Stephen Hawking talks about aliens in a new documentary, and warns we shouldn’t try and contact them because they might raid the earth for resources:
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. [...]
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.”
What do you think? Is it worth the risk?
I’m just commenting to say that the headline/picture combination made me nearly ruin my keyboard.
I’m inclined to take the advice of the brilliant scientist.
It might be that they would want to destroy us and use the Earth for its recourses but I am more inclined to believe that an alien civilization which has made it to the point of interstellar flight would be a peaceful alien race. I do think that contact might be good. There are plenty of planets elsewhere that could give the aliens the supplies they need so why go to the one which is inhabited.
What resource would they want? It wouldn’t be minerals – those are much more available from an asteroid belt. It is unlikely to be food, since the odds of life on our planet being digestible by them aren’t that high (and synthesizing any food from base molecules is likely MUCH easier than sending ships back and forth between solar systems). Stephen Hawking is a brilliant scientist, but when he’s quoting the plot of the movie Independence Day, he’s no smarter than anyone else.
Fresh water? Uranium? Plutonium? Our brains?
Fresh water is available by the tonne in Saturn’s rings. And it’s conveniently frozen for ease of transportation.
Organics. Biological specimens, genetic material, unusual biochemistries. Stuff that could ONLY come from life bearing planets – which in turn appear to be rather rare.
even in that case, it’s just as easy to take a small sample and do the actual heavy manufacturing in the Oort Cloud, where CHON (Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen, the most common elements in living things) is available in huge quantities without having to lift it out of a huge gravity well. Since harvesting on a large scale from the Earth is impractical, aliens are probably more likely to pay us to do the genetic harvesting for them (a phial of blood from 1000 species = 1 viable design for an efficient fusion generator?). Glass beads to them, planet-saving stuff for us. Invading planets simply isn’t economical. Hell, if we can talk to them we could send them the genomes in digital form and not have to lift a kilogram.
Economics have nothing and everything to do with war. The cause of war is almost always at least partially economic – but the economics of actually conducting the war are pretty much irrelevant.
IF we can communicate, trade for what they want makes sense. If we can’t, and I figure it’s probably 50/50 on that question, or they don’t want to, or they just don’t understand the “trade” concept – they’ll just take what they want. Currently, we have no way to prevent it.
it’s not about the economics of war, but the economics of taking what they want… everything they can get here either can be taken in miniscule amounts and still be valuable, or it’s easier to get elsewhere. Corn farming could in theory be done in Antarctica, but it’s easier in the Midwest so that’s where we do it, and mining is easier in the asteroid belt than on Earth. People might in theory fight a war for the corn belt, but unless conditions change a lot, an actual war for Antarctica is unlikely.
Yeah, water is one of the most plentiful substances in the universe. Interstellar voyages to find it are ludicrous.
Beer
He’s obviously a kook.
Actually, Dr. Carl Sagan offered this proposition in Cosmos and, if I remember correctly, Broca’s Brain both of which predate Independence Day. So, if anything, he’s ripping off Dr. Sagan (as Dutchhobbit suggested)
Dr. Sagan proposed that there are only two types of civilizations that would be advanced enough to respond to us and visit us. The ones that go around taking things over or the ones that have “advanced” themselves socially as well as technologically and would be benevolent.
All that said, you are correct that asteroid mining would be much easier than planetary mining. However, Dr. Hawking implied a vagabond species, not one that would shuttle things back to a home planet.
Also, there may be a third, more far-fetched alternative. There is a sci-fi story from the fifties (forgive me for not knowing the title, I have far too many compilations) where Earth is contacted by an advanced species whose empire is engaged in a war with an evil enemy. They use the Earth as a base and source of resources, but are driven out by the enemy. This enemy claims to have ‘liberated’ Earth from the evil empire. The back and forth goes on for decades until the Earth is a devastated world with no strategic value and the warring factions leave. The survivors get by with eating algae and telling the story of the glorious war that Earth was a part of. Sure, it was a metaphor for the cold war, but still a startling story.
Before he went tax-exempt, L Ron hubbard had the evil aliens find the earth by running into the voyager probe, realizing it made of minerals that are extremely valuable on their world and show up to strip mine the earth. Anyway, with all due respect to Hawking given the currently avalible data the chance of encountering peaceful aliens is exactly the same as the chance of finding warlike ones.
Not if we consider the human species as available data. We colonize. A lot. Violently. We also tend not to care about other groups when ours is in need. Chances are good that we fall somewhere in the normal distribution of “violent colonization” as far as advanced galactic civilizations go. So, on average, we should expect a bunch of aliens to show the same tendencies. In retrospect, we could be wrong, but there isn’t any way to know that now.
I tend to agree. On the other hand, from the sparse data set that we represent, we know from some self-reflection that much if not most of our species’ expansionistic, imperialistic tendencies were directly due to the pressures of fierce competition for land and resources. One would hope in the vastness of space there would be far more than enough stuff for everyone.
I dunno. The more stuff, the more space between the stuff. Of course any species that has achieved intergalactic travel will have taken a significant step towards solving that problem.
Maybe they’re like the Catholic hierarchy and want our kids. ;p
“To Serve Man”!!! IT’S A COOK BOOK !!!
*applause*
How To Cook For Forty Humans
I just imagine what happens here on Earth when a more advanced society/culture encounters a “less developed” culture. Typically the outcome isn’t to good for the latter.
Colonization cheap labor force, a new home, and yes possibly resources.
or you could use O’Neill habitats, asteroids and comets, and robots. In the long run it’s cheaper and easier. Slavery and direct colonialism were pre-industrial solutions; we’re more in danger of being sold things than being invaded.
lol High pressure salesmen…….FROM SPACE!
that is truly frightening.
thanks for the laugh. :)
Actually the only current method we know of for interstellar travel would be massive ships using various forms of nuclear power for propulsion from star system to star system, it would take generations to make the journey, and depletion of relevant fuels during travel would be likely.
Unless some new theory comes along to radically redefine the way we think about space and time (and simultaneously prove everything we currently know wrong), that is the only reliable method for interstellar travel. So, given what we currently know, any aliens we would encounter would be more like the ones in Independence day than the ones in Star Trek.
Of course they may not even be concerned with planets like ours, assuming they have fully adapted to life in space they wouldn’t even be capable of standing on a planet bigger than a small moon or asteroid. After all if you have committed to living in space for generations why bother with artificial gravity, just adapt as a species to the near zero-g environment. They could potentially get their fuel sources from gas giants and asteroids and not bother with the significant problem of conquering and mining a rocky planet. So the bright side is they may leave us alone and move on, the downside is that if they do they will have already strip mined the rest of the solar system, squashing humanities hopes of leaving our own sun.
you have a great point…i am so tierd of hearing about alians comming here and taken over!! it may happen anything is possible!!!, but why do we think that any other living life form is a threat? Come on thats what all humans do/are afriad of everything we dont know of…Honistly if an alien came here we would more then likely be the onces trying to kill it and do horrible things to them not them hurting us because we are so afraid not to be the most advanced dominate creatures in the universe…and what would they want with us? if they came here we would look so unadvaced to them that we wouldnt be threat and i doubt they would come down here to steal our cars or technology when theres would be far more advanced…
When I was riding the Weekly Weirdly Christian Train (all aboard!) it was stated that aliens aren’t real but rather the manesfestations of the devil to throw us off the course of worshipping god.
I’m with Amelia…he’s probably thought it through.
Ditto. Hawking is, most likely, right, and I’ll gladly take his advice.
I’d take his word on physics, but not on exopolitics.
I find that his analysis is somewhat clichéd – more reminiscent of Battlestar Galactica, Aliens or Star Wars (i.e. 1970′s science fiction) than how real aliens might behave and think. Sure, if we were to go star travelling, it might be how we might behave, but other aliens? I would be very doubtful.
In any case, any alien arriving at our home planet would be at an instant disadvantage. Our planet is overrun with all sorts of creepy crawlies, all of whom have the benefit of millions of years of adaptive evolution to cope with the highly corrosive atmosphere of our planet. Alien creatures would find themselves under assault in numerous different ways.
thats assuming they plan a foot invasion. they could just orbitally bomb the earth back to some prehistoric state with nothing left alive larger than insects. We couldn’t do anything about that at our current technological level. any resource gathering could be done by unmanned drones. they would have little reason to greet us face to face if they had bad intentions.
Finding alien life will probably happen at some point in the future, but I’ve always assumed it will be simple organisms. But in all honesty, for humans to correctly identify “intelligent” life, they will have to smack us in the face with it. There is also nothing assuring that if some super smart aliens did show up, they would think we were the intelligent beings on this planet.
Hawking has a valid point, but he’s making an awful lot of assumptions, primarily in that they will be anything like us to being with.
They would have two very important things in common: they would be alive and they would be intelligent.
But that would be my point, would our definition of intelligent apply?
Define “alive”. An android or an advanced robot could very well appear alive to us.
Sentient. Could possibly include androids, robots, computers…
“Daisy…Daisy… Give…me…your…a.n.s.w.e.r…….d…o……”
So, an alien comes with an spaceship to an earth crawled with mechanical and electrical devices and sources of energy and both species will think the other one is not intelligent?
I was thinking in reference to actually finding something on another planet, moon, etc.
Alien lifeforms from the centers of stars? How does that work, exactly, beyond invoking some “2001″ hand-waving?
With all due respect to Mr. Hawking, of course.
There are creatures on this planet that live in the harshest of environments (underwater or near to volcanic fissures) – so why not even more so, out there?
oO
Personally I’d guess an alien race would be so incredibly different from us that contact (other than just smiting first and questioning later) would be incredibly difficult.
Well, it would be difficult but that’s what scientists are for :-p
Especially cute ones who will fall in love with the natives :P
I’ve been reading too much Stanislaw Lem.
An alien race could be so different that we’re not even alive to them and smiting first could be accidental.
I find this unlikely for a couple of reasons:
1. If life turns out to be similar pretty much everywhere, then we unlikely to be mistaken for not alive.
2. If life turns out to be wildly different everywhere, the chances of us being the first first-contact situation these particular visitors would have encountered are very slim, hence they would already be aware that life takes wildly different forms and adjust procedures appropriately.
1.5 Life has a general model and we are kinda of an exeption.
Tough I can’t imagine it at all, life must be organic or, at least, based on autocatalizers
Scale could play a role. They might exterminate us in the process of some other celestial project, much as we might unknowingly step on an ant. Also, if they are like us we would likely encounter some less discerning extension of themselves first, a mindless robotic probe of some sort that, again, might destroy us independent of the volition of the aliens themselves.
I say we take the risk. And The Doctor is always guarding this Earth so the Aliens are warned.
I’d have to say, “what the hell? Why not.”
At the rate we are going in this world who knows where we will even be in 100 years? As far as we know we’ve got a 50/50 chance of it being hostile. There are so many other variables that could affect the outcome of such a meeting. The ways in which they may communicate and function (biologically, socially, ect) are many, and with our limited knowledge of life outside our planet I think a prediction would be hard to make.
I’m curious to know what other factors made Hawking come to this conclusion (as I’m sure they could fill a book, or already have).
stephen hawking is one of the smartest people in the history of the human race. i think that it would be best if we paid attention to what he says, even on theoretical stuff that hasn’t been tested.
He is? I don’t think so, not even close. I hear he’s a brilliant theoretical physicist, but that doesn’t mean he has any special insight into anything outside his field. I question whether he’s even one of the smartest theoretical physicist in the history of the human race. Just my opinion of course. I just don’t understand the hype about Hawking, even after reading A Brief History of Time back when it came out.
his work on black holes was pretty important. But yeah, he’s not an exobiologist or similar. It’s like saying that your plumber is good with technical stuff, so he should be able to fix your computer.
I have never, ever spoken to an alien. Now I’ll be doubly careful to avoid it.
“I have never, ever spoken to an alien.”
As far as you know…
Now you’re scaring me.
If we were ever to encounter aliens, I say send the teabaggers to meet them. The aliens would either leave us alone or kill the teabaggers.
That is a win-win proposition.
Or hunt down and exterminate the source of the galactic infection: Earth.
Personally, I think the risk is much more subtle. I doubt aliens would bother to traverse the stars in order to conquer us, especially when we don’t have any resources (except for our tasty tasty brains) that they couldn’t find almost anywhere else.
No, if our own history is anything to go by, the problem is that when two civilizations meet, the more advanced of the two will invariably steamroll the less advanced. Almost every previously isolated tribe or people which come into contact with stronger cultures find themselves adopting their various technologies, their clothes, their money, their drugs, their values, their way of thinking. We can readily see what this has meant to the quality of life for eskimos, indians in the Amazon or in the USA, aboriginals in Australia, etc etc.
Unless the aliens are simply too alien, or unless they show remarkable restraint in their interactions with us, I see a big risk that our cultures in general would be subsumed in the long run.
“we don’t have any resources (except for our tasty tasty brains) that they couldn’t find almost anywhere else.”
Yep. Lot’s of earthlike planets out there.
“adopting their various technologies, their clothes, their money, their drugs, their values, their way of thinking”
Still looking for a downside…
well, their drugs might not work on our biochemistry. I’m thinking for instance of the Lizards in Harry Turtledove’s Worldwar series, who arrived in the middle of World War II with roughly 1990′s level technology (their culture doesn’t advance very quickly, and is still stuck in an imperial mindset despite being spread over three planets and as many intelligent species). They were fought to a standstill through a combination of German tank skills, American nuclear technology, those damn Russian winters, and the spreading addiction to powdered ginger, which was like some sort of super-cocaine to them.
On the other hand, what if we’re the technologically superior ones?
I doubt it would be anything like in the sci-fi movies wherein extraterrestrials appear suddenly in Earth orbit. If anything, if encounters were to happen at some point in the distant future, I think it is more likely that our probes will encounter their probes far from each other’s home worlds.
I was thinking that too. When speaking of aliens, we always assume that we are the ones who are less advanced. Why can’t we be currently the most advanced civilization in the universe.
He OBVIOUSLY knows nothing! I mean we are the only life forms in the universe right? …..
I would rather think that aliens were more like Douglas Adam’s, but who knows.
I just hope they speak English.
I have my towel.
Hmmm…Mr. Hawking does make a good point, BUT it is an assumption. Possibly a safe one to make, however, it shuts the door to other possibilities. And, given that we are on a downward slope as far as our resources and how well we’re doing on this planet, I think we need to actively look at other opportunities. These opportunities could present themselves in the form of meeting some new life forms elsewhere. Like one person said, it’s a 50/50 chance of it going well or not so well. Think of it this way, if you never buy a lottery ticket I can guarantee you you’re not going to win.
You’ll never win if you don’t play Russian Roulette either.
What’s the material difference between winning at Russian roulette and not playing at all?
Chuck Norris plays russian roulette with a Glock 19 – and wins.
Listen for aliens. Don’t talk. They’re going to be squid with nuclear weapons and they won’t be interested, or able, to talk.
http://speculative-nonfiction.blogspot.com/2010/04/hawking-also-says-we-should-shut-up.html
I’d rather die having seen aliens than survive not meeting them. Plus, as Jack Handy said, there’s a chance the aliens would make us their pets and we’d get to have beds with our names written on them.
Hey, works for cats and poodles ;p
I see no reason why they would have to be “friendly”.
The worst is *shudder* *remembers picture* some person, in remembered case (and probably others) a fat California woman with lots of makeup leading a bunch of people out to start a church ready to worship the aliens.
Other scenarios taken from fiction of all kinds: Alien college students “buzzing” farmers on Earth for fun in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. That creepy thing in the Antarctic in “Who Goes There?” by John Campbell, from which the movie was taken. The becoming subjects of medical experimentation in that couple that claims to have been abducted (I always think of them as Betty and Barney Rubble because I can’t remember their names).
An electromagnetic life form thrown from the sun in a massive solar eruption. Being electromagnetism living on the sun, it wouldn’t need material mined form Earth. It certainly wouldn’t need Jesus. “Out of the Sun” by Arthur C. Clarke is one of the most haunting short stories I’ve ever read.
Contacting – let alone worshipping, for fuck’s sake – would be either risky or impossible.
I’m confused. I’ve read a lot of the stories/comments on this site which portray God and Jesus and the whole created the world stuff as “made-up stories” not worthy of intelligent rationalization. Yet, when you talk about aliens (of which none have ever been found or seen or even proven to exist), then everyone jumps on the bandwagon as if they are real. (It’s not just this site either. I’ve seen this same “faith” in aliens mentioned today alone on 3 different computer/technology related sites as well.)
So if neither God nor aliens can be seen/proven, then why the slant toward believing aliens probably do exist; yet totally dismissing God and Jesus? Doesn’t that seem sort of hypocritical?
If we had a bunch of deities running around on the earth, then I’d guess there were deities on other planets in our universe somewhere, too.
We know life exists — if you have some evidence for a god existing and can convince us, then maybe we’ll accept there are other gods in the universe, too! But you have to start with one.
Alien Missionaries coming to Earth to spread the message of the one true god. Now there is a thought. And if you don’t like it they WILL change your mind.
I imagine that the ability to observe phenomena has probably outstripped the ability to accurately deduce causes for phenomena in pretty much any conceivable situation where sapient life emerges (at least reasonably close enough to humans to experience the physical universe in a phenomenological sense). Since the desire or motivation to seek answers to unsolved phenomena seems a rational prerequisite of building a technological society, it is very likely that nearly every alien species we could come into contact with would go through a religious phase.
It would be very interesting to be an xenoanthropologist of religion, is all I’m saying. :)
Again, you are not being consistent in your rational. You are discarding the possibility of God because you haven’t seen one. Yet you are allowing the possibility of aliens even though you haven’t seen one. Your example of “life existing” doesn’t fit with what’s being talked about in this column because the “life” that is being discussed here has no comparison with what we can see. The best you can claim is that there may be other “humans” because you have seen at least one. Other than that, all these other possibilities are no different than the Christians believing in God. No one has seen an “alien” as described in these comments or as envisioned by Stephen Hawkin, yet everyone is ready to believe.
I think the trouble is that everyone assumes that if there are aliens out there, then they would be physical and we would be able to see them. (This is the same qualification you used in your comment: “If we had a bunch of deities running around on the earth, then I’d guess there were deities on other planets in our universe somewhere, too.”) But since no one has ever seen one, how do you know for sure?
I’m not trying to say either group is right or wrong. What I’m trying to point out is the people commenting on this article are not consistent with the other comments I’ve read on this site against why there is or is not a God. After reading all the comments from other sites, I was hoping that this site would take the same “proof of evidence” stance on aliens as they do on God. However, it looks like I was wrong.
Thing is, most of us will admit that there may be a god – only we don’t believe there is, for various reasons. Surely not the tribal gods pandered by current religions, such as Allah and Jehovah, which – as portrayed by the books – are always interfering with humanity. There is no evidence whatsoever that there is a magic pixie in the sky controlling our thoughts and interfering with our planet. There might be, but it’s very unlikely.
With regards to life, however, we know life exists. We know, for a good part, how it works and in which conditions it arises. We know what life is made of, how it replicates, that it seems to need water and certain conditions to exist. We know there are a lot of planets out there. It’s not absurd to think there would be some which are similar to ours, in which chemistry and physics would take their course and create life.
Aliens can be proven or disproven.
Aliens are more very likely, compared to a god.
Statistically if you look at the number of stars then it is possible.
But you are right, at this moment science has no proof that they exists so this clame is to be tested in the future.
If you compare it with religion then the people here:
Do not channel aliens using some spiitual medium.
Do not worhips superintellgent aliens blindly.
Do not claim that they are abducted by aliens and have an anal probe.
Have no fuzzy video about some fuzzy UFO.
There is no blind faith in an Alien because somone said so.
And the very moment science proves that Aliens really cannot eist, then these people here wil dispose that idea and classify it as some nice story that is not real.
And actually we do have evidence of at least one Alien life form. We call it Earth beeings.
We’re assuming they’re real. It’s a discussion of a hypothetical possibility, namely, if there are intelligent beings on other planets in our galaxy capable of intergalactic travel and we could meet each other, then how might such scenarios play out.
As for whether there is any kind of life elsewhere at all in a universe filled with billions of galaxies, the odds are more likely that there is rather than there isn’t. We know that life, even at the microbial level, can exist in environments here on Earth that are hostile to human life, hence we call them extremophiles.
We know that there is water on the moon, Jupiter’s moon Europa, and Saturn’s moon Enceladus, and that Mars was once had a wet phase. Life, so far as we know it, cannot exist without water. So, if there are numerous bodies in our own solar system that have or had water, then the number of bodies in the galaxy, let alone the universe, that have water, must be very great.
Now, as to why I don’t believe that Christianity is true. Well, on the face of it, Christianity does not require a universe filled with billions of galaxies, each one containing billions of its own stars and planets.
A funny thing about odds…they are never 100%. If they were, no one would ever play the lottery.
Your question is probably rather common, I for example remember a lecture Q&A video where Richard Dawkins was asked along the lines of “So you don’t believe in the existence of a god but you believe in aliens, how nutty is THAT?”
As already stated in other replies, alien life is certainly possible and even probable, considering the immense vastness of the universe as we know it.
A mental exercise to illustrate the size of the universe:
The observable universe contains[1] an estimated 8.0×10^80 atoms. This number written out is an eight with eighty zeros after it.
The Earth contains[2] an estimated 1.33×10^50 atoms. This number written out is 133 with 48 zeros after it.
Calculating the ratio of atoms in all of the known universe vs. the atoms that exist on Earth, we get approximately 6.02×10^30. This number written out is 602 with 28 zeros after it.
So there are not a thousand times (three zeros) more atoms in the universe than on Earth, not a million times (six zeros), not either a billion times (nine zeros) or even a billion billion times (eighteen zeros). No, there are on the order of a thousand billion billion billion times (thirty zeros) more atoms in the universe than what exists on Earth.
In addition, most of the atoms that the Earth consists of is molten lava and rock inside the Earth’s crust. All the atoms that we can see and interact with and what the biosphere consists of are on the thin surface layer, like the thin leather surface of a basketball. This will enlarge the ratio even more.
I personally find it very improbable that in this great vastness of the universe, that the Earth would be the only planet that supported life. There simply is so much stuff out there that somewhere, at some time life must have happened, just as it happened on Earth.
But an important distinction, when comparing extraterrestrial life with god:
If life exists somewhere else in the universe, it is concrete, observable, tangible and is subject to the same laws of physics that we experience too. Also, it is not unreasonable to assume that this life has also evolved over time, through natural selection. It is just a different strain of life, living its life very far away from us. It might be that we never have contact with them.
On the other hand, a god is an intangible, eternal, omnipotent and omniscient force that supposedly exists in an unknown dimension separate from our universe, inaccessible from our observations.
These two concepts are not at all comparable.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom
“On the other hand, a god is an intangible, eternal, omnipotent and omniscient force that supposedly exists in an unknown dimension separate from our universe, inaccessible from our observations.”
Keep in mind this god also feels emotions, is moody, get tired and has a child named Jesus.
In a hundred years time we won’t have any resources left, so this will cease to be a problem. Just another good reason to drill in national parks!
James you’re quite a pessimist, aren’t you?
Depends what natural resource I’m currently utilising.
Raid the landfills. Resources are simply moved around, except for energy resources, and for that there’s always the sun, the shoreline, and the planet’s heat (and perhaps a nuclear plant or two during the transition) to keep us going.
It’s not so much the amount of resources but how we use them. We have plenty, the problem we are facing has a lot more to do with our current throw-away-mentality coupled with big box companies not only in services but also in agriculture. But I do agree with James G, at the rate we are going, policy change may not be fast enough to offset our current course…
Naaaah, nanobots will purify all garbage dumps and extract the materials so it can be reused by then. But it won’t happen if science gets destroyed by religious nuts.
And then nanoboots are going to evolve to replicants and earth life -as we know it- is going to disappear!
(sorry, too much Stargate)
Holy crap, it’s the Tiberium saga all over again!
The proposal that alien life would be out to get our resources seems unlikely. Honestly Once your in space it would appear that harvesting resources would be comparably easy.
However the observation that wherever a more advanced society has encountered a less advanced one things did not go well for the less advanced one seems to be quite valid. Cross species viruses seem unlikely, but the leakage of technology could do a lot to upset the balance of power on earth and reshape it. And change that happens too fast is bound to be unpleasant.
Also historically there has been if there seems to be little if any correlation between moral and technological growth. In fact some of our biggest leaps had there antecedents in times of war rather then peace. So I would expect more technologically advanced civilisations to have the same tentions as we have in ours
I would say that the ability to sustain a functioning interstellar spacefareing enterprise would require civilization-wide cooperation at least, so perhaps where the technological advances may not indicate ethical advance, the practical necessity of a functioning government of that level of sophistication may give some hope.
Unless they are libertarian aliens. Eek.
Um, did anyone actually watch the program this article is derived from? The article is a bit misleading. Hawking was going through a bunch of different imaginative possibilities. The article hones in on a few and puts undue emphasis on these. I would suggest watching the program, it was really interesting.
In regards to life outside of our planet existing or not: If there are at least 100 billion galaxies, & if only 1 planet per galaxy had life, that’s still at least 100 billion planets with life. His point/thought was that with the huge number of stars, planets, and galaxies in the universe, the probabilty that there is life on some other planets is very high.
He also mentioned that since the laws of physics seem to be constant throughout the universe, that it makes sense that something like evolution would also be the same. The same general principles with different details. That would make observations of life here on our planet valid on a general scale. Life here is violent. The weak tend to prey on the strong.
How much of our technological progress as an “intelligent” life form has been based on or developed with completely peaceful intentions and how much on war or gaining/maintaining strength?
Um, yes. Watched it.
this is something that worries me a lot lately. Competition between states basically fuelled all our technological advancement until quite recently. Hopefully when we institute the One World Government, competition between corporations will have a similar effect.
Well, the same natural principles (rather mechanisms) don’t imply the same results, especially because evolution’s results are so dependent on the environment and the ways they are expressed can be different as well. I rather doubt life in another planet would be like life on Earth, even on similar circumstances.
well, it will have some way of eating, and probably some way of excreting. To grow, it’ll need to eat more, and to reproduce it’ll have to have some way of budding. Sexual reproduction of some description reduces copying errors, so that’s likely. Sex and eating both require ways of getting around and of observing the world. Sight might not depend on precisely the same spectra as ours, because our visible spectrum is linked to the atmosphere (what gets through but is reflected from solid objects enough to be useful, more or less. In other environments, animals will see by radar.) Tactile and chemical senses (touch, taste and smell) are almost certain, because they’re both useful and easy to develop. Hearing might be a little more contingent, but where it evolves it’ll be useful enough that it’ll spread rapidly. To develop a technological society, one requires not only intelligence, but extelligence, some way of preserving and passing on information, which implies some sort of communication as well as a group social structure. The ability to manipulate the world is also required to develop the technology required to cross the interstellar gulf.
So, in short, any intelligent species will have needs like ours (food and sex, more or less), movement (maybe not exactly like ours, but something), probably at least three or four of the five main senses we have, a social structure similar to, though probably also quite different from, ours, and a way of reshaping the world to its desires. In short, to be intelligent, it has to have similar capabilities to ours. Note that these can be achieved by radar land-squid who live in clone-pods, but they’ll still be similar enough to us that we can basically understand them. But then, the same can be said of the North Koreans.
Well, possibly, but possibly not. For all we know, they could be highly organized colonial insectoids that have nothing at all to do with humans.
Also, why assume feeding needs to be from something else? It could work via photosynthesis or absorption of other chemicals through other means that aren’t useful here. We’re assuming it’s a single species doing all these things, but isn’t it possible that it was a group of species in symbiose? Also, what if life isn’t as plentiful there as it is here? What if there are only a few niches to fill? If the environment is so hostile that there are only a handful of species (at the “macro” level, anyway)? A group social structure might be like those of ants (it IS highly organized, after all) rather than like ours.
Hearing and sight aren’t exactly required, though I agree that a technological species would need some senses – I could go with tactile/mechanical. Or, who knows, electrical. It might communicate via sonar/radio waves (hey, we do), or through light pulses invisible to our naked eye…
I suppose the possibilities are endless, even with the same formula :p
yeah, but the basics are still the same. A species (like that described in Gregory Benford’s novel Across the Sea of Suns) which subsists primarily on electricity is still technically eating, that is, taking something in from its environment. Even if we don’t eat electricity, we can understand the need for it, and it’s that similarity to which I was referring. Symbiosis isn’t an alternative at all; our cells are symbiotic associations of eukaryotes and bacteria, after all. I guess it’s possible for an intelligent species to photosynthesise, but why would an autotrophic species require intelligence? All it has to do is sit in a sunny place and take in water, carbon dioxide and trace nutrients, and that can be done without any brain at all.
To survive against its competition? After all, plants, while not exactly intelligent, do have some modicum of adaptation to survive against its predators. There might be a condition where intelligence would be required for survival, even if this survival wasn’t related to predating.
As for symbiosis, I was thinking more in terms of macro-organisms rather than the symbiosis we display. Maybe even parasitism?
There was a story I found quite interesting in the Last and First Man, where Mars (this book was written a long time ago, btw, it’s even public domain) evolved a species that was composed of “floating” micro-organisms that coordinated like our cells, without ever making an “unit”. Thus these critters’ individuals could simply mesh into a “superorganism” and divide into individuals at any time. Each tiny speck communicated with others via radio waves. It was an interesting thought, but I wouldn’t have the slightest idea if it’s possible or not.
Asimov used something similar in Nemesis, where the bacterial sludge covering the planet turns out to be the neural cells in a giant, planet-wide brain communicating by radio as well as normal neurotransmitters, and the idea got stolen for Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, which is still a great game despite being only 56 megabytes (I can’t even imagine how small that is).
The point is that each unit of such an organism would have the same needs as any other living species, and so the organism as a whole would need to seek food in the same way that we need to eat so that the food can be distributed to our cells.
That doesn’t prevent misunderstandings… the Human-Bugger War in Ender’s Game was started by the Buggers destroying a few humans as a way of saying hi to the human queen, who they assumed would be connected to these workers by natural forms of communication and would notice their demise better than anything else. To the Buggers, it was simple politeness, but to humans it was an atrocity which led eventually to the near-annihilation of the Buggers.
I think Stephen Hawking is a pretty
fart smellersmart feller and I’m inclined to believe what he says is most likely closer to truth than fiction.I disagree with this:
1) First-contact, however it eventually happens (if it does), is likely to be between explorers and scientists.
2) Taking resources from another star system would be hugely inefficient for a couple of reasons;
i) Most star systems have their own Kuyper Belt which contains all the minerals and ice you
could wish for at far closer proximity than the light-years scale of interstellar travel, and
ii) Any species that has the technology to travel between the stars is likely to have already
developed recycling, reuse and matter manipulation technologies which would make such
space-piracy completely pointless.
3) Humanity are war-like, aggressive and generally unpleasant. That is how we have evolved to be. It does not necessarily follow, however, that we’ll continue to be that way (the peaceful in times of plenty will live to breed more than the aggressive, after all) – and it does not follow that the current evolutionary stage of whatever species eventually finds us will be an aggressive of hegemonising one.
I love the idea that we would be taken as pets. How do we actually treat “sub-human” species? I’m thinking slavery here (that’s provided they didn’t find us tasty).
Custador, interesting comment “the peaceful in times of plenty will live to breed more than the aggressive, after all”.
Not sure I agree. The US has had 60 years of plenty yet is one of the most warlike and destructive forces ever seen on this planet. Those who have, always want more.
Perhaps I should have said “times of peace and plenty” then :-)
But yes: 5% of the world’s population and 50% of the world’s military spending all in one nation is not a good thing for anybody except weapons makers!
If they are truly and absolutely ‘alien’ then their whole ‘being’ and atomic make-up is unlikely to be compatible with anything on Earth, or at least unrecognisable with what we have biologically :| They may be shmoozing around here already. Idek. But who would wanna come to Earth? If I was an alien I’d probably watch from a safe distance and bring the popcorn.
If they turn hostile, don’t worry gaize; we still have Sigourney Weaver.
Hawking’s point, that we don’t really know WHAT aliens would do, is worth considering. Isn’t it possible that they might be technically advanced, but still think it’s fun just to blow things up? For interaction with another species gone wrong, watch the documentary Grizzly Man. Personally, I’m more worried about space microbes.
What are the odds that an alien microbe could live within us? How could it evolve to affect us? We usually don’t get new microbes from reptils (usually) but we have some common -or similar- to other apes. An alien species from an other planet won’t have any in common (probably).
Moreover… spaceships should be pretty sterile.
My knee jerk reaction is to say that our gravitational well would make it too hard for them to get our resources. Asteroid belts, moons of gas giants, and the Oort cloud are where you go for your materials.
Then I remembered the teachings of Lex Luthor. The one thing they’re not making more of is land. They won’t come to take our water or minerals. Mining would be a secondary concern. However, we have lots of fertile soil. They could just want to use Earth to grow food to send home or to feed their people operating in this area of the galaxy.
If they came here for resources it would be for something that cannot be found anywhere else. Us. Life. Organisms. Organic matter. Or maybe just sentience itself. Aside from interstellar travel the aliens will have undoubtedly solved many other problems we still wrestle with. Perhaps one of them would be the mind/body problem. If minds could be mined that would be an enormous resource.
There’s simply no reason for aliens to be hostile.
1. Resources are way more plentiful in space.
2. Colonization seems unlikely, considering that they would almost certainly would be unable to survive on our planet.
3. Enslaving sound even more ridiculous, robotics are way more effective.
The only situation I could think in which they would attack us, is if for some reason they perceived us as a threat.
yes, but we’re so obviously peaceful and harmless that… oh crap. I gotta go dig a bunker, bbs.
Well we might be violent, but we would be unable to cause harm to them. So no threat there.
are you kidding? We have nukes, now. One of those in the right place can screw up an entire moon, and very few space craft are going to be that big without being very fragile as well. An O’Neill can, for instance, would basically pop like a balloon. And if we kill them, we can take their technology.
If they are actually capable of interstellar travel, then it is safe to say that they would be able defend themselves against our nukes.
Your version of Aliens sounds like a Utopian society of GODS.
1. Natural pearls are prized more than manufactured ones. Why? Because the human race is full of nutters. Our entire financial system is based upon how much shiny orangy metal we can accumulate, for crying out loud. Ooo, shiny shiny! Can we second-guess aliens, when we don’t even know why humans want what we want?!
2. Why couldn’t aliens survive here? Are they too thick to adapt themselves to the environment, or adapt the environment to themselves?
3. Human beings are very adaptable, low maintenance, self-replicating robots.
4. Tell that to the Aztecs.
“My knee jerk reaction is to say that our gravitational well would make it too hard for them”‘
silly, silly fool. Try waiting a billion years then check it. Your little brain is like an ant’s brain to them. We are just a bit of chemical scum upon this tiny, insignificant planet.
1. the human race will never encounter aliens
2. the entire human race will die out
3. the big secret is that ‘there is no point to it all’
4. live life and enjoy
This is outrageous speculation. Stephen Hawking may be terrific physicist, but fortune teller he is not.
Will aliens be hostile and eat us? Possibly.
Is it equally possible that they will be friendly? Yes.
Just because Stephen Hawking is scared of something it doesn’t mean it is a legitimate concern. His xenophobia is unwarranted, just like all xenophobes.
I see Hawking’s comments more like a critic to ourselves than xenophobia.
In fact, we are not yet a species able to interestelar travels, and we may be never able if we don’t improve in some ways as a society. Or perhaps we can. Anyway, the premisse that we are a good example of this kind of species is, at least, dubious.
I think if they were coming here to tackle the resource problem, they weren’t as advanced as we were to find a way around it, like electric cars. I don’t think they’d be very advanced or they would have no need for our resources.
what do they make all those electric cars out of, Billy?
Hate to be a pessimist on this thread but we will never encounter aliens. Yes, they may exist but the human race will never encounter them. They are bound by the same laws we are.
If we could travel at the speed of light (our atoms would fall apart but I digress) it would take us 100,000 years to get from one end of our galaxy to the other.
Here’s a great article on this – I highly recommend it.
“To move faster, you add energy. But when you get going near the speed of light, the amount of energy you need to go faster balloons to infinity! To move a mass at the speed of light would take infinite energy. It appears that there is a distinct barrier here.”
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/technology/warp/warpstat.html
what about generation ships? Or Bussard Ramjets? Sure, we can’t flit from star to star light as a bird, but a slow gradual expansion could see human-like creatures covering the galaxy within a couple of million years, and if there’s other intelligent life out there, we might be the aliens to them…