Effects of a rapidly developing, unknown nearby civilization

[newjerseyrunner]

I have two separate inquiries that may seem unrelated at first, but aren't. Firstly, I'd like to propose a thought experiment. Say someone studying Venus suddenly discovered incontrovertible proof of a biosphere on the surface, and a vibrant one at that. Eventually, Venus will disappear in the sun's glare but when it emerges a short time later, there is a obvious technological settlement on it. Several months later, the settlement has grown to about 60% of the planet's surface. Several months later, we see evidence of artificial satellite's in orbit, and we start detecting radio signals. A month later, we see the unmistakable signature of nuclear explosions on the surface. A week after that, radar detects a rocket leaving Venus orbit on a free trajectory towards Earth. What'd the reaction from the public, scientific community, and defense systems? I'd imagine once word got out that something that sprung up from nowhere was headed here, everyone would go completely nuts, but in what way? What'd be the response to the realization that their tech would eclipse ours in a matter of months, or that the explosions we saw showed them to already to have nuclear military tech?Secondly, what are any potential advantages or disadvantages of having a glacial metabolism for a sentient being? My story is from the point of view of some sort of scientist of alien species. They are several centuries ahead of us technologically, but their tech is obviously designed around their glacial-speed minds. They've encountered a variety of alien creatures, all like them, and assumed until recently that the habitable zone of a given star is based on where NITROGEN is liquid, as that's their main solvent in all their biology. Their planet is near where Neptune would be in our system. This extreme low energy environment is why biological processes happen in super slow motion (or from their perspective, ours work at super-speed.). They never considered planets covered in molten ice to be habitable, until they detected our radio signals and now they see us developing thousands of times faster than them.

The obvious disadvantage that I come up with is that evolution must happen in slow motion as well, so their planet must be ancient, but I can hand wave it that silicone based life using nitrogen as a solvent is less stable so it mutates and evolves faster. It also wouldn't be able to complete for the greater galaxy against water based life. They move and think so slowly, we'd likely not even realize they were sentient. Imagine a sentient sponge-like creature that took five minutes to say "Hi" and could walk a millimeter in minute, but was smart enough to (given enough time) display all the eloquence of Shakespeare and the scientific genius of Newton.

A huge advantage is that local spacetravel becomes way easier. A 100 year journey to a species like that, would be like just a long military deployment for us. Its energy demands for life support are also greatly reduced. The time delay for communication between planets, even light hours apart, would seem like little more than minor lag. Would the perceived rapid day/night cycle throw things off do you think? Obviously, I can slow down the planet to the rotation of Venus or something, but those kinds of planets are very rare.

Thoughts?

 

[anorlunda]

1. If the neighbor species developed that fast, I say that we better start practicing bending the knee.
2. An advantage to glacial speed living? The speed of light would not seem so constraining to such a species. So what if a space voyage to another star takes a million years. Who cares?

 

[256bits]

designed around their glacial-speed minds

If their minds work so slow, how do they process any input that does not happen at glacial speeds?
Seems that anything above a certain rate of input, be it light or sound, would be gibberish to their senses.

And energy expensive perhaps.
If their movies for entertainment were flickered at 1 frame per minute to simulate motion, that is 1800 more energy used to watch a whole movie than what we use - Economically, would they have to charge more for the cinema taking into account the energy usage per film - they would have 1800 times less paying customers per film as we would have in the same allocation of time span. And the popcorn and soft drinks would go stale before they had a chance to enjoy - or are all chemical reactions slowed down in their world.

 

[newjerseyrunner]

If their minds work so slow, how do they process any input that does not happen at glacial speeds?
Seems that anything above a certain rate of input, be it light or sound, would be gibberish to their senses.

There tech isn't really that important to the story. I would imagine any mechanical structure would jam quickly and overheat, it'd be no different that spamming your space bar a thousand times in a second. Electronic interfaces probably just wouldn't poll fast enough to register. You could probably touch your smartphone fast enough that it doesn't register. If one does manage to interact with their tech, they'd probably experience a lot of lag. Computers themselves would likely be very efficient though, as superconductors exist around room temperature.

And energy expensive perhaps.
If their movies for entertainment were flickered at 1 frame per minute to simulate motion, that is 1800 more energy used to watch a whole movie than what we use - Economically, would they have to charge more for the cinema taking into account the energy usage per film - they would have 1800 times less paying customers per film as we would have in the same allocation of time span. And the popcorn and soft drinks would go stale before they had a chance to enjoy - or are all chemical reactions slowed down in their world.

All chemical reactions are very slow as there is very little energy. They use liquid nitrogen in the way that we use liquid water. From our perspective, everything would appear to be cryogenically frozen. In fact, that may become the way I introduce them: a human mission finds what they think is a derelict facility that suffered some sort of life support failure and flash froze everyone. They don't realize until later that the creatures frozen within are, in fact, alive just moving so slowly they couldn't perceive it.

As for energy usage, because they have a lot less energy, both their tech and biology have evolved around it. At the orbit of Neptune, high noon is still extremely dim, and since their retnas' chemistry and processing all happen in slow motion, their eyes have a lot longer to take in photons. They've evolved in what from our perspective would be almost total darkness, so yes, a frame would have to be held on screen longer, but the luminosity required for this species to see it is far lower.

In fact, when they first see the radio noise from our earliest broadcasts, they believe it's a beam directed at them. They calculate that it's either a direct beam, or a non-directional radio source in the thousands of watts. Since they communicate across light years with only about a dozen watts, they assumed we beamed a message directly to them and only realized later that Earth tech is way more power hungry than theirs. Keep in mind, that the temperatures that we use to create superconductors, is room temperature for them.

 

[newjerseyrunner]

If their minds work so slow, how do they process any input that does not happen at glacial speeds?
Seems that anything above a certain rate of input, be it light or sound, would be gibberish to their senses

Oh, you were referring to the creatures themselves? Yeah, they simply wouldn't perceive things that didn't happen at their pace, it'd just be a flash. But since their environment itself is in deep freeze, every other life form and geological processes also happen in super slow motion. When the finally encounter us, we're just a blur to them. Not any different than us, we perceive things that happen at super high speed as a flash, a hummingbird's wing is just a blur of color.

 

[some bloke]

What happens when a technologically superior species suddenly arrives in a previously undiscovered world? See America.

As for the speed of evolution, this is less to do with the speed of the creatures movements and more to do with the speed of sexual maturity and the expected lifespan. If the creatures had a lifecycle where they are born, compete in a highly hostile environment for a year, then spawn the next generation before growing into these large, glacial creatures then you can have evolution occur more swiftly, as the survivors will be determined quickly. It's the same reason that humans will never evolve to be immune to old age, because evolution is all about who gets to make babies - and elderly people have already made theirs.

They would probably be looking to produce faster technology to observe us better - like we use high-speed cameras to observe animals which are too fast for us. I doubt such a race could exist as a warlike one, as the laws of physics still exist there so they could easily produce weapons which can kill each other before they are even aware of being attacked. Then again, that's just guns, isn't it!

 

[anorlunda]

There was a Star Trek OS episode about that. In that case, we were the glacial species and the aliens were super-fast. They had to magically slow down to talk to humans.

 

[member 656954]

It is hard to provide much useful reflection without an idea of where your story is headed. But have you read stories with these attributes? Were there any that you particularly liked?

In terms of low energy beings, one of Hannu Rajaniemi's Jean le Flambeur novels (The Causal Angel, I think) has a society that lives on a planet that orbits a dwarf star with an interesting depiction of that. At the other end of the scale, Alastair Reynolds House of Suns has a distributed intelligence being that spans a huge physical distance and thinks slow thoughts.

There are other stories about fast acting evolution - often it's us humans, fast moving from the perspective of aliens and Peter F. Hamilton's The Salvation Sequence is a recent example - and I think the Netflix "Love, Death & Robots" Ice Age episode is interesting for this.

But I'd ask why any Venusian civilization would want to nuke the Earth? What's their motivation? There's no point them coming here for conquest, they'd pop in the vacuum of our atmosphere without space suits (and it's doubtful anything less than a metal container would hold the pressure and heat they need to survive in). If your intent is to work through the impact of aliens on humankind, you don't need the threat of a nuke, just the proven existence of aliens would wobble our societies.

I briefly described a similar situation in Tyranny and it wasn't even aliens, just an unexpected ship coming in from the outer solar system, it is fun to imagine economies crashing through fear and the rise of religious cults as people try to make sense of something so unprecedented.

But it's not clear what metabolic pathway or evolutionary pressure would create such a fast moving society as you're describing. Unless they somehow manipulate time so it's running slower on Venus, it's not obvious how they could accelerate development in the way / period you describe. There are physical processes - such as mining - that you can't just arbitrarily speed up. So, technological expansion to 60% of the surface in mere months seems very unlikely.

 

[gmax137]

There is an Outer Limits episode where the guy gets sped up somehow; everyone else looks frozen to him. He somehow figures this out, then spots a dump truck that will roll down the driveway and hit a kid. So he has to figure out how to save the kid (I won't spoil that part). I don't remember the rest of it, I saw it in (guessing) 1965. And that seems like a long time ago to me!

EDIT:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Premonition_(The_Outer_Limits)
There was a lot about this episode that I had forgotten. But it was 1965.

 

[newjerseyrunner]

It is hard to provide much useful reflection without an idea of where your story is headed. But have you read stories with these attributes? Were there any that you particularly liked?

I liked the Star Trek episodes like this. I can think of two, one from Voyager where they encountered a planet in some time accelerator, and another from NexGen? where they discovered a silicon based lifeforms in a mine.

The story is a short story in the format of a nature journal article. It's from the point of view of an alien species who are aware of many other species like them. They assumed all organic chemistry happened in liquid nitrogen or liquid methane because that's what they are. They describe us as the most extreme form of extremophile they know of. The crust of their planet is mostly water ice and in a very far orbit, so they describe us as living in a biosphere of molten rock, blowtorched by the extremely close star. Because of the energy difference, to them, we move around and build things hundreds of times faster than them.

I point out everyday occurrences and sensationalize them because of the point of view. They discover two creatures tossing something back and forth and are astonished that we can even track things in free trajectory. Because of their slow movement and mental processes, when they drop a ball, it instantly appears where it landed, their eyes don't work fast enough to register any motion. It'd be like if from our point of view, two people were found shooting at each other, effortlessly catching the bullets, and the returning it over and over again.

 

[jbriggs444]

In "Dragon's Egg", Robert Forward sets up something similar if I recall correctly. He chases a story spanning entire epochs of history on the surface of a neutron star (with barely concealed parallels to Earth history) while a human exploratory vessel is overhead. The "fast" subjects on the neutron star transcribe by hand the binary pulses in a microwave transmission, learn high tech and eventually salt the universe with answers to various human problems in such a way that the humans can only discover those answers when they have achieved the technical ability to get there themselves. They also take time out to cure an undiscovered cancer in one of the female humans.

"Starquake" is a sequel.

 

[Jarvis323]

I have two separate inquiries that may seem unrelated at first, but aren't. Firstly, I'd like to propose a thought experiment. Say someone studying Venus suddenly discovered incontrovertible proof of a biosphere on the surface, and a vibrant one at that. Eventually, Venus will disappear in the sun's glare but when it emerges a short time later, there is a obvious technological settlement on it. Several months later, the settlement has grown to about 60% of the planet's surface. Several months later, we see evidence of artificial satellite's in orbit, and we start detecting radio signals. A month later, we see the unmistakable signature of nuclear explosions on the surface. A week after that, radar detects a rocket leaving Venus orbit on a free trajectory towards Earth. What'd the reaction from the public, scientific community, and defense systems? I'd imagine once word got out that something that sprung up from nowhere was headed here, everyone would go completely nuts, but in what way? What'd be the response to the realization that their tech would eclipse ours in a matter of months, or that the explosions we saw showed them to already to have nuclear military tech?

Secondly, what are any potential advantages or disadvantages of having a glacial metabolism for a sentient being? My story is from the point of view of some sort of scientist of alien species. They are several centuries ahead of us technologically, but their tech is obviously designed around their glacial-speed minds. They've encountered a variety of alien creatures, all like them, and assumed until recently that the habitable zone of a given star is based on where NITROGEN is liquid, as that's their main solvent in all their biology. Their planet is near where Neptune would be in our system. This extreme low energy environment is why biological processes happen in super slow motion (or from their perspective, ours work at super-speed.). They never considered planets covered in molten ice to be habitable, until they detected our radio signals and now they see us developing thousands of times faster than them.

The obvious disadvantage that I come up with is that evolution must happen in slow motion as well, so their planet must be ancient, but I can hand wave it that silicone based life using nitrogen as a solvent is less stable so it mutates and evolves faster. It also wouldn't be able to complete for the greater galaxy against water based life. They move and think so slowly, we'd likely not even realize they were sentient. Imagine a sentient sponge-like creature that took five minutes to say "Hi" and could walk a millimeter in minute, but was smart enough to (given enough time) display all the eloquence of Shakespeare and the scientific genius of Newton.

A huge advantage is that local spacetravel becomes way easier. A 100 year journey to a species like that, would be like just a long military deployment for us. Its energy demands for life support are also greatly reduced. The time delay for communication between planets, even light hours apart, would seem like little more than minor lag. Would the perceived rapid day/night cycle throw things off do you think? Obviously, I can slow down the planet to the rotation of Venus or something, but those kinds of planets are very rare.

Thoughts?

This is really interesting to think about. I have thought about a related idea, which is that our consciously perceived rate of the flow of time is related to the complexity at which we can think (before reacting). Like, to a fly we appear in slow motion. But flys have simple brains and simple thought processes. We are able to contemplate our actions, but that takes time. And we need to react timely enough to survive in our environment. So we have to balance how much calculation we do before reacting with how fast we react to find the right spot where we react fast enough and also react intelligently. How fast time seems to us could be related to these factors.

If the biology of all creatures on another planet were very very slow, but the signals in their brains (or whatever they calculated with) were somehow still fast, then they could spend an enormous amount of time thinking about their next move. And, the fact that they hyper calculate/predict and analyze everything they perceive and do, might help make it possible for them to obtain much higher intelligence. For example, to them we are like flys (in both speed and intelligence).

But it might be more interesting if their brain functions are slow as well as you originally proposed.

It's also interesting to think about AI in this context. In the end, AI might be driving advancement for both civilizations, and maybe the rate we experience time, or how intelligent we are becomes moot.

What'd the reaction from the public, scientific community, and defense systems?

I think people would go nuts. It sounds pretty scary. The military might try to launch a large scale attack as soon as possible to exterminate them, seeing how every second wasted they are gaining advantage and we don't know what they will do. And now that I think about it, I really hope this situation doesn't arise where we are the fast evolving nuclear powered aliens.

 

[Lren Zvsm]

I have two separate inquiries that may seem unrelated at first, but aren't. Firstly, I'd like to propose a thought experiment. Say someone studying Venus suddenly discovered incontrovertible proof of a biosphere on the surface, and a vibrant one at that. Eventually, Venus will disappear in the sun's glare but when it emerges a short time later, there is a obvious technological settlement on it. Several months later, the settlement has grown to about 60% of the planet's surface. Several months later, we see evidence of artificial satellite's in orbit, and we start detecting radio signals. A month later, we see the unmistakable signature of nuclear explosions on the surface. A week after that, radar detects a rocket leaving Venus orbit on a free trajectory towards Earth. What'd the reaction from the public, scientific community, and defense systems? I'd imagine once word got out that something that sprung up from nowhere was headed here, everyone would go completely nuts, but in what way? What'd be the response to the realization that their tech would eclipse ours in a matter of months, or that the explosions we saw showed them to already to have nuclear military tech?Secondly, what are any potential advantages or disadvantages of having a glacial metabolism for a sentient being? My story is from the point of view of some sort of scientist of alien species. They are several centuries ahead of us technologically, but their tech is obviously designed around their glacial-speed minds. They've encountered a variety of alien creatures, all like them, and assumed until recently that the habitable zone of a given star is based on where NITROGEN is liquid, as that's their main solvent in all their biology. Their planet is near where Neptune would be in our system. This extreme low energy environment is why biological processes happen in super slow motion (or from their perspective, ours work at super-speed.). They never considered planets covered in molten ice to be habitable, until they detected our radio signals and now they see us developing thousands of times faster than them.

The obvious disadvantage that I come up with is that evolution must happen in slow motion as well, so their planet must be ancient, but I can hand wave it that silicone based life using nitrogen as a solvent is less stable so it mutates and evolves faster. It also wouldn't be able to complete for the greater galaxy against water based life. They move and think so slowly, we'd likely not even realize they were sentient. Imagine a sentient sponge-like creature that took five minutes to say "Hi" and could walk a millimeter in minute, but was smart enough to (given enough time) display all the eloquence of Shakespeare and the scientific genius of Newton.

A huge advantage is that local spacetravel becomes way easier. A 100 year journey to a species like that, would be like just a long military deployment for us. Its energy demands for life support are also greatly reduced. The time delay for communication between planets, even light hours apart, would seem like little more than minor lag. Would the perceived rapid day/night cycle throw things off do you think? Obviously, I can slow down the planet to the rotation of Venus or something, but those kinds of planets are very rare.

Thoughts?

Why would chemical reactions be slower on the surface of a planet whose typical temperatures would melt lead?

How could life develop on a world with no free water?

How could beings whose thought processes are so much slower than those of humans develop civilization so rapidly?

Who terraformed Venus to make room for your scenario? (That would be a good mystery in a science fiction novel.)

 

[DrStupid]

Why would chemical reactions be slower on the surface of a planet whose typical temperatures would melt lead?

Maybe the life forms are inorganic. Solid state reactions can be quite slow.

How could life develop on a world with no free water?

Living rocks don't need water.

How could beings whose thought processes are so much slower than those of humans develop civilization so rapidly?

Maybe they didn't. They could develope their civilization and technology very slowly until they reach a singularity.

Who terraformed Venus to make room for your scenario?

No terraforming required.

 

[Lren Zvsm]

Maybe the life forms are inorganic. Solid state reactions can be quite slow.
Living rocks don't need water.
Maybe they didn't. They could develope their civilization and technology very slowly until they reach a singularity.
No terraforming required.

Well, for the purposes of science fiction, I think you've got your bases covered. Hope to read the resulting story someday. :-)

 

[newjerseyrunner]

The thought experiment about Venus was purely about the human reaction to such a thing. In the story I wrote, humanity is the ultra-high energy creature, it's from the point of view of a creature who's chemistry takes place in liquid nitrogen instead of water.

 

[Algr]

Ultra fast and ultra slow aliens are both possible. Curiously, I've heard both being silicon based. Another way to explain how they evolved is that their planet orbits a red dwarf, so they just really are that old. Red dwarf stars have very long lifespans without major changes in their light output. Another example of an ultra-fast alien is that someone proposed that life could occur on the surface of a neutron star. Such life would be nearly two-dimensional. They could project energy from their star to communicate or otherwise affect the outside world.

At the orbit of Neptune, high noon is still extremely dim,

The Sun, as viewed from Neptune, is still surprisingly bright. Our eyes are adapted to deal with huge variations in light intensity, so it is easy for us to underestimate just how bright Sol is compared to a lightbulb. On Neptune, you'd have no problem reading by sunlight. Colors would be clear and only mildly subdued.
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/dwarf-planets/pluto/plutotime/

how do they process any input that does not happen at glacial speeds?

The same way we do - like this:

Humans can understand things far beyond our physical perceptions. There is little reason why the slow aliens would not do the same.

There are physical processes - such as mining - that you can't just arbitrarily speed up.

Sure you can. Blow up a mountain, and gently pluck out the minerals that float leisurely through the air.

 

[Hornbein]

Another example of an ultra-fast alien is that someone proposed that life could occur on the surface of a neutron star.

The surface of a neutron star is about the most life-hostile zone imaginable. Among other things, there is a tendency for a star-wide thermonuclear explosion when accumulating hydrogen fuses. On the other hand, the extreme Coriolus force is fun to contemplate.

Life made of knotted electromagnetic quantum vorticies in the superfluid and superconductive interior of the neutron star is a much more attractive prospect. ( thought of this myself but Anders Sandberg beat me to it.)

 

[Algr]

Life made of knotted electromagnetic quantum vorticies in the superfluid and superconductive interior of the neutron star is a much more attractive prospect. ( thought of this myself but Anders Sandberg beat me to it.)

That is what I was referring to.

I took this photo at the time that that Nasa site said the light level was the same as on Pluto. It was a few minutes after sunset:

I used an iPhone 6. It would not be quite the same as this though. There would be razor sharp shadows, and high contrast. But not as high as on the Moon. The sky is blue on Pluto, so there is at least some atmospheric scattering.