From: Jeff L Jones (jeff@spoonless.net)
Date: Fri Aug 24 2007 - 10:59:42 MDT
On 8/24/07, Adam Safron <asafron@gmail.com> wrote:
> galactic voids. Considering the size of interstellar voids (even
> this big one) and the age of the universe, it seems that expanding
> intelligences could create voids this size with relatively modest
> assumptions about the speed of expansion for the civilization.
Hmmm... this giant hole they're talking about is 6-10 billion light
years from us. Which means it's about 4-8 billion light years after
the big bang. They say the size is nearly a billion light years
across. So that means the civilization would have had to come to
maturity 3-7 billion years after the big bang and then spend at least
a billion years colonizing the region and harvesting all the matter.
That seem pretty early for intelligent life to develop, but maybe.
Although if it did, then why did they stop there rather than continue
for the next 6-10 billion years colonizing other regions around it?
Jeff
> At the edge
> of interstellar voids, do we see stars mysteriously flicker and then
> disappear? What percentage of the stellar output could be feasibly
> absorbed/harvested? Of course this will depend on the specific
> stellar-system in question. If possible, how many years would it
> take a super-intelligence to block the radiation from a star?
It's not the radiation from stars they are looking at. They mention
the dark matter is completely missing too, which means they detected
this hole by looking at the gravitational lensing effects (or lack
thereof, in this case). So blocking radiation from just the stars
would not be able to hide the matter or the dark matter from us. They
would have to build some sort of gravitational shielding device that
cancels out the effects of gravity so we don't see them... or
something that unbends the light passing through the region so that it
looks like the space there is curved differently than it is. If such
technology exists, it would be a sign of an extremely advanced
civilization.
Jeff
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