If everything else doesn't work, at least we can treat the whole planet Earth as a very slow, random walking spaceship. If we learn how to maintain a technological civilization here sustainably, without wrecking it's life support systems, it will take us to the next destination in a bit over 1Myr, for free: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_710
Maybe that's our 'test' as intelligent lifeform: have opportunities to 'jump ship' to other solar systems, potentially discover alien life there, if only we can survive & maintain space-travel capability long enough for other star(s) to come within hopping distance?
Looking at that little rotating starfield, it reminds me of an idle problem I occasionally think of: "If I was somehow lost in space and found by helpful aliens, what useful information could I provide--from memory--for locating my home planet again?"
The best I can think of offhand are ratios that could help them filter existing records:
1. It's the third planet from the Sun, the majority of it is covered with water, etc.
2. It has a moon 1/6 its mass
3. The largest planet in the system has a little over 70% of all the planetary mass
4. The largest planet in the system is 5.2x further from the Sun than my third-planet
But on a larger scale... Somewhere around the middle distance of an arm in a galaxy? I doubt I would have triangulation distances from major quasars memorized.
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If everything else doesn't work, at least we can treat the whole planet Earth as a very slow, random walking spaceship. If we learn how to maintain a technological civilization here sustainably, without wrecking it's life support systems, it will take us to the next destination in a bit over 1Myr, for free: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_710
Or bring us a lot closer in a 'measly' 30..40k years. See "Distant future and past encounters" here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars_and_br...
Maybe that's our 'test' as intelligent lifeform: have opportunities to 'jump ship' to other solar systems, potentially discover alien life there, if only we can survive & maintain space-travel capability long enough for other star(s) to come within hopping distance?
Looking at that little rotating starfield, it reminds me of an idle problem I occasionally think of: "If I was somehow lost in space and found by helpful aliens, what useful information could I provide--from memory--for locating my home planet again?"
The best I can think of offhand are ratios that could help them filter existing records:
1. It's the third planet from the Sun, the majority of it is covered with water, etc.
2. It has a moon 1/6 its mass
3. The largest planet in the system has a little over 70% of all the planetary mass
4. The largest planet in the system is 5.2x further from the Sun than my third-planet
But on a larger scale... Somewhere around the middle distance of an arm in a galaxy? I doubt I would have triangulation distances from major quasars memorized.