Much speculation on interstellar war as depicted in fiction
has humans (the good guys) pitted against alien beings (usually monstrous bad
guys). Usually this takes the form of
advanced alien civilizations attacking and invading Earth while humans fight
back to save the day. But in reality,
interstellar wars will more likely take place between various branches of
humanity that have colonized the nearest stars.
To compare the two likely scenarios human vs. human and alien vs. human,
one can compare the likelihoods given distance to the nearest civilization. Advanced alien civilizations are likely very
far from Sol and thus less likely to make contact. One calculation of the Drake equation places
a 75% chance of finding an alien civilization between ~1400 and 4000 light-years away, while the chances of finding one within 500LYA drop to nearly
nil. Meanwhile, the number of star
systems to potentially colonize within 500LYA rises to ~2M stars. While this may not address the number of
non-advanced alien civilizations (which humans would conquer) which may exist and
may number greater than advanced ones, the likelihood of encountering such is
still relatively low.
Another issue is civilizations existing on the same
timeline. More likely is finding defunct
alien civilizations long dead (Yay, space archeology!) than ones existing. But if the civilizations are related
genetically (i.e. branches of humanity), the probability that they would be ‘chronically
parallel’ would be much higher than the former case. Combining the 2 factors distance and
timeline, human cousin civilizations would be far more likely to be fighting each
other over control of the stellar neighborhood (hey, I was wondering why there
were so many ‘humanoid’ aliens on Star Trek J).
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