How to Win an Interstellar War

Summary

The video script from Kurzgesagt Labs explores hypothetical interstellar warfare, presenting three theoretical alien weapons: a Star Laser, a Relativistic Missile, and an Ultra-Relativistic Electron Beam. These weapons, powered by advanced technologies like a Dyson swarm and antimatter, are capable of annihilating Earth from light years away, illustrating the potential scale and devastating nature of interstellar conflict. The script concludes with a cautionary note on the visibility of such weapons, suggesting that perhaps the best strategy for humanity is to remain quiet and observe.

Takeaways

• 🌌 Interstellar warfare is challenging due to the vast distances and time scales involved, making traditional warfare concepts like front lines and logistics irrelevant.
• 🚀 Sending an invasion fleet is not feasible because the time it takes to travel even at a significant fraction of the speed of light is measured in decades or centuries.
• 🔭 The Smorpians, an advanced civilization, use a Dyson swarm to harness near limitless energy from their star, which is a significant technological advantage.
• 🌟 The Star Laser is a theoretical weapon that uses the energy from a Dyson swarm to create a high-powered beam that can destroy a planet from over 2 million light years away.
• 💥 The Relativistic Missile is a weapon that uses antimatter to achieve near light speed, delivering a devastating kinetic impact that can annihilate a planet.
• ⚡ The Ultra-Relativistic Electron Beam (UREB) is a weapon that uses extremely high-speed electrons to penetrate and sterilize a planet, causing DNA damage and lethal radiation doses.
• 🛰 The construction of these weapons requires immense technological capabilities, such as building a Dyson swarm or a megastructure particle accelerator.
• 🕰 The time delay in interstellar communication and warfare means that the consequences of actions may not be known until decades or even generations later.
• 🌐 The use of such weapons could be visible to other civilizations in the Milky Way, which could have strategic implications regarding the visibility and perceived threat level of a civilization.
• 🔎 Observing and remaining quiet might be a prudent strategy for humanity, as it allows for the gathering of information and the avoidance of drawing attention that could provoke conflict.

Q & A

What is the main topic of the video script?

The main topic of the video script is the hypothetical scenario of interstellar warfare, exploring how advanced civilizations might wage war across light years using futuristic weapons.

What are the two civilizations depicted in the script?

The two civilizations depicted are the humans from the yellow dwarf star system and the Smorpians from the planet around the orange dwarf star HD 40307.

What is a Dyson swarm and how does it provide energy?

A Dyson swarm is a hypothetical megastructure that surrounds a star to harness its energy. It consists of billions of solar power satellites that collect a significant portion of the star's energy output.

Why do the Smorpians consider humans a threat?

The Smorpians consider humans a threat because they are planning a hyperspace bypass through the human solar system, and they have decided that humanity must be eliminated to prevent any future acts of vengeance.

What are the challenges of waging war across interstellar distances?

The challenges include the meaninglessness of traditional front lines, tactics, and logistics at such scales, as well as the time it takes for a weapon to be fired and its impact to be known, which can span decades.

What is the Star Laser and how does it function?

The Star Laser is a theoretical weapon that uses the energy collected by a Dyson swarm to create a highly focused beam of light. It can focus on a target from over 2 million light years away and has the power to destroy an entire planet.

What is the Relativistic Missile and how does it differ from the Star Laser?

The Relativistic Missile is a weapon that uses the energy from a Dyson swarm to propel a super bullet, or missile, at near the speed of light. Unlike the Star Laser, which is a beam of light, the missile is a physical object that delivers a massive kinetic impact upon collision.

What is antimatter and why is it significant in the context of the Relativistic Missile?

Antimatter is a material composed of antiparticles, which are counterparts to particles of regular matter. It is significant because when antimatter comes into contact with matter, they annihilate each other, releasing a large amount of energy, which powers the Relativistic Missile.

What is the Ultra-Relativistic Electron Beam (UREB) and how does it work?

The Ultra-Relativistic Electron Beam (UREB) is a theoretical weapon that accelerates electrons to nearly the speed of light, allowing them to travel vast distances without spreading out. It is designed to be highly penetrating, capable of sterilizing an entire planet by damaging DNA.

What are the consequences of using these interstellar weapons, as depicted in the script?

The consequences include the complete destruction of the target planet and its inhabitants, as well as the potential for other civilizations in the galaxy to observe the attack, which could label the attacker as a dangerous species and reveal their location.

What is the moral or strategic implication of the scenario presented in the script?

The moral implication is the ethical question of exterminating an entire civilization. Strategically, the script suggests that it might be wiser for civilizations to remain quiet and observe rather than engage in conspicuous acts of aggression in the universe.

Outlines

00:00

🌌 Interstellar Warfare: The Star Laser

The script introduces an imaginative scenario where advanced civilizations, humans and Smorpians, consider waging war across light years. The Smorpians, with superior technology, contemplate constructing a weapon capable of destroying Earth from a distance. The Star Laser is one such weapon, harnessing the energy of a star through a Dyson swarm to create a laser beam with an immense range, capable of reaching Earth from over 2 million light years away. The laser, traveling at the speed of light, would take 42 years to arrive and, upon impact, would annihilate the exposed side of Earth with an intensity equivalent to 3 million Suns, boiling seas, igniting fires, and melting the planet's crust into lava, eradicating all life.

05:02

🚀 The Relativistic Missile: Antimatter Annihilation

The second weapon considered by the Smorpians is the Relativistic Missile, which utilizes antimatter, a highly dangerous material that reacts violently with matter, releasing gamma rays and plasma. The Smorpians, with their advanced capabilities, can produce antimatter on an industrial scale to power their missiles. These missiles, larger than skyscrapers, are equipped with a magnetic nozzle and contain 250 floors of antimatter and matter ready for annihilation. The top floor holds a 300 kg projectile. Upon launch, the antimatter engines outshine their star, and the missiles accelerate to nearly the speed of light, reaching Earth with minimal warning and delivering catastrophic kinetic energy, causing continent-sized fireballs and reducing the planet to rubble and smoke.

10:05

⚡ The Ultra-Relativistic Electron Beam: Sterilizing Earth

The third weapon concept is the Ultra-Relativistic Electron Beam (UREB), inspired by human technology used to sterilize food. The Smorpians scale this up to an interstellar level by accelerating electrons close to the speed of light, which due to time dilation, allows the beam to remain focused over vast distances. To achieve this, a particle accelerator over 100,000 kilometers long is required, creating a tightly focused beam capable of sterilizing Earth. Upon impact, the beam does not cause immediate destruction but instead pierces DNA, causing sickness and death over time, even to those in deep bunkers, as the beam's penetrating power accumulates lethal doses underground.

🔭 Observational Caution: The Milky Way's Silent Watchers

In the final paragraph, the script reflects on the potential visibility of these weapons to other civilizations in the Milky Way, suggesting that using such weapons could reveal one's location and intentions. It proposes that the best strategy for humanity might be to remain quiet and observe, avoiding drawing attention to itself. The possibility of witnessing distant stellar conflicts without participating is presented as a preferable outcome, emphasizing the importance of caution in the face of unknown cosmic neighbors.

Keywords

💡Interstellar War

Interstellar War refers to the hypothetical conflict that occurs between civilizations across the vast distances of space. In the video, it is the central theme, exploring how advanced civilizations might wage war over light years. The concept is illustrated through the fictional conflict between humans and the Smorpians, emphasizing the challenges of time, distance, and technology in such a scenario.

💡Dyson Swarm

A Dyson Swarm is a hypothetical megastructure consisting of a vast array of solar power satellites designed to encircle a star and capture its energy output. In the script, the Smorpians have built a Dyson swarm around their star, providing them with near limitless energy, which is a key factor in their advanced technological capabilities and their ability to wage interstellar war.

💡Hyperspace Bypass

A Hyperspace Bypass, in the context of the video, is a theoretical construct for a shortcut through space-time that allows for faster-than-light travel. The Smorpians plan a hyperspace bypass through our solar system, which becomes the catalyst for their decision to eliminate humanity to secure the route.

💡Star Laser

The Star Laser is a theoretical weapon system described in the video, which harnesses the energy of a star through a Dyson swarm to create a laser beam capable of destroying a planet from millions of light years away. It is an example of the extreme measures and technologies that might be employed in interstellar warfare.

💡Relativistic Missile

A Relativistic Missile, as depicted in the video, is a weapon that utilizes the principles of relativity to achieve near-light speeds. The Smorpians use antimatter propulsion to create missiles capable of delivering catastrophic kinetic energy to Earth, illustrating the destructive potential of advanced civilizations' technology.

💡Antimatter

Antimatter is a material composed of antiparticles, which have the same mass as particles of ordinary matter but opposite charge and other particle properties. In the script, the Smorpians manufacture antimatter on an industrial scale to power their relativistic missiles, highlighting the extreme energy requirements and potential of such a substance in warfare.

💡Ultra-Relativistic Electron Beam (UREB)

The Ultra-Relativistic Electron Beam (UREB) is a theoretical weapon system that accelerates electrons to nearly the speed of light, allowing them to travel vast distances without dispersing. The UREB is designed to sterilize a planet by damaging DNA, as described in the video, showcasing another method of interstellar warfare that does not rely on physical impact.

💡Particle Accelerator

A Particle Accelerator is a device that uses electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to high speeds. In the context of the video, the Smorpians require an immensely large accelerator to create the UREB, emphasizing the scale of technology needed for such advanced weaponry.

💡Magnetic Nozzle

A Magnetic Nozzle is a component of a propulsion system that uses magnetic fields to direct the flow of plasma, as mentioned in the video in relation to the relativistic missiles. It is an example of the advanced engineering required to harness the destructive power of antimatter reactions for propulsion.

💡Whipple Shield

The Whipple Shield is a protective layering system designed to dissipate the energy of incoming particles or debris. In the script, the missiles have multiple sacrificial layers forming a Whipple Shield to protect the payload during its journey, illustrating the engineering solutions to the challenges of interstellar travel.

💡Interstellar Communication

Interstellar Communication refers to the exchange of information across the distances of space. The video mentions that decades may pass between firing a weapon and learning of its impact, illustrating the time lag in communication that is inherent in interstellar warfare and its strategic implications.

Highlights

Kurzgesagt Labs explores the theoretical concept of interstellar warfare between civilizations.

The hypothetical scenario involves humans and the advanced Smorpian civilization from 42 light years away.

The Smorpians have developed a Dyson swarm, granting them near limitless energy.

Interstellar war is characterized by vast distances, time lags, and the impracticality of traditional invasion tactics.

Three theoretical Smorpian weapon designs are proposed: the Star Laser, the Relativistic Missile, and the Ultra-Relativistic Electron Beam.

The Star Laser utilizes the energy of a star, focusing it through a Dyson swarm into a powerful beam.

A star laser can be visible from a distance of over 2 million light years, creating a gigantic column of green light.

The laser's impact on Earth would be catastrophic, with the intensity of 3 million Suns, causing rapid planetary devastation.

The Relativistic Missile concept involves using antimatter propulsion to achieve near light speed.

Antimatter-matter reactions in missiles release gamma rays and plasma, creating an extremely fast and destructive weapon.

The Ultra-Relativistic Electron Beam (UREB) is a weapon that could sterilize a planet by destroying DNA at a cellular level.

UREB uses a particle accelerator over 100,000 kilometers long to maintain focus over interstellar distances.

The UREB's lethal radiation can penetrate deep underground, making no place safe from its effects.

All proposed weapons have the drawback of revealing the user's location to the rest of the galaxy.

The video concludes with a suggestion that observing and staying quiet might be the best strategy for humanity in the cosmos.

The Kurzgesagt animation provides a detailed and imaginative exploration of interstellar warfare technologies.

Each weapon design is based on real technologies that humans are already using in some form, adding a layer of plausibility to the theoretical scenarios.

The narrative highlights the challenges and ethical considerations of engaging in interstellar conflict.

Transcripts

Could aliens destroy us from light years away?

Mh, another day at the Kurzgesagt Labs,

where we answer the most important questions with science.

Today:

how might civilizations wage war across light years?

What kind of devastating weapons could they use,

and what would they look like?

Meet our two players.

A yellow dwarf star system home to a species of primates.

"Humans," as they call themselves,

recently became a technological civilization.

They have rockets, nuclear reactors and memes.

How cute!

The Smorpians disagree.

They reside on a planet around the orange dwarf star HD 40307,

42 light years away.

Smorpian civilization developed earlier than humans

and they have much better technology.

They've recently built a Dyson swarm around their star

which gives them near limitless energy.

And they noticed humanity,

which is unfortunate as the Smorpians are planning a hyperspace bypass

through our solar system,

so they decided that humanity has to go.

Interstellar war is hard though.

Front lines, tactics, and logistics are meaningless at these scales.

It's also fought across time.

Decades will pass between firing a weapon

and learning whether it hit or not.

Sending an invasion fleet is futile.

Even if the Smorpians travel in a large fraction of the speed of light,

the journey to Earth would take decades or even centuries,

and humans would have plenty of time to prepare.

If you want to learn more about the mind numbing problem

of war between alien civilizations,

we made a video about it.

Today we'll help the Smorpians construct a weapon

that is not only extremely long range and as fast as physically possible,

but that will totally destroy everything on Earth,

so no human survivors will come to an act of vengeance on swap in the future.

In interstellar war, you want to win with one shot.

Our bird scientists have found three Smorpian designs:

the Star Laser, the Relativistic Missile,

and the Ultra-Relativistic Electron Beam.

All based on real technologies

that humans are using in some form already.

Let's see how they work.

[The Star Laser]

As an advanced technological civilization,

the Smorpians harness the energy of their star

by surrounding it with billions of solar power satellites.

This Dyson swarm collects 1% of the star's energy output,

a million billion billion watts,

50 billion times more than all humanity generates.

What if all the power of the Dyson swarm,

all those satellites were used to create a star laser?

Like any laser, the bigger it is, the longer its range.

Human-built lasers use small mirrors to focus,

so they have short ranges.

The Smorpians could turn their entire Dyson swarm

into a collective focusing element a million kilometers wide.

The star laser has an insane range as a result,

enough to focus on target Earth

from a distance of over 2 million light years.

OK, let's shoot it.

Countless tiny beams combine into a single huge beam.

Laser beams are normally invisible in space,

but the star laser is so powerful

that light scattering off bits of dust and gas in its path

makes it clearly visible in the sky.

A gigantic column of green light.

The laser travels at the speed of light,

which, oddly enough, is still pretty slow on a galactic level.

It takes a whole day until the laser has left the Smorpian system,

shooting into the emptiness between stars.

It will travel for decades,

occasionally melting the odd bit of interstellar dust or asteroid.

42 years after being fired, it arrives without warning.

Humans only notice a weird green glow in the sky,

and then they're gone.

1% of the energy of a star,

concentrated into a beam the diameter of Earth,

traveling 42 light years.

It burns the exposed half of the planet

with the intensity of 3 million Suns.

The seas boil and evaporate, fires scour the land,

and within minutes Earth's crust begins to melt into a sea of lava.

As the planet rotates,

it turns into a red hot hell with no trace of life.

After a day, it's all over and the laser dies down.

In another 42 years,

the Smorpians will know if they've been successful.

That's another thing about interstellar war.

When you attack, your grandchildren will be the ones to find out if you won.

It's like all the bombs from World War II exploding in the 80s

and us only seeing the effect today.

OK, the star laser's extreme range, speed of light attack,

and ability to melt down any target

make it a premier interstellar weapon.

But is there something else?

[The Relativistic Missile]

What if instead of converting the energy of their Dyson swarm into a laser,

the Smorpians used it to shoot a super bullet?

A relativistic missile going as close to the speed of light as possible.

This sort of weapon is at the limits

of what the Smorpian technology can handle,

as it requires loads of a highly dangerous material: antimatter.

The evil twin of regular matter.

Humans have only managed to produce a few nanograms of antimatter.

With their unlimited energy,

Smorpians can manufacture it at an industrial scale

to build antimatter rockets.

When antimatter and matter are mixed, they annihilate,

which in more practical terms means there's a big big boom

releasing gamma rays and plasma.

The physics is complicated,

but basically, if you have a really strong magnetic field

you can deflect the plasma through a nozzle

just like in the chemical rockets humans use.

But it would be much, much faster.

The fastest rocket possibly basically.

Our relativistic missile is much bigger than a skyscraper.

At the bottom is the bell shaped magnetic nozzle 100 meters wide.

On top of it are 250 floors filled with antimatter and matter

ready to annihilate each other.

On the top floor is a 300 kilogram projectile

looking quite small, about the size of a person.

To stop them getting damaged on the way,

the missiles have dozens of sacrificial layers

that form a Whipple Shield.

To make sure they do their job,

the Smorpians build 1000 missiles.

Let's fire them.

Launching all the relativistic missiles is a spectacular event.

For a moment, the antimatter engines lighting up outshine their star.

Their exhaust is a long trail of brilliant white,

and as they accelerate away,

they appear redder and redder until they turn invisible.

With the extreme amount of energy released by the matter-antimatter reactions,

the missiles are accelerated

to 99.9999996% of the speed of light.

They have effectively infinite range,

as there's nothing really to slow them down.

They arrive shortly after you can see them.

The light from their launch will take 42 years to reach Earth,

so human astronomers might see the flash of the missile's launch,

and then a few days later they'll hit.

Not enough time to prepare.

Each relativistic missile packs the kinetic energy

of a dinosaur killer asteroid,

so only one needs to hit.

They never reach the ground,

disintegrating instead at the edge of Earth's atmosphere.

Intense blue flashes set everything on fire.

Then continent-sized fireballs slam down on the surface

to smash everything into dust, repeatedly,

until nothing is left but rubble and smoke.

So interstellar missiles with unlimited range,

minimal warning, and delivering complete destruction of a planet's surface.

Nice.

But they are a hassle to build.

Is there something else maybe?

[The Ultra-Relativistic Electron Beam]

Humans do funny things to their food

to rid it of bacteria and make it safe to eat,

like shooting electron beams at strawberries.

Small particle accelerators send electrons into the food

with an energy similar to the radiation from nuclear reactions.

Not enough to burn the food, but deadly to bacteria.

Smorpians had the same idea, but bigger.

The main challenge with an electron beam is range.

Electrons are negatively charged particles,

so they don't want to stay near each other.

A regular electron beam will quickly spread out,

making it harmless.

Smorpians needed to cover distances of dozens of light years,

so they've used the rules of the universe to trick the electrons

by building an Ultra-Relativistic Electron Beam, or UREB.

What it does is accelerate the electrons

to 99.99999…

…99999…

…99999…

…99999…

…9999998% of the speed of light.

Phew!

Faster than even the most powerful cosmic rays.

The closer something travels to the speed of light,

the slower time moves for it relative to the rest of the universe.

And since these electrons are moving so incredibly fast,

for every second of spreading their experience,

over 5 million years pass in real time.

A physics trick that lets the beam cross interstellar distances

while remaining tightly focused on its target.

The biggest particle accelerator on Earth is 27 kilometers long.

The Smorpians need one that's over 100,000 kilometers long.

A megastructure 8 times longer than Earth is wide.

It's mostly a tube of magnets holding the beam together until the exit.

Like a long trumpet of doom surrounded by an aura of deadly radiation.

When it's fired, it produces a ruler straight lightning bolt pointed at Earth.

Its effects on arrival are less visible than the other weapons.

No flashes of light, no massive firestorms,

no explosions.

It doesn't destroy rocks, it destroys DNA.

People get dizzy, then fall sick as their cells are pierced by radiation.

You might think that a deep bunker could save a few humans, but no.

The UREB is so penetrating

that its effects accumulate to lethal doses even underground,

over days or weeks.

In the end, just like our strawberries,

Earth becomes sterile.

[Simulation results]

Hm, another elaborate animated science explainer by Kurzgesagt

where we've learned a lot, not sure exactly what.

Luckily, the Smorpians don't really exist,

but others… might.

One major downside of all our weapons

is that others around the Milky Way could see you firing them,

which is not ideal

because you don't want to present yourself as a dangerous species

and tell everybody where exactly you are.

So maybe instead of shouting or shooting out into the universe,

the best course of action seems to be to stay relatively quiet for now,

and observe.

Maybe one day we'll witness distant stars shooting at each other

and be glad we stayed out of it.