• Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’m not sure why aliens that are going around the galaxy taking resources from various systems would exploit the resources of a system with life on it when there are probably trillions of exploitable systems that have no life.

    I also am not sure why aliens who have technology so advanced they can achieve practical interstellar travel would need to mine entire solar systems for resources.

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Because growth eats everything. Even if your economy only grew at .1% per year that would still mean a doubling every 720 years. For our 15k doubling species that would be a bit over 20x. About a million fold increase.

      Secondly we don’t see evidence that they did mine out uninhabited systems. There are over 5,000 exoplanets found that are terrible candidates for life. Yet they are there. Not used.

      Third our system alone. Life would have been fine without Saturn. Even if our aliens are nice they still could have snagged that and not really impacted us.