Agreed. The only thing that might save us--assuming these other races aren't just nice people--is that their needs are so different from ours, nothing we have could work for them. For example, if they breathe chlorine gas or another mix that's nowhere close to be found on Earth, trying to survive here might prove untenable. (Of course, they could still nuke us or something as they mine minerals in spacesuits, I guess, but one hopes that would discourage colonization/genocide). Or perhaps they come from a lighter gravity world such that our gravity is two or three times heavier than theirs, making a permanent settlement difficult.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Martin Baxter" <martinbaxt...@gmail.com> To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 5:47:06 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [scifinoir2] Don’t talk to aliens, warns Stephen Hawking Keith, I could see that as equally troublesome. What if the folks they're fleeing from decide to come after them, for some reason? Martin (pessimism in full bloom) On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 10:12 PM, Keith Johnson < keithbjohn...@comcast.net > wrote: I don't think so. Look at the history of Earth: so many technologically superiour races have exploited and destroyed others. Advanced tech can't make up for the loss of key materials or extinguished lifeforms. What if, like Europeans, they simply want to expand to new shores due to overcrowding, or a big group wants a new planet to pursue their unique religious/political ideas outside of the home world? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mr. Worf" < hellomahog...@gmail.com > To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, April 25, 2010 6:00:39 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [scifinoir2] Don’t talk to aliens, warns Stephen Hawking If they have the technology to reach us, they probably solved their resource problem already. Or close to it. I think that we should keep a positive outlook on this. We may come across both good and bad beings, but that doesn't mean that it isn't worth the journey. On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 1:59 PM, Martin Baxter < martinbaxt...@gmail.com > wrote: Time to get into a Quisling frame of mind... Seriously, that is something to think about. With all of this lovely H2O we've got lying about, it makes us a tempting target for colonization. On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 2:14 PM, brent wodehouse < brent_wodeho...@thefence.us > wrote: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7107207.ece >From The Sunday Times April 25, 2010 Don’t talk to aliens, warns Stephen Hawking Jonathan Leake 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 -- "If all the world's a stage and we are merely players, who the bloody hell wrote the script?" -- Charles E Grant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQUxw9aUVik -- Celebrating 10 years of bringing diversity to perversity! Mahogany at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mahogany_pleasures_of_darkness/ -- "If all the world's a stage and we are merely players, who the bloody hell wrote the script?" -- Charles E Grant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQUxw9aUVik
