All bow before Spock, the god of Science. Spoiler: monkeys yes, I'm well aware that's Nemoy and not Spock, it's entirely on purpose, and for the love of monkeys don't take this post seriously XD
the only way you're going to get free energy is if someone or something else is paying for it. Even solar is not 'free' sure the sun is throwing out energy left right and center for whoever can collect it, but the process of making solar panels burns huge amounts of energy and it can take up to 4 years of use before they've even equaled what was used to make them in the first place. However unless you break yours before then, chances are you'll end up making way more than that as they should reasonably last 20-30 years. Chances are even if you find some kind of 'cosmic radiation' that doesn't show up on any of the tools we have at the moment, something somewhere is generating it. I will however point out one device that is quite fascinating. it's a radiometer for those who aren't familiar, and it's quite literally turning by the energy of the light absorbed by the black side of the panels. (more or less) Probably the great great great grandfather of the solar panel but it's amazing of itself, I have one in my room XD
Elon Musk is the tech billionaire we don't deserve, but the one we somehow got anyways. I wish more people did awesome ambitious projects like this with their money instead of just obsessive-compulsively hording it all. He wants Space-X to launch 4,000 new satellites into orbit to provide high-speed, low-latency internet to every square inch of Earth. Elon Musk for future Tech Overlord.
Honestly if more wealthy people spent their money on -anything- it would be better, I don't care if they hire a guy to juggle in the bathroom while they shit, it'd be better than sitting on that pile of the economy rotting in their vault.
You want the rich to stop hoarding... Good luck. As time goes on history will inevitably repeat itself.
We've either got interstellar neighbors all over the place, our the next closest intelligent life is sitting somewhere near the border of the observable universe. Depending on how pessimistic you feel about some of these odds.
It's just starting to get to the level of absurdity that we don't see anything as we get more powerful telescopes and more of them online. It's not like an interstellar civilization can really hide if it starts getting out into the stars. Isaac Arthur really points out how ridiculous it is that we still haven't seen anything yet in this video.
the problem is quite simple, almost all of those theories rely entirely on the concept that an alien civilization might evolve along similar lines as our own. Everything we know is a fraction so minute that it would take several sheets of paper to write it down compared to the potential knowledge in the universe that while we are constrained by that limitation, whatever life occurs in the universe is not. Many of the theories addressed aren't unreasonable if you make a few assumptions but you have to accept that in doing so, you're making assumptions. There's no guarantee that any civilization would grow in the same manner as ours, that they might not have access to elements and unusual alloys that we haven't even conceived of, or that they might not even be carbon based, or perceive the universe in even a vaguely similar fashion to our own. There might just as easily be aliens across the universe travelling hither and yon with ease utilizing some facet of the universe that we haven't even discovered a means to recognize yet, much less make use of. It's also entirely possible that there is no cosmic cheat button and that to get from point A to point B you simply have to make the slog across the billions of miles of space. Even those things that we assume should be easily observable from Earth may actually be so alien in design that even seeing it, we don't recognize it for what it is. There's also the problem of tech, sure we're getting more and more advanced tech every time we turn around, but even with the most advanced technology available we can still only 'see' well enough to identify gas giants out to 13000 light years away, which is slightly more than 1/10th of the galaxy. On top of that there's the little thing of relativity, whereas that planet we're looking at out there we're actually seeing 13k years ago, which means any civilization we might see on the outskirts of our viewable area we'd actually be looking at whatever stage they were at in the past, and not where they are -now-. So sure, if there is a interstellar civilization right now in our solar system, there's good odds that sometime within the next 100,000 years we'll start to see evidence of it, even if they never bother to come visit. XD
I'm still of the opinion that any alie s who come (if ever) would be xcom/independence day in reason. For reasources/conquering earth. Theres not really any other reason to come. Probably not a peaceful visit.
actually there's dozens of reasons -not- to come for that explicit reason, the only real reason is: A: Habitable planet suitable for their species and absolutely nothing else viable within a reasonable distance or B: Some specific interest in the human species, whatever the reason. Whether it's slave labor (which seems idiotic when you realize that their technological level should easily have them capable of producing robotics for any need of that nature) or simple scientific curiosity, or anything else in between. The raw resources on earth can pretty much all be obtained easier and with far less effort among the billions upon billions of asteroids and other uninhabited celestial bodies around the galaxy, and chances are good if we're dealing with an advanced alien species that life probably isn't all that uncommon either. Hell if they just wanted us dead all they'd have to do is nudge one of those large asteroids into a collision path and there's not a whole damn lot we could do about it, we'd never even know it was sent rather than simple fate. I mean, if you can travel the stars, unless there's some significant reason why there just happens to be only two sentient races and planets of that specific type of evolution (because they'd have to be similar enough to us for our planet to be in any way desirable for colonization) or some other McGuffin device there's bound to be easier ways to obtain anything we have here that doesn't require soiling their alien fingers in the 'savage lands' of Earth.
Physics works the same no matter where you are in our galaxy, so there's only so many functional ways you can do anything. Isaac Arthur works only with what we know is possible, which says a lot about the level of technology we're currently at when he talks about the sort of stuff like building massive swarms of space habitats. And he points out that it only takes one species to become successful in space for us to notice. We might not see their specific planets let alone space-faring vessels or habitats, but we would notice a lot of missing stars if they were being surrounded by Dyson Swarms. Totally true. Hell, they don't even have to come into our solar system. They could just hang out in the Oort cloud and pick some choice rocks to through at us. Which could number in the millions if they really wanted to be assholes about it. But even if they wanted the planet intact for some reason, they don't even need to bother with an invasion. They can just as effectively kill all of us by hang out between the Earth and the Sun and blocking out all of the light until we freeze to death. That would be astronomical levels of dickery, just because we would be able to see it and not be able to do anything about it.
