Because 2020 was not eventful enough... UFOs

[BrasatoAlBarolo]

I kinda like the Namibian way.

While I was living there we went to the wedding of a relative of a friend of mine (she was Ovambo which is probably important to mention considering how many ethnic groups there are in Namibia). We were there for three days. I thought having a wedding for three days was quite extansive. Then I was informed that this was only the final part of the wedding. The entire festivities had already started three months ealier.

A bit too much, probably. That would scare the aliens. Let's stick to the cow-slaughtering for the first date, shall we?

[Olterin]

I kinda like the Namibian way.

While I was living there we went to the wedding of a relative of a friend of mine (she was Ovambo which is probably important to mention considering how many ethnic groups there are in Namibia). We were there for three days. I thought having a wedding for three days was quite extansive. Then I was informed that this was only the final part of the wedding. The entire festivities had already started three months ealier.

A bit too much, probably. That would scare the aliens. Let's stick to the cow-slaughtering for the first date, shall we?

Rightful reaction of any extraterrestrial visitor (to most of what we do, really): "Absolutely barbaric!"

[Vertigo 7]

While I was living there we went to the wedding of a relative of a friend of mine (she was Ovambo which is probably important to mention considering how many ethnic groups there are in Namibia). We were there for three days. I thought having a wedding for three days was quite extansive. Then I was informed that this was only the final part of the wedding. The entire festivities had already started three months ealier.

A bit too much, probably. That would scare the aliens. Let's stick to the cow-slaughtering for the first date, shall we?

Rightful reaction of any extraterrestrial visitor (to most of what we do, really): "Absolutely barbaric!"

I think they would either be disgusted by us or either show us how they've perfected subjugation.

[Olterin]

A bit too much, probably. That would scare the aliens. Let's stick to the cow-slaughtering for the first date, shall we?

Rightful reaction of any extraterrestrial visitor (to most of what we do, really): "Absolutely barbaric!"

I think they would either be disgusted by us or either show us how they've perfected subjugation.

Disgusted, quite probably so. Showing how they perfected subjugation, maybe not so much - it'd likely be a Kardashev Type 2 civilization, and as such subjugating a planet like ours would be an insignificant feat, both in terms of actual effort they might need and the need they might have for such a measure. Which is not to say that there might be a cultural element to it, but certainly no "need", it'd be far more advantageous to just take our solar system and use our Sun's energy output. We don't go about subjugating ant colonies, do we?

[felter]

Meanwhile Elon Musk says:

Aliens built the pyramids obv

He is needing to stop taking those drugs.

[BrasatoAlBarolo]

We don't go about subjugating ant colonies, do we?

This is the perfect definition of modern capitalism.

[fiksal]

Do you believe that life exists (or has existed) elsewhere in the universe? Are those extraterrestrial drones or military prototypes? Here's what I know: this year has been so crazy that revelations about UFOs do not surprise me. Having alien sightings makes complete sense in the year 2020. Or maybe this is just a distraction, who knows.

I dont believe much of anything, including this.


Regarding the evidence : From what we know so far, we had not found another life at all. No concrete proof of anything was ever presented.
As interesting as those videos are, they still too far. Are we sure we are not watching ball of lightning? That's a pretty freaky occurrence too.

Regarding the location : there's no alien life in our solar system probably at all. (Maybe some bacteria on Europa, but still a fantasy). So, it's a damn long trip to us from anywhere else. Considering that we are probably undetectable to anyone, that's also an improbable one, needle in a haystack sort of thing.

Regarding real aliens: so as they say, there are no aliens until there are aliens. If we were to discover that there are alien organisms, technological ones at that, who have been here for decades, who know precisely how we detect things and learned to hide from that, who came from amazing distances, over a very long time (1000s of years in flight?) just to see us - that'll be incredibly terrible news. This would be creatures who could easily erase us probably.

[euclid]

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” - Arthur C. Clarke.

Cheers Euclid

[mr.WHO]

Regarding real aliens: so as they say, there are no aliens until there are aliens. If we were to discover that there are alien organisms, technological ones at that, who have been here for decades, who know precisely how we detect things and learned to hide from that, who came from amazing distances, over a very long time (1000s of years in flight?) just to see us - that'll be incredibly terrible news. This would be creatures who could easily erase us probably.

It makes absolutely no sence why they would want to erase us. It's like Humanity want to erase lions, because they eat a human from time to time.

There are only TWO special things about Earth that you can't find in abudance in universe:
- Earth biome
- Human civilization

For any technical civilization both are fascinating and if they bother to visit us frequently then it prooves it.

Unless we are at the brink of creating something awful, like galaxy ending self-replicating AI singularity, they have no reason to do any harm to us - not even if we would be a danger to Earth (they probably mapped most of our biome already and somewhere there is a giant floating space ZOO with Earth-section, maybe even bunch of humans who think they are living in medieval world with gods watching over them and saying "see that fence over there? Don't touch it or you will feel pain").

We are yet to colonize Mars and even prove that you can artificially warp space (theoretically FTL warp-drive is doable, but at our current level it would be like Bronze-age civilisation trying to figure out how to build fusion reactor).
We are pretty much contained at the moment and they probably just wired to our internet and sell subscriptions to galactic-netflix.

[fiksal]

Regarding real aliens: so as they say, there are no aliens until there are aliens. If we were to discover that there are alien organisms, technological ones at that, who have been here for decades, who know precisely how we detect things and learned to hide from that, who came from amazing distances, over a very long time (1000s of years in flight?) just to see us - that'll be incredibly terrible news. This would be creatures who could easily erase us probably.

It makes absolutely no sence why they would want to erase us. It's like Humanity want to erase lions, because they eat a human from time to time.

There are only TWO special things about Earth that you can't find in abudance in universe:
- Earth biome
- Human civilization

For any technical civilization both are fascinating and if they bother to visit us frequently then it prooves it.

Unless we are at the brink of creating something awful, like galaxy ending self-replicating AI singularity, they have no reason to do any harm to us - not even if we would be a danger to Earth (they probably mapped most of our biome already and somewhere there is a giant floating space ZOO with Earth-section, maybe even bunch of humans who think they are living in medieval world with gods watching over them and saying "see that fence over there? Don't touch it or you will feel pain").

I specifically said "could" erase us, not that they would, though they might


We tend to think of (non existing) alien races as if they were us. You bring up reasons that would be interesting to a human society, for example. I can not say you are wrong or right, since we've seen no alien life at all.

But keep in mind that the alien life, even "intelligent"[1] and advanced may not be anything like us. They may not live like us, think like us, or like any creature on Earth. They may not understand us or even care to understand us. They may not have any empathy towards us or our planet.


What I am saying is, discovering aliens who behave and live like ants or wasps, that also live long enough and have enough of technology to travel between stars - is a really bad thing for us to encounter. And even then, we may have more in common with ants than with those aliens.


[1] speaking of which, we think of intelligence from our point of view too. Often we see framed in the constraints of a human intelligence and human experience.

We are yet to colonize Mars and even prove that you can artificially warp space (theoretically FTL warp-drive is doable, but at our current level it would be like Bronze-age civilisation trying to figure out how to build fusion reactor).
We are pretty much contained at the moment and they probably just wired to our internet and sell subscriptions to galactic-netflix.

It's more of a - wishfully theoretically. None of our equations or models predict existence of the worm holes. Nor we observed anything that indicates such thing is possible. We wish for it, because we dont live long enough to travel the space without it.

[CBJ]

It makes absolutely no sence why they would want to erase us. It's like Humanity want to erase lions, because they eat a human from time to time.

There are only TWO special things about Earth that you can't find in abudance in universe:
- Earth biome
- Human civilization

For once I think you're being overly optimistic. If you're going to go to the huge effort of travelling interstellar distances, you're far more likely to be doing it out of necessity than curiosity. The value of human civilisation to an alien species capable of interstellar travel is questionable at best. What's much less questionable is the value of Earth's resources (be it liquid water in huge quantities, minerals that can be extracted in a relatively hospitable environment, and/or biological resources) which could easily prove irresistible to an alien species looking for opportunities to expand. Visitors of that kind would be highly unlikely to bother sneaking around, or abducting people who live in remote locations, or for that matter conducting secret negotiations with primitive local governments.

I think the chances that we've been visited by anyone are slim, and, exciting though it might seem in principle to meet an alien species, I can't help thinking that we should hope it stays that way. It would probably be somewhat more comfortable for us if our first encounter with aliens were on our own terms, as the visitors!

[Alan Phipps]

Thinking about the two possible perspectives of Christopher Columbus and the primitives he encountered on his travels, it might not go that well either way. <shrugs>

Perhaps I've seen too much of films such as Aliens, Independence Day, Oblivion, Avatar, etc and not enough like Close Encounters or Arrival.

[RegisterMe]

primitives

?

[mr.WHO]

For once I think you're being overly optimistic. If you're going to go to the huge effort of travelling interstellar distances, you're far more likely to be doing it out of necessity than curiosity. The value of human civilisation to an alien species capable of interstellar travel is questionable at best. What's much less questionable is the value of Earth's resources (be it liquid water in huge quantities, minerals that can be extracted in a relatively hospitable environment, and/or biological resources) which could easily prove irresistible to an alien species looking for opportunities to expand. Visitors of that kind would be highly unlikely to bother sneaking around, or abducting people who live in remote locations, or for that matter conducting secret negotiations with primitive local governments.

There are only two scenarios for us to with hypotetical Alien civilization:
High tech - FTL capable, has plenty of options and resources (Dead Space style planet cracking) - they could easily wipe us out, but has no reason to do so.

Low tech - STL, might be desperate and travel in some kind of generation arks, but then you have two sub scenarios:
a) You don't need to leave your system - it's much easier to build tons of O'Neil cylinders than exodus even to nearest star.
b) You need to leave because nearby star is going Nova. You need significant headstart to run to safe distance (about 30-60 LY), but then you don't need to look for colonizable planet, you just build space colonies (see game Helium Rain for similar scenario).

If you can build huge space ark then you can also build huge stations - water, oxygen, all resources can esasily mine and mass processed (you don't need to worry about environment, only about waste heat) in space.
Idea that Aliens would need to get to Earth because of resource needs is so 1990 Sci-Fi and would have nothing to with reality - unless there is a race that released something like Xenons by accident.

Scenario B is also more favorable for us as the low tech race would have to cut corners on their migration ships, so they would probably not be able to handle 20'000 nukes launched at them if we launch them into low orbit.
I could also bet on that Boeing X-37 is capable of launching ship-to-ship missiles, so if we would spot them approaching decades before arrival we could create a proper space fleet to greet them.

This is also the reason why I think Elon Musk is wrong with his Mars colonization idea - it would be much cheaper and easier to build huge stations at Earth-Moon L-points than trying to settle a small city on Mars. The only bright side is that there will be plenty of SpaceX Starships for use when Mars colonization will fail.
IMO Starhip will not be know for Mars colonization, but for orbital industry development. It's a workhorse, not an explorer.

[mrbadger]

Before anyone starts going on about Columbus, his journey doesn't compare to the one a civilisation from another star would have to take to reach us. Besides, he didn't even land on the right continent, he was sailing blind.

Not even slightly comparable then, if it would even be worth it, which it isn't. There is nothing on our planet not more easily accessible in space without coming down into the gravity well of an inhabited planet.

Or even if there was something here they wanted, they could get rid of us pretty much instantly by dropping a kinetic weapon. We've no defence that could stop one, and they wouldn't have to mess about with any expensive invasion. Just drop something big and wait around until the flames went out.

Interstellar war as seen in the movies exists to make movies interesting, that's not how it would go down.
They wouldn't want us as slaves, because by the time they could reach us they'd be advanced to build robots to fill those workforce gaps.

[Vertigo 7]

They wouldn't want us as slaves, because by the time they could reach us they'd be advanced to build robots to fill those workforce gaps.

Unless it was impractical to transport that much equipment for some reason.

[brucewarren]

It would all depend on whether the alien civilisation was merely technically advanced or whether it was morally advanced as well.

The Federation (Star Trek) is. The Empire (Star Wars) is not. Both are high tech but I know which I would prefer to live in.

There's no reason whatsoever to just assume that high tech requires civilised moral codes. Human history has demonstrated in blood
that it all too possible for an advanced tech society to be governed by utter savages.

Robots are high tech. High tech is expensive. Slaves are low tech. Low tech is cheap. if the aliens have no moral compass they
might well consider expendable slaves to be far more cost effective than expensive to operate and maintain high tech machinery.

[Mightysword]

It would all depend on whether the alien civilisation was merely technically advanced or whether it was morally advanced as well.

The Federation (Star Trek) is. The Empire (Star Wars) is not. Both are high tech but I know which I would prefer to live in.

There's no reason whatsoever to just assume that high tech requires civilised moral codes. Human history has demonstrated in blood
that it all too possible for an advanced tech society to be governed by utter savages.

I disagree.

What you think would had happened if humanity were similar to the Klingon? Personally I don't think we would had made it through the cold war and would head straight down the Fallout road if we were that aggressive. The Sith Empire makes even less sense logically. It's not even a matter of evil, it's just barbaric, and any society like that would self-destruct or regress itself over and over before reaching any relevant point. The Krogan from mass effect is an example of I think what would logically happens if a civilization achieve technology without the enlightenment to handle it.

In a way I think Nuke is the first milestone in term of advance technology for humanity. For the first time we invented something that's very powerful that opened up a lot of new possibilities, but we can also for the first time have something to wipe ourselves off the map with. And between nuke to whatever point a civilization achieve FTL travel, I imagine there will be many more milestones, and each will probably be even more potent than the last. For example one milestone I think is probably accessibility to space, not just for research but also to live and produce. At that point space militarization will happen, and will pose even a greater threat to the species survival than nuke does now. And if a civilization makes it pass that, it would also be more morally progressed.


So no, while it's not a guarantee of course, I believe there is actually strong reasons to believe technically advanced and morally advanced go hand in hand in any civilization. Otherwise it would be more than likely to destroy itself with it.

[BrasatoAlBarolo]

What about a Vulcan first contact scenario?
Let's suppose the trigger isn't warp drive, but a manned Mars landing (which is likely going to happen during the present century). The fact humanity starts to "colonize" another planet is going to wake up some kind of interest in an advanced race observing us, convincing them to make contact and help us progress, provided we respect certain conditions or we reach certain social milestones without help (e.g.: no more wars between us or no more people dying of hunger).

To be honest, though, as somebody already pointed out, we're suggesting that aliens have a human-like way of thinking, which is probably unlikely. What if they grew and evolved on a planet with a sulfuric atmosphere? What if they lived and evolved in a gas giant and they eat palladium? What if the concept of "good" or "evil" is something like "you're evil if you eat vegetables, you're good if you eat your mom when you reach maturity"? Their ethics could be very different, so different from ours we hardly can comprehend it.
From what we know, they could be shaped like rockets, travelling on a giant Lady-Gaga-shaped spaceship. Coming there just to ask "why do you worship a spaceship?".

On top of that, I'm not really sure "morals" grow with tech growth in mankind. Cold war didn't trigger a global nuclear war not because "a lot of people would die", but because "the fallout would make impossible for me taking all those juicy resources I'm interested in". The scientific community is willing to "share and cooperate" worldwide, but they're not the ones to choose. I mean, just look at how different have covid responses been around the world! Scientific community agreed on what to do, but they're not the ones picking the choice.
Same is going to happen to space exploration, or a new form of energy which incidentally can be used for huge booms. Technological progress doesn't mean moral growth for us, why would do for an alien race?

[Olterin]

I have to agree, tech progress doesn't strictly speaking mean morality progress. Nor can we count on any possible aliens having any ethical guidelines remotely similar to our own. The only truly sensible and fairly universal means of measuring their level of advancement is the amount of energy available to them (Kardashev Scale). As I said before, it's a lot closer of an analogy to look what we humans do about ant colonies or bee colonies than what happened with Columbus. Until we get to fusion power and frequent use of space resources, we're not even a Type 1 civilization, essentially ants for anyone with the means of interstellar travel. Should they exist, we better hope we're not an inconvenience that just gets cleared away to make room for a Hyperspace Bypass

The Earth does not have anything on it that would warrant an interstellar civilization to conquer us (*). Resources? Pfah, there's plenty more, more readily available, from asteroids and comets in our solar system. Except fossil fuels, and we're rapidly using those up ourselves already. And even then, Titan has plenty of methane if memory serves.

(*) No, the only thing that would make Earth a point of interest for an interstellar traveler is the life on the planet. Be that as a somewhat rare subject of study or a source of slave labor or whatever else I'm not thinking of or cannot even conceive of. But the sci-fi trope of biome rarity or resource rarity just doesn't hold up.


As for what aliens might look like, well, that's an entirely different question. Personally, I believe (based on our present knowledge of chemistry) that carbon-based life is the most likely, followed by maybe silicon-based life. It's in the molecular complexity as well as the temperature range where the molecules in question have such a wide range of structural permutation and stability. Unless of course there somehow are elements on the periodic table that we didn't encounter in our solar system that are sufficiently light to do many of the same things. Furthermore, we can surmise that certain societal milestones are a requirement for a civilization to have become an interstellar one in the first place - they'd need to have become the dominant species on their planet, for one, and have the drive to expand at the very least to have done so. As such, at a point where interstellar travel is feasible, expanding to new planets is less feasible than just building new space habitats. I realize this slightly contradicts the part about there being no reason whatsoever to conquer the Earth, and I'll happily concede this point - yes, for a civilization looking for more places to stuff their population, assuming they are very close to us in physical characteristics and living requirements, the Earth would be a good target. Big caveat though, surface acceleration. This is the one variable which can differ a fair bit for Earth-like planets that could feasibly sustain carbon-based life.

What I mean is: we're not going to have a good time of having a Mars colony or a Moon colony until we figure out how to prevent bone and muscle loss. Any alien life coming to Earth would have much the same issue unless coming from an environment extremely similar to our own. Far better to have orbital stations built to spec.