this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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This, plus the time it would take for signals to travel space at the speed of light, not even mentioning matter at sublight speed, makes it just implausible that we'll ever encounter another civilization (assuming there are some out there)
Plus, I remember reading that the constant expansion of the universe makes it another big factor as we are ever drifting away from most of the rest of the universe, but I'm not sure
You are correct, but the expansion of the universe is relative to intergalactic space, not interstellar. Our galaxy isn't flying apart, so it will be explorable with currently theorized faster than light speed drive systems. There's more than enough to explore in our galaxy as it is, so it will have to do when and if we ever develop an FTL drive. But traveling to another galaxy is an entirely different feet because of the expansion of the universe. You may wonder why, when it is just a distance that needs to be covered, all you should need is enough fuel and supplies... But you would also need to accelerate to many magnitudes of the speed of light in order to "catch" the galaxy you want to travel to. This is because galaxies are accelerating exponentially away from each other. An easy way to visualize it is to remember that the universe is expanding out from a central point - so take a balloon and draw two dots on it, then begin to inflate; after one breath they spread apart, after the second breath they've spread appart at a faster rate, and after the next the rate of spread continues to increase and so on. The points are spreading away from the center at the same rate, but the distance from each other is ever increasing. Therefore, their will be a day where we can no longer see any other galaxies again, because the speed of the spread will far exceed the speed of light and continue to increase for all eternity (we presume).
Except for the Andromeda galaxy, that one's headed right for us and the two are going to collide in a few billion years... Which will probably pose a major threat to all life and indeed earth itself... Maybe we should start planning to try to get to another galaxy. ๐ค