Awesome Stuff You Have To Share, Part 3: You Can't Handle The Awesome!

[dman11235]

Honestly I didn't think Elfen Lied was that good....

[Amechra]

Honestly I didn't think Elfen Lied was that good....

I've liked terrible things. I've hated great things.

I honestly just need to watch it at this point to see where it falls.

[Libertad]

Superman Red Son in motion comic form.

[phaedrusxy]

I'm not saying it's aliens... but it's aliens. (Astronomers may have found a partial Dyson sphere...)

[brujon]

I'm not saying it's aliens... but it's aliens. (Astronomers may have found a partial Dyson sphere...)

That's AMAZING. And also a bit frightening. If what we're seeing are the begginings of a Dyson Sphere, odds are that 1500 years later - I.E, right now, as we're seeing the light and signals from a millenia and a half ago - it's already completed. If a civilization is advanced enough to undergo such a massive feat of engineering, they're advanced enough for interstellar travel. Definitely relativistic travel speeds, quite possibly lightspeed, and perhaps even FTL speed.

If there's concrete evidence that this was an alien civilization, i'd be the first to be against broadcasting a signal there. I don't feel it's prudent at all to try and establish contact with a civilization that, by all accounts, was at least a thousand years ahead of us technologically a millenia and a half ago, and by now is probably beyond our wildest dreams.

More often than not, encounters between different species end up with the stronger one eliminating the weaker one. It's bad for us.

[Gazzien]

I'm not saying it's aliens... but it's aliens. (Astronomers may have found a partial Dyson sphere...)

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

.... Okay, I'm done. But holy shit, that's amazing.

[dman11235]

FTL travel is unfortunately as far as we can tell impossible.  Unless wormholes work the way the insane theories that are certainly not true think they do.  Not even quantum entanglement can send information faster than light...

Not only that, you have no idea how they'd act.  By the time they get here we'll be much more advanced than we are now, and honestly they would probably peaceful to new species on different worlds.  There's no reason to believe they'd be violent.  I mean, we were a very violent species, and when we look for alien life, what are we doing?  Being peaceful about it.  No reason to believe they would be any different.

[phaedrusxy]

And there are good philosophical arguments about why if we make alien contact, it will likely be with peaceful aliens (which are much more technologically advanced than us). More aggressive species would probably be more likely to self-destruct right around the time they get the capacity to do so (which started with the first atomic weapon detonation for us, but we're coming up with new and easier ways to do so all the time ).

Given the cosmic timescales involved, and the fact that our own technological civilization is at such an early stage, the odds of contacting another civilization at just about exactly the same stage of technological development as us is highly improbable statistically. They'd almost certainly have passed the early tech stage (where we are) by thousands or millions of years. If they'd managed to survive that long without self-destruction, then they're probably pretty peaceful.

But yeah, FTL travel looks like a practical impossibility from what we know about physics at the moment. I think more likely colonization scenarios would involve sending out very small ships at low relativistic speeds which contain nanofabrication factories which can "seed" new worlds, and them maybe implant the newly constructed bodies with copies of the minds of the aliens that launched them (or maybe they'd just create new ones from scratch... who knows?). For anyone interested in this kind of speculative sci-fi, Diaspora is a pretty good novel to read (although it gets kind of wonky near the end, IMO).

If it turns out that FTL communication is possible (via quantum entanglement), then this kind of colonization could eventually lead to a civilization becoming quite disseminated at least within their own pocket of the galaxy. Of course... it would take place over insanely long timescales... If FTL communication is not possible, then any disseminated colonies would have enormous delays between their communications, so that they'd likely diverge from each other into separate, independent civilizations.

[bhu]

King Kong vs Godzilla has been confirmed!

[veekie]

FTL travel is unfortunately as far as we can tell impossible.  Unless wormholes work the way the insane theories that are certainly not true think they do.  Not even quantum entanglement can send information faster than light...

Not only that, you have no idea how they'd act.  By the time they get here we'll be much more advanced than we are now, and honestly they would probably peaceful to new species on different worlds.  There's no reason to believe they'd be violent.  I mean, we were a very violent species, and when we look for alien life, what are we doing?  Being peaceful about it.  No reason to believe they would be any different.

On the other hand, any species which had committed to the multi-generational travel necessary to GET here are unlikely to just wave and leave. If nothing else because they'd need to resupply energy and mass.

[dman11235]

But I mean, they wouldn't /come/ here unless they were looking for life.  our solar system isn't that great in terms of energy/mass, and there's other, closer ones that they would go to.  And if they were looking for life, they wouldn't hurt us.

[altpersona]

i would call those pretty large assumptions.

[dman11235]

I mean, there's a much bigger system just 4 light years away from us.  And that star we saw was what, twice as bright as the sun or something?  Our system isn't particularly special in terms of resources.  And even if they did want to harvest it, the best places to get resources for an interstellar mission are Jupiter, Saturn, the Oort cloud, the Keiper belt, the asteroid belt, and the Sun itself.  Earth isn't special aside from life.  And if it's looking for life, it wouldn't be to kill it, unless it was a religiously motivated thing.  They would want to at worst study us.  For raw materials and precious metals they'd be harvesting asteroids.  For energy they'd be harvesting radiation and hydrogen from the Sun and gas giants, respectively.  Rocky planets are not where you "fuel up" on an interstellar mission.  They're too hard to mine from space, and they have very little usable energy. 

[altpersona]

more assumptions... 

consider iv been married 20 years and i have no idea what the mrs is thinking most of the time... how can we presume to understand actual 'alien' thoughts. 

but lets ASSUME a human parallel

how many of our explorations to 'new worlds' involved us killing off / subjugating the indigenous people? even our trips to mars may be destructive to native life. (we sorta left radioactives and microbes laying around, on purpose and by accident)

[Amechra]

more assumptions... 

consider iv been married 20 years and i have no idea what the mrs is thinking most of the time... how can we presume to understand actual 'alien' thoughts. 

but lets ASSUME a human parallel

how many of our explorations to 'new worlds' involved us killing off / subjugating the indigenous people? even our trips to mars may be destructive to native life. (we sorta left radioactives and microbes laying around, on purpose and by accident)

Why would subjugation even be a factor?

Seriously, the chance that their biology allows them to even survive in our atmosphere is a pretty tiny one.

Plus, our subjugation was mostly for three reasons: religious, resources, and labor. We can pretty much strike resources and labor off the list (for the reasons dman11235 is bringing up), and religious is something we can't even account for.

Heck, for all we know, the species that built that Dyson sphere is now extinct.

[dman11235]

Almost certainly.  I mean, humans will be extinct too soon enough.  Just have to wait a few thousand years until we breed into a new species.  And, again, if it is a Dyson sphere.  Which it probably isn't.

Now, I should say, I'm in the group of people, along with Phil Plait, who do believe extraterrestrial life exists.  However, it is almost certainly not that close to us, and we will never find it.  At least not for a long time.  And it might not be intelligent.  And not in our galaxy.  And they'll never find us, and maybe a few will find a different life form, and maybe maybe two intelligent find each other and form a crude interstellar trade system that's very slow because it's interstellar and thus consists of culture trade and no material goods.

[brujon]

Wish me and my liver luck, we're starting our journey to untold amounts of alcohol on our very own Oktoberfest, here in Brazil - Blumenau, Santa Catarina, here i come.

[oslecamo]

Why would subjugation even be a factor?

Seriously, the chance that their biology allows them to even survive in our atmosphere is a pretty tiny one.

Plus, our subjugation was mostly for three reasons: religious, resources, and labor. We can pretty much strike resources and labor off the list (for the reasons dman11235 is bringing up), and religious is something we can't even account for.

You're forgetting a key fourth reason: entertainment.

Human beings will dive to the deepest sea and tallest mountain just for shit and giggles, even at the risk of our own lives. And we'll take any "souvenirs" that we can carry. Which includes killing them in exotic ways if they didn't want to come with us.

So if advanced aliens arrive to the Earth, we'll have to do our best for our planet to appear as boring as possible, or they may turn our planet into their personal holyday resort/hunting park.

[Kuroimaken]

Why would subjugation even be a factor?

Seriously, the chance that their biology allows them to even survive in our atmosphere is a pretty tiny one.

Plus, our subjugation was mostly for three reasons: religious, resources, and labor. We can pretty much strike resources and labor off the list (for the reasons dman11235 is bringing up), and religious is something we can't even account for.

You're forgetting a key fourth reason: entertainment.

Human beings will dive to the deepest sea and tallest mountain just for shit and giggles, even at the risk of our own lives. And we'll take any "souvenirs" that we can carry. Which includes killing them in exotic ways if they didn't want to come with us.

So if advanced aliens arrive to the Earth, we'll have to do our best for our planet to appear as boring as possible, or they may turn our planet into their personal holyday resort/hunting park.

The funny thing about your assumption is that it also presumes sufficiently advanced civilizations have gotten rid of boring ecologically responsible people protesting the cruelty of such an action. 

[dman11235]

Why would subjugation even be a factor?

Seriously, the chance that their biology allows them to even survive in our atmosphere is a pretty tiny one.

Plus, our subjugation was mostly for three reasons: religious, resources, and labor. We can pretty much strike resources and labor off the list (for the reasons dman11235 is bringing up), and religious is something we can't even account for.

You're forgetting a key fourth reason: entertainment.

Human beings will dive to the deepest sea and tallest mountain just for shit and giggles, even at the risk of our own lives. And we'll take any "souvenirs" that we can carry. Which includes killing them in exotic ways if they didn't want to come with us.

So if advanced aliens arrive to the Earth, we'll have to do our best for our planet to appear as boring as possible, or they may turn our planet into their personal holyday resort/hunting park.

We don't vacation on the Moon right now.  It wouldn't be anyone who would do what you said above.  The first people to get here would be scientists, not tourists.  Unless they are able to have FTL travel, in which case they would already be here and/or we would have seen the activity at other stars and stuff in the area.

EDIT:  Actually, the first thing to come here would be a satellite and/or a robot.