Technological Progress vs. Interstellar Colonies, part 1

Assuming (a big assumption) continuous and uninterrupted exponential technological progress on Earth, it would seem to set up some interesting implications for interstellar colonies and each's respective technological progression.  The farther away the colony in light-years, the farther away from the human technological "center of mass" the colony would lie.  It would take many generations for such a colony to "catch up" if ever since the population of a colony would necessarily not be very large at first.  In theory, the number of technical people would certainly be disproportionate to the ratio of workers on Earth, but still the technological progress would be slower at first which could make all the difference.  As an example, if humans would establish a colony X around 30 light-years away, the colony would have to 'wait' for the signal from Earth of all the technological developments from Earth.  Let's just assume there would be a powerful laser signal that would be sending news and information from Earth to colony X and vice versa at the light-speed.  Thus Earth would always be 30 years ahead on the technological growth curve, of course assuming no interruptions like an end-of-days asteroid strike.  And such a growth is exponential, thus in real terms, the differences would be more stark over time.  Think of the differences of tech development in the year 1940, 1970, and 2000.  The amount of progress between 1970 and 2000 was much more than between 1940 and 1970. 
In the next post, I will further explore the implications of this progress differential across interstellar distances.

Prometheus Unbound

I got to see the movie Prometheus the other day.  I thought it was pretty good. I won't go into the plot too much which you can read about at here here.

     

One theme that was subtle but could still be picked up is the cycle of life in which the young replace their parents in the scheme of things, necessitating that the parents exit stage left.  A sub-plot is the revelation that Weyland, the founder of Weyland Industries (who is trying to extend his life with the help of the Engineers) is in fact Vickers father.  In a dialog between the two, Vickers states that "every king has his reign but that all reigns come to an end."  In short, she wants him to accept that his time as 'king' has come to an end and way should be made for the new king or queen for that matter.

    

Thus we come to the grand scheme of things, a reason suggested thematically (but subtlety) of why the Engineers wanted to send bio-weapons to Earth was to destroy the human race before it would become a threat (i.e. out with the old in with the new).  From the carbon dating, the Engineers at their outpost were killed around 2000 years prior suggesting they would have destroyed Earth 2 millennia if they hadn’t had a “bad day”.  So from a sub-luminal relativistic frame-of-mind, if the Engineers had visited Earth to check up on us about the year 60BC, they would have found the Roman Republic having taken over most of the Mediterranean area.   The Library of Alexandria which was the largest collection of learning still hadn’t been destroyed in a fire.  China in the East was unified and expanding in territory in the Han dynasty.  They could have well concluded that Earthlings would become a threat to their civilization in short-order (relativistically speaking).  Assuming they couldn’t communicate or travel super-luminally, they may have thought a seemingly ‘inferior’ civilization could be on their doorstep within a millineum commencing orbital bombardment given technology exponential improvement.  Notwithstanding the Dark Ages, best to nip these little whipper-snappers in the bud while they are still Earth-bound.  If for instance, these travelers lived in a star-system 100 light-years away, a 2-way trip would take at least 200-years if they are traveling at the speed of light.  So let's say on average they could get up to half the speed of light, then the 2-way trip would take 400 years.  But since they can send a signal at light-speed, the scout party would have sent a signal back so maybe it would take 300 years (100-years for the back signal and 200-years for an expeditionary ship to come with the bio-weapons back to Earth) to get a weapon on-line to wipe out Earth.  Thus such advanced planning would not seem to be so outlandish from the Engineers perspective.  

So coming back to the cycle-of-life thing, the archeologist on-board theorized that the Engineers made the humans or seeded them on Earth many thousands of years in the distant past as it is revealed that the Engineers and humans have the same DNA.  Thus the Engineers may have feared some sort of Oedipal impulse for their Earthling children to kill them and take their place as the 'kings' in their respective small part of the universe.