PhilippeO wrote: The sudden and unexplainable emergence of a totally unknown species that numbers in the thousands on earth will only be ignored -
I'm not sure this is true. Intelligence agencies on earth had lot of duties and targets, spying on each other, on research personnel, on governmental agencies. Several thousand aliens among million of other aliens would be just minor thing. And remember that many students come from several sector away. Most spying would be directed to neighboring sector. Cataloguing hundred of aliens would needless waste of resource.
And i expect that every intelligence service worth being called such has a file on each and every one of those students, on the species, its homeworld, area of influence, known strong and weak points, important people, culture, etc. Each of those students is possibly a top secret spy from another agency.
Humanity has many legends. There's the yeti. There's a monster in Loch Ness. There are flying objects nobody can identify. There are even buildings on mars. Well... not really. But still there are people out there trying to find pictures, videos and all sorts of clues that its still true. And that's for things that don't exist. Now, there are aliens. Someone will notice them and be nosy enough to want to know more about yet another alien species. If its the crazy "humanity first aliens are to be hated" guy its an embarrassment for intelligence agencies.
Second, Intelligence agencies on earth did not have Jason knowledge. Jason knew Hrathari have hundred of planet and relatively backward technology, that why he didn't tell Dahnai. even if they scan one Hrathari mind, they would not know how advanced Hrathari tech or knowing number of arable Hrathari planet. "Unknown Empire that attack Karrine agricultural planet and get their fleet ambushed and destroyed" did not mean that they have lot of arable planet or they very weak technologically. Karinne had successfully ambush Consortium before. an intelligence agencies going for limited check, scan several random Hrathari mind, wouldn't put Hrathari in any priorities.
Oh yeah, there is an unknown species out there. It suddenly appears in your neighborhood. You know nothing about it. You do not know if they are a threat, where they come from, what they intend on doing in your neighborhood and what changes they bring with them. And no one else does either! That's like Microsoft ignoring a small corporation that specializes in the not very profitable search engine market. Its a recipe for disaster. An intelligent service absolutely has to know whats going on everywhere around it. Anything you do not know is something that can possibly show up with a lot of advanced ships in orbit around your homeworld sooner or later.
Third, Researching Hrathari body and history would be an extensive endeavour without purpose for busy intelligence agencies. a) local solar system ( presence of radioactive planet, how thick atmosphere, angle of planet from the sun) that would decide a lot of Hrathari biology, not location of their sun in the galaxy would influence Hrathari bodies more. b) Hrathari knowledge of constellation would be difficult to use. Terrans think Polaris and Twelve Zodiac important, its their location and usefulness in dating that make them important. Bright and Important star to astronomer not necessarily would have place in mythology. c) and Galaxy is very big place, even if they found Hrathari evolved in bright red sun, there will be tens of thousands of stars fulfilling that criteria in Galaxy. d) distance from galactic core would be even more irrelevant, most intelligent species is in the Rim of Galaxy, and even if they found Hrathari distance from Core, Galaxy have 640 sector on identical distance from Galactic Core.
Every single clue you can find is another waypoint to the knowledge one seeks. If you have the approximate distance of earth from the core, the type of sun and at least one constellation of stars visible from your homeworld all you need now is a computer that can go through your database. If you are flying around in giant space ships in your edge of the galaxy you will by definition have a very good knowledge of distances, stars and such even before you fly to another region and end up in the middle of a sun or a black hole.
Humanity was using star constellations to navigate the oceans before someone invented GPS. And the only thing moving was earth itself, the star constellations did not change at all. Although without actually having a real picture to see exact distances between stars it would be quite a lot more difficult.
Our galaxy has an estimated 100 to 400 billion stars in them. Google has indexed 4.2 billion internet pages as of now. So, even today with our current technology we would be able to handle all those stars - if we had a way to actually look at them. But we only have one viewpoint - from earth. And as such, many stars are occluded by other stars so we don't see them. We also can't see anything on the opposite side since the center of our galaxy stops us there. But if you can just jump out into the middle of empty space, jump a few hundred light years up or down out of the galactic disc and look from there you can see a lot more.
And if you can construct a view from any place in the galaxy at other stars, its simply a question of computers calculating where that place might be. A simple picture with stars in the background would do.
What does a signature tell us about a person that has a signature significantly longer than the text he posted in his last post?