(Spoilers)Destiny's Loose End?

[Hartzilla2007]

Because the other Caeliar had a big part in that as well. I don't understand why it should be so hard to believe that these other Caeliar may have evolved differently just like the future-Borg Caeliar. Does it contradict future stories or something? And didn't these Caeliar end up being sent even further back in time than the Borg-Caeliar did? Plenty of time for a race to change its priorities.

Sure, it's possible. It just doesn't seem probable. They would have had the full resources of a fully-inhabited entire Caeliar city-ship to build upon -- very unlike the unfortunate residents of Mantillis.

Well, the Caeliar were never willing to kill to further their own interests before; the furthest they'd go is to relocate individuals who threatened to expose their existence.

But these Caeliar were in an older and more wild universe where they incountered who knows what. Plus with the Caeliar in the present for all that claiming to preserve life stuff, you would think at some point the Mantilis Caeliar or any of the Caeliar having known a lot about the tech in Columbia would have bothered to mention that the hyperphasic radiation in their subspace tunnels would have killed the crew. Which since they can't be that stupid would mean they have no problems not warning people that they are going to fry themselves. Not to many steps from their to frying someone else to survive.

 

[Christopher]

How far back in time were those Caeliar flung? Millions of years? A civilization's values and attitudes can change a lot in a much briefer time.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Actually, Christopher, I think that Mere Mortals said it was billions of years. Nearly the dawn of the universe itself.

And, again, I'm going to suggest that the other Caeliar of Erigol, the ones that Inyx and the other Caeliar of Axion believed dead in the cataclysm, may not be dead at all. Billions of years of technological evolution means they could well have perfected ways of surreptitiously saving those Caeliar from the supernova that they had to trigger to maintain the predestination loop.

 

[Christopher]

Actually, Christopher, I think that Mere Mortals said it was billions of years. Nearly the dawn of the universe itself.

Well, there you go. I doubt a civilization that lasted billions of years would be remotely recognizable to its earliest forebears, or would have any reliable memory of them. Even planets, stars, and galaxies change substantially over billions of years. Anything as volatile as life -- or as culture, which is more volatile yet -- would have changed far more profoundly.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I read this article -- Cosmic blast sets distance mark -- of the recent observation of a 13 billion year-old supernova, and I wondered. Did we just "see" the third Caeliar city arrive near the dawn of time or see the results of their first cosmic engineering project?

The explosion happened when the universe was only 630 million years old.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

As was mentioned, the third Caeliar City was thrown back in time 13 BILLION years - almost reaching the Big Bang. They are mentioned in "Destiny" as having completely harnessed - Kardashev III style - one of the first galaxies.

13 BILLION years - that's incommensurable. I doubt the New Erigol inhabitants would recognize the very distant descendants of what were caeliar so long ago. The physical, mental, moral, cultural attributes of these advanced caeliar have changed with the passsage of time and are now, most likely, completely different from those of the New Erigol caeliar.

Why have they hidden an entire galaxy? For the energy. Probably, these advanced caeliar have evolved into the Q (who were also described as being incredibly old) or some other such species.
We've seen the godlike powers these beings have. Maybe now we've seen where the energy necessary for their magic tricks is coming from - our first peek behind the curtain.

 

[LutherSloan]

Considering the Caeliar's technological evolution in the 2200s when the Columbia encounters them, they could be close to Q-level intelligence after being flung back near the dawn of time with that technology.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

Considering the Caeliar's technological evolution in the 2200s when the Columbia encounters them, they could be close to Q-level intelligence after being flung back near the dawn of time with that technology.

One might wonder why they haven't evolved to the same level as the Q Continuum itself - they've been around for 13 billion years, odds are they'd be able to get a dimensional plane or something all to themselves and none of the less evolved species could bother them.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

One might wonder why they haven't evolved to the same level as the Q Continuum itself - they've been around for 13 billion years, odds are they'd be able to get a dimensional plane or something all to themselves and none of the less evolved species could bother them.

Perhaps not every species can evolve to the point of being able to transcend from the purely physical to the purely mental.

 

[Christopher]

One might wonder why they haven't evolved to the same level as the Q Continuum itself - they've been around for 13 billion years, odds are they'd be able to get a dimensional plane or something all to themselves and none of the less evolved species could bother them.

Evolution isn't a ladder, or some cosmic clock that causes a species' evolution to progress continuously "forward" or "upward" toward an increasingly godlike level. There's no "more" or "less" evolved, except in terms of being more or less adapted to whatever environmental niche a species occupied. What's "more evolved" for one species can be "less evolved" for another that has different needs. For instance, getting taller is getting "more evolved" for a species that needs to eat fruit growing in tree branches, but decidedly "less evolved" for a species that needs to crouch in low grass to hide from predators.

So there's no reason why a species older than the Q would have to have gone in the same direction.