[rizzom5000]

The theory is that there may be civilizations, or remnants (AIs), that have a vested interest in removing possible competition for resources, or in the case of the AIs, have been instructed to snuff out signs of life for the same reason.

[yreg]

There are plenty of unclaimed resources.

If you are the first one and want to make sure to prevent all future advanced civilizations from evolving, you send out von Neumann probes. You can tell them to build relativistic kill missiles and destroy all planets. No planets = no new civs, probably.

[bufferoverflow]

> There are plenty of unclaimed resources.

You don't know that. Maybe our planet once had some amazing high-energy isotope/mineral that was completely mined out.

[Intralexical]

There is no such thing. I think physics and economics dictates that you can't really be advanced enough for interstellar industry and yet backwards enough to have the type of resource scarcity which would compel interstellar resource competition.

If these aliens can not only travel but do resource extraction at interstellar distances, that implies having highly advanced fusion or annihilation reactors.

Minerals are just chemical reaction products, and therefore necessarily cost negligible energy to synthesize compared to interstellar travel. It's easier to just make the minerals you need.

Isotopes are finite in number, and we already know and largely understand all the ones are likely to ever be useful. "Island of Stability" nuclei may or may not be possible beyond that, but even if they're not only possible but also useful, they will almost certainly have halflives short enough that they will also have to be synthesized rather than mined. So, there's no competing over planets either way.

At the lower end of the tech levels where you can have interstellar industry, the only "amazingly high-energy isotope/mineral" is hydrogen fusion fuel. There's nothing in the Earth's crust or core that could be useful for them, because terrestrial planets are made out of spent nuclear detritus. Though maybe they can bring a big fusion candle and just run off with Jupiter, if they forget about their own gas giants and stars.

At the higher end of the tech scale, even hydrogen stops being a resource. Matter annihilation (e.g. via microscopic black holes) means that it doesn't matter what element or chemical your fuel is made out of when you're converting it directly to energy.

I think any resource competition argument for "dark forest" exopolitics really undersells how vast space is, and how abundant resources are. A single Jupiter with basic fusion reactors could easily sustain quadrillions of humans in enormously inefficient utopian living conditions for trillions of years. [1] It's going to need to get a lot more crowded before fighting over minerals is something that any sane interstellar civilization would worry about.

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1: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28%28jupitermass%2Fpro...

[bufferoverflow]

> If these aliens can not only travel but do resource extraction at interstellar distances, that implies having highly advanced fusion or annihilation reactors.

No, it doesn't. You don't know what you don't know. Aliens can have tech based on some rare isotope/mineral/whatever.

> Minerals are just chemical reaction products, and therefore necessarily cost negligible energy to synthesize compared to interstellar travel. It's easier to just make the minerals you need.

Unless these minerals require special rare isotopes or some other material we're not yet aware.

> Isotopes are finite in number, and we already know and largely understand all the ones are likely to ever be useful.

No, we do not. Google "island of stability".

> At the lower end of the tech levels where you can have interstellar industry, the only "amazingly high-energy isotope/mineral" is hydrogen fusion fuel.

That statement isn't a fact. Unless you magically synthesized all possible isotopes and materials. Which you didn't.

> There's nothing in the Earth's crust or core that could be useful for them

But maybe there was, that's the argument.

> Matter annihilation (e.g. via microscopic black holes)

Again, you're talking about known science. Not everything. You don't know what you don't know.

> A single Jupiter with basic fusion reactors could easily sustain quadrillions of humans in enormously inefficient utopian living conditions for trillions of years.

Yes, but that has nothing to do with the argument we're having. It doesn't disprove that there might have been some rare resource (or maybe it's still here, we just didn't get to it).

[Intralexical]

Properties like the binding energies of molecules and nuclei are a direct and well-understood consequence of the laws of physics. Materials in the real world aren't like Star Trek, where dilithium and the omega molecule can be treated as an infinite energy source because the name sounds cool. In order for a material to be an energy source, that energy has to come from somewhere.

You can only put so much strain on a chemical bond before the electrons decide to stop sticking together anymore. You can only get as much energy out as the mass change from splitting an atom. You can only store as much energy in a heavy nucleus as was originally put into it by the supernova that created it. Anything else would violate basic laws of physics, to such a degree that everything in our universe would presumably immediately cease to exist.

> No, we do not. Google "island of stability".

I already addressed the hypothetical island of stability in the sentence immediately after the one you quoted. The term is relative. They are expected to have longer halflives than the instantly decaying superheavies like ununoctium, but even the longer predictions of their decay properties have them disappearing far too quickly to be mined as minerals.

I'll add now that there's also no reason to believe that island of stability substances, if they even exist, will have any more particularly useful or powerful properties than any other heavy metal. When was the last time you needed to use Mendelevium for something?

> Yes, but that has nothing to do with the argument we're having. It doesn't disprove that there might have been some rare resource (or maybe it's still here, we just didn't get to it).

It disproves the idea that there might be some useful resource which you would want to go conquering for. The resources available in any star system are already more than any conceivable civilization could ever use.

The other side of this is the difficulty of interstellar travel. Reaching relativistic speeds implies turning a significant fraction of your vehicle's mass into energy. With the ability to create and manipulate such power densities, you're better off just synthesizing whatever you need.

> No, it doesn't. You don't know what you don't know.

> But maybe there was, that's the argument.

> Again, you're talking about known science. Not everything. You don't know what you don't know.

If the argument for suggesting a complete break from the known laws of physics can be summarized as "You don't know what you don't know", then you may as well argue that the universe is secretly controlled by a giant space cat which will reward us with salmon if we all shine laser pointers in our retinas every third Thursday.

"Maybe there was" is not actually an argument, in the sense that there is neither anything specifically substantiating it which can be examined, nor any falsifiable conditions which may disprove it.

[bufferoverflow]

All your arguments are basically "we already know all of physics, there's nothing new to learn". Which is just wrong.

And then you engage in obvious logical fallacies like talking about mendelevium, as if it's exactly the same as hypothetical stable isotopes from the island of stability. You have no idea what you're talking about, you have not produced those isotopes, no human did.

And then you engaged in completely dishonest straw man with the space cat. I never claimed that there are such isotopes or other used yet unknown natural materials, I just suggested that there may have been some.

Considering how dishonest you are, I won't respond any more.