Tau Ceti colonyAnother humanity 11.9 light-years away

Would a human colony with a 12-year communication delay split into a new civilization? Founder effect, language drift and other real science.

A group of people flew to Tau Ceti, 11.9 light-years away. A few centuries later, are they still "us"? The game's "Tau Ceti colony" channel asks exactly this: could two human societies separated by an 11.9-year communication delay slowly become two civilizations?

This page covers the real science behind the question: what kind of star Tau Ceti is, why closed ecosystems are hard, and real cases of the founder effect and language drift. Then it outlines the story the game imagines and lists related real research. The colony itself is fictional, and Tau Ceti's planets are still only candidates.

Tau Ceti: a real neighbor

Tau Ceti is 11.9 light-years from the Sun, has about 78% of the Sun's mass, and has only about 28% of the Sun's heavy elements. A 2017 radial-velocity analysis found 4 candidate planets around it, and the outer two lie near the inner and outer edges of the habitable zone. It has more than ten times as much dust around it as the Solar System, which suggests far more comets and asteroids there, and more frequent impacts on its planets.

From Tau Ceti, the Sun would appear in the sky near Arcturus as a star of about magnitude 2.6: visible to the naked eye, but not striking. In 1960, humanity's first organized listening for alien signals (Project Ozma) was aimed at it.

Why a closed home is hard

Dome farms: in 1991, 8 people moved into the sealed Biosphere 2. After a little over a year, the oxygen inside had dropped from 20.9% to about 14.5%, and oxygen had to be added from outside. A closed ecosystem is much harder to sustain than it sounds.
Another gravity: bones remodel themselves according to the load they carry. Astronauts on space stations lose about 1% to 1.5% of bone mass per month because the load is gone.
Mirror-image life: life on Earth uses almost only left-handed amino acids and right-handed sugars. If life on another planet used mirror molecules, the two kinds of life probably could not digest each other.

How the split happens

Founder effect: around 1775 a typhoon left only about 20 people on the Pacific island of Pingelap, and one of them carried a gene for total color blindness. Today nearly 10% of the island's people are totally color-blind. In the United States the rate is about 1 in 33,000.
Dialects: Icelanders left Norway in the 9th century. More than a thousand years later, Icelanders can still read 13th-century sagas fairly easily, while Norwegian has changed much more. Isolation can let a language drift away, or leave it almost frozen.
Lesson of Greenland: the Norse settlements in Greenland lasted from about 985 to the 15th century. Contact with Europe dwindled, and in the end they disappeared without a trace.
Their own science: the E. coli long-term evolution experiment began in 1988. After more than 30,000 generations, one of the 12 populations suddenly learned to eat citrate in the presence of oxygen.

How to keep the two sides connected

Radio takes 11.9 years to get from the Solar System to Tau Ceti. Ask a question and the fastest you can get an answer is 23.8 years later. Staying in touch takes relays. The US Deep Space Network has a set of large antennas in California, in Madrid, Spain, and in Canberra, Australia, spaced about 120 degrees apart in longitude, so wherever Earth turns, one set can point at a distant probe.

In measurement, since 2019 the kilogram has been defined through the Planck constant and no longer depends on the platinum-iridium cylinder near Paris, so any civilization with good enough laboratories can independently reproduce the same kilogram. In institutions, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty says no nation may claim the Moon or other celestial bodies, and it remains the foundation of space law. In language, the golden record on Voyager carries greetings in 55 languages.

The idea in the game

What follows is game lore. The channel is discovered by completing "Interstellar travel" in the interstellar-civilization era: the first generation ship arrives at Tau Ceti. The core mechanic is divergence: every sentence between the two sides takes 11.9 hours to travel, and with nobody deliberately changing anything, language, bodies and habits drift apart bit by bit. The greater the divergence, the more creative the colony is (higher output) and the farther it is from you. The main civilization's letters can pull the divergence back somewhat.

In the scenario, the ship lands on the outermost candidate planet, which is cold but has water. That planet is much heavier than Earth, so within a few generations the colonists grow shorter and sturdier. The native microbes they find in the soil use right-handed amino acids. The two sides agree that all units of measurement start from physical constants, and sign a charter whose every revision takes 23.8 years for a round trip. The colony writes its first letter in its own language, with a translation attached. The channel has three endings: Federation, Sister civilizations and Strangers. All of this is fiction.

Aurora (Kim Stanley Robinson, 2015): the book's account of a closed ecosystem slowly going out of balance has a real basis (Biosphere 2). Tau Ceti's planets are still only candidates, and the moons and life in the book are invented.
Foundation (Isaac Asimov, 1951): statistical laws really can predict the behavior of large groups, but not of individuals. The faster-than-light jumps in the book are fiction.
The Time Machine (H. G. Wells, 1895): special relativity allows "travel to the future" (time dilation). There is still no workable proposal for going back into the past.

The studies below concern colonization, the spread of languages and leaving the Solar System. They are related real science, not evidence that a colony would split.

The FOXP2 gene, linked to language, underwent distinctive changes in the human lineage (Enard et al., Nature, 2002).
The expansion of farming populations carried their languages to many regions and shaped today's distribution of language families (Diamond and Bellwood, Science, 2003).
Using a ground-based laser array to push an ultralight sail could accelerate a probe to one fifth of the speed of light (Lubin, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 2016).
Particle changes measured by Voyager 1 show that it has left the sphere of influence of the solar wind and entered interstellar space (Stone et al., Science, 2013).

Real basis

Landing: Tau Ceti is 11.9 light-years from the Sun, with about 78% of the Sun's mass and only about 28% of its heavy elements. A 2017 radial velocity analysis found 4 candidate planets around it, the outer two near the inner and outer edges of the habitable zone.
Dust disk: Tau Ceti has more than ten times as much dust around it as the Solar System, which suggests far more comets and asteroids there, and more frequent impacts on the planets.
Dome farm: In 1991, 8 people moved into the sealed Biosphere 2. After a little over a year, the oxygen inside fell from 20.9% to about 14.5%, and oxygen had to be added from outside. Keeping a closed ecosystem going is much harder than it looks.
Founder effect: Around 1775, after a typhoon, only about 20 people were left on Pingelap in the Pacific, one of them carrying the gene for complete color blindness. Today nearly 10% of the island's people are completely color blind; in the US, the rate is about 1 in 33,000.
An echo of 11.9 years: Radio takes 11.9 years to get from the Solar System to Tau Ceti. If you ask a question, the earliest an answer can come back is 23.8 years later.
A new sky: Seen from Tau Ceti, the Sun appears in the sky near Arcturus as a star of about magnitude 2.6: visible to the naked eye, but not conspicuous.
Dialect: Icelanders set out from Norway in the 9th century. Over a thousand years later, Icelanders can still read 13th-century sagas fairly easily, while Norwegian has changed much more. Isolation can let a language drift away, or nearly stop it.
A common yardstick: Since 2019 the kilogram has been defined by the Planck constant, no longer depending on the platinum-iridium cylinder near Paris. Any civilization with a good enough laboratory can reproduce the same kilogram independently.
Another gravity: Bones rebuild themselves according to the load they carry. Astronauts on a space station lose about 1% to 1.5% of their bone mass each month, because the load is gone.
Relay station: The US Deep Space Network has a set of large antennas in California, Madrid in Spain and Canberra in Australia, about 120 degrees of longitude apart: wherever Earth turns, one set can point at a distant probe.
Lesson of Greenland: The Norse settlements in Greenland lasted from about 985 to the 15th century, had less and less contact with Europe, and finally vanished without a sound.
Mirror-image life: Life on Earth uses almost only left-handed amino acids and right-handed sugars. If life on another planet used mirror-image molecules, the two kinds of life probably couldn't digest each other.
Federation charter: The 1967 Outer Space Treaty says no nation may claim the Moon or other celestial bodies. It is still the foundation of space law.
Their own science: The E. coli long-term evolution experiment began in 1988. After more than 30,000 generations, only one of 12 populations suddenly learned to eat citrate in the presence of oxygen.
A letter in a new language: Voyager's golden record carries greetings in 55 languages.
Aurora (Kim Stanley Robinson, 2015), the science: the book’s account of a closed ecosystem slowly falling out of balance has real grounding (Biosphere 2); the planets of Tau Ceti are still only candidates, and the moon and life in the book are fictional.
Foundation (Isaac Asimov, 1951), the science: statistical laws really can predict the behavior of large groups, but not of individuals; the faster-than-light jumps in the book are fictional.
The Time Machine (H. G. Wells, 1895), the science: special relativity allows “travel to the future” (time dilation); going back to the past still has no workable proposal.

Related research

These studies relate to this topic but are not direct proof of this page.

The language gene: The FOXP2 gene linked to language underwent special changes in the human lineage.
Source: Enard et al., Nature 2002, "Molecular evolution of FOXP2, a gene involved in speech and language"
Farmers and languages: The expansion of farming populations carried their languages to new places and shaped today's distribution of language families.
Source: Diamond & Bellwood, Science 2003, "Farmers and their languages: the first expansions"
Light sails to the stars: Pushing ultralight light sails with a ground-based laser array could accelerate probes to one fifth the speed of light.
Source: Lubin, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 2016, "A roadmap to interstellar flight"
Leaving the heliosphere: Particle changes measured by Voyager 1 show it has left the realm of the solar wind and entered interstellar space.
Source: Stone et al., Science 2013, "Voyager 1 observes low-energy galactic cosmic rays in a region depleted of heliospheric ions"

Game lore (fictional)

Node “Landing”: The generation ship lands on the outermost candidate planet: cold, but with water.
Node “Founder effect”: Everyone in the colony descends from just a few thousand people on the ship.
Node “An echo of 11.9 years”: In the game it is 11.9 hours.
Node “A common yardstick”: The colony and home agree that all measurement will start from physical constants.
Node “Another gravity”: This planet is much heavier than Earth. After a few generations, the colonists grow shorter and sturdier.
Node “Relay station”: A string of relay stations is laid out between the colony and home.
Node “Mirror-image life”: The colony finds native microbes in the soil, and their amino acids are right-handed.
Node “Federation charter”: The main civilization and the colony sign a charter: every amendment takes 23.8 years to make a round trip.
Node “A letter in a new language”: For the first time the colony writes to home in its own language, with a translation attached.
Node “Two civilizations”: The people who walked off the same ship are now two civilizations.
Channel ending “Federation”: 11.9 light-years could not pull them apart. The colony’s children can still read home’s poetry, and the two worlds form a slow federation: every vote takes 23.8 years to count. This run, the main civilization’s “Interstellar civilization” output +10%.
Channel ending “Sister civilizations”: They have their own accent, their own festivals, their own science. They still answer home’s letters, but it reads more and more like correspondence between two old friends.
Channel ending “Strangers”: Centuries later, the envoys sent by the main civilization can no longer understand the colony’s language. The colonists are shorter and sturdier, do math in a different notation, and treat the original ship as myth. In The Time Machine, Wells needed 800,000 years to split humanity into two species; the cultural split took only a few centuries.
Summary of the novel Aurora: A generation ship carrying about two thousand people travels for over a hundred years at one tenth the speed of light and reaches Tau Ceti. The native life on the destination moon is deadly, and the colonists split: some stay, some decide to go home.
Summary of the novel Foundation: A mathematician uses “psychohistory” to calculate that the Galactic Empire is about to fall, and sets up a foundation at the edge of the galaxy to shorten the dark age from 30,000 years to 1,000.
Summary of the novel The Time Machine: An inventor rides a machine he built to the year 800,000 and beyond. Humanity has split into the frail Eloi on the surface and the Morlocks underground.

See it in the game