Time-lapse of a single cell transforming into a salamander (2019)
This video brings up a crackpot theory I've been toying with. I know it's crazy, but I keep thinking about it.<p>The Fermi paradox asks, why haven't we found any alien probes? Why have we received no contact or evidence of aliens visiting Earth in the past? Why aren't there galactic-wide civilizations, or super advanced beings that have spread over the entire galaxy?<p>If there were such a being/civilization, perhaps their planning time horizon would be billions of years, instead of (optimistically) hundreds of years like for humans. With that magnitude of time horizon in mind, what might that civilization's colonization efforts or exploratory probes look like? What would their machines look like, if time was not a concern?<p>If 4 billion years is nothing to you, and assuming there really isn't a way around the speed of light, maybe sending self-assimilating, self-adapting machine "seeds" to all Earth-like planets is the most efficient way to expand or explore. Seeds that perfectly adapt to the environment they're exposed to, self-replicate, take over the planet, and then the solar system.<p>Sort of like the Protomolecule from The Expanse, instead of hijacking life, it hijacks raw materials, and was designed on a timescale of beings that think in terms of eons.