[mxcrossb]

> The galactic center, according to the scientists, “provides an ideal” central location for “advanced civilizations to place a powerful transmitter to efficiently send beacons across the entire Milky Way,” in what is yet another advantage to this strategy.

Can anyone comment on this? What is the idea of such a beacon?

[trutannus]

Whenever I hear about putting beacons in space I'm always reminded of the plot of the book The Dark Forest. I remember too about a decade ago that it was decided the idea of broadcasting our location in deep space might be a bad idea.

[Balgair]

The Three Body Problem trilogy also leans heavily into that theme.

It's a good series at first, but gets very woo-woo by the end.

Spoilers:

All aliens are actively hostile to others. Any civilizations they find, they destroy.

[squarefoot]

A book that could reinforce this idea is "Those Gentle Voices" by Gorge Alec Effinger.

[kumarvvr]

If a civilization has sufficiently advanced technology, then I would imagine they would be scouring the cosmos for more resources.

Ultimately, every species is biologically trained to propagate itself, consuming resources and expanding presence, unless there are other external factors governing (for example, long gestation periods, limited offspring, etc)

So, advanced civilizations might put communication mechanisms in convenient places to contact inferior species.

[wing-_-nuts]

>If a civilization has sufficiently advanced technology, then I would imagine they would be scouring the cosmos for more resources.

Stable elements are not scare, life is scarce. I would hope that any civilization advanced enough to travel the verse would be able to strip mine the elements it needs from lifeless rocks and leave planets with life alone.

Bezos is right that we should ultimately move resource extraction to space.

[FiReaNG3L]

Or an advanced enough civilization might on the contrary use their resources efficiently with long term planning and population control and stay on their planet / solar system - "advanced" and "ever-expanding" don't have to come together.

[toomanybeersies]

> Ultimately, every species is biologically trained to propagate itself

Grouped by planet, we have a sample size of 1.

[teachingassist]

> every species is biologically trained to propagate itself, consuming resources and expanding presence

It's not obvious to me that this would apply to xenobiology.

(It's not even totally obvious that it applies on Earth - other species live a much more synergistic lifestyle than humans do)

[gaoshan]

I should think any civilization capable of producing, operating and placing such a beacon would be able to detect us on their own and might have the same interest in communicating with us that we have with ant colonies. WE think everyone wants to find and communicate with us but there is no reason that we should assume THEY feel the same way.