Escaping the Galaxy

One day humanity might find itself competition on the galactic stage, and need to flee aliens, artificial intelligence, or even other humans. How could the escape pursuit and survive the long exodus to safety?

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Credits:
Escaping the Galaxy
Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur
Episode 322; December 23, 2021
Produced, Written, and Narrated by Isaac Arthur

Editors:
Darius Said
Yamagishi

Cover Art:

Graphics:
Legiontech Studios
Udo Schroeters

Music by:

[QUIRK]

It's probably SO difficult to commit to this regular release schedule, but you really create a community by giving us a comforting routine to share in. Thank you for the hard work you do.

[vipondiu]

While flying through a red giant seems like the ideal place to scatter, even with fake ships made to be as reflective or emissive as the real ones but acting as decoys, all while utilizing the gravity well of most of the star including it's core to manouvre and change directions and speeds for all those real and/or fake scatering ships. One ship goes in, a myriad of ships go out in many directions. All seam real until the pursuers get close enough to see that all of them except one is made of the 35th century equivalent of cardboard.
Interesting idea for whoever wants to use it in a hard scifi space opera.

[crsmith]

The only real enemy that I can think of that would wish to pursue an enemy for hundreds of thousands of years would be a machine intelligence with the amount of spite equal to the type in “I have no mouth and I must scream”

[cmmaddragon]

Am I the only one that likes it when Isaac goes in depth with the math in his episodes?

[kailenmitchell]

If the fleet is fleeing rather than spend a huge armada, send just enough to make them afraid enough to continue to flee. Say automate a robot fleet to noisily chase, but never catch the enemy fleet. The persuit fleet being a robotic hound fleet chasing the fleeing fleet, allows your civilization to advances far beyond anything the fleeing fleet could contend with.

[VisiblyPinkUnicorn]

22:46 "On the stone was etched a galactic map and a single word, more ancient than the clans themselves: Hiigara. Our home."

[calvingreene]

Using a laser as a photon rocket and shining the beam into a star should be extremely difficult to detect. It also gives one hell of a defense against pursuers.

[sarcasmo]

Sometimes I wish I could boldly go where no man has gone before. But I'd probably just stay in Aurora.

[davidjordan]

Imagine living on a fortress world who for thousands of years has been fortifying, drilling, regimenting its population and creating a fleet that can literally blot out the sun as a dyson swarm only for the ‘Archenemy’ to arrive and announce, oh the galactic genocide thing, we don’t do that anymore.

[calvingreene]

Dropping a von Neumann antiship missile defence system into star systems you pass could really ruin the pursuers whole morning. Potentially leaving two antiship missile optimizers fighting eachother for a very long time.

[MrMorlow]

The only enemy I could think of, that could possibly be willing to commit to a centuries, millennia or longer chase, is a machine race.

[willyreeves]

bringing the concept down to scales that we mortals could possibly grasp: imagine fleeing Alexander the Great's conquest south up the Nile and still running and hiding from them today. how likely would both sides still be following the ideals and purposes of their original reasons for the flight and chase? a mere 2.5 millennia later.

[cannonfodder]

4:22 "Math lesson compete, no quiz to follow."

Oh thank God, considering how I somehow graduated from high school despite struggling in high school algebra I would have been screwed. The scales and numbers SFIA deal with would break me.

Yet another informative video Isaac, I look forward to the Christmas Q&A and wish you and Sarah a Merry Christmas.

[mtgradwell]

Traversing the voids between galaxies is something that must happen all the time, not to escape enemies but because all of the local galaxies are falling towards the Great Attractor. The only way to survive in the very long term is by analogy to keep leaping from ice floe to ice floe as the floes accelerate towards the top of the nearby waterfall.

[karelstava]

It can be very interesting to know more about Dune's ftl- they fold space, so they can be everywhere in entire universe immediately.

[PowerfulSniff]

These videos have given me so much inspiration over the years for the scifi series I'm making. My dream is that one day it gets published so I can thank Isaac properly

[iainballas]

When debating the options interstellar civilizations face, all I could think of is "The Clash":
"Should I stay or Should I go?"

[sleepingbackbone]

Another brilliant episode, and we expected nothing less.

[theOrionsarms]

Want to escape the galaxy? Find the fastest star that is on a trajectory that reaches your destination, and settle around it, after few hundreds of millions year you will arrive on another galaxy.

[darkage]

The telling of life among the evacuation fleets you described reminds me of an episode of Metal Hurlant Chronicles. They showed the remnants of a destroyed civilization and what was left on ships headed toward an uncertain future. Also you talked about the large arrays. In the Honor Harrington universe. Each star nation uses massive arrays thousands of kilometers in length to detect hyper footprints light centuries away.