Peter Mulvey
1 HN recommender · recommended in 3 months, 2021
5:49 · 34K views · May 19, 2014
Folk musician Peter Mulvey performs Vlad the Astrophysicist, a spoken-word style song that touches on why civilizations may never meet across space and time.
Brought up in Fermi paradox and alien-contact threads as a song that makes the point about distance in time and space.
3 comments from Hacker News
There's a song by one of my favorite artists, Peter Mulvey, which touches on this point. It's more of a spoken word poem, titled "Vlad the Astrophysicist". In the song, Peter asks Vlad if there are aliens, and if there are, why haven't they contacted us? Vlad answers basically that there almost certainly are aliens, but civilizations don't last for long enough compared to the size of the universe. > "You see?" He said, "They never meet each other. Time is too long, space is too large. I mean sure, maybe at one time, right next to each other at the same time, fss, fss - Two civilizations sprang up and they had war, better yet they had peace, They had arts exchanges, they had an intergalactic library... but they are all dead now, too. In all likelihood, we are alone, and by the time the next civilization arises, We'll have been gone for a long, long time." this video
Although I very much enjoy the novel, I think Vlad's theory is more likely to be true: this video As of myself, I also have a theory why it's difficult for civilizations to see each other: 1 - You need very advanced technology to break through the barrier of speed of light (worm hole, someone?) 2 - Such advanced technology will need a long, continuous period of peace and prosperity for researchers to figure it out. Wars are "useful" in certain way but not always. 3 - Intelligent beings are in general greedy (regardless of their biological construction) and they want to take as much resources as possible. 4 - The resources in the universe is unlimited, but the resources that one civilization can obtain is very limited. 5 - Combine 3 & 4, you can probably figure out that the "long, continuous period of peace and prosperity" is very much unlikely and very likely to be broken by wars within the civilizations. 6 - The more advanced the civilizations they are, more likely those wars will wipe them out completely. 7 - Even if they managed to avoid those destructive wars (unlikely already). Another factor we need to consider is the number of smart scientists and technicians that can figure out and implement those fancy technologies. 8 - Yeah for sure, one man, such as Newton or Einstein can leap forward our understanding of the universe. 9 - But you need a very large of population to "grow" one Newton or Einstein. 10 - Go back to 3 & 4, now tell me, even if they manage to avoid wars, ca
> If you say there are civilizations thriving somewhere in the galaxy, you're Carl Sagan. Modern thinking is it's more likely there were civs that thrived, but they are all dead now. - this video [LINK]