Hello, SFIA audio listeners, in this month's Nebula exclusive, big alien theory,

we're asking the reason alien civilizations might be rare is because most aliens are huge.

To hear it and every episode early and add free, plus hours of bonus content, check out

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We live in an era where technology improves constantly and every day brings new marvels,

but what have we reached a wall beyond which technology could no longer improve?

Music improved. Now the day goes by where we don't see new improvements in our knowledge and technology,

and while we often feel that civilization might collapse and remove our technology, as

we looked at in post-apocalyptic civilizations

or techno-privitivism, we rarely contemplate the notion that progress would simply stop.

In some ways, the idea of technological progress, grinding to a halt, is even more unthinkable

than it falling backwards.

We can believe humans might mess up and wreck society, but

we're very predisposed by our culture to think knowledge is a thing which is infinite,

and that there is always a new stone to turn over.

Yet this not only may not be true, but realistically almost certainly can't be, at least

where science and technology are concerned.

The universe has rules it follows, which are presumably finite and we should eventually

discover them all, or discover all those that aren't physically impossible to infer, at which

point technology would continue to improve for a time, quite probably many generations at least,

but would have to plateau out.

...