual effects are awesome as well. Happy new year issac arthur.
an idea for some of your mid-month bonus vids : an omnibus of miscellaneous facts and tidbits left out due to editing for time of other episodes, or a collection of things that were too short to make a full video of on their own
Quick question...
For an sci-Fi planetary defense, it more power efficient to use something like a rail gun or a mass driver over a large Laser? I’m in an arguement with a friend, I’m in the camp for a mass driver however he’s all about DEWs.
I know both should be more effective as an orbital platform rather than a ground side installation, which is where we are basing our argument off of.
A mass driver (as so far as I understand it) is limited by travel time primarily however the larger the mass you are accelerating the more power you need. And your effective range would be largely based up computational limits, but would be easy to dodge at ranges where it could take up to a minute or more for your projectile to arrive on target. A Laser or similar energy weapon would not have this issue, but as so far as I understand lasers, the farther out you have to reach, the power requirement starts growing exponentially, although I could very well be wrong on that.
This really is the best of TH-cam. Bravo as always...
Woohoo, I love the colonization/civilization episodes!!
If it were possible to convert heat directly into laser light (see Sun Diver) an interstellar craft would hide their heat by beaming it out in one direction where observers are unlikely, or so far away they cannot affect your foreseeable future.
You have given every /r/ student I teach extreme optimism. Your /r/ has improved so much from 3 years ago! Kudos dude for /r/ has broken many people but not sir Isaac Arthur
Thank you for the work you do, Mr. Arthur. Having you here makes our world better.
Sunday episode: Grab my coffee and a snack! Thanks Isaac!
7:19 what is the name of this movie or video game whose extracts are throughout this video.
24:50 What happens though if they find a way to turn matter into the light? That’s about as matter less as you get.
Thank you for your work!
here's an idea thats been bugging me last night : Aliens that build illusory walls around a system with sentient life making no contact and treating it as a sanctuary as they harvest the rest of the stars.
Pretty impossible. Illusory walls would easily discovered by any civilization like ours because of our powerful telescopes. Illusory walls wouldn't be able to replicate fake planets around all the fake stars (light dimming) and gas composition, infared, etc all at once for all the stars we can observe that with telescopes like Hubble. Its just too much to fake let alone construct. They'd also have to create illusory gravitational lensing and a ton of other things.
Much less effort to annihilate the civilization or just do nothing because they wouldn't be able to lift a finger even if a early space civilization like ours discovered some super mega civilization is literally harvesting whole stars.
@@Leo-ip3yx hypothetically, maybe our system was located inside their star farm. they harvest and grow stars at the same time while our low tech asses are just sitting in the middle of it and they just dont want to bring harm to us so they build an illusory picket fence out of courtesy.
@@madmanpete I once heard something similar but there weren't walls just very good holograms.
@@fanuluiciorannr1xd212 holograms - thats the word i was looking for. these aliens are counting on our low tech for them to deceive us visually, until of course until we perfected space travel.
The red thing at 6:04 scared me cause I thought it was about to crash into the cylinder. It’s almost like depth perception is hard on a flat screen.
Drink: Check.
Snack: Check.
ADD meds: Oops. What did I just watch?
Hey Isaac. Would like to thank you for taking the time and energy to make these and inform myself and others. Have a suggestion for a video I’d love to see as well. If possible a video on the end of the universe as you see it and if w the expanse of the universe until it’s over would black holes slowly become the last things in the universe until the last two encounter each other ?
I was so fascinated that I didn’t even notice when my appetite fell down an unstable wormhole and disappeared.
Thank you IA and team for making days a bit brighter
I havent been this early since my vacation to Pangea.
"I havent been this early since my vacation to Pangea." That's still not nearly as early as the folks who set up the hotel.
How was that vacation? I was thinking of visiting myself?
@@annoyed707 Actually i went camping.
@@Cherrynasb nice, never saw another person. The landscaping could have used a bit of clean up but very private.
Don't wanna be this guy but:
If you're talking about the super continent Pangea, how would that work?
Its one big landmass, saying you made a vacation on Pangea is like going from Colorado to Florida and saying you went on vacation in America.
Maybe you're talking about traveling back in time to the time when Pangea still existed but then the joke wouldn't really work.
idk
I've been looking forward to this one!!!
May All the Cosmos bring peace and love to you and your loved one .. Thanks for your info and vision !!
I really hope some writers and game developers get inspired by Isaac. I have been wanting more games and shows inspired by real science.
Imagine the kind of energy available if anyone figured out total mass to energy conversion. And not just chucking stuff down a black hole, I'm thinking something more clarke-tech.
The calculations for collecting interstellar medium assume that relative speed of the collectors are are small, but if you shoot a high speed spaceship in the direction of a molecular cloud you can trade your velocity for collected material, and use higher density of the medium for a shorter deceleration path and smaller sizes for deceleration devices (the collector).
You know, when I first stumbled across Isaac's channel a couple or so years back I just quickly dismissed it. One of those quick "nope not for me" moments and moved right along. The second time I ran across it I stayed around just a little longer, and thought, "wtf is this?!" and moved on again. The third time was definitely the charm, I got it, loved it, and I was hooked from that moment forward.
Future: Coronal gas grazed by a coronal cow made into a coronal steak.
I guess I have some vids to track down and watch, I wasn't aware of any amendment/compendiums of late. Life has had me rather distracted and I was going through the life in a colony series again, so maybe I just missed the memo, lol.
Great vids Isaac and crew. B)
@Isaac, I absolutely LOVE your videos.
5:30 The size of a ship or habitat might be estimated by the thickness of shielding it needs. I'd say this might be even 100 m or more depending on speed and radiation strength. So supposing the shielding might be just 1% of the diameter easily diameters of 10km are reached. So anything from oil tankers to sky scrapers might not be considered as it does not even meet shielding needs.
Nice to see some love for Orions Arm and DWIZ ❤️
Actually we are on the Orion spur of the Percius arm. Just saying....
And nice neighbor of Thuban, Andromeda, and Tau Ceti...
happy to see interstellar gas collection! it always looked like a lot of useful materials that are continuously lost to space whenever thing leak or when spaceships travel around
Thanks brother.......love the videos
Interesting... Escape velocity of our galaxy.
So much to learn.
So, a very fast ship in the future, an asteroid or other bodies would have to reach this same velocity to escape the Galaxy just the same as rockets today have to reach a certain velocity to escape the atmosphere of the earth or earth's gravity?
This is a pleasant Sunday surprise. For me.
I love your content. keep it up🥰
will do :)
Would it be more efficient to run a galactic computer on black hole engines, fusion reactors, or some kind of hybrid of a variety of sorces?
Insane timing on this vid Ngl there ⏱
An invisible Dyson swarm or Matroska brain could be built around a black hole as a cold sink instead of a star as a heat source. Its outer surface can be kept at the background temperature and not look like a huge infrared beacon.
fantastic episode
I think I heard on NPR this last week (I live in Northeast Ohio so it was WKSU, so maybe they do know your actual birthday) that March 9th was your birthday.
If so HAPPY BIRTHDAY and Best Wishes.
2 episodes in a week?! hell yes!!!
How do you scrape up the collected molecules off the collectors without expending more energy or material than collected?
Your videos are great.
Do you have any plans to make videos on mathematics of Alien civilization ? I want to say basically if we use mathematics to build engineering product, technology & infrastructure on earth then what types of mathematics do you think alien civilization use for the development of their technology, product & infrastructure ? I am just curious about this thing.
Sometimes I think do alien civilization also use algebra, calculus , probability etc like we do on earth ?
Your You Tube channel is awesome.👍👍
All the best 👍
An interesting prospect in the local group intergalactic environment is the prospects of reaching Andromeda which is approaching the Milky Way as the galactic corona's of both galaxies are intersecting its low density but it offers a slower approach to getting to our nearest major galactic neighbor. There is also a higher density pit stop around a million light years out halfway between the giant spiral galaxies where the two coronal halos intersect compressing material and driving the beginnings of the star formation of Milkomeda. It is of course pretty far out and limited in terms of what is there now as we are only in the very early stages of the Merger but for an exostellar civilization it might very well be prime real estate You could not only offer boosts to colonists on their way to Andromeda but you also can be pretty sure you don't have any annoying neighbors to deal with.
The communication lag is quite awful however hence it would be for the I want to get away from everyone crowd. Exostellar space hipsters basically. XD
Bonus video? This made my day! But.... i ran out of snacks!
Ran out of snacks!?!?
@@isaacarthurSFIA like the distant descendents of earth inhibiting exostellar worlds, ill need to learn to ration my snacks
This soon? Amazing! This will be a good one :)
No time for a drink and a snack. Let's goooo!
Don't worry, most people consume more calories than they need anyways. I never get a drink or snack.
17:50 Tricky part of fusion for us is largely keeping the plasma hot, something which space would help it two fold just off the top of my head making it so easy a baby could do it in space. First and foremost here on Earth we must contend with Atmosphere, Gravity, and Electromagnetic fields of our environment. This makes preventing the Plasma from touching the side cost considerably more than it would need to on Earth as the near perfect vacuum would be created in Space with almost Zero energy cost on our part. Further more the larger we make fusion reactors the easier it is to hit the break even point hence the reason we just keep going bigger here on Earth and in 30 years will reach break even point ;) . In space, when our Reactor could literally be made the size of a small astroid if we wished something as Basic as a Fusor design for Fusion would be more than enough to rapidly reach break even as the Time periods for Ions and Electrons to get from one grid to the other means we could run them in a Pulse mode such that packets bounce back and forth far easier. We would likely even be able to make it multiple layers of Grids in the Future timing them in such a way that the packet automatically avoids the inner grid through electrostatic repulsion( the number one damper in small fusors) . It would be simple, You Have the Grid charged with a Negative charge so it attracts the Positive Deuterium and just as the packets are passing through the grid you shut it down for brief instance then reverse charge such that it now uses repulsive forces to push towards another inner grid gaining power from the positive and negative electrodes. It Literally would be a small sun just sitting there in space producing materials and energy for us all the time.
I just a TNG Season 6 episode where they encounter a Dyson sphere. Pretty cool
Relics.
great work
One feels that latency will be an issue when creating a galaxy-wide computer. Considering there are whole 'sets' of 'scales' equal to or larger than the scales we experience that are 'larger' than the galactic/filament scales that permeate our universe and that are effected by more forces it is more likely that our mastery of the quantum universe has more to offer in the future of computing
nice renders, try breadth first radio burst or sequential geometry rastering cast
tf you need to transmit information "in the end", the "heights", its only a burden
freedom is the best, you dont need to know, even if you do something, like angels
you have a problem if you are dependent on the energy laws of the created
you can always mask your signature, so that you cant reach where i am
I'm glad I paused this to make a grilled cheese, fill a bowl with leftover salad, then grab a bottle of seltzer.
For habitats and other structures, why not collect organic biomass and ferment to make methane? Crack the methane for hydrogen, you have a homegrown fuel source that is continually renewable.
Can you hide a civilization/colony by directing the waste heat? If you know where your enemy is likely to be, couldn’t you just put a giant mirror in that direction so that all the waste heat gets reflected away from that direction?
As a follow up, how tightly could you send the waste heat? Is it only diffraction limited or does thermodynamics come into play here? Since the Entropy of a tight beam is lower? :s
Using excess energy from your star, black hole, or galaxy, to create dark matter could be thought of as creating batteries to increase your overall efficiency. Your interstellar ventures could be 'pseudo energy free' if you are talking your extra reserves which you would ideally have.
Creating 'excess power batteries' could enable you to commit a base load to your system should this be the optimal approach.
Realized these are also in podcast form a few days ago which is great, but i do miss the animatoons and pictures :
Ex-wifes, you forgot ex-wifes --- "...avoiding the law, taxes, or self-replicating killswarms..."
I don't know why but I feel like dark energy and dark matter might be a way to get a space craft close to the speed of light, or even FTL, If in the future we discover a way of using dark energy to power an engine that could collect dark matter while you travel to be used as your propellent, the faster you go, the more dark energy and dark matter you would collect and as it is spread evenly throughout the universe, I feel like this type of engine could reach light speed or even go faster than light, as long as you could keep getting more and more dark energy and dark matter as you go faster, it's kind of like having infinite energy and infinite propellent, that's saying if you could some how survive reaching these speeds without killing the crew or destroying the ship by hitting a dust particle, far as I know though, there might be a cap on the speed you could push the dark matter out the back of the engine
Is it possible to digitize matter? To send it as data? I guess that's what teleportation kinda hha
This is after Peace on Earth and we're all working together in Harmony correct?
Or it's driven by competition or greed.
I think the one area you haven't touched on yet (which to me seems a pretty obvious omission) is non-civilizational or post-civilizational intelligences. Solo intelligences, whether organic or machine/AI based. For instance, how about advanced technological beings which do not exist as part of a civilization? Or those which once were, but have been living as independent beings for a very long time.
I don't mind the episodes being long. You generally upload once a week.
If you uploaded every day, it may be difficult to make time for longer videos.
where is the poll?
Did the math, apparently if you took all the matter and energy of the entire observable universe, and crunched it down to a cube the density of water, it'd be only about 20 lightyears on a side, though given I was dealing with dozens of orders of magnitude, that could be off by a fair bit.
To my knowledge there's only 3 ways to truly hide a civilization one is to give the laws of thermodynamics a big ol kardashev 3 sized middlefinger, figure out a way to dump all waste heat into a black hole. Or place the whole civilization inside a black hole... so I'm thinking its prolly impossible lol
The Caelier using Clarke tech drew energy directly from their star and their planet was hidden in a shell. No way of seeing them. Then again later their star went nova then they built the shell around the planet.
There is another option. Have we considered that some of these civilizations, when they reach a certain level of knowledge and wisdom, choose not to go the eternal growth route of building bigger and bigger hives and exploiting more and more natural resources at the planet-wide and system-wide scales? What about low industrial footprint civilizations, which still develop and use advanced technology, but have strict population controls, smart resource stewardship, an ecological mindset and a desire to maximize the comfort of the relatively few individuals living in them? I would think that given large spans of time, many of the few civilizations that actually survive would have chosen this route rather than incessantly trying to jump up the Kardashev scale.
@@jtinalexandria The flaw with that viewpoint is it implies that the civilization values barren rocks over other uses like ecological preserves or habitats for people away from sensitive ecologies. Space colonization is not like earth bound colonization in that we aren't displacing anyone, or any other species, even microbial forms.
@@danielhall271 Aren't we assuming most civilizations would want to maximize the number of individuals, though? That is an unstated assumption of the Kardashev scale and I think of much of what Arthur talks about when he discusses advanced civilizations and what they're likely to look like . I don't think it takes a great deal of social and political evolution beyond where we are right now to envision a society that limits population growth for sustainability and efficiency reasons, and does it in a humane and fair way. Hell, China did it by passing one law. (I am not advocating or supporting China's one-child policy, just pointing out that it CAN be done through simple means.) How about a highly advanced civilization of only 1 million members in an ecologically smart, low industrial footprint world that has chosen not to reproduce like bacteria and instead maximizes the quality of life for each individual, but doesn't generate an enormous technological signature that we can see?
@@jtinalexandria The notion is that civilizations will continue to expand their numbers when they can comfortably do so. Meaning new members are added at the same maximal quality of life as the old members and there are no sustainability concerns. With the astronomical resources of outer space this is completely possible.
Hi Isaac Arthur! Which one will come first in human history "Moon base" or "mars base" ? What's your prediction?
according to his vids, Moon base.
Depends on which one Elon Musk & Yusaku Maezawa spend their money on.
@@TraditionalAnglican don't forget the Artemis Project, which is using SpaceX ships
Moon base for certain. Its out of the prediction stage now and in the pre-building stage, with massive industrial investment; 2024-2025 it will be online.
And the cost to visit will be about $2,500-$5,000 in current currency. Cheap enough to set up mass production for shipping back to earth.
RIP every single production industry. And every single economic theory.
@@allhumansarejusthuman.5776- Who’s going to set this up by 2024-25?!? NASA’s timeline has already slipped past 2026, and Artemis is slated to cost a total of $150B by 2028 (Constellation + SLS + Orion & ESM + Gateway + Suits, Habitats, Rovers & other equipment).
I don’t now where you’re getting the $2500-5000 figure from. SLS will cost $22,000/kg (not person) to get stuff to LEO & >$80k/kg to TLI. ULA costs about the same. SpaceX (Falcon 9 & Falcon Heavy) are $2000-2500/kg to LEO & ~$10k/kg to TLI. Even Starship won’t be able to get that down below $20/kg to LEO & $120/kg to TLI, & that’s assuming a best case scenario. Given that each person will require ~1000 kg, that gives you an absolute minimum cost of $120,000 to TLI, assuming an absolute best case scenario & no added costs for things like spacesuits, rovers, habitats & other supplies.
I agree that Starship will enable things not even the Falcon’s do, but it’s not going to be nearly as cheap as you might want to think it will be.
Never been this early! Hype! :D
Isaac, I notice you occasionally mention dark energy as a potential source of power for a highly advanced civilization, but I don't understand how that would be even possible. To my knowledge, you can't produce any work unless there's an energy gradient, and dark energy is equally distributed everywhere in the universe, so you wouldn't be able to do any work with dark energy, no?
Apologies if you've already addressed this in one of your episodes, it was just something that nagged at me a bit when you mentioned it.
Anyways, please keep up the amazing content!
10:00 "Pray for the great money in the sky and middle finger means peace among the worlds"
Would it be accurate to call the hyper advanced civilizations in Vernor Vinge's novel A Fire Upon the Deep exo-stellar?
Is this the first time that Isaac has referenced Orion's Arm?
He mentioned it a few times in older episodes
How dense could concentric cylinders be built do you think?
The Popuulation density problem does not exist with a waste heat using system which can grab energy from melcular motion. In principle those machines already exist.
I would still maintain that an Exo-Stellar civilization would be very hard to detect. There are brown dwarfs in our local stellar neighborhood we have only recently discovered, so a few thousand O'Niell cylinders may be too cold for us to detect currently.
Me personally I think it'll be really nice if you make a video talking about how to colonize a desert planet or moon.
So my question is.if you vacuum up these charged hydrogen atoms moving at 15k per sec ,where does that motion go ?into your ship?
Can you provide a direct link for nebula users, just for efficiency purposes? Idk if TH-cam allows this or not.. just a suggestion
I've watched every video you've put on TH-cam i just like as soon as I click on the video now
So is curiosity stream worth it?
Hey Isaac, 01-April is coming.
You should post a video on April Fool's Day. Serious topic, played straight except for one thing.
Colonizing Uranus, but - ah - 'accidentally' mispronounce it