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clemvidal

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clemvidal  ·  3814 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Are We Observing Extraterrestrial Intelligence Without Realizing It?

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...

    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.

Indeed, that is the main challenge here.

    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.

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.