Theories about aliens

[katipunero]

And I still believe that any civilization advanced enough to actually master interstellar travel HAS NO BLOODY NEED to conquer/colonize Earth. If anything, this is just a projection of human psychology - we're scared ***less that someone will do to us what we've done to each other for the past 200,000 years, without actually considering whether something like that would even be economical for the would-be colonizers.

i would hope so too. the universe is big enough for interplanetary beings to co-exist peacefully. that, unless we're talking about important, sought-after and limited life sustaining resources like air or water which we have in abundance but the other might have a few of. and hence, and quite possibly, their adventitious random trek to sweep the universe for resources and eliminate those who stand in the way.

besides, ants and other invasive species (not human) have been known to pester weaklings for dominance and upset an otherwise balanced ecology. in this sense colonization is not an exclusive human trait of hubris. so i think it would be wise to take the safe stance that aliens have a hostile agenda in mind regardless of the fact that advanced beings might have evolved and became the way they are by mastering diplomacy and peace.

 

[warpus]

Why would we do that, if there was no profit in it?

Our population continues to grow and our resources continue to dwindle. A new ice-free continent, if discovered, would be colonized in a second.

For a civilization capable of interstellar travel, it will be many times easier to just find a suitable lifeless planet and terraform and colonize it instead of organizing a costly expedition to a far away planet whose ecology is most likely totally incompatible with theirs and whose inhabitants might resist being colonized.

Perhaps.. but you are making a lot of assumptions. You'd think that we'd be too far for any colonization effort, but.. if these guys manage to make their way here to check us out, you've got to think they'd be able to bring more of their goes over as well.

EDIT: Even better - suppose we are contacted by a methane-based lifeforms from Titan. Will we spend trillions of dollars to build a space fleet to get to them and nuke them, just to have Titan for ourselves? Of course we won't. We might send explorers to contact them and see what we can learn from them. We'd study them, because they'd be worth much more alive and well than dead.

That's true. I'm still very uneasy about hyperintelligent alien beings discovering us. We're pretty annoying and self-destructive creatures.

 

[Quackers]

If you could describe the human race in two words would you really use "annoying" and the phase "self destructive creatures". Thats quite pessimistic of you.
We are also capable of love a whole spectrum of other emotions, kindness, generosity, charity; we have our faults but we do have many more virtues IMO.

 

[warpus]

If you could describe the human race in two words would you really use "annoying" and the phase "self destructive creatures". Thats quite pessimistic of you.
We are also capable of love a whole spectrum of other emotions, kindness, generosity, charity; we have our faults but we do have many more virtues IMO.

We are capable of a lot of good stuff, like hugs and kisses, but look at what we're doing to this planet. An unbiased outside observer would be right in categorizing us as an unwanted pest.

We're greedy, we exploit resources without considering the impact on the planet, go in, take what we want, and leave. We kinda suck in that regard..

 

[Cutlass]

Why would we do that, if there was no profit in it?

For a civilization capable of interstellar travel, it will be many times easier to just find a suitable lifeless planet and terraform and colonize it instead of organizing a costly expedition to a far away planet whose ecology is most likely totally incompatible with theirs and whose inhabitants might resist being colonized.

So, if some sort of Antartican ice-ants living kilometres deep under the ice sheet contacted us, would we send drilling teams to get to them and wipe them out, just so that we can occupy their... um, ice caves? Really?

EDIT: Even better - suppose we are contacted by a methane-based lifeforms from Titan. Will we spend trillions of dollars to build a space fleet to get to them and nuke them, just to have Titan for ourselves? Of course we won't. We might send explorers to contact them and see what we can learn from them. We'd study them, because they'd be worth much more alive and well than dead.

Teraforming a planet will never be as easy or as cheap as taking a habital planet and removing the current inhabitants.

 

[Winner]

Perhaps.. but you are making a lot of assumptions. You'd think that we'd be too far for any colonization effort, but.. if these guys manage to make their way here to check us out, you've got to think they'd be able to bring more of their goes over as well.

I am making reasonable assumptions based on real-world physics of space travel. It's the notion of interstellar imperialism that's based on nothing but people's fears.

That's true. I'm still very uneasy about hyperintelligent alien beings discovering us. We're pretty annoying and self-destructive creatures.

Well, of course, that's natural. I am not saying we should advertise our presence to the rest of the universe, if only not to show them that we're idiots who are about to wipe themselves out without any help from outside. What I am saying is that there is no reason to assume the aliens would even be interested in "conquering" us.

Teraforming a planet will never be as easy or as cheap as taking a habital planet and removing the current inhabitants.

Maybe if the two planets were in the same solar system, this could be true. But since that's clearly not the case with Earth, the argument is moot.

The difficulties of interstellar travel make terraforming look very easy in comparison. And even if interstellar travel was easy for them, it would still make more sense to just colonize empty solar systems. Earth is a planet with a biosphere that's most likely incompatible with the alien biosphere in so many ways it would take pages to list them all. It's not like they could land, sow crops and make themselves at home, as Europeans did in America.

The first deep breath on Earth would probably kill them just as surely as if the atmosphere was made of ammonia (or who knows, perhaps they'd prefer ammonia) - think of the allergies alone. Adapting a totally alien biosphere to them would involve more effort than terraforming a dead planet, where you can start from scratch and control what kind of lifeforms you introduce, what the air pressure will be, how much water you'll bring, etc.

So, why bother taking something that's a) already occupied; b) not that useful; c) too far? And that's supposing the aliens are amoral.

 

[Leonel]

I'd like to think that human's were genetic experimentation to make a slave race for their space mines and that many of our health problems are really safety devices to ensure that if we did escape that we wouldn't survive for very long left to our own devices and that the alien's didn't anticipate how well developed our brains were until there was eventually a slave revolt or something.

But I certainly don't believe it!

 

[NetGear]

If we turn out to be alien in origin yes. Eitherway, not likely.

 

[El_Machinae]

I think your economics are incorrect, Winner. The cheapest option, by orders of magnitude, is to colonise their own system, even if it involves terraforming. But we're not discussing that.

Additionally, you might be anthropomorphising intent, which doesn't need to happen. The only motivation you can predict from evolution is spreading, because life drives itself to spread.

However, terraforming a planet would require either a lot of time or a lot of equipment. The cost of 'conquering' a planet is much, much lower than that. Killing a species is a lot easier & quicker than changing the balance of gases in the planet. Additionally, there's a lot of embedded energy in a planet that already has life.

The cost of traveling between stars is virtually the same whether you're going far or going close. The costs are time, acceleration, and deceleration. A 'near' star is just as easy to reach (within the same order of magnitude) as a 'far' star. A 'far' star that has life will be colonisable at a much lower initial cost than a 'near' star that needs to be terraformed.

Added to the benefits of embedded energy in a living planet, a living planet also has a great deal more scientific potential. The main 'export' of a colonised planet is information, because it can be returned to the investing body at a much cheaper price than any material assets. The home planet will benefit more from investigating a living planet than a dead one.

So, a living planet has a lower initial investment, a higher potential return. The offset is distance, which is better measured in time. You cannot be guaranteed that a living extrasolar civilization is willing to do the same time-value of investment we are, given that our valuing of time-value has biologically instinctive roots.

 

[Quackers]

We are capable of a lot of good stuff, like hugs and kisses, but look at what we're doing to this planet. An unbiased outside observer would be right in categorizing us as an unwanted pest.

We're greedy, we exploit resources without considering the impact on the planet, go in, take what we want, and leave. We kinda suck in that regard..

We are getting better though. We managed to fix the hole in the ozone layer (i'm not a scientist so laugh all you want ). Save some species from extinction, replant trees we use (it's difficult to not find a carton without the words "sourced from a sustainable forest" anymore), governments around the globe subsidise "green" energy technologys, we're working on international solutions to AGW (if one believes in it ofc ) obviously we cannot reduce CO2 emissions to 0 as we will be plunged into the Stone age! Yet, there is a lot of good which your ignoring.

 

[warpus]

Well, of course, that's natural. I am not saying we should advertise our presence to the rest of the universe, if only not to show them that we're idiots who are about to wipe themselves out without any help from outside. What I am saying is that there is no reason to assume the aliens would even be interested in "conquering" us.

I wasn't picturing a conquest per se.. It doesn't have to be a conquest at all. It could be as simple as them showing up, and a couple generations later.. the planet not being ours anymore. That's what generally happens when 2 civilizations who aren't technological equals meet.

 

[Winner]

I think your economics are incorrect, Winner. The cheapest option, by orders of magnitude, is to colonise their own system, even if it involves terraforming. But we're not discussing that.

That goes without saying.

Additionally, you might be anthropomorphising intent, which doesn't need to happen. The only motivation you can predict from evolution is spreading, because life drives itself to spread.

Intelligent life is not mindless life that spreads by accident. Especially if this spreading involves interstellar travel, which in turn involves a lot of planning, which suggests intent. I am talking about the economics of it, and that should be universal. So unless the aliens are driven by something else (like a religious need to wipe out all other life in the universe, or something equally irrational), I see little reason to believe they'd be even interested in threatening us., especially since we are obviously no threat to them.

However, terraforming a planet would require either a lot of time or a lot of equipment. The cost of 'conquering' a planet is much, much lower than that. Killing a species is a lot easier & quicker than changing the balance of gases in the planet. Additionally, there's a lot of embedded energy in a planet that already has life.

I disagree. My point which I made in this thread is that a planet with a completely independent evolutionary history to the one their species came from will be as unsuitable for their needs as any other (assuming they still depend on their biological bodies). Adapting a living planet would actually probably be harder that terraforming a dead planet which has most of the essentials. The question is then, why would they even consider doing it?

The cost of traveling between stars is virtually the same whether you're going far or going close. The costs are time, acceleration, and deceleration. A 'near' star is just as easy to reach (within the same order of magnitude) as a 'far' star. A 'far' star that has life will be colonisable at a much lower initial cost than a 'near' star that needs to be terraformed.

Time is of the essence, unless the species in question perceives time very differently from us, and the very energy requirements of interstellar travel make transport of large masses of anything impractical.

Added to the benefits of embedded energy in a living planet, a living planet also has a great deal more scientific potential. The main 'export' of a colonised planet is information, because it can be returned to the investing body at a much cheaper price than any material assets. The home planet will benefit more from investigating a living planet than a dead one.

Study and exploration =/= conquest and colonization. And what's that mysterious "embedded energy", again?

So, a living planet has a lower initial investment, a higher potential return. The offset is distance, which is better measured in time. You cannot be guaranteed that a living extrasolar civilization is willing to do the same time-value of investment we are, given that our valuing of time-value has biologically instinctive roots.

You still didn't make a convincing case why would an alien civilization be interested in conquering/colonizing Earth.

If information is the currency they're interested in, it would be much easier for them to obtain it through trade and cooperation rather than conquest. Or, if communication with us turns out to be impractical, they can simply gather what information they need (and there is no reason to expect they wouldn't be interested in us, since we are part of the environment) through other means, again without doing anything as wasteful and disruptive as trying to wipe us out.

All things considered, my assertion is rather comforting - even if we meet someone who's millions of years ahead of us (literally), there is little reason to expect they would be hostile.

---

I wasn't picturing a conquest per se.. It doesn't have to be a conquest at all. It could be as simple as them showing up, and a couple generations later.. the planet not being ours anymore. That's what generally happens when 2 civilizations who aren't technological equals meet.

Two human civilizations. Don't extrapolate our history too much.

 

[warpus]

Two human civilizations. Don't extrapolate our history too much.

If humans can't get along with other humans, what makes you think we can get along with aliens? Our cultures are going to be so incredibly different that we won't even know where to begin hating them...

Either way I think we should be more careful about alerting the Universe of our existence, mostly because as a civilization we are still an infant. Who knows what's out there.. Sure, the question "Are we alone?" is important, but there are other ways of finding out... and maybe we should just forget about the question for now anyway? We'll figure it out eventually when the time is right (or wrong). And chances are that we're going to find non-intelligent extraterrestial life first.. and I'm not talking about an alien idiot but bacteria or something.

I guess that was a bit of a rant, but I have my reservations about running into intelligent life that isn't from this planet. It could be anything.. it could even be republican.

 

[warpus]

We are getting better though. We managed to fix the hole in the ozone layer (i'm not a scientist so laugh all you want ). Save some species from extinction, replant trees we use (it's difficult to not find a carton without the words "sourced from a sustainable forest" anymore), governments around the globe subsidise "green" energy technologys, we're working on international solutions to AGW (if one believes in it ofc ) obviously we cannot reduce CO2 emissions to 0 as we will be plunged into the Stone age! Yet, there is a lot of good which your ignoring.

Yeah, we did some good stuff, but we continue to do a lot of bad stuff. If a guy comes in your room and craps all over the walls, is it any consolation that he lit a stick of incense and sang a song?

 

[Quackers]

Your analogy doesn't fit. The guy craps all over the walls which is still oozing and seeping into the wallpaper lol): but he is on all 4s scrubbing it clean to the limits of governments willingness to tackle it
Anyway, if we just tried to eradicate all CO2 emissions (and not even get around to saving the pandas!!) - human civlisation will..suffer..immensely. Yet, if thats what you need to do to clear your guilty conscience, go canvass for it

 

[Cutlass]

Maybe if the two planets were in the same solar system, this could be true. But since that's clearly not the case with Earth, the argument is moot.

The difficulties of interstellar travel make terraforming look very easy in comparison. And even if interstellar travel was easy for them, it would still make more sense to just colonize empty solar systems. Earth is a planet with a biosphere that's most likely incompatible with the alien biosphere in so many ways it would take pages to list them all. It's not like they could land, sow crops and make themselves at home, as Europeans did in America.

The first deep breath on Earth would probably kill them just as surely as if the atmosphere was made of ammonia (or who knows, perhaps they'd prefer ammonia) - think of the allergies alone. Adapting a totally alien biosphere to them would involve more effort than terraforming a dead planet, where you can start from scratch and control what kind of lifeforms you introduce, what the air pressure will be, how much water you'll bring, etc.

So, why bother taking something that's a) already occupied; b) not that useful; c) too far? And that's supposing the aliens are amoral.

Ironically, to me it appears that the problems of interstellar travel pale to triviality compared to the problems of terraforming a planet.

 

[El_Machinae]

Intelligent life is not mindless life that spreads by accident. Especially if this spreading involves interstellar travel, which in turn involves a lot of planning, which suggests intent. I am talking about the economics of it, and that should be universal. So unless the aliens are driven by something else (like a religious need to wipe out all other life in the universe, or something equally irrational), I see little reason to believe they'd be even interested in threatening us., especially since we are obviously no threat to them.

This is anthropomorphising intent on your part. Like I said, the only thing you can predict regarding life is that it is driven to spread.

I disagree. My point which I made in this thread is that a planet with a completely independent evolutionary history to the one their species came from will be as unsuitable for their needs as any other (assuming they still depend on their biological bodies). Adapting a living planet would actually probably be harder that terraforming a dead planet which has most of the essentials. The question is then, why would they even consider doing it?

A dead planet is more expensive, because there's less embedded energy. A living planet has accumulated biomass due to endothermic properties. It's easier to generate an atmosphere from an atmosphere that can be utilized for energy than one that cannot latently be utilized as an energy source.

Time is of the essence, unless the species in question perceives time very differently from us, and the very energy requirements of interstellar travel make transport of large masses of anything impractical.

Why is 'time of the essence'? The cost of spreading life is the initial outlay. That's the investment. There's a minimum investment required to bud an interstellar colony. The time to which the interstellar colony returns an investment only matters as an opportunity cost to the original investment. That's even IF the budding of an interstellar colony is due to a cost analysis that requires a return on investment.

You still didn't make a convincing case why would an alien civilization be interested in conquering/colonizing Earth.

Again, because it's the nature of life to spread. The biological imperative is the only real thing you can predict in an interstellar species without anthropomorphising.

If information is the currency they're interested in, it would be much easier for them to obtain it through trade and cooperation rather than conquest. Or, if communication with us turns out to be impractical, they can simply gather what information they need (and there is no reason to expect they wouldn't be interested in us, since we are part of the environment) through other means, again without doing anything as wasteful and disruptive as trying to wipe us out.

The information is a bonus, a perk. So is the fact that our biosphere has an atmosphere available for exothermic reactions. If an intelligent species greatly values 'acquiring information' over 'spreading', then yes, we have less to worry about with regards to conquest. But even that's not guaranteed. It depends on what information they value. If we're causing extinctions at 1000x the 'natural' extinction rates, then we're ruining a lot of ecological data each year.

All things considered, my assertion is rather comforting - even if we meet someone who's millions of years ahead of us (literally), there is little reason to expect they would be hostile.

I disagree. The only reason why they wouldn't be hostile is if they value our presence more than anything else we are fond of. As soon as they want anything else (due to whatever intellectual or biological imperative), it's game over. That's an awfully long bet. What you're doing is stating that *you* cannot imagine a motive. The problem is that *I* can imagine several motives.

Like I said, the only real variable is their intrinsic time-value of investment. And that is something that's determined through biological instinct via evolution.

 

[Berzerker]

a 4500 year old Sumerian depiction of our solar system...

http://www.thelivingmoon.com/42stargate/03files/Sumerian_Astronomy.html

The Enuma Elish describes the creation of those 12 "gods" with 6 formed in 3 pairs.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Cosmology-of-incas.gif

Compare the two groups of celestial bodies joined by the ellipse (the Inca said the ellipse was the creator) with the hands of the Nazca monkey.

http://penn.museum/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/nazca-lines.jpg

The Toltec also believed in "9 Lords of the Night/Underworld" and 13 levels in Heaven, they share a similar cosmology. Chichen Itza has 9 steps with a serpent ascending and descending the staircase on the equinoxes, the architecture results in a serpent with 7 humps and 6 unhumps All 3 numbers are key to their beliefs, 7 (the # of Queztalcoatl), 9 Lords on the Underworld, and 13 levels of Heaven with the creator occupying 2 levels just as depicted in the Incan Genesis. I haven't figured out the Monkey's tail but it could be the orbits of the 4 inner planets with the Monkey representing Heaven, the perihelion of the ellipse joining or separating 9 planets in groups of 4 and 5...

 

[Winner]

If humans can't get along with other humans, what makes you think we can get along with aliens? Our cultures are going to be so incredibly different that we won't even know where to begin hating them...

Because analogies using relations between humans who live on a very tiny speck of dust (in terms of the size of the Universe) are useful only to a limited extent.

Either way I think we should be more careful about alerting the Universe of our existence, mostly because as a civilization we are still an infant.

Agreed. There's not much to advertise anyway.

Ironically, to me it appears that the problems of interstellar travel pale to triviality compared to the problems of terraforming a planet.

Then you don't have enough information

This is anthropomorphising intent on your part. Like I said, the only thing you can predict regarding life is that it is driven to spread.

No, it's not. Just as you can generalize about life, we can make reasonable assumptions about intelligent life.

A dead planet is more expensive, because there's less embedded energy. A living planet has accumulated biomass due to endothermic properties. It's easier to generate an atmosphere from an atmosphere that can be utilized for energy than one that cannot latently be utilized as an energy source.

The "embedded energy" as you keep calling it is irrelevant. We are talking about civilizations that can produce energy outputs orders of magnitude greater than humanity. A little biomass will hardly be important to them, especially since this biomass is of the wrong kind.

Why is 'time of the essence'?

Communication delays, the need to maintain a chronological unity of the civilization, etc.

Again, because it's the nature of life to spread. The biological imperative is the only real thing you can predict in an interstellar species without anthropomorphising.

That idea is... I was going to say "********", but I understand this word is considered offensive in English, so let's replace it by "preposterous". First, you expect a civilization of intelligent beings to behave like a colony of mindless bacteria. Second, you imagine that violent expansion in a Universe that's more than big enough for billions of civilizations is the only way to spread life.

The information is a bonus, a perk. So is the fact that our biosphere has an atmosphere available for exothermic reactions. If an intelligent species greatly values 'acquiring information' over 'spreading', then yes, we have less to worry about with regards to conquest. But even that's not guaranteed. It depends on what information they value. If we're causing extinctions at 1000x the 'natural' extinction rates, then we're ruining a lot of ecological data each year.

I disagree. The only reason why they wouldn't be hostile is if they value our presence more than anything else we are fond of. As soon as they want anything else (due to whatever intellectual or biological imperative), it's game over. That's an awfully long bet. What you're doing is stating that *you* cannot imagine a motive. The problem is that *I* can imagine several motives.

I can imagine plenty of them. What I am saying is that from a simple cost-benefit analysis point of view, interstellar conquest and colonization of other species' planets makes no rational sense. We have nothing that would make it worthwhile.

 

[Marla_Singer]

Well, History is a very long process. If aliens visited planet earth something like 250 million years ago, we could never ever be able to prove it. Considering the universe was created something like 13 billion years ago... anything could have happened.

Maybe even life on earth is from alien origins... As far as I know, we've never been able to emulate the process leading to the synthesis of amino acid and DNA in earth conditions.