Yeah, I buy the filter (or at least a big filter) being early. That does seem like a freak accident, even with all that time for it.
But on the spread of civilization, this is why I love Orion’s arm: it posits that if a civilization like ours makes it another few thousand years, it’ll expanded in a bubble at a significant fraction of the speed of light and be extremely difficult to extinguish at that point, meaning civilization should have spread across galaxies by now:
“Even with all the equipment available in the Civilized Galaxy and beyond the amount of the Universe which can be examined in detail is tiny. Imagine our own Galaxy as a deep sea fish, with very sharp but tiny eyes, peering at the other galaxies with trepidation.”
Yeah, I buy the filter (or at least a big filter) being early. That does seem like a freak accident, even with all that time for it.
But on the spread of civilization, this is why I love Orion’s arm: it posits that if a civilization like ours makes it another few thousand years, it’ll expanded in a bubble at a significant fraction of the speed of light and be extremely difficult to extinguish at that point, meaning civilization should have spread across galaxies by now:
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/49333a6b7d29f
That makes a lot of sense to me.
And the fiction, even as wild as it is, gives the still somewhat unsolved Fermi Paradox a lot of thought:
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/464d087672fe7
I particularly like the ‘Ginnungagap Theory’ that, perhaps, there’s some unknown barrier to expansion.
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/464e942db2789