Alien conquistadores?

[martins]

Looks like Steven Hawking isn't a fan of SETI:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8642558.stm

 

[garyw]

Interesting timing as it seems SETI want to try a different approach and start really looking for signs of stellar engineering instead of radio waves. The team has said that Earth is growing ever more silent due to technology improvements such as frequency shift spectrum and fibre optics and this would appear to be a natural technological progression.

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=12153

 

[anemazoso]

I'm suprised he would take this sort of position. Part of me wants to think he is just being dramatic.

If you take the famous Drake Equation and divide it by the volume of the Milky Way you would have an intelegent alien civ every 250 LY. INow this is probably way to optimistic because it's all just a bunch of assumtions.

I would think though that Hawking would be one who believes intersteller travel is virtually impossible.

My personal belief and answer to the Fermi paradox is that we will never see a living intellegent alien. We may discover their remains or works some day but it's probably akin to what Clark described in the Rama series. Civs are to far apart and to spread out in time to make contact with each other.

I think it more likley we will meet their robots rather than them.

 

[T.Neo]

:lol:

Seriously though, if the Europe of today were to make contact with uncontacted peoples, rather than the Europe of Colmbus' time, the outcome would be far better. A sophont capable of traversing interstellar space should know better than humans of the 1600s, barring societal and cultural differences.

Mr Hawking may be a good physicist, but he isn't an anthropologist, and not even an anthropologist can know how another intelligent organism will react to a certain situation.

Some things don't make sense at all, such as "raiding Earth for resources", with our thick atmosphere, relatively deep gravity well, pesky biosphere and threatened natives...

He is right on one thing though, life, and intelligent life, are probable. You get quite large numbers on even very conservative estimates.

EDIT:

Interesting timing as it seems SETI want to try a different approach and start really looking for signs of stellar engineering instead of radio waves.

That is of course if such engineering is possible, common or required. But the logic behind SETI's approach is sound, I don't think it's worth looking for extraterrestrial signals unless they are very powerful and pointed at you.

INow this is probably way to optimistic because it's all just a bunch of assumtions.

Again, even the pessimistic assumptions give quite large numbers. And at least some of these assumptions have a little grounding in fact, such as stellar attributes.

I would think though that Hawking would be one who believes intersteller travel is virtually impossible.

Virtually impossible? We have spacecraft travelling into interstellar space right now. Ok, so they're going at pitiful velocities, but going faster should not be too troublesome. Interstellar travel does not require FTL, although if you want to go anywhere is remotely human timescales you'll have to travel at relativistic velocities.

the Fermi Paradox

I think the answer to the so called "Fermi Paradox" is more an issue of observation and time than anything. Signals are not that detectable unless they're aimed at you, and engineering detectable over large distances may not be required or common. And we've only been open to the idea of extraterrestrial sophonts for a century at most, and we've only been discovering exoplanets for the last 20 years.

 

[Ghostrider]

:lol:

Seriously though, if the Europe of today were to make contact with uncontacted peoples, rather than the Europe of Colmbus' time, the outcome would be far better.

... For Europe, of course.

 

[T.Neo]

... For Europe, of course.

I dare ya, invade a small African country and see what happens. :lol:

Just not Lesotho. We tried that one...

 

[Ghostrider]

I dare ya, invade a small African country and see what happens. :lol:

Nothing good, as soon as the cameras look away. Of course, today we would either strike a deal with the local boss, or buy another boss, or send some "contractor" to "establish more favourable circumstances".

 

[AirSimming]

Seriously though, if the Europe of today were to make contact with uncontacted peoples, rather than the Europe of Colmbus' time, the outcome would be far better. A sophont capable of traversing interstellar space should know better than humans of the 1600s, barring societal and cultural differences.

I agree. Hawking should consider that intelligent life does not only make progress technologically, but also is able to make progress sociologically. I'm glad to live in the middle of Europe these days, rather than still 100 years ago...

If intelligent life manages to travel light years of distance to visist us, they might be well ahead and maybe even more careful and concerned than we are. They possibly would be even afraid if they observe us and what is going on down here for a while

Mr Hawking may be a good physicist, but he isn't an anthropologist

And above all he is a mere mortal like anybody else. He might be a great physicist and publish a few interesting hypotheses and theories. He is interested in certain things above average. But I would not take anything he says immediately serious just because it is Stephen Hawking

 

[orb]

Aliens almost certainly exist but humans should avoid making contact, Professor Stephen Hawking has warned.
...
"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," he said.

But Native Americans didn't look for Europeans to contact them. It's Europeans, who found a New Land and Native Americans, and it was on the same planet.
IIRC, currently humans are the ones, who are looking for new planets and the aliens, and not the aliens, who are looking for the humans and Earth.

But he warned that aliens might simply raid Earth for resources, then move on.

Like the Earth is the most resourceful planet in the universe. :rofl:
Rather, they could take away our Sun and a few asteroids, if they need some resources. :lol:

Why do people think that alien species are similar to Earth species. Maybe they don't need more and more and more, like human kind.

 

[martins]

Some things don't make sense at all, such as "raiding Earth for resources", with our thick atmosphere, relatively deep gravity well, pesky biosphere and threatened natives...

Maybe he was talking about human resources. Just imagine being gang-pressed into jobs as civil servants, hairdressers and accountants for the conquering aliens ...

 

[T.Neo]

They possibly would be even afraid if they observe us and what is going on down here for a while

It is certainly possible that hostilities with the aliens could be induced by humans.

I would not take anything he says immediately serious just because it is Stephen Hawking

I concur.

Why do people think that alien species are similar to Earth species. Maybe they don't need more and more and more, like human kind.

The human nature of "more and more and more" is derived from survival mechanisms in our evolutionary history. While I think alien organisms will be different in many ways to terran organisms, they will probably share key concepts of psychology (as they will morphology and biology).

Rather, they could take away our Sun and a few asteroids, if they need some resources. :lol:

Indeed, there is a whole solar system for the taking- but it might become a problem when we grow up to use it.

"Taking away the sun" would undoubtedly destroy the ecosphere of Earth, of course. But a more realistic means of deriving massive amounts of power from the sun would be multiple orbiting satellites, which would be more environmentally suitable. Unless one crashed into Earth...

Maybe he was talking about human resources. Just imagine being gang-pressed into jobs as civil servants, hairdressers and accountants for the conquering aliens ...

I'd prefer my civil servants to not harbour interstellar hate against me. :shifty:

It's also quite possible that environmental or biological factors would make inhabiting Earth, or exporting humans to their homeworld (for example) implausible or not worth the effort. Oxygen may be highly dangerous to them...

 

[Ghostrider]

Just imagine being gang-pressed into jobs as civil servants, hairdressers and accountants for the conquering aliens ...

Poor aliens, then! :lol:

 

[anemazoso]

Anyone every read Stephen Baxters Xeelee and/or the Destiny's Children series? Earth is occupied twice, by the Sqeem and then by the Qax which leads to a hardening of mankinds resolve and mankind eventually exterminating all other intelligent spieces (except the Xeelee) and controlling the galaxy.

There is also the idea that if a civ grows large enough and is colonlising, eventually the colonization wave will sweep by as fast as light itself. :tiphat:

 

[Ark]

There is also the idea that if a civ grows large enough and is colonlising, eventually the colonization wave will sweep by as fast as light itself. :tiphat:

Light speed bubbles, yeah. Assuming exponential population growth continues unabated, the leading front of a colonization bubble is mathematically doomed to accelerate to light speed. Assuming light speed is an unbreakable speed limit, that causes population pressures to mount to the point of collapse. Theoretically the Milky Way could be full of these bubbles and we'd never know about it.

I agree with Hawking on this. Odds are any alien civilization capable of picking up our transmissions and traveling here in response (and in a reasonable amount of time) would be capable of wholesale exterminating us. If we're going to make contact with aliens, I'd rather we do it on OUR terms instead of trying to negotiate when a fleet of flying saucers appears in orbit or the bugs start launching meteors at us.

 

[T.Neo]

If they could travel to Earth, they could certainly destroy the entire ecosystem. Whether they would want to is a different matter.

Making first contact on our terms, well, we're a few decades to centuries from doing that...

And meteors are so atomic age. Interstellar empires use RKKVs...

 

[willy88]

Perhaps the aliens would try to avoid us, in order to prevent the same kind of disaster that happened with Native Americans, for example.

 

[ex-orbinaut]

Old story...

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/36

 

[T.Neo]

Perhaps the aliens would try to avoid us, in order to prevent the same kind of disaster that happened with Native Americans, for example.

So... wait, the aliens would avoid us, so that we wouldn't attack them?

Since when did Europe get overrun by Native Americans?

 

[Ghostrider]

Couldn't we just invoke the Shadow Proclamation?

 

[T.Neo]

No.