Thursday, September 20, 2018

Galactic Scale Organisms: Part Two

The previous post on this topic had worked on the assumption that there was only one civilization spreading throughout a galaxy. But Forge of God and it's sequel went further with the idea by including other possible civilizations too.

So let's take a look at the implications. As planetisms spread out into the galaxy they'll encounter exo-planetisms with different forms of life and civilization.

The possibility here is for further evolution of one or more planetisms, either via cooperation, parasitism or competition. In essence it's the creation of a galactic scale ecology which, if it can stabilize, becomes a galactism.

Just as a planetism is a planet-spanning organism a la Gaia, a galactism is a galaxy-spanning organism with very large scale "metabolisms" and homeostasis. The size of a galactism would in fact be so vast that (assuming no faster-than-light travel is possible) its equivalent of breathing or a heartbeat would last on the order of a few hundred-thousand years to millions of years.

A topic like this is rather big and has a lot of ground for speculation, with that said the post ends here but I might return to these ideas in future posts.

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