Dangerous Illegal Aliens

[Joe Guy]

source

April 25, 2010
Don’t talk to aliens, warns Stephen Hawking

THE aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact.

The suggestions come in a new documentary series in which Hawking, one of the world’s leading scientists, will set out his latest thinking on some of the universe’s greatest mysteries.

Alien life, he will suggest, is almost certain to exist in many other parts of the universe: not just in planets, but perhaps in the centre of stars or even floating in interplanetary space.

Hawking’s logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved.

“To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational,” he said. “The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.”

The answer, he suggests, is that most of it will be the equivalent of microbes or simple animals — the sort of life that has dominated Earth for most of its history.

One scene in his documentary for the Discovery Channel shows herds of two-legged herbivores browsing on an alien cliff-face where they are picked off by flying, yellow lizard-like predators. Another shows glowing fluorescent aquatic animals forming vast shoals in the oceans thought to underlie the thick ice coating Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter.

Such scenes are speculative, but Hawking uses them to lead on to a serious point: that a few life forms could be intelligent and pose a threat. Hawking believes that contact with such a species could be devastating for humanity.

He suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.”

He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

The completion of the documentary marks a triumph for Hawking, now 68, who is paralysed by motor neurone disease and has very limited powers of communication. The project took him and his producers three years, during which he insisted on rewriting large chunks of the script and checking the filming.

John Smithson, executive producer for Discovery, said: “He wanted to make a programme that was entertaining for a general audience as well as scientific and that’s a tough job, given the complexity of the ideas involved.”

Hawking has suggested the possibility of alien life before but his views have been clarified by a series of scientific breakthroughs, such as the discovery, since 1995, of more than 450 planets orbiting distant stars, showing that planets are a common phenomenon.

So far, all the new planets found have been far larger than Earth, but only because the telescopes used to detect them are not sensitive enough to detect Earth-sized bodies at such distances.

Another breakthrough is the discovery that life on Earth has proven able to colonise its most extreme environments. If life can survive and evolve there, scientists reason, then perhaps nowhere is out of bounds.

Hawking’s belief in aliens places him in good scientific company. In his recent Wonders of the Solar System BBC series, Professor Brian Cox backed the idea, too, suggesting Mars, Europa and Titan, a moon of Saturn, as likely places to look.

Similarly, Lord Rees, the astronomer royal, warned in a lecture earlier this year that aliens might prove to be beyond human understanding.

“I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms we can’t conceive,” he said. “Just as a chimpanzee can’t understand quantum theory, it could be there are aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains.”

Stephen Hawking's Universe begins on the Discovery Channel on Sunday May 9 at 9pm

[Gob]

He's got a point.

Any aliens capable of traveling the enormous distances required would be technologically far advanced of us, not the sort of people you want to piss off.

[Grim Reaper]

I kind of like the point made in the short story, First Contact by Murray Leinster. Basically, any alien species we meet, we would have to be absolutely certain that the other species could not locate our home planet. And of course, they would want to do the same. Neither side would be able to set up much of a framework for trust based on one encounter, so they would have to weigh the odds of the other species being trustworthy or not with the rest their species being the price if they're wrong.

[Anglyn]

Sadly, he's right. If we have ourselves to go by, Aliens would at worst slaughter everyone for fun and at best wipe us out with alien diseases.

[Big RR]

He's got a point.

Any aliens capable of traveling the enormous distances required would be technologically far advanced of us, not the sort of people you want to piss off.

If they were that smart, i doubt they'd come here. Resources? We're using them as fast as we can, and seeking to spoil what we can't use fast enough.

[Miles]

He suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.”

Sounds like a good plot for a movie, hint:Independence Day.

[Sue U]

The idea of contacting extra-terrestrial life in any meaningful way is ludicrous. While I do not doubt that conditions giving rise to life may exist elsewhere in the universe, the problems of time and distance between such points makes the likelihood of contact virtually nonexistent. We as a species have only been around about 250,000 years. Measure that against the 14 billion years the universe has existed. The entire history of dinosaurs, from their first appearance to their total extinction, played out over only 180 million years. Life forms elsewhere in the universe likely occurred so long in the past -- or will occur so far in the future -- as to be completely out of our time zone, in the same way that dinosaurs came and went 65 million years before we ever even got out of the trees. Add to this the colossal distances between stars -- even in our own galaxy -- and the technology necessary for interstellar transport. To any being capable of such travel, we would be of no more interest than a biological specimen. And of course, why would any being come to this particular rock in the first place, out of all the billions of others more readily available? The anthropocentric fantasies of sci-fi writers are just silly.

[Grim Reaper]

And of course, why would any being come to this particular rock in the first place, out of all the billions of others more readily available? The anthropocentric fantasies of sci-fi writers are just silly.

This is something else Murray Leinster covered in a rather interesting way. While aliens showing up randomly in our backyard is a bit far fetched, his scenario has two teams of explorers bumping into each other while investigating the Crab Nebula.

[tyro]

Well, we have pretty much jumped up and down and waved while shouting, “Over here!”

We even sent out a probe that was intended to be taken in by aliens.

On top of that, our radio and TV waves have been going out into space for some years.

If aliens were to show up, it wouldn’t be a chance discovery on their part.

[Sue U]

On top of that, our radio and TV waves have been going out into space for some years.

Proving to any alien receiving them that no intelligent life exists on Earth.

[Aard Vark]

I was watching Futurama withthe kids and the Aliens turn upin the year 4000 wanting to know how the last episode of Allie Mc Beal ended after the transmitions was stopped in the year2005 before the end of the show.

Just make you think what an Alien would think of our race if they were watching Big Brother or Morning talk shows?
The Aliens might think it a mercy killing

[Sub Human]

I believe a civilization capable of mounting the investment of time, and the cost of travel between the stars must already have more resources at their disposal than could be found on earth.

Some credible alien invasion/exploitation scenarios that resonate are the ones in Singularity Sky and Infected.

Singularity Sky proposes an invasion by an incredibly advanced cloud of posthuman intelligence on a less advanced colony of humans who have held back their own technological advances. The "Festival" comes to their world and really causes havoc by providing whatever is asked for in exchange for "stories, art and other entertainment" I suspect that stories etc. might be resources that an alien culture cannot get from asteroids or suns. I for one welcome our bored overlords.

Infected proposes a cheap bootstrap approach to invasion that gets around the huge costs. The alien culture sends a tiny seed-like probe that takes advantage of organisms, it seeks advanced tool-users and works to co-opt them as tools. They are then used to build a transport device like a Star-Gate. Billions of these small cheap seeds are sent galaxy wide knowing that only a tiny fraction will hit a suitable host world and succeed. Of course if you send enough. . . The reason isn't to obtain the resources of earth, but to eliminate a possible threat. If you are an ancient alien civilization, who can devise such a thing, you recognize that a similar thing might be used at some point against you. Therefore if you are paranoid and any really old civilization might very well be, you better get there first and make the potentially threatening civilization over into a friendly one before they do this to you. Don't we seek to do the same in the Middle East?

I don't condone it I just remark on it. We perceive a threat in an Iranian Nuke. We seek to endorse Iranian reform into a more Western Style Democracy in order to feel safe about Iranian advances in weapons. Or we will crush them.

We are the aliens to so many, we should be better representatives than Columbus or Genghiz Khan.

[Sue U]

I for one welcome our bored overlords.

Today we are all alien invaders.

[tyro]

And maybe the aliens would regard the planet Earth as a navigational hazard and demolish it.

[Gob]

I believe a civilization capable of mounting the investment of time, and the cost of travel between the stars must already have more resources at their disposal than could be found on earth.

We'd be frogs in a jar, flies under a microscope, ants in an ant farm, to them then.

Would we even be far enough up the evolutionary scale to warrant care?

And maybe the aliens would regard the planet Earth as a navigational hazard and demolish it.

HHGTTG?

[loCAtek]

Well, we have pretty much jumped up and down and waved while shouting, “Over here!”

We even sent out a probe that was intended to be taken in by aliens.

On top of that, our radio and TV waves have been going out into space for some years.

If aliens were to show up, it wouldn’t be a chance discovery on their part.

Actually, radio and TV waves, at most are discernible from the edge of our solar system, or maybe for a few light years but they break up like other radiation in deep space.

Another possible scenario for a space-faring race that is so technologically superior is to help in the advancement or protection of sentience in the universe since it is so rare. Such as in the Arthur C. Clarke works.

[tyro]

Actually, radio and TV waves, at most are discernible from the edge of our solar system, or maybe for a few light years but they break up like other radiation in deep space.

Wouldn’t that work in both directions? And if so, then what is the point of SETI




Yes Gob, but more originally, the Loony Tunes with Martin the Martian.

[Gob]

Wouldn’t that work in both directions? And if so, then what is the point of SETI

We watch TV sitting on ours

[Anglyn]

I am V-ger......

[loCAtek]

Actually, radio and TV waves, at most are discernible from the edge of our solar system, or maybe for a few light years but they break up like other radiation in deep space.

Wouldn’t that work in both directions? And if so, then what is the point of SETI

They check for more than just radio transmissions.