Provided that’s even how they work
But what they hell do I know, I drive a forklift for a living not do science things with other science people at the science place
The whole thing is theoretical, but the more tools we have on our belt to look for intelligent life in the universe, the better.
Unless we go the way of Independence Day or Three-Body Problem. At this point though I’d also probably say…
spoiler
Please conquer us.
We’re sooooo fucking stupid.
That’s what it means to specialize.
You can detect a forklift before most other people can.
I can literally build a Jenga tower with standard size Jenga blocks using a forklift (we have little competitions every so often)(unfortunately I can’t show pics or videos otherwise it’d be a security incident)
I got that shit on lock
Of course it’s assuming that’s how advanced propulsion tech works. But it is useful to try to detect, just in case that’s how it actually turns out to work, no?
And if we detect something interesting, like a potential warp bubble collapse, well, that also gives us a strong hint that it’s possible, helping us to direct research in the right path.
Detecting techno-signatures of aliens would be super useful for us.
And of course there’s the sheer awesome factor of if it turns out to be the case
Could you imagine being the dude who makes that discovery? Prepare to have shit named after you for centuries
Science location, you rube.
That’s assuming they actually use a Star Trek style warp drive when we ALL know they are actually using Navigators to jump into the Immaterium.
If immaterium is real, we have a much bigger problems than inability to detect xeno’s warp drives.
Whatever. Just track their warp signatures.
Scientists: We’ve been trying to reach you about your spaceship’s extended warranty…
just look for hyper evolved salamanders, that’s what happened in voyagers warp experiment gone wrong
It did not. That never happened. No one has ever gone beyond Warp 10. It’s infinite speed. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Then why did a hologram of Janeway tell a bunch of kids she once was a salamander?
You’d lie to kids about evolving into a salamander and having sex with your former flight control officer who is also now a salamander and having little salamander babies after traveling faster than infinitely fast if you could too. Don’t say you wouldn’t.
Damn it. I know I would.
Leave them on a planet? They sure did.
Okay, but what did a HOLOGRAM have this knowledge?
Did you know that HOLOGRAM is an anagram for GLAM HOOR?
Don’t you dare disrespect Hologram Janeway! /s
But please don’t.
EDIT: Just to be clear my tone is the sarcasm.
How dare you.
I propose detecting atmospheric anomalies induced by their infinite improbability drives.
Such as falling whales?
Pretty hard to detect. But… probably easier than finding the petunias I guess.
Not again…
As long as we can still go to The Restaurant the End of the Universe, I’m cool with that.
you can’t see a failing warp drive through a cloak. duh.
We need to just work on making our own. Then the Vulcans will find us.
Don’t forget to polarize the sensors.
If that doesn’t work then reverse the polarity.
Bounce a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish.
So civilizations travelling at ludicrous speed won’t be discovered, so sad
Sure, sure, you think looking for an intermix chamber of antimatter and matter that is not 1:1 is easy. What happens if they are simply leaking plasma from their nacelles? Or what if the ship is trying to steal your tech by luring an engineer onboard to repair “damaged” systems?
Or what if their warp drive uses an artificial singularity?
You seem to think that they are saying they can find any alien ship with any sort of technology. They aren’t. They are saying that if an alien ship has this specific type of theorized warp drive technology and it fails, then we know how we would be able to detect that.