See, I don't think that First Contact should have necessarily happened by now. It could be entirely possible that another race is a few thousand light years away, and just hasn't gotten here yet. If races live closer in to the Core, for example, the stellar density there is dozens--hundreds--of times greater than out here in the relative sticks where we live. They may have simply not finished exploring those closer worlds.
I can't speak to oxygen-rich worlds. We haven't found any yet (which isn't a big deal 'cause we don't have the tech to see such worlds). I'm also not certain that oxygen breathers are necessarily the norm in our galaxy. Maybe they breathe other gases. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mr. Worf" <hellomahog...@gmail.com> To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 6:23:50 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [scifinoir2] Don’t talk to aliens, warns Stephen Hawking Well I think that if it were to happen it would have happened already by now and we wouldn't be having this conversation. As to the oxygen breathing creatures, there's so many planets that I'm sure there are quite a few other worlds out there. Then again there are so many variables that can happen. It took our species a long time to get to scientific method. Can you imagine how different our world would have been if we didn't have certain intellectual baggage? (religion, racism, greed etc.) On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 8:35 PM, Keith Johnson < keithbjohn...@comcast.net > wrote: Not necessarily. We already know that planets in that sweet spot where water can exist in liquid form and an atmosphere can exist could be rare. It's entirely plausible that they'd want Earth as a place to colonize to expand their race. If we are an oxygen breathing, carbon-based species, it's reasonable to think the universe would create another such that might view Earth as a likely place to colonize. Terraforming nearby planets and building colonies on inhospitable worlds might take too long and ultimately support too few people. Even an advanced species would probably rather build generation ships to come to Earth rather than languish in doomed colonies or the like. Think of it like this: if mars were inhabitable right now, and had a primitive race living there, how long do you think it'd be before the nations of Earth would find a reason to go there and take over? Also, it's not always about resources like oil, water, and spices. like I said, how often do people on Earth seek new vistas in order to live out lives the way they want. how often do people seek new lands to worship a new way, to create a new form of government, etc? I don't think that just because a race is technologically advanced means they would leave behind the ugliness, fighting, selfishness, racism, etc., that have often driven people here to seek new lands. Granted I'm taking a cynical view, but I frankly think it's at least as likely as the one where they'd come here and want to be buddies. Also, one thing you need to remember is that no species is monolithic. Scifi usually simplifies races so that the whole planet has one way of thinking, while in reality that changes. So even if one faction might want to be friends with us, what if there's an election or coup or something were another faction gains power and changes policies radically. Kinda like an alien Republican party gaining ascendance: I wouldn't give a plug nickel for our chances if an alien Tea Party led by a green Sarah Palin took over the Ministry of Extraplanetary Contact! ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mr. Worf" < hellomahog...@gmail.com > To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, April 26, 2010 11:24:51 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [scifinoir2] Don’t talk to aliens, warns Stephen Hawking That would be a worse case scenario. Travel light years just to steal minerals or water? There's ice the entire trip here. I"m sure that they can also find minerals as well. The overpopulation part would be a little unusual I think. That would mean that life only exists in an oxygen rich environment and they would have to be at a tremendous infestation level of population to travel that far just to live here. I think as our own technology continues to grow we will look at things differently. For example, spices (and the money it brought) were a huge reason to go on an expedition. After people learned how to grow majority of the spices elsewhere the need to concur for that resource. Eventually we will say the same about oil. Hopefully... On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 7:12 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/ -- Celebrating 10 years of bringing diversity to perversity! Mahogany at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mahogany_pleasures_of_darkness/ -- Celebrating 10 years of bringing diversity to perversity! Mahogany at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mahogany_pleasures_of_darkness/
