Mercury,
September/October 2005 Table of Contents
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Courtesy
of the AIP Emilio Segr Visual Archives. |
by
Robert Jackson
Simple
models of the expansion of a star-faring civilization predict that
our entire galaxy could be colonized in a small fraction of the
Galaxy's age. Based on such considerations, physicist Enrico Fermi
is said to have asked "Where is everyone?"
One
of the parameters of these models is the time delay between founding
a new colony and the new colony sending out colony ships of its
own. During the time delay, usually considered to be on the order
of a thousand years, the new colony is building up the industrial
base necessary to create more colony ships. There are consequences
to this time delay that are significant yet rarely articulated.
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