Here's a little bit over at The Register related to the Fermi Paradox:
The problem, according to boffins Jacob Haqq-Misra and Ravi Kumar Kopparapu of Penn State uni, is that it's entirely possible that our Solar System is littered with ancient alien space probes and we simply haven't found them yet. Haqq-Misra and Kopparapu have investigated this mathematically.
Of course it might also be the case that we have no idea what they might look like. Maybe they wrap them up in a big black rock the size of an aircraft carrier...
3 comments:
Hmm, never really thought of that before. People tend to think of buried alien bases on Mars or Pluto, but not probes just drifting about. There's gotta be a lot more story ideas like with your own story arc with "Dragon" the alien probe with a multiple personality disorder.
One thought to consider is how we are miniaturizing our technology (think how much there is in a modern mobile phone, and maybe compare that to one of the old Voyagers) and how much it costs to sling mass over interstellar distances. Maybe we haven't spotted the probes because they're so small, perhaps the size of a mobile phone, or maybe even a bacterium.
When I was a kid I used to look up at giant clouds scudding across the sky and wonder if they were just giant spaceships in disguise.
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