The Forest
Jan. 16th, 2006 10:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
james_davis_nicollSee previous entry for one inspiration. A second source of inspiration is THE DIVERSITY OF LIFE by EO Wilson, which describes the effects of a storm on a rain-forest. In general terms, the forest is stable, with the presence of some species (like trees whose canopy intercepts most of the light) preventing the intrusion of other species (like low growing vegetation dependent on abundent light). Occasionally a tree will be knocked over by weather or die of old age, or a river bank might be undermined and collapse, opening up short-lived opportunities for opportunistic species to exploit. Within the limits of the regular disruptions in whose context the forest has evolved, the various component species are able to contend with the challenges they meet and so the forest survives.
Where this all falls apart, of course, is when something new shows up, an ape that has mastered fire or a sudden change in rainfall or temperature. North America is dotted with relics of the ice age, marooned trees that can survive in small refugia despite the new climate, although they can no longer spread.
Four or five years ago I refered to something I called a Big Hunger Galaxy, which was intended as a reference to an old Walter M. Miller story but which was taken as a reference to the Standard Malthusian Doom most high population worlds are expected to eventually suffer from. A catch-phrase that creates the wrong in the readers' minds is a bad catch phrase and it occurs to me that a mature forest might be a better metaphor for what I have in mind, because people like forests but don't seem fond of hunger.
This is a galaxy where every niche is either filled or blocked, like a mature forest. The various species within it cannot spread more than they have, for they have hit their natural limits, whatever those may be. This does not necessarily mean that everyone is teetering on the edge of mass starvation, just that this is an established order with mechanisms in place to deal with disruptions (Note that the mechanisms need not be and probably are not centralized).
It seems to me that there are likely to be periodic disruptions in any large organization in a natural universe and any opportunistic species is going to be keeping an eye out for them, because these open up opportunities to displace the old order, even if only for a moment. We might even be able to guess what they might be. A Kardashev II civilization, for example, might be overwhelmed by a nearby supernova (if their technology didn't extend to domesticating them) and a Kardashev III civilization might find a hypernova hard to deal with [1].
Of course, if they are even halfway on the ball, they should have seen what was coming. We are not even a Kardashev I civilization and we can make an educated guess about the next hypernova.
Coincidentally, we live in what might be called a clearing in the woods. In fact, we seem to have been cruising through this region for about as long as there have been humans. there seems to be a chimney of low-density, high-temperature material running from the top of the galactic disk to the bottom. This would appear to have been created by a number of supernovas in the not too distant past, whose effects blew a hole in the interstellar medium (ISM). Something I only recently realized (but which was probably obvious to everyone else) is that the high-mass stars in stellar nurseries act like cluster bombs as far as the ISM is concerned, evolving rapidly and more or less in unision from protostellar objects to supernova. A few million years ago, this was a bad, bad neighborhood to live in and we may be lucky that Earth was not closer to the exciting events of the recent past.
Also coindentally, we live near but not in the volume that will be affected when Eta Carina finally blows its top. Eta C is a candidate to produce a hypernova, something energetic enough to disrupt the ecosystems of worlds at five thousand light year ranges. Luckily, we are neither in the two cones where most of the high energy particles are likely to be sent and we're a bit too far away at 7500 light years to be killed by them in any case. Yay, us: the volume behind the wavefront of destruction may well be ripe pickings for us once we get there.
The catch is that any hypothetical advanced species in the affected region would by definition probably have better models than we do and a better idea of when that wavefront was likely to show up. What do animals in the forest do when they smell smoke and where do they run? Not towards the fire but to the nearest safe haven, which would seem to be systems like ours....
1: Galactic mergers are flashy but I think not too disruptive, at least for first order effects.
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Where this all falls apart, of course, is when something new shows up, an ape that has mastered fire or a sudden change in rainfall or temperature. North America is dotted with relics of the ice age, marooned trees that can survive in small refugia despite the new climate, although they can no longer spread.
Four or five years ago I refered to something I called a Big Hunger Galaxy, which was intended as a reference to an old Walter M. Miller story but which was taken as a reference to the Standard Malthusian Doom most high population worlds are expected to eventually suffer from. A catch-phrase that creates the wrong in the readers' minds is a bad catch phrase and it occurs to me that a mature forest might be a better metaphor for what I have in mind, because people like forests but don't seem fond of hunger.
This is a galaxy where every niche is either filled or blocked, like a mature forest. The various species within it cannot spread more than they have, for they have hit their natural limits, whatever those may be. This does not necessarily mean that everyone is teetering on the edge of mass starvation, just that this is an established order with mechanisms in place to deal with disruptions (Note that the mechanisms need not be and probably are not centralized).
It seems to me that there are likely to be periodic disruptions in any large organization in a natural universe and any opportunistic species is going to be keeping an eye out for them, because these open up opportunities to displace the old order, even if only for a moment. We might even be able to guess what they might be. A Kardashev II civilization, for example, might be overwhelmed by a nearby supernova (if their technology didn't extend to domesticating them) and a Kardashev III civilization might find a hypernova hard to deal with [1].
Of course, if they are even halfway on the ball, they should have seen what was coming. We are not even a Kardashev I civilization and we can make an educated guess about the next hypernova.
Coincidentally, we live in what might be called a clearing in the woods. In fact, we seem to have been cruising through this region for about as long as there have been humans. there seems to be a chimney of low-density, high-temperature material running from the top of the galactic disk to the bottom. This would appear to have been created by a number of supernovas in the not too distant past, whose effects blew a hole in the interstellar medium (ISM). Something I only recently realized (but which was probably obvious to everyone else) is that the high-mass stars in stellar nurseries act like cluster bombs as far as the ISM is concerned, evolving rapidly and more or less in unision from protostellar objects to supernova. A few million years ago, this was a bad, bad neighborhood to live in and we may be lucky that Earth was not closer to the exciting events of the recent past.
Also coindentally, we live near but not in the volume that will be affected when Eta Carina finally blows its top. Eta C is a candidate to produce a hypernova, something energetic enough to disrupt the ecosystems of worlds at five thousand light year ranges. Luckily, we are neither in the two cones where most of the high energy particles are likely to be sent and we're a bit too far away at 7500 light years to be killed by them in any case. Yay, us: the volume behind the wavefront of destruction may well be ripe pickings for us once we get there.
The catch is that any hypothetical advanced species in the affected region would by definition probably have better models than we do and a better idea of when that wavefront was likely to show up. What do animals in the forest do when they smell smoke and where do they run? Not towards the fire but to the nearest safe haven, which would seem to be systems like ours....
1: Galactic mergers are flashy but I think not too disruptive, at least for first order effects.
<lj-cut?
