What has the Federation done/build that would be detectable by a society at our level of technical development?
astroarcheology
- Thread starter Ronald Held
- Start date
The members of the UFP have inhabited many planets in our immediate neighborhood; it shouldn't be difficult for us to detect these planets, and perhaps the telltale spectral evidence of life and industrialism on them, with technology currently becoming accessible to us.
Does "growing up on one's native planet" count as doing something noticeable, though? We haven't exactly been told that the UFP members would have created colonies or terraformed planets in Earth's vicinity - we've only been told that several homeworlds exist within the range of our upcoming telescopes.
Future UFP member Vulcan has supposedly been operating spacecraft that are visible to optical instruments (although presumably not to radar) at least for the past century. These should be detectable, and also better trackable than the fancier variants of UFO that currently litter eyewitness records.
In the near future, just a couple of centuries from now, the UFP and some of its enemies will engage in igniting and shutting down stars, through various techniques. A civilization on our level should observe these events eventually, and might draw conclusions.
Also, the powerful optical flashes associated with warp travel might be visible to a culture like ours in this neighborhood, where supposedly many cultures regularly travel. Identifying and understanding the flashes might take some time, though. Space battles might also release telltale radiation bursts that cannot be explained as anything else besides the product of a civilization (if one is willing to call space belligerents that).
In terms of megastructures and the like, I don't think UFP or its members would have engaged in anything that would be visible from Earth currently or a couple of centuries from now.
Timo Saloniemi
Does "growing up on one's native planet" count as doing something noticeable, though? We haven't exactly been told that the UFP members would have created colonies or terraformed planets in Earth's vicinity - we've only been told that several homeworlds exist within the range of our upcoming telescopes.
Future UFP member Vulcan has supposedly been operating spacecraft that are visible to optical instruments (although presumably not to radar) at least for the past century. These should be detectable, and also better trackable than the fancier variants of UFO that currently litter eyewitness records.
In the near future, just a couple of centuries from now, the UFP and some of its enemies will engage in igniting and shutting down stars, through various techniques. A civilization on our level should observe these events eventually, and might draw conclusions.
Also, the powerful optical flashes associated with warp travel might be visible to a culture like ours in this neighborhood, where supposedly many cultures regularly travel. Identifying and understanding the flashes might take some time, though. Space battles might also release telltale radiation bursts that cannot be explained as anything else besides the product of a civilization (if one is willing to call space belligerents that).
In terms of megastructures and the like, I don't think UFP or its members would have engaged in anything that would be visible from Earth currently or a couple of centuries from now.
Timo Saloniemi
Photosynthesis. Okay, technically, this is what plants of future Federation members have done, but the atmospheres our aerobic friends enjoy would presumably be detectable as O2 absorption lines.
Apropos of nothing, do you really spell "absborbtion" with a "p," because that's what the spell check is telling me. That is absolute bullshit.
Apropos of nothing, do you really spell "absborbtion" with a "p," because that's what the spell check is telling me. That is absolute bullshit.
Well, I'm pretty sure there's at least one "b" too may there... 
Yeah, it's really "absorption". That's probably systematic with getting "corruption" when something "corrodes" - the ending is not "-ion" or even "-tion" but "-ption", and nibbles away several letters from the body of the word. Although somebody who actually knows this weird language might be able to tell a truer story.
Yet Trek regularly features planets that are deemed "lifeless" when they have extensive vegetation. Apparently, vegetation "doesn't count" - it is found naturally everywhere, and is not a cultural artifact (except in the sense that some ancient, no longer operating culture may have been responsible). The UFP wouldn't be behind it, certainly, not even indirectly.
Timo Saloniemi
Yeah, it's really "absorption". That's probably systematic with getting "corruption" when something "corrodes" - the ending is not "-ion" or even "-tion" but "-ption", and nibbles away several letters from the body of the word. Although somebody who actually knows this weird language might be able to tell a truer story.
Yet Trek regularly features planets that are deemed "lifeless" when they have extensive vegetation. Apparently, vegetation "doesn't count" - it is found naturally everywhere, and is not a cultural artifact (except in the sense that some ancient, no longer operating culture may have been responsible). The UFP wouldn't be behind it, certainly, not even indirectly.
Timo Saloniemi
In some ways you're talking the Fermi Paradox - that any advanced space-faring civilisation (even without FTL) that exists for more than a few thousand years would be capable of stellar engineering on such a scale that it would be obvious in the sky (the depressing solutions to the paradox being that either there are no other space-faring civilisations, or they wipe themselves out before they do it. For more on this, check out Stephen Baxter's Manifold series of books).
Within Trek, as we don't really know how warp drive works, we have to assume that there's some limitations on it which stop them mucking around with the basic stellar landscape.
Within Trek, as we don't really know how warp drive works, we have to assume that there's some limitations on it which stop them mucking around with the basic stellar landscape.
I would think the premature collapse of a star would be a good indication, for those who have a mature stellar evolution theory.
Well, I'm pretty sure there's at least one "b" too may there...
Yes.
Might be; I'll split the difference between you and sojourner and say that the (Latin?) root might be the same. I'll have to look it up. Etymology is fun.
Sure, I can agree with that--but with modern means we could determine which planets could have intelligent aliens of a humanoid bent on them. It would be a good screen for all the (many more) planets that don't.
Though it does bug me that the Federation, especially in TOS, sets up these research stations on the most barren parts of planets that very clearly, because of the breathable atmospheres, have a great deal of vegetation on them.
Perhaps they don't want to trample on the daisies?
OTOH, if the sample we got of Delta Vega fauna in STXI was representative, I wolly agree with Starfleet's decision to establish their outpost in a relatively thinly populated area...
(I might also argue that there are planets with "old" oxygen - planets that have been terraformed a few hundred millennia ago, have lost their ability to support life beyond bacteria, but haven't lost all the oxygen quite yet because those few bacteria aren't breathing all that heavily. If the ancients terraformed originally barren worlds, they might have taken care of preemptively oxidizing all the soil that was oxidizable before proceeding to ramp up the O2 content of the actual atmosphere...)
Timo Saloniemi
OTOH, if the sample we got of Delta Vega fauna in STXI was representative, I wolly agree with Starfleet's decision to establish their outpost in a relatively thinly populated area...
(I might also argue that there are planets with "old" oxygen - planets that have been terraformed a few hundred millennia ago, have lost their ability to support life beyond bacteria, but haven't lost all the oxygen quite yet because those few bacteria aren't breathing all that heavily. If the ancients terraformed originally barren worlds, they might have taken care of preemptively oxidizing all the soil that was oxidizable before proceeding to ramp up the O2 content of the actual atmosphere...)
Timo Saloniemi
T'Girl, it would depend on how well they know stellar evoultionary theory. Main sequence stars lighter than ~20 solar masses do not collapse down to "nothing".
