Interesting... If we are to observe intelligent life in our lifetime it seems as if this route is more likely than direct contact. That sad truth about the universe is that you can't go faster than the speed of light. So if you assume that intelligent life takes roughly about the same amount of time as our civilization to form and develop space ships it may be impossible to have reach us by now or impractical to. This works the other way around too. If we are looking at a binary star system that might have intelligent life we are really looking X years into the past where X is the number of light years they are away. Adding to the problem that it might take a long time for highly intelligent life to form and reach the kind of state suggested. It's an interesting question to pose, what telltale clues could you infer from a binary star system that would suggest there is life on it. I suppose when analyzing the metabolism of these binary star systems you would want to look for something that looked more like an engine and less like a firework to truly determine if there is life out there.
Hi, Thanks for your interesting comments. Colonizing the galaxy is actually not that impractical. Colonizing several or all galaxies is harder though. See this recent paper for the math: Armstrong, Stuart, and Anders Sandberg. 2013. “Eternity in Six Hours: Intergalactic Spreading of Intelligent Life and Sharpening the Fermi Paradox.” Acta Astronautica 89 (August): 1–13. doi:10.1016/j.actaastro.2013.04.002. http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Arm... Indeed, that is the main challenge here. Interesting suggestion. For more info, you can have a look at this news item about black holes in binary systems: "How black holes change gear", http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120607142254.ht...
What do you think? Astrophysical or astrobiological phenomenon? I also wrote a short working paper summarizing a metabolic argument for the existence of starivores: Vidal, C. 2013. “Starivore Extraterrestrials? Interacting Binary Stars as Macroscopic Metabolic Systems.” Working Paper. http://student.vub.ac.be/~clvidal/writings/Vidal-Starivore-B.... Best,
Clément Vidal.It's an interesting question to pose, what telltale clues could you infer from a binary star system that would suggest there is life on it.
I suppose when analyzing the metabolism of these binary star systems you would want to look for something that looked more like an engine and less like a firework to truly determine if there is life out there.