Would a galaxy-wide civilization have any reason to build a solar probe?
For my sci-fi world, which spans the entire galaxy, I was wondering if an advanced civilization would build a space probe to explore a star. Would it be necessary and have any scientific benefits, or is a galaxy-spanning civilization above such an experiment? Basically I'm asking- Is it worth it?
P.S. Here in the real world, we plan to send a probe to explore our sun's photosphere in 2018, yet we only have one star we can explore and it remains that most of it is unexplored.
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2 answers
I upvote some of the above. One answer not mentioned: ensuring there is nothing wrong with the star.
I presume a galaxy spanning civilization knows a great deal more about stars and how they work than we humans know now; so perhaps internal probes would help them decide on th exact makeup and "health" of the star before they begin colonizing the system or using it for some purpose. They want to know the precise age, how much fuel remains, internal circulation patterns, any unusual chemical makeup, and ensure there are no microscopic black holes lurking in it. Or whatever else their super-advanced knowledge about stars might demand.
In the system itself they might want to install some kind of sensory apparatus or "Claim Stake" to report on future developments; or register the territory as claimed so others know they are planning to begin development here in the next million years. It is a galactic civilization after all, surely there must be rules and regulations governing the use and appropriation of natural resources like star systems.
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Preconditions
Bank's The Algebraist and many other works feature galactic scale civilizations connected by wormhole networks, but with only relativistic (i.e. slow and expensive; possibly very slow and expensive) real-space travel.
Systems off the network are isolated at best, and not worth bothering with unless there is something significant to be gained.
Even if wormholes can be created or moved, a sufficiently "boring" appearing system sufficiently far from a terminus might go unexplored for the simple reason that no one cares.
Justifying the Mission
If something happens to make the star of an unused system 'interesting' a decision has to be made about sending a probe or a crewed mission. But, keep in mind that the crew will be putting many years of travel time between themselves and their current lives, so crewed missions won't be undertaken lightly. Calibrate the level of interestingness and a probe becomes likely.
The fly in the ointment
Your civilization will have vast remote sensing capabilities as they will be able to correlate data taken from many different angles. They will be able to reliably count the number of significant planets, approximate their orbits, and know at least roughly the content of any atmospheres involved. They'll be able to tell how many large moons the planets of the system have. They may be able to guess at the mass and density of any asteroid belt.
They'll know a huge amount about the lifecycle and behavior of stars and will be able to categorize stars with great accuracy without visiting the system.
In short it's going to take some work (or handwaving) to set up a mystery that is interesting enough for a probe but doesn't justify a crewed expedition.
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