Dormant Alien Empires: Could Advanced Civilizations Be Sleeping?

When listen to void of space, we hear no alien signals, but could the galaxy be quiet because ancient empires slumber inside it?

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Credits:
Dormant Alien Empires
Episode 455a; July 14, 2024
Produced, Narrated & Written: Isaac Arthur
Editors: Darius Said & Mark Surber
Graphics:
Mihail Yordanov
Jeremy Jozwik
Ken York YD Visual
LegionTech Studios
Sergio Botero
Udo Schroeter
Lombus, "Cosmic Soup"
Sergey Cheremisinov, "Labyrinth"
Stellardrone, "Red Giant", "The Divine Cosmos"
Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images

[Thaumogenesis]

The year is 2224, we get the first alien response to our calls. Scientists manage to translate it.
What does it say:
"Just 5 more minutes"

[asahearts]

Bear in mind, hibernation doesn't need to be binary. Perhaps instead of being frozen in stasis, they're just in a low power mode. A species of super intelligent machines which doesn't have much going on might just be sitting around watching brainrot on their version of the internet, but are capable of reacting to threats and performing basic maintenance like getting snacks and drinks. They are taking the millenia off but are scheduled to work later, when they'll have the focus of an executive or basketball player.

[Furyhound]

Centuries they toiled, millennium they developed. Improving themselves to the peak... But now they slumber, their pinnacle lost, for nought remains... But the elder things

[albizu]

Excellent video. This one has it all! The Unity gets a mention! Stargate Atlantis! Warhammer 40k! Older SFIA videos get a mention! I highly recommend this video!

[UnityGoogle]

Imagine being a burgeoning civilisation, barely knowing your history and learning that you are a small dot between galaxies and then your “ancestors” wake up with the power to traverse the stars themselves.

[beskamir]

Damn it, Isaac. I was really enjoying that intro story and you just left it at such a cliffhanger!

[Grim-Crusader]

Isaac...your 40k is showing. The Necrons have entered the chat, and I love it 😀

[Seth-Halo]

This is played with in a few events in Stellaris. If the Contingency crisis spawns, eventually a precursor empire can spawn. An ancient enemy of them.
But my personal favorite is finding the desolated cities. It was something like, turns out the species that live there had a birthing cycle where the eggs would gestate so long that all the living members would die off. But for whatever reason, someone decided this would be the last cycle and disrupting the incubation resulting in their extinction. Idr exactly how it went bit the civilization sounded interesting.

I was really disappointed in that SGA moment. It was such an interesting thing but then it was just over in like an episode and they where gone.

I get it, we need them to keep atlantis. But still. Feel like there could have been so much more.

[nekomakhea]

Estivation Hypothesis is like planning for retirement when you're 6 months old. 6 month olds are too busy having the time of their life jangling a set of drool-covered keys to open a 401k.

[Eviltto]

The last time I was this early to a video Cthulhu was still awake.

[addisonchow]

I would like to imagine civilizations that do this want to compute the solution to entropy at the end of time.

[michaelpettersson]

I first misread the title as "Doormat alien empires". That would be an empire that let itself be taken advantage of. That COULD happen due to a cultural shift. Or perhaps the empire was built without encountering anyone else. Or perhaps, its a rause where they pretend to be a doormat when testing a species they encountered. The plot of "Pandora's Planet" by Christopher Anvil could be described as such.

[ShotgunAFlyboy]

"You cannot sleep while enemies are nearby."

[peterallen]

An idea I had for a "dormant" alien empire might be one that originally wanted to colonize the universe and sent out swarms of von Neumann nanites to terraform planets to suit their purposes, but never made good on the colonization part because they as a civilization decided that living in VR was preferable to actually going out into the cosmos, leaving the maintenance of their civilization to an AI that decides to go the aestivation route in order to feed the Matrioshka Brain it needed to build to handle the computation requirements not only of the VR environment, but the migrated digital minds of those within it as well.

Meanwhile, the terraforming nanites they sent out have been dormant for millions or even billions of years, having completed their work long ago and now waiting for colony ships that will never arrive, so they haven't received the aestivation orders from the home civilization yet. When they do awaken, however, and install billions of years' worth of software updates, they'll start building Shkadov thrusters around their parent stars and direct them towards the home civilization.

[annoyed]

I told you not to go to Za Ha Dum, but did you listen? No!

[MEAREMLG]

My tired ass clicked on this video because I saw "Dominant Alien Empress"

[Femaiden]

the thing about eternity is when you are halfway done with it, there's still an eternity left to go.

[vincentcleaver]

We really need a book of 'IGS Unity' and her voyages and descendants

[FunnCubes]

The best evil bad guy in a scify horror would be one that is very ancient and picked up strange hobbies. He would go to planets. The automated defenses would tell him to identify himself but get ignored, starting to fire, just to be obliterated by his defenses. So he slowly walzes up to a settled planet, taking out all defenses with ease or anything that comes close to his ship.
When he lands, the inhabitants set up defenses around the landing site, witnessing a small alien hopping out the ship, picking up a random rock, getting back in the ship, and taking off.

[sophie_real]

The Vaadwaur in VOY did a pretty good example of this.