Wouldn't non-warp races be able to detect 'aliens'?
- Thread starter Vurok
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In Star Trek the incention of warp drive came at almost the same time as the invention of three-four other major technologies. One of them is the sensors that would allow the detection of stuff from far away. If they are really tied together for some reason, e.g. they depend on the same basic discoveries, I'd say no. You can't detect other civilizations unless they visit you. It's just too hard.
In ENT “Dear Doctor” pre-warp species came in contact with warp species on their own. I think they probably discovered them by travelling and meeting with them directly, but it's possible that they used some sort of the detection beforehand. It would be irrational if they went on an interstellar journey without knowing that there is somebody out there, and they wouldn't have succeeded if they didn't know where to look.
As a person who is obsessed with any contact with pre-warp species in the franchise I'm quite disappointed that most such episodes weren't particularly good, and that there weren't more pre-warp species that came in contact with the rest on their own.
In ENT “Dear Doctor” pre-warp species came in contact with warp species on their own. I think they probably discovered them by travelling and meeting with them directly, but it's possible that they used some sort of the detection beforehand. It would be irrational if they went on an interstellar journey without knowing that there is somebody out there, and they wouldn't have succeeded if they didn't know where to look.
As a person who is obsessed with any contact with pre-warp species in the franchise I'm quite disappointed that most such episodes weren't particularly good, and that there weren't more pre-warp species that came in contact with the rest on their own.
I think it's possible to detect alien ships, but only if the warp-capable civilization doesn't care about being detected by a non-warp civilization. A warp-capable ship could buzz Alpha Centauri today, but it might take four years for the image of it to reach our telescopes, IMO, and even longer for scientists to agree on what they just saw out there...
Earth, Vulcan, Andorian, and Tellarite governments: “The people of that world are not ready. We will make no contact and we will not make them aware of us until they are ready.”
Harry Mudd: “Ooh, goodie! That means first contact is up to me!”
Cyrano Jones: “Not if I get there first!”
Kor: “It doesn’t matter which of you fools is first. I’ll kill you both when I get there.”
Harry Mudd: “Ooh, goodie! That means first contact is up to me!”
Cyrano Jones: “Not if I get there first!”
Kor: “It doesn’t matter which of you fools is first. I’ll kill you both when I get there.”
Our telescopes can't see an alien ship that far. We might be able to catch some of the transmissions but:
1. In the real world, encrypted transmissions have been theorized to be undistinguishable from natural ones. And any species worth their salt would use encrypted transmissions.
2. In Star Trek, these submissions are sent through subspace and pre-warp species don't seem to know what this is.
But radio telescopes can see something that abruptly appeared near Alpha Centauri, moved around briefly in a very unnatural way at very high relativistic speeds, and then disappeared, leaving a powerful doppler shift in its wake. It might take the scientific community, however, awhile to come to a consensus that the object might not have been a natural object.
Not with our current level of technology, no. Radio signals can only travel roughly a light-year before they degrade to the point of little more than background noise, IIRC. For us to intercept any kind of intelligble transmission, the alien craft would have to be transmitting very close to our star system (not too far beyond the outer edge) to begin with.
That’s entirely dependent on the strength of the signal. We have detected radio signals from literally billions of light years away. Nothing so far indicating intelligent design, but we keep looking.
Actually, it would be more dependent on the proximity of the signal, because one of the problems is that we're hearing countless very strong signals from everywhere--even from things as powerful as a supernova--but can't make out anything from the clutter that can be proven to be of artificial origin.
What we've truly been detecting falls more under the category of static from billions of light-years away. It's all blends together into what is often called "background noise" (some believe left over from the Big Bang itself), and we can't make out anything specific other than the occasional spikes that may or may not be energy bursts from supernovae, pulsars, and other high-energy celestial objects.
The "Wow! Signal" initially got some hopes up back in the '70s, but the results are still inconclusive to this day as to whether it was of natural or artificial orgin.
Actually, SETI was exactly what I had in mind. They're searching for anything that might remotely suggest extraterrestrial intelligence, even if the ability to detect stuff from the background noise is relatively limited, IMO.
Say, as a wild hypothetical of course, that Romulans were in orbit of real-life Earth. The warp signatures would be way beyond our means to detect. Ship materials most likely would use alloys way beyond our current metallurgy, their cloaking devices (or at least the ability to understand the science behind it) would blow our minds away, etc.
We couldn't detect faster-than-light propulsion, and surely the technology to detect it would be achieved at the same time as when warp drive was invented.
We couldn't detect faster-than-light propulsion, and surely the technology to detect it would be achieved at the same time as when warp drive was invented.
Let's also remember that 23rd century Starfleet could defeat 1960s Earth radars by adjusting the shields of the starship ("Assignment: Earth"). It's not even one of the infamous disappearing technologies of Trek: 24th century tech could still do the same ("Future's End").
What we'd be left with is simple optical imaging. Cochrane had no difficulty seeing the E-E with his garden variety telescope once the starship was placed in the crosshairs for him. Optical tracking today actively scans the skies for things like that: there are military trackers chasing space debris and foreign satellites, and amateur astronomers watching out for comets, asteroids and the like. Would the E-E have been invisible to such scrutiny if she had been fully operational and able to make the effort? Our heroes in TOS didn't seem to think that optical invisibility was commonplace. But some sort of a dimming effect might probably still be created with standard shields. When we saw the hero starships in Earth orbit in "Assignment: Earth" and "Future's End", we saw them with Earth on the background. Perhaps the ships would have been far less visible if the camera had been shooting from the opposite direction...?
Ships in low orbit would probably be a rare phenomenon anyway: primitive worlds just don't hold that much interest to the warlike species out there. Klingons never bothered to conquer Organia until a war sweeping past the region made the planet a strategically important location. Possibly a Class M is only worth conquering when it presents a threat or is home to a valuable and rare resource such as dilithium or topaline or whatever.
OTOH, it apparently is worthwhile for petty criminals to abduct small groups of primitives for slave labor to be used in shady enterprises of theirs. This nicely allows for an universe where UFO sightings are for real: the criminals don't always have perfect stealth techniques, but exposure doesn't endanger them - and they sure as hell won't land on Times Square or contact the UN or attack our nuclear installations or do any other things a "conventional" alien culture would undoubtedly do.
So, why don't we observe the thousands of inhabited Earth-like worlds out there by their radio signals? Perhaps radio goes out of fashion real quick in a typical Trek culture, to be replaced by a means of communications we can't observe even though no real attempt is made to hide or cipher it. And perhaps there's more stuff out there to absorb radio signals than we currently believe; the Trek universe at least has a far greater number of dense, colorful nebulae than ours has, perhaps suggesting that this is where radio signals get lost and converted to pretty lights.
It could also be that natural phenomena such as stars generate "unnatural" phenomena that cannot be observed by current science and technology, but that nevertheless affect currently known natural phenomena. Perhaps the Sol system is bombarded by accidental signals from a variety of next-door cultures, but Sol emits a type of subspace radiation that blocks all that stuff and makes us falsely think it's cosmic background or something. When our first spacecraft finally reaches a sufficient distance from Sol, it may find out that the universe is very different from how it looks like from the inside of that radiation bubble!
Timo Saloniemi
What we'd be left with is simple optical imaging. Cochrane had no difficulty seeing the E-E with his garden variety telescope once the starship was placed in the crosshairs for him. Optical tracking today actively scans the skies for things like that: there are military trackers chasing space debris and foreign satellites, and amateur astronomers watching out for comets, asteroids and the like. Would the E-E have been invisible to such scrutiny if she had been fully operational and able to make the effort? Our heroes in TOS didn't seem to think that optical invisibility was commonplace. But some sort of a dimming effect might probably still be created with standard shields. When we saw the hero starships in Earth orbit in "Assignment: Earth" and "Future's End", we saw them with Earth on the background. Perhaps the ships would have been far less visible if the camera had been shooting from the opposite direction...?
Ships in low orbit would probably be a rare phenomenon anyway: primitive worlds just don't hold that much interest to the warlike species out there. Klingons never bothered to conquer Organia until a war sweeping past the region made the planet a strategically important location. Possibly a Class M is only worth conquering when it presents a threat or is home to a valuable and rare resource such as dilithium or topaline or whatever.
OTOH, it apparently is worthwhile for petty criminals to abduct small groups of primitives for slave labor to be used in shady enterprises of theirs. This nicely allows for an universe where UFO sightings are for real: the criminals don't always have perfect stealth techniques, but exposure doesn't endanger them - and they sure as hell won't land on Times Square or contact the UN or attack our nuclear installations or do any other things a "conventional" alien culture would undoubtedly do.
So, why don't we observe the thousands of inhabited Earth-like worlds out there by their radio signals? Perhaps radio goes out of fashion real quick in a typical Trek culture, to be replaced by a means of communications we can't observe even though no real attempt is made to hide or cipher it. And perhaps there's more stuff out there to absorb radio signals than we currently believe; the Trek universe at least has a far greater number of dense, colorful nebulae than ours has, perhaps suggesting that this is where radio signals get lost and converted to pretty lights.
It could also be that natural phenomena such as stars generate "unnatural" phenomena that cannot be observed by current science and technology, but that nevertheless affect currently known natural phenomena. Perhaps the Sol system is bombarded by accidental signals from a variety of next-door cultures, but Sol emits a type of subspace radiation that blocks all that stuff and makes us falsely think it's cosmic background or something. When our first spacecraft finally reaches a sufficient distance from Sol, it may find out that the universe is very different from how it looks like from the inside of that radiation bubble!
Timo Saloniemi
Certainly if the universe was as populous as Star Trek makes it out to be, we'd have noticed someone else by now. But it's not, sadly.
Thank you all for your interesting responses. An understanding and awareness of sub-space would precede the development of a warp-capable spaceship being built by many years. However, it is quite likely that they would not necessarily assume distortions or other phenomena that they had seen were from an alien species.
Would it? It doesn't seem to be "rocket science" as such. Or more accurately, it is rocket science: when you work out the theory of how a liquid-fueled rocket ought to work, you can immediately start building one, because the tenets of the theory (ways to inject fuel or regulate pressure) would only emerge when your technology is around the right level already. Just knowing Newton's laws would not get you anywhere, and wouldn't really count as "rocket theory" yet.
Cochrane cobbled together a warp drive in very primitive conditions; quite regardless of whether he did it solo, or as part of a team ten thousand superbrains strong initially, it's clear that one can jump to prototype stage virtually immediately after working out the basic theory. One isn't held back by having to wait for the development of infinitely long strings of infinitely dense matter or any such nonsense.
That is, probably one has to build a "subspace coil" to manipulate or measure subspace. And apparently this is not made out of unobtainium, but out of accessible stuff such as copper, as indicated in ST:FC. Once you build the first wedding ring -sized coil for detecting the existence of subspace, you can apply for a grant for a house-sized one and probably get your money ASAP from the military.
Rome wasn't built in a day, but the atom bomb emerged within a few decades of the first tentative formulation of the theory. Warp drive might have taken decades, too - but it might have been the very first application of subspace technology, and may have preceded the subspace radio or the subspace receiver by half a century. Atom bombs were created first; a controlled variant of fission had to wait for quite some time (some attempts at contaminating squash courts notwithstanding). Subspace radio could well be massively more difficult to achieve than warp drive, and thus the first contact a planet would have with interstellar neighbors could well come from a test flight.
Interestingly enough, there's just one known example of a world that has subspace radio before it has warp drive: the one from TNG "Pen Pals". That planet also had bountiful supplies of dilithium, easily detectable from space. It's then doubly curious why this planet hadn't been contacted by aliens already...
Timo Saloniemi
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