Re:SETI spots dozens of new mysterious signals emanating fro...
by bluGill on Friday September 14, 2018 @10:06AM
(#17987252)
How much do you pay attention to the live feed of news from Mauritius? (If you live anywhere close to that country, or have ties there pick a different country on a different continent). Somewhere in my family history is the towns where my family immigrated to the US from, but I don't care at all about news from those towns.
The news in my town is of interest to me, nobody else would care about the latest live music at the local stage.
Science might be of interest, but the problem is both cultures will work in parallel, so we can assume that majority of advances one planet discovers are discovered by the other planet in the mean time.
The nearest star (which might not even have a habitable planet) to earth is too far away for science collaboration other than the "here is new type of signal we are sending your way, see if you get it", and even then you take the risk that the other planet chooses to not listen for whatever reason (it wouldn't surprise me if some theory require this level of cooperation). It is close enough that some "we are studying this lead, so you probably want to look at something different to avoid duplicate work".
As we get farther and farther from the other planet collaboration is less and less useful. You quickly reach a point where the planets can advance faster by duplicating effort than talking to each other (other than as a much latter verification of current theories)
Of course if we colonize a planet 100 light years away you can assume a few hundred years of the colonists working hard to establish the colony and so getting science and technology feeds from Earth will be useful since then they can make a copy of widgets without having to design it from scratch. Eventually they will get established and start producing their own science locally, and soon the feed will be useless and not of interest.
The news in my town is of interest to me, nobody else would care about the latest live music at the local stage.
Science might be of interest, but the problem is both cultures will work in parallel, so we can assume that majority of advances one planet discovers are discovered by the other planet in the mean time.
The nearest star (which might not even have a habitable planet) to earth is too far away for science collaboration other than the "here is new type of signal we are sending your way, see if you get it", and even then you take the risk that the other planet chooses to not listen for whatever reason (it wouldn't surprise me if some theory require this level of cooperation). It is close enough that some "we are studying this lead, so you probably want to look at something different to avoid duplicate work".
As we get farther and farther from the other planet collaboration is less and less useful. You quickly reach a point where the planets can advance faster by duplicating effort than talking to each other (other than as a much latter verification of current theories)
Of course if we colonize a planet 100 light years away you can assume a few hundred years of the colonists working hard to establish the colony and so getting science and technology feeds from Earth will be useful since then they can make a copy of widgets without having to design it from scratch. Eventually they will get established and start producing their own science locally, and soon the feed will be useless and not of interest.