Our extinction could be a consequence of them building, say, an interstellar bypass. Or they may not have any reason to invade. They could completely ignore us, as we might be pretty inconsequential. No reason to spend a lot of resources exterminating exofauna that can hardly make it to its moon.
It all assumes that there are alien civilizations more capable than us. Also, saying that we only have a single sample to work with is not an exercise in bullshit, it's a fact. We have a single example to compare all of our ideas to, so assuming that anything else out there is completely and totally foreign to anything we have ever seen is itself an exercise in bullshit, and it's a bigger stretch than anything I have said about this topic. In addition, why does everyone assume that finding a clever way around the speed of light means that the aliens will have every other awesome technological innovation you can imagine? Isn't it possible that you can be really good at doing one thing, and not others? What about nations on Earth? There are a couple of third world countries with nuclear weapons, who don't have half of the military technology that the United States and European, first world countries have. Possessing a single, highly advanced piece of technology does not mean that you automatically are capable of doing everything else that you can imagine.
I meant that trying to determine anything about an unknown population using only a sample of one is futile. Literally, it won't work. Your chance of error is virtually 100%. Being 100% wrong and talking like you know what you're talking about– sounds pretty bullshit to me. There are simply too many unknowns. The assumption that intelligent, spacefaring life out there is hominid like is just as much of a stretch, or more of a stretch, than assuming otherwise. Unless we only define intelligent life as hominid, in which case we're excluding all the possibilities that intelligent life evolved different than we did, then there are many more possibilities that life isn't hominid. Finding your way around traveling very long distances in a short period of time would be an incredible trick. I imagine it would open up all sorts of possibilities. Furthermore, if you assume the aliens are like us in behavior, then they are probably like us in technological development and how they develop tech. Also, one would assume the development of being able to move so very quickly would lead to nonlinear growth in other fields, just as the advent of computers and the information age have fueled the past half century's exponential growth. Also, those third world nations bought most of their nuclear technology from richer ones. There's also already the knowledge out there of how to build a nuclear reactor. They know it can be done and how to do it. Lastly, the militaristic returns to building atomics is far higher than investing in any other tech. Nukes are the be all end all weapon. Why fuck around designing a better tank when you can obliterate every major city of the US with only a handful of bombs?
you would expect that a alien nation that has the technology to move between the stars gave some nice gadgets. But what would their interest be in our world. Any nation that has FTL engines must also gave the technology to terraform planets. Our planet is rather big as has a atmosphere that is large enof to hinder any mining. All this planet has got are his inhabitants so why would they bother to even come when they wan't to destroy us. IF they were really that antisocial they could yust simple invade the solarsystem and terraform mars or venus while making a buck from the mining of the asteroid belt.
Cause they got this purpose in life to destroy all life in their way, so that other civilization tremble in fear of the upcoming doom. The fear of civilizations give strength to the alien nation to trash some more civilizations.
Who would be left to fear when all others are death? Afther all skeletons can only grin at you. Killing for fun doesn't seem to be a productive ID.
oohh...thats no problem. They will seed a new civilization, make sure that civilization develops to a certain point and then attack all the beings. To feed on fear.
well this conversation has maked me hunger I will have a sandwich with fear on it, and drink a nice cup of fear at that bar wich I will use my jetengine fueled on fear to get there... Doesn't wreally work does it If they would look verry fearsome with big horns and tails and fire coming out of their mouths they would still gave to go to work to next day, because engines don't fix themselfs, imagen something like that with a tie and a college asking him how his weekend was. Doesn't wreally work for me, the alien would almost have to have god like abilities before ge can do something like that
Gods they are. In Gods that we believe in, the promised heaven and hell that comes swiftly as fire. And we were made to go through natural cycle and made to believe: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! And as the civilization expanded so came the day of justice and all are sinners, and all fell to "GODS"
Ok...ok...there were peaciful aliens. So they came and send robots before them to explore the civilizations. Our civilization saw the probe and thought it was a nuke attack by one of the nations, so we nuked ourselves, and there it goes aliens get to meet the shadows of our vaporized bodies.
I postulate that the highest form of intelligence is humour. Therefore an advanced alien species will exhibit excessive amounts of humour during an invasion. I suggest the following scenarios: 1. they plant the idea in human minds that there is something like god. 2. they give some people religious visions uon which they must act. 3. they send down to earth a man that claims to be the Son of God.
a extremly creepy ID. Especially when it was only recentley imagen yourself walking on such a world in a radiation suite at the beginning of a nuclear winter.
I think roman answered most of your point. Well, yes, thats the fun of it. An alien civilisation that is less capable than Humanity 2006 will have an extremely hard time getting to us. We're basically throwing ideas around just now. Roman and I just objected to your comment of because it is erroneous no matter what we are trying to say here. I dont see how we are assuming that anything out there will be completely and totally foreign, just different, and ultimately, we do not know exactly how different. Its fun to speculate, but making statements about the technological levels of anything out there is silly, when we only have a sample of one. That is correct. However, assuming that the laws of physics are the same everywhere in this universe, said aliens will have had to overcome very similar problems to ourselves in order to have half a chance at an FTL drive. This means that there is a chance they will have very good tech on all levels. Trying to compare them to Earthbound countries misses the point, because as Roman said, teh Earthbound countries can borrow or steal technology off other ones. Moreover, specialisation by country is a relatively new thing, and overall as a species we are still not very specialised. Also, consider the history of technology. It took the development of a whole set of iron alloys, chepa ways of producing them, from the mine to the blast furnace, in order to make the industrial revolution and steam engines possible. Hero had what was a precursor of the steam engine in ancient Greece. However their metallurgical (and other materials) limitations mean the idea could not be taken any further. But by the time you have steel, rubber, and all the rest of it, you can go further. Technology builds upon itself. Your computer relies upon and is descended from a whole host of processes from the past 50 years. Pushing computers onwards requires advances in everything from XRD to water purification to lasers to furnace insulation. Therefore, working from our base of ourselves, it seems likely that an alien civilisation that can go faster than light can do a whole host of interesting things. Note that I am not saying they definitely will, or must be able to, and nor am I saying that we are the most technologically advanced civilisation in the universe. I am saying that, assuming the physical laws are the same across the universe, an alien civ will have had to overcome some simlar technological problems in order to get an FTL drive. I am unwilling to extrapolate necessary technological advances and their relationship to teh actual alien society. And of course for all we know, there might be aliens with organic built in FTL drives....
If you are making an assessment of the threat of alien invasion, then you have to consider the worst-case scenario. Points to consider that suggest that there is no threat; There is no convincing evidence of any alien civilisation in the vicinity of Earth. Using the line of reasoning suggested by Enrico Fermi, if an alien civilisation existed in our galaxy, it would have long ago explored and colonised the worlds of our galaxy in something like an exponential fashion. Even if such a civilisation had come to Earth and gone in the distant past, there would be almost certainly some palaeontological/archaeological evidence of their visits. There is none. Points to consider that suggest there may be a threat; There is quite a lot of unconvincing or poor quality evidence for an alien civilisation in the vicinity of Earth (the so-called UFO phenomenon, which seems unlikely to have any connection to real alien species, but might qualify as a potential threat if there is any truth at all involved) , so the possibility that an alien invasion is possible should at least be considered. How likely is it that another intelligent species has emerged anywhere near our solar system? There are very many sun-like stars in our galaxy, some or many of which are a few billion years older than our own star. This suggests that it is possible that there are Earth-like planets in our galaxy orbiting some of those stars, and some of them would be as old or older than our own planet. There is a non-zero chance therefore that earth-like worlds as old as, or older than our world exist in our galaxy, worlds which have had the same opportunity as our own for the development of life; there is a smaller, but still non-zero chance that any of those planets might hold intelligent life, perhaps with a technological civilisation. If so, then that technological civilisation may have existed for a shorter period than our own, or approximately the same length of time; but if they exist at all, they are much more likely to have existed for a much longer time than our own civilisation. This would not be true if we assume that all technological civilisations necessarily die out or destroy themselves after a few hundred years or so; in which case we may well be in the median age range of such civilisations. In fact this possibility is entirely consistent with the so-called Doomsday Argument of Brandon Carter; reference here if you are interested. But if annihilation of technological civilisations is not automatic, then there is a greater possibility that any technological civilisation we may encounter would have a longer history than our own; and there is a non-zero possibility that such a civilisation could be thousands, or millions, or billions of years older than our own. At this moment in our own history our technology is changing and developing quite rapidly; it is not possible to know if this will continue, or if such a rate of change will be reflected in other, alien civilisations, but there is a non-zero chance that an older civilisation than our own will have technology in advance of our own, possibly far in advance. So there is an apparently very small, but non-zero, possibility that we may encounter aliens with technology which is arbitrarily in advance of our own. The very fact that a hypothetical alien race which has travelled to our system may indicate that they do have such advanced technology. Such an arbitrarily advanced race could be very dangerous, and would be a real threat. In no way could we assume that they were friendly or peaceful. Other possibilities include the chance that they are only advanced in a single technological direction; they might have interstellar drives but use poison arrows for warfare, for instance. Or they may have perfected the interstellar drive millions of years ago, but since evolved into a post-intelligent state, and lost all intelligent behaviour. But without detailed information on their characteristics, we couln’t know for sure.
Unlikely, but perhaps just about possible. I expect I could concoct a rationale for this scenario (although Stephen Baxter has beaten me to it, in his book Ring if I recall correctly).
If they have FTL engines they could simply speed up and crash into the planet they don't like. They could even dip their ship in poison. Basicley what I'm trying to say is that eventuelly evrything can be used as a weapon
Unlikly but not inpossible. Perhaps some older aliens that are tyred of having to shave themselfs with a multi hyper super the luxe razors that has so much virtual memory that it demands it's own room and lissins to hip hop all day long. Could come to earth for or more simple lifestyle.
