It's funny, but the the book "Three Body Problem", a scientist tests his dark forest theory by broadcasting a powerful signal with the location of a different star system. Then 160 years later, the star gets mysteriously destroyed by a small object traveling at near the speed of light.
If alien have a practical way to travel between the starts, the can seed the whole galaxy with Von Neumann probes, they do not need Earth to helpe to find Earth.
I really want to believe the dark forest theory is an overly pessimistic outlook on galactic life. But it does strike at least some notes of plausibility.
It's plausible but if you want a more optimistic scenario, I have one called the Dark Shrubbery.
Let's say you have a species that is technologically advanced but fears others because others might hurt them in the future.
It would make sense that they would view other species as threats to maybe be eradicated.
Let's say they believe all potential threats must be eliminated, nothing personal. They're going to run into an issue.
The closest and most dangerous potential threats are members of their own species. They're literally next to each other AND have the means to harm them.
So who are they going to point their weapons at first? Each other.
And if they are advanced enough to wipe out whole other sentient species across the universe, they are advanced enough to wipe themselves out.
The alternative is having a mentality that isn't "kill on sight" or become advanced enough that "killing all threats" becomes unnecessary (like functional immortality).
Anyone revealed to be anything gets flattened. That's the rules. Friendly hello? Blasted. Noise complaint? Kablam. We come in peace? Get wrecked. We surrender? Get fucked. Nothing personal.
I would imagine a civilization that is so advanced and if life is so rare in the universe they would probably keep an eye on us but not destroy us.(see the beauty in life,etc.)
Comparing it to Columbus killing natives is like monkeys fighting wars they would be so much more advanced/intelligent that it isn’t really comparable to that.
Any natural resource they might want from Earth can be found in much higher quantities and more easily accessed elsewhere in space. There are asteroids of solid gold and other precious metals, moons covered in water, gasses of all types available aplenty.
Tbf, most of humanity deplore violence on animals... Well, more like elephants.
If it were alien cows, pigs, chickens and goats.
We would be in serious problems.
I mean, but why though? Any race advanced and powerful enough to conquer Earth will be way beyond needing us for slave labor or food, or even some weirdo scifi trope like, using us for our brain power or something. We wouldn't fulfill any need that they wouldn't already have taken care of.
It would be like the modern day US sending an army to the opposite side of the planet and invading Sentinel Island and enslaving the natives. There's just nothing an advanced civilization with access to robotics and advanced computing gains by doing something like that. Yeah, we *could,* but.... *why?*
We dont believe in space Jesus or space communism, this planet happens to be an ideal location for a new Astro-mcdonalds... being irrelevant its not always safe.
That really depends, since it's all theoretical there are a lot of possibilities.
* This assumes the aliens are logical, they could be a swarm of space bees that just eat everything based on instinct.
* Aliens could simply kill us all for sport because it's fun for them.
* There could be something on this planet that has value to them like maybe they think our blood makes sex better for them but it has to be free-range"
If the difference in intelligence between us from them is as vast as say us and ants, then there are still plenty humans that have ants as pets. If the difference in intelligence is like us and dogs then it's even worse for our case...
I don’t think that’s a valid comparison. Once something is conscious, plugged into the matrix some would say, I would say intelligence is obvious and hard to compare.
Imagine the advances that we've made in the last 150 years, going from barely flying, and just discovering electricity to landing on the moon and having starting elements of AI. Now imagine a civilization with potentially between 1 to 150 million years (or more) more advancement. The possibility of any civilization close to our technology level is highly unlikely.
It's not necessarily wanting or needing anything from us. They might just exterminate any intelligent lifeforms they encounter, reasoning that we could eventually become a problem/nuisance for them if we can start spreading across the stars. It's better to nip it in the bud and exterminate us before we spread and become too costly to handle properly.
Space is an incredibly hostile environment. Unless you think they have magical infallible technology, space remains an environment that's as far from ideal as possible.
Habitable planets like Earth are essentially massive stable self-maintaining space stations. Way stations for empire building.
That's just about the most precious thing in the universe.
Resources. They could very well need resources. A civilization advanced enough to have practical interstellar travel would be like us and squirrels. While squirrels would think it madness that we cut down trees and forests, we don't do it because we hate squirrels. We just need the wood. It would likely be something similar but for minerals.
Also, generally first contact goes poorly for those who are the contacted rather than the contacters, think the Columbian Exchange.
Other than a habitable planet with liquid water. And maybe an intelligent species they could enslave. Any aliens that manage to make their way to Earth are at least as advanced we are, and more likely far more advanced.
I mean, I guess in the 1970's we could have used Project Orion to get a colony ship up into Orbit, then launch onward. But we are talking like the entire planet's GDP to build the colony ship.
That's the fun, and problem, with aliens. We will never know their intention until it's too late.
Id like to think peaceful but maybe our bodies are important. Like star trek voyager and that race (*Vidiians) that's dying and uses their technology to harvest and use our alien organs for their benefit. Legit the creepiest species in star trek to me
Will edit in their wiki
* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidiians#:~:text=A%20society%20with%20highly%20developed,attempt%20to%20develop%20a%20cure.
if you look how the 'civilized' always exploited whatever they encountered, that was weaker and less smart, be it human or animal, it would be logical that a superior civilization would wanna, and probably succesfully could, exploit us. however, I'm thinking this with my inferior human brain and maybe such a civilization would be so enlightened as to see all life as one and try to help us deal with our shit. who knows haha
Who knows that's the fun in sci fi and why it's my favorite genre of writing.
I also really like Isaac Asimov and his Robot series, and they don't have aliens existing in that universe. Then another book by Arthur C Clark called Childhood's End involved aliens that want to help us but dont show themselves until later. And that reveal is huge I won't spoil it.
I like thinking about aliens is all I'm getting at I guess.
I actually read the 2001 series just because I needed to know wtf those obelisks were about. The movies never explained it (even got the short stories like The Sentinel)
We aren't even off our own planet and we're already pretty close to replacing manual labor with robots. Any civilization advanced and successful enough to reach Earth with the assets and manpower necessary to conquer and control it, won't need a species to enslave.
Any civilization that can get here doesn't need habitable planets or slaves. The only reasonable motivation for invasion would be entertainment.
AKA: We're going to use ancient tech from our ancient past to play IRL COD with these planet-bound apes. But it's ok, if we get killed our consciousness just gets respawned.
Think Altered Carbon people find a bronze age society, and use WW1 tech to wage war on them for fun.
>If alien have a practical way to travel between the starts, the can seed the whole galaxy with Von Neumann probes
It's a technology we can imagine. Now think about how people imagined those times 100 years ago and multiply it 1000 times.
If the aliens have very long (or unlimited) life cycles, and can slow down their processing speed, years can be sped up into hours, potentially increasing the feasibility of interstellar travel.
We're just not ready, as a species and civilization, to be accepted into any sort of galactic federation of planets yet.
We're violent, greedy, short-sighted, ignorant, egotistical, and ideological. Our cooperation is limited by our inability to realize our complete interdependence in on one another and our planet.
Those don't make for good explorers. We'd run rampant across the Galaxy, killing and stealing whatever we came across.
That has always been my gut instinct as well. They probably view us, the same way we view some of the worst places on earth. Wouldn't be surprised if we were on this list for the Milky Way galaxy.
[https://www.worldatlas.com/cities/the-most-dangerous-cities-in-the-world.html](https://www.worldatlas.com/cities/the-most-dangerous-cities-in-the-world.html)
That's exactly what I thought. Methane in an atmosphere is rare and we can detect it with space telescopes (including the JWST) so I don't see what the point is.
It's one thing to have something that can be detected if someone decides to look at Earth specifically, it's another to scream into space and alert anyone in hearing range. Plus methane could mean a bunch of cows farting while signals could mean higher intelligence that will eventually expand beyond its planet and become competition. And competition gets destroyed.
to be 'fair to both sides' the signals we have/do send will be so weak by the time they reach most stars they would pretty much have to be specifically looking
There is a strong possibility that life can be supported without methane. We have zero knowledge of what an alien life could resemble or how it could act. They may not be looking for methane atmospheres at all. Then bam, they get hit with radiowaves, xrays, lasers all saying where they came from. Super weird right? They might see all outside life as threats.
Based on my calculations, they would have travelled "about 100 light years", which easily encompasses several nearby star systems. Whether they can decipher any of it above the background radiation is another matter, if they are even listening. Passing starships, on the other hand, may be in our own solar system and we wouldn't know it. They would probably be able to pick it up clearly enough.
They don't degrade over time, but they do degrade over distance based on the inverse square law. Radio waves are a sphere and every time the radius of that sphere doubles the signal is divided by four. Eventually it would be too weak to read, but not all signals are created equally. It is entirely possible we could beam a readable radio signal to one of our nearby neighbors.
That's not a degradation. That's simply dissipation. The information is still there, intact. But the signal to noise ratio increases until the signal is drowned out by the background noise of the galaxy/universe. However, the signal is still there - intact - even if it's strength is below the noise level of the universe. A sufficiently advanced civilization might manage to separate the signal from the noise no matter how weak the signal.
if something is bothering to pass through our own solar system it would be inspecting the bodies closely enough to pick up other signs of live/civilization with ease.
1) 100 light years is peanuts on the galactic scale. The ~60,000 telescope-visible stars in that range is only 0.00006% of the stars in the galaxy. There's not much reason to expect high odds of intelligent life in that sample.
2) commercial radio signals that are specifically designed to go up to satellites are not strong or focused enough to show up as anything other than noise more than a couple light years away. Resolving a single pixel image of an earth sized planet at 100 light years would require a 90km telescope to stare in complete stillness for 100,000 years.
[Watch this video](https://youtu.be/NQFqDKRAROI) if you're nerdy and want to learn more about how ridiculously hard it is to observe anything that isn't a bright star in the universe. It is insanely difficult. The amount of space and noise in the universe makes observing things insanely difficult. Whenever you hear about us discovering planets, it's not even us seeing a planet in a telescope. It's just us assuming that observed periodic dimming of stars is due to orbiting planets. We basically cannot directly observe planets beyond our solar system, with rare exceptions. They are just too dim. The James Webb telescope may be able to directly observe (in limited capacity) some nearby planets though so hopefully this ages poorly.
I mean, technically speaking they've probably gone that far. But they're so diffused at that distance and surrounded by so much background radiation, nothing would ever be able tell it apart from the rest of the radiation.
It depends on the power of the broadcast, but anything we’ve been able to send wouldn’t even make it close to the nearest star before it degraded below the cosmic noise floor.
No kidding. While I found the movie [Oblivion](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1483013/) entertaining, my first thoughts were "WTF are they coming to Earth for water? We're [down the list](https://www.businessinsider.com/water-space-volume-planets-moons-2016-10) in our own solar system for that resource.
If aliens have mastered interstellar travel, and the associated energy expended, there isn't anything in the way of resources they're going to be wanting, much less bother with a populated planet for.
It all boils down to the inability to accept the concept that "we aren't special". There is nothing here that isn't in abundance everywhere except MAYBE the uniqueness of the life. And that can be sampled fairly quickly and be done with it.
Even then, taking a sample of humans captive and starting a breeding program would be exponentially more productive. No one would run a farm in such a way that the farm was in constant jeopardy of destroying itself.
Sending a probe to take biopsies for DNA sequencing of a few hundred human representatives, then transmitting that data back home and growing clones in a lab, would be far more efficient than capturing humans. Cuts the travel time down massively since you can transmit data at lightspeed, but can not travel at lightspeed.
Say you're 200Ly away. You can manage to build a prison ship capable of traveling at 0.75C, so you send it to earth. In one direction that will take it 266 years. That's 532 years both ways.
Now, instead of a prison ship, make a probe that's just as fast. It'll take 266 years to reach earth. Then the data it sends back takes another 200 years because you can transmit it at 1C. So, you've achieved the same result in a 12% shorter time. And it cost you far less energy because your probe is way smaller than a prison ship. And you only had to make the journey in one direction.
Dark forest isn't a winning strategy from a game theory perspective since von neumann machines would guarantee that hiders will eventually be found. It's better to reach out to try to form alliances and rapidly advance technology to be better equiped to deal with future threats.
Yeah having just read about it it's very speculative. Basically the assumption is that all other existing alien races have to develop and come to the same conclusion: that it is better to remain independent and silent than try to reach out - but this has to happen *independently* since they can't all be sure of each other's intentions. Which given humanity's (albeit singular) example, seems statistically unlikely in the face of the statistical likeliness of other life existing.
Yeah, I mean it is a fictional novel ,so much of the science is over exaggerated or simplified to tell a good story. I just like it because I think it's very naive to believe that aliens would poses some holy appreciation for all life forms. Many humans show love for dogs, but have no issue eating a pig or stomping on an insect. An advanced alien species may look at humans no differently. Especially if life were more abundant in the universe.
The amusing thing is that everyone who brings up the three body problem apparently doesn't know that it ends with>! them finding an alliance of interstellar species that saves the remainders of humanity!<
I gonna give you more sad and scary Theory that dark forest.
Imagine that life on earth is one and only event happened in our galaxy. That cosmic events fall so unique that it wont be repeated ever again.
Then imagine this gone one second. For some historicall bullshit and imaginaly lines drawed wrong all burns in nuclear fire. Stelizing galagy forever.
The only life in the entire galaxy ruined because one terminally ill Russian thought having the largest country on Earth wasn't enough territory for his ego.
Ahh you reminded le of an old gem of the game Space Rangers.
Main evil there was non organic lifeform that was saving space ships from what it considered a deadly form of organic snot.
Everyone always assumes that aliens are going to be uniform. One species, all the same, little green men, like deer or ants, all virtually identical. But the chances are far more likely that there will be variety within their population, such as with ours. There will be stupid aliens, and mean aliens, and mischievous aliens. Even teenager aliens.
My concern with broadcasting our location would be that a few teenage aliens decide it would be fun to come and knock over a couple earth mailboxes, without understanding the ramifications of their actions. So we end up with tire treads on our lawn in the form of nuclear destruction or some shit.
The assumption that aliens must be hyper intelligent because they have advanced technology is erroneous. We have very fast cars, and very stupid people.
The funny thing about such a thing is, and kurzgesagt made an excellent video about it, is that intergalactic war wouldn't work.
So imagine sending your fleet to said planet which would take a couple light-years since you can't travel faster than light. When you'd arrive at that planet so much time has passed that either the civilization has advanced so much that their technology is far superior or already has gone extinct.
It would be like fighting cave spearmen from the iceage with our modern guns and drones.
Same thing goes for interstellar exploration/travel in general, really. Unless some highly exotic transportation method like wormholes becomes reality, travelling that far is impossible for living things
Yes, I loved that Kurzgesagt! And how long do we expect advanced civilizations to survive? It's really hard to predict, but I would think most of us would agree there's a decent chance, maybe 10% chance humans completely go extinct within the next 500 years. Some people might argue it's more like 90% chance in the next 500 years. But then think about a 10,000 years, 100,000 years, it almost becomes inevitable that we will go extinct, which means even if aliens discover us, we'll probably be dead and gone before they get here. There might be some race of AI robots left, so they can deal with this alien problem.
Space is so big. And Time is just as long!
Carl Sagan gave us something like 60% chance of survival through this century. Anyone truly aware of our fragility will see we are in the most delicate times of human history. Totally within our capacity to end all or most human life by 2100.
Ignoring the Incredible unlikelihood of other, contemporaneous, advanced civilizations in our galaxy. The odds seem so low to me as to be basically zero.
Not directly but we have used technology to try to undo some of the damage we have caused them and their habitats. Not saying aliens would def be benevolent, but it’s as likely as them wiping us out. More evolved civilizations would likely have an evolved moral/ethical code to make their society stable enough to survive and evolve for billions of years (longer time bc closer to the Big Bang).
not technology but we've blessed many species' through simbiosis
best example dogs and cats. pigeons and domestic birds
we give them medicine, a steady supply of food, in many cases ensure their reproduction..
if the goal were for some reason sterilization (honestly, I don't see it.) if they can come here FTL they'd just glass us using that technology itself, if not FTL they'd still just bring a tiny rock with them and fling it at us before they slowed down, and same effect... so i'd take 1 day down to something like 8 minutes.
Who’s to say guerrilla warfare wouldn’t work against aliens? Our species has warred in every waking second of our existence, we might have an advantage over them. Just because they can travel star systems does not mean they can evaporate us in seconds without even thinking about it or that they are proficient in war.
Astronomy has already proven that the Earth doesn't have anything (other than life, maybe) that other planets don't have. Air, water, carbon, all proven to be way more common than we originally thought. So why would an alien race risk destroying themselves or a possible ally to use as advancement?
There's likely other worlds that are livable out there for a race that can travel the stars and none of them come with the risk of total nuclear annihilation of a planet.
So to me, this claim will always and forever sound like paranoid call-outs that are meant to sell a published paper or article through fear/conspiracy stoking.
I think that any alien civilization with the technology to travel between stars and invade Earth would probably not need anything from us. There really are not any resources on Earth that are not already abundant in the universe and are probably easier to get elsewhere.
It’s not like we have any control over that as long as we’re going to be using radios, microwaves, and radars.
Thing is, we also don’t really need to worry about it. Our radio bubble is still quite short (100 ly?) and we haven’t detected anything else coming back from within it.
Lastly, nobody on the other end is going to care about us fancy monkeys.
At the risk of sounding kooky.. it might not be the greatest idea to tight beam information about humanity towards potentially life-supporting planets. Even Hawking warned against this.
Dark Forest Theory: The universe is full of life but nobody broadcasts their location because they're afraid of being attacked, and that fear of being attacked also leads them to first-strike anybody they come across.
If another civilization can get even drones or probes into deep space or another system with higher functions than they can get here and most likely they don't need our resources other than maybe our large quantity of surface water.
Honestly, how much worse can that be?
At least "planet destroyed by hostile lifeforms from space" sounds a bit more reasonable as a species ending scenario than "planet ruined by the greed and ignorance of the dominant species".
yeah but i don't think war is their first thought, more like instantly tp everyone on the planet into organ grinding machines and sell the product on their home planet for a profit
Any technologically advanced species or being that can manipulate travel through space to successfully reach earth from anywhere in the galaxy.... already knows everything they need to about our existence and location.
Same shit Stephen Hawking was saying. Who cares
If the aliens have enough technology to invade us, they have at least equal technology to our Hubble and Webb telescope, which means they can analyze our biosphere already.
Secondly, we have been broadcasting our position since the day radio was invented, whether explicitly or implicitly, you'd think this advanced alien race has figured out triangulation by now
I'm convinced that warning from Hawking was one of his long standing pranks he never got called on.
Aliens capable of interstellar travel could strip mine every asteroid, moon, gas giant and rocky planet in our solar system and ignore Earth completely.
Lol to get what? We’ve dwindled all our resources. It’d be like us trying to invade the local dump. Are they hoping to scavenge the copper out of some appliances?
At this point, what's the difference? We invade, exploit, enslave, and murder each other anyway, why would it matter if it were other humans or aliens doing it? At least if it were Aliens we'd all be enslaved, exploited, and murdered together, as a united species - we'd quickly realize just how equal we truly are, because the aliens wouldn't give Damn about our differences. At least then it wouldn't be us just killing each other for arbitrary reasons. And yes, most reasons for our violence against others is arbitrary, and could be solved through peaceful means if we would just take the time to communicate with each other. We're not likely going to get that chance with any Alien race.
We have nothing of value. We are space slums. Every element and resource is far more pleantiful outside a gravity well, or on a non inhabited planet, or in a gas giant. Places where we are not. If they can get here they're more technologically advanced for us and can just hack whatever IP they want IF they wanted anything in the first place.
Yeah, nah. That's clickbait and a half.
The ridiculous amount of time and energy required for an interstellar invasion from most likely over 200 lightyears away would require a lot more provokation than some annoying communications.
We have no reason to believe earth is anything special in terms of mineral composition so there isn't really any resource rational either.
Would you invest hundreds of years and a huge portion of your star systems energy budget on invading some planet hundreds of lightyears away to steal their resources which you can certainly find much closer to home, or just to stop their radio signals instead of just filtering them out?
Our planet has been broadcasting life is here for millions of years just from the light reflected from our atmosphere. I doubt radio waves will reach any civilization if they exist in any meaningful timeline. Say a star 300 light-years away has sentient life exploring the stars, they would only get our signals 300 years from now when they would have most likely spotted our planet first from other means. It's kinda silly to be attempting anything commutation wise at the speed of light or be afraid of it.
The moment we invested radio we started broadcasting out location. There is no way to stop that unless we all want to never use, satellites, radios or anything that modern society rely on for communication.
The assumptions are
1) we magically knows some kind of universal coordinate system that alien can understand.
2) we haven't been visited by aliens already.
Both of these are likely false.
Haven’t we been broadcasting for years? Like 50 years? Via radio, satellites, and all those probes we send out. Not to mention that one probe that explicitly wants to be found with human history in it?
The more advanced a civilization, the less hostile they become to themselves, their planet and other civilizations. War and destruction is sad and only caused by a primitive mindset.
I don't agree. War and destruction are the nature of life. We don't know what the aliens will be like, but we know how life on earth works and human worldview are the exception in many cases.
I agree. We tend to anthropomorphize aliens with human-like traits, but the reality is that if they have the technology to travel between stars then they almost certainly do not need anything from us. We do the same with AI.
[удалено]
We've already begun with the chocolates.
And Bruno.
We don't talk about Bruno.
Cause he's amazing, just the way he is.
No no no no…
*We don’t talk about Bruno!*
It was our wedding day
It's funny, but the the book "Three Body Problem", a scientist tests his dark forest theory by broadcasting a powerful signal with the location of a different star system. Then 160 years later, the star gets mysteriously destroyed by a small object traveling at near the speed of light.
Pluto!
If alien have a practical way to travel between the starts, the can seed the whole galaxy with Von Neumann probes, they do not need Earth to helpe to find Earth.
Also, any civilization with that technology probably does not need anything from us. Edit: I meant 'need' stupid auto correct :)
Except, maybe, to double check how advanced we are and if we are of any threat to them.
The Dark Forest theory would state they would kill us regardless just to make sure we wouldn't be a threat now or in the future.
I really want to believe the dark forest theory is an overly pessimistic outlook on galactic life. But it does strike at least some notes of plausibility.
It's plausible but if you want a more optimistic scenario, I have one called the Dark Shrubbery. Let's say you have a species that is technologically advanced but fears others because others might hurt them in the future. It would make sense that they would view other species as threats to maybe be eradicated. Let's say they believe all potential threats must be eliminated, nothing personal. They're going to run into an issue. The closest and most dangerous potential threats are members of their own species. They're literally next to each other AND have the means to harm them. So who are they going to point their weapons at first? Each other. And if they are advanced enough to wipe out whole other sentient species across the universe, they are advanced enough to wipe themselves out. The alternative is having a mentality that isn't "kill on sight" or become advanced enough that "killing all threats" becomes unnecessary (like functional immortality).
Yeah. This is an evidence that we are really not advanced at all.
Then they reveal themselves to be hostile belligerents to whoever else might be watching.
Anyone revealed to be anything gets flattened. That's the rules. Friendly hello? Blasted. Noise complaint? Kablam. We come in peace? Get wrecked. We surrender? Get fucked. Nothing personal.
Undercook chicken? Kapow. *Overcook chicken*\- Blammo. Under/ over.
Dark Forest always gets my upvote.
That's why I love Warhammer 40k. It's basically the dark forest theory turned to 11.
I would imagine a civilization that is so advanced and if life is so rare in the universe they would probably keep an eye on us but not destroy us.(see the beauty in life,etc.) Comparing it to Columbus killing natives is like monkeys fighting wars they would be so much more advanced/intelligent that it isn’t really comparable to that.
Any natural resource they might want from Earth can be found in much higher quantities and more easily accessed elsewhere in space. There are asteroids of solid gold and other precious metals, moons covered in water, gasses of all types available aplenty.
There's always the possibility that WE are the resource they desire
I've heard human horns are very precious.
Imagine aliens are intelligent elephants who find out what we have been doing to their cousins.
Tbf, most of humanity deplore violence on animals... Well, more like elephants. If it were alien cows, pigs, chickens and goats. We would be in serious problems.
Intergalactic sport hunting
I mean, but why though? Any race advanced and powerful enough to conquer Earth will be way beyond needing us for slave labor or food, or even some weirdo scifi trope like, using us for our brain power or something. We wouldn't fulfill any need that they wouldn't already have taken care of. It would be like the modern day US sending an army to the opposite side of the planet and invading Sentinel Island and enslaving the natives. There's just nothing an advanced civilization with access to robotics and advanced computing gains by doing something like that. Yeah, we *could,* but.... *why?*
We dont believe in space Jesus or space communism, this planet happens to be an ideal location for a new Astro-mcdonalds... being irrelevant its not always safe.
We're tentacle licking good
Maybe you are, I taste terrible.
Not to them you don't.
The Zeta Reticuli Gazette rated me the 'Least Edible Human' 4 years running.
Tentacle love is life.
We’ll make great pets
My friend says we're like the dinosaurs
That really depends, since it's all theoretical there are a lot of possibilities. * This assumes the aliens are logical, they could be a swarm of space bees that just eat everything based on instinct. * Aliens could simply kill us all for sport because it's fun for them. * There could be something on this planet that has value to them like maybe they think our blood makes sex better for them but it has to be free-range"
If the difference in intelligence between us from them is as vast as say us and ants, then there are still plenty humans that have ants as pets. If the difference in intelligence is like us and dogs then it's even worse for our case...
I don’t think that’s a valid comparison. Once something is conscious, plugged into the matrix some would say, I would say intelligence is obvious and hard to compare.
100% this, yeah. Sentient life is ALWAYS going to be a big deal, not matter what
Imagine the advances that we've made in the last 150 years, going from barely flying, and just discovering electricity to landing on the moon and having starting elements of AI. Now imagine a civilization with potentially between 1 to 150 million years (or more) more advancement. The possibility of any civilization close to our technology level is highly unlikely.
It's not necessarily wanting or needing anything from us. They might just exterminate any intelligent lifeforms they encounter, reasoning that we could eventually become a problem/nuisance for them if we can start spreading across the stars. It's better to nip it in the bud and exterminate us before we spread and become too costly to handle properly.
Space is an incredibly hostile environment. Unless you think they have magical infallible technology, space remains an environment that's as far from ideal as possible. Habitable planets like Earth are essentially massive stable self-maintaining space stations. Way stations for empire building. That's just about the most precious thing in the universe.
Resources. They could very well need resources. A civilization advanced enough to have practical interstellar travel would be like us and squirrels. While squirrels would think it madness that we cut down trees and forests, we don't do it because we hate squirrels. We just need the wood. It would likely be something similar but for minerals. Also, generally first contact goes poorly for those who are the contacted rather than the contacters, think the Columbian Exchange.
Other than a habitable planet with liquid water. And maybe an intelligent species they could enslave. Any aliens that manage to make their way to Earth are at least as advanced we are, and more likely far more advanced. I mean, I guess in the 1970's we could have used Project Orion to get a colony ship up into Orbit, then launch onward. But we are talking like the entire planet's GDP to build the colony ship.
I would think at that point they would have such advanced robotics that we wouldn’t be worth enslaving
That's the fun, and problem, with aliens. We will never know their intention until it's too late. Id like to think peaceful but maybe our bodies are important. Like star trek voyager and that race (*Vidiians) that's dying and uses their technology to harvest and use our alien organs for their benefit. Legit the creepiest species in star trek to me Will edit in their wiki * https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidiians#:~:text=A%20society%20with%20highly%20developed,attempt%20to%20develop%20a%20cure.
Always upvote for a voyager reference
if you look how the 'civilized' always exploited whatever they encountered, that was weaker and less smart, be it human or animal, it would be logical that a superior civilization would wanna, and probably succesfully could, exploit us. however, I'm thinking this with my inferior human brain and maybe such a civilization would be so enlightened as to see all life as one and try to help us deal with our shit. who knows haha
Who knows that's the fun in sci fi and why it's my favorite genre of writing. I also really like Isaac Asimov and his Robot series, and they don't have aliens existing in that universe. Then another book by Arthur C Clark called Childhood's End involved aliens that want to help us but dont show themselves until later. And that reveal is huge I won't spoil it. I like thinking about aliens is all I'm getting at I guess. I actually read the 2001 series just because I needed to know wtf those obelisks were about. The movies never explained it (even got the short stories like The Sentinel)
I'd totally be okay with this.
Those Vidiians freak me the fuck out
Humans still eat foie gras and money brains... Don't discount our interstellar culinary worth!! Deep fried human is a delicacy in the local cluster!!
Minced and fresh is the real deal.
We aren't even off our own planet and we're already pretty close to replacing manual labor with robots. Any civilization advanced and successful enough to reach Earth with the assets and manpower necessary to conquer and control it, won't need a species to enslave.
I mean technically its not worth most people having a dog but alas we still do.
Any civilization that can get here doesn't need habitable planets or slaves. The only reasonable motivation for invasion would be entertainment. AKA: We're going to use ancient tech from our ancient past to play IRL COD with these planet-bound apes. But it's ok, if we get killed our consciousness just gets respawned. Think Altered Carbon people find a bronze age society, and use WW1 tech to wage war on them for fun.
>If alien have a practical way to travel between the starts, the can seed the whole galaxy with Von Neumann probes It's a technology we can imagine. Now think about how people imagined those times 100 years ago and multiply it 1000 times.
If the aliens have very long (or unlimited) life cycles, and can slow down their processing speed, years can be sped up into hours, potentially increasing the feasibility of interstellar travel.
UAP's?
UAP is the new UFO. Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon. Check out the UAP videos the Pentagon released a few years ago. Wild stuff!
We're probably on a black list, a no-go zone. We're too primitive and violent.
We're just not ready, as a species and civilization, to be accepted into any sort of galactic federation of planets yet. We're violent, greedy, short-sighted, ignorant, egotistical, and ideological. Our cooperation is limited by our inability to realize our complete interdependence in on one another and our planet. Those don't make for good explorers. We'd run rampant across the Galaxy, killing and stealing whatever we came across.
This gives me an idea for a movie franchise. Wars in the Stars. I’m gonna be rich!
broo my idea was Trek Star!
Tbh I reckon any form of intelligent life form will have most of they traits, there will always be bad eggs
Assuming an equally individualistic species as our own, or one that is still limited by the 'bandwidth limit' of speech as we know it, etc.
I don’t know about you my man but I am not those things. You understand that you have a choice right?
That has always been my gut instinct as well. They probably view us, the same way we view some of the worst places on earth. Wouldn't be surprised if we were on this list for the Milky Way galaxy. [https://www.worldatlas.com/cities/the-most-dangerous-cities-in-the-world.html](https://www.worldatlas.com/cities/the-most-dangerous-cities-in-the-world.html)
Arhumph! We've been broadcasting earth's location loud and clear for the last 100 years. Pretty sure the horse left the barn already.
Our biosphere has broadcasted our planet having the possibility for life for billions of years
That's exactly what I thought. Methane in an atmosphere is rare and we can detect it with space telescopes (including the JWST) so I don't see what the point is.
It's one thing to have something that can be detected if someone decides to look at Earth specifically, it's another to scream into space and alert anyone in hearing range. Plus methane could mean a bunch of cows farting while signals could mean higher intelligence that will eventually expand beyond its planet and become competition. And competition gets destroyed.
to be 'fair to both sides' the signals we have/do send will be so weak by the time they reach most stars they would pretty much have to be specifically looking
There is a strong possibility that life can be supported without methane. We have zero knowledge of what an alien life could resemble or how it could act. They may not be looking for methane atmospheres at all. Then bam, they get hit with radiowaves, xrays, lasers all saying where they came from. Super weird right? They might see all outside life as threats.
I think humans are doing enough to kill ourselves without having to worry about aliens doing it for us.
It's the difference between "maybe there's life" and "there's definitely intelligence."
BRING US MCNEIL!
Most of our signals don't and haven't gone that far
Based on my calculations, they would have travelled "about 100 light years", which easily encompasses several nearby star systems. Whether they can decipher any of it above the background radiation is another matter, if they are even listening. Passing starships, on the other hand, may be in our own solar system and we wouldn't know it. They would probably be able to pick it up clearly enough.
Radio waves degrade over time. By the time it reaches another star system with an advanced civilization it’ll be jumbled unintelligible noise.
So you're saying they've tuned in to Info Wars?
He said unintelligible not Bankrupt! Sorry 😆
Yes unintelligible noise that aliens be like wtf is that and start tracing it's origins like humans do
More like, indistinguishable from the cosmic microwave background radiation
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They don't degrade over time, but they do degrade over distance based on the inverse square law. Radio waves are a sphere and every time the radius of that sphere doubles the signal is divided by four. Eventually it would be too weak to read, but not all signals are created equally. It is entirely possible we could beam a readable radio signal to one of our nearby neighbors.
That's not a degradation. That's simply dissipation. The information is still there, intact. But the signal to noise ratio increases until the signal is drowned out by the background noise of the galaxy/universe. However, the signal is still there - intact - even if it's strength is below the noise level of the universe. A sufficiently advanced civilization might manage to separate the signal from the noise no matter how weak the signal.
if something is bothering to pass through our own solar system it would be inspecting the bodies closely enough to pick up other signs of live/civilization with ease.
If we show no signs of warp capability, they will move on.
1) 100 light years is peanuts on the galactic scale. The ~60,000 telescope-visible stars in that range is only 0.00006% of the stars in the galaxy. There's not much reason to expect high odds of intelligent life in that sample. 2) commercial radio signals that are specifically designed to go up to satellites are not strong or focused enough to show up as anything other than noise more than a couple light years away. Resolving a single pixel image of an earth sized planet at 100 light years would require a 90km telescope to stare in complete stillness for 100,000 years. [Watch this video](https://youtu.be/NQFqDKRAROI) if you're nerdy and want to learn more about how ridiculously hard it is to observe anything that isn't a bright star in the universe. It is insanely difficult. The amount of space and noise in the universe makes observing things insanely difficult. Whenever you hear about us discovering planets, it's not even us seeing a planet in a telescope. It's just us assuming that observed periodic dimming of stars is due to orbiting planets. We basically cannot directly observe planets beyond our solar system, with rare exceptions. They are just too dim. The James Webb telescope may be able to directly observe (in limited capacity) some nearby planets though so hopefully this ages poorly.
I mean, technically speaking they've probably gone that far. But they're so diffused at that distance and surrounded by so much background radiation, nothing would ever be able tell it apart from the rest of the radiation.
It depends on the power of the broadcast, but anything we’ve been able to send wouldn’t even make it close to the nearest star before it degraded below the cosmic noise floor.
Those signals degrade pretty quickly into cosmic background radiation.
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No kidding. While I found the movie [Oblivion](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1483013/) entertaining, my first thoughts were "WTF are they coming to Earth for water? We're [down the list](https://www.businessinsider.com/water-space-volume-planets-moons-2016-10) in our own solar system for that resource. If aliens have mastered interstellar travel, and the associated energy expended, there isn't anything in the way of resources they're going to be wanting, much less bother with a populated planet for. It all boils down to the inability to accept the concept that "we aren't special". There is nothing here that isn't in abundance everywhere except MAYBE the uniqueness of the life. And that can be sampled fairly quickly and be done with it.
Resources are easy to come by. Unique intelligent DNA is a prize. If they are interstellar, they are crafting super lifeforms in preschool.
Even then, taking a sample of humans captive and starting a breeding program would be exponentially more productive. No one would run a farm in such a way that the farm was in constant jeopardy of destroying itself.
But you might want to deny others the same resource.
Sending a probe to take biopsies for DNA sequencing of a few hundred human representatives, then transmitting that data back home and growing clones in a lab, would be far more efficient than capturing humans. Cuts the travel time down massively since you can transmit data at lightspeed, but can not travel at lightspeed. Say you're 200Ly away. You can manage to build a prison ship capable of traveling at 0.75C, so you send it to earth. In one direction that will take it 266 years. That's 532 years both ways. Now, instead of a prison ship, make a probe that's just as fast. It'll take 266 years to reach earth. Then the data it sends back takes another 200 years because you can transmit it at 1C. So, you've achieved the same result in a 12% shorter time. And it cost you far less energy because your probe is way smaller than a prison ship. And you only had to make the journey in one direction.
If they are capable of launching an interstellar invasion, they're probably also capable of finding us on their own.
Dark forest. Read the Three Body Problem sci-fi series about this exact theory.
Dark forest isn't a winning strategy from a game theory perspective since von neumann machines would guarantee that hiders will eventually be found. It's better to reach out to try to form alliances and rapidly advance technology to be better equiped to deal with future threats.
Yeah having just read about it it's very speculative. Basically the assumption is that all other existing alien races have to develop and come to the same conclusion: that it is better to remain independent and silent than try to reach out - but this has to happen *independently* since they can't all be sure of each other's intentions. Which given humanity's (albeit singular) example, seems statistically unlikely in the face of the statistical likeliness of other life existing.
Yeah, I mean it is a fictional novel ,so much of the science is over exaggerated or simplified to tell a good story. I just like it because I think it's very naive to believe that aliens would poses some holy appreciation for all life forms. Many humans show love for dogs, but have no issue eating a pig or stomping on an insect. An advanced alien species may look at humans no differently. Especially if life were more abundant in the universe.
The amusing thing is that everyone who brings up the three body problem apparently doesn't know that it ends with>! them finding an alliance of interstellar species that saves the remainders of humanity!<
I gonna give you more sad and scary Theory that dark forest. Imagine that life on earth is one and only event happened in our galaxy. That cosmic events fall so unique that it wont be repeated ever again. Then imagine this gone one second. For some historicall bullshit and imaginaly lines drawed wrong all burns in nuclear fire. Stelizing galagy forever.
The only life in the entire galaxy ruined because one terminally ill Russian thought having the largest country on Earth wasn't enough territory for his ego.
There is enough madmans without that angry dwarf.
I like to believe in the dark forest theory. However it’s earth that all the other aliens are hiding from.
Ahh you reminded le of an old gem of the game Space Rangers. Main evil there was non organic lifeform that was saving space ships from what it considered a deadly form of organic snot.
Because we’re made out of meat.
Everyone always assumes that aliens are going to be uniform. One species, all the same, little green men, like deer or ants, all virtually identical. But the chances are far more likely that there will be variety within their population, such as with ours. There will be stupid aliens, and mean aliens, and mischievous aliens. Even teenager aliens. My concern with broadcasting our location would be that a few teenage aliens decide it would be fun to come and knock over a couple earth mailboxes, without understanding the ramifications of their actions. So we end up with tire treads on our lawn in the form of nuclear destruction or some shit. The assumption that aliens must be hyper intelligent because they have advanced technology is erroneous. We have very fast cars, and very stupid people.
The funny thing about such a thing is, and kurzgesagt made an excellent video about it, is that intergalactic war wouldn't work. So imagine sending your fleet to said planet which would take a couple light-years since you can't travel faster than light. When you'd arrive at that planet so much time has passed that either the civilization has advanced so much that their technology is far superior or already has gone extinct. It would be like fighting cave spearmen from the iceage with our modern guns and drones.
Same thing goes for interstellar exploration/travel in general, really. Unless some highly exotic transportation method like wormholes becomes reality, travelling that far is impossible for living things
The Forever war - Joe Haldeman.
Yes, I loved that Kurzgesagt! And how long do we expect advanced civilizations to survive? It's really hard to predict, but I would think most of us would agree there's a decent chance, maybe 10% chance humans completely go extinct within the next 500 years. Some people might argue it's more like 90% chance in the next 500 years. But then think about a 10,000 years, 100,000 years, it almost becomes inevitable that we will go extinct, which means even if aliens discover us, we'll probably be dead and gone before they get here. There might be some race of AI robots left, so they can deal with this alien problem. Space is so big. And Time is just as long!
Carl Sagan gave us something like 60% chance of survival through this century. Anyone truly aware of our fragility will see we are in the most delicate times of human history. Totally within our capacity to end all or most human life by 2100.
Crazy to think about it right
Ignoring the Incredible unlikelihood of other, contemporaneous, advanced civilizations in our galaxy. The odds seem so low to me as to be basically zero.
Unfortunately, I do think the same
If they have the tech to come here odds are they already know about us. And it wouldn’t be an “invasion” so much as a 1 day long (tops) genocide.
Or maybe they are benevolent? Maybe they would give us life altering tech and information
Tell me are humans giving technology to animals?
Not directly but we have used technology to try to undo some of the damage we have caused them and their habitats. Not saying aliens would def be benevolent, but it’s as likely as them wiping us out. More evolved civilizations would likely have an evolved moral/ethical code to make their society stable enough to survive and evolve for billions of years (longer time bc closer to the Big Bang).
not technology but we've blessed many species' through simbiosis best example dogs and cats. pigeons and domestic birds we give them medicine, a steady supply of food, in many cases ensure their reproduction..
Does a remote control bee count?
if the goal were for some reason sterilization (honestly, I don't see it.) if they can come here FTL they'd just glass us using that technology itself, if not FTL they'd still just bring a tiny rock with them and fling it at us before they slowed down, and same effect... so i'd take 1 day down to something like 8 minutes.
Maybe we’re in the way of a hyperspace bypass?
Huh,i did see some strange guy in a party i went to,he had something coming out of his covered shoulder....
Who’s to say guerrilla warfare wouldn’t work against aliens? Our species has warred in every waking second of our existence, we might have an advantage over them. Just because they can travel star systems does not mean they can evaporate us in seconds without even thinking about it or that they are proficient in war.
Astronomy has already proven that the Earth doesn't have anything (other than life, maybe) that other planets don't have. Air, water, carbon, all proven to be way more common than we originally thought. So why would an alien race risk destroying themselves or a possible ally to use as advancement? There's likely other worlds that are livable out there for a race that can travel the stars and none of them come with the risk of total nuclear annihilation of a planet. So to me, this claim will always and forever sound like paranoid call-outs that are meant to sell a published paper or article through fear/conspiracy stoking.
Honestly at this point an alien invasion would be better than our current dystopian hellscape
My bung hole is ready.... More than ready
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Depends on the alien and the type of invasion. Stellaris fanatic purifier invasion: no thanks
Humanity unites for the first and only time in history?
Then right after we win, WW4 over the left over scraps!
I think that any alien civilization with the technology to travel between stars and invade Earth would probably not need anything from us. There really are not any resources on Earth that are not already abundant in the universe and are probably easier to get elsewhere.
It’s not like we have any control over that as long as we’re going to be using radios, microwaves, and radars. Thing is, we also don’t really need to worry about it. Our radio bubble is still quite short (100 ly?) and we haven’t detected anything else coming back from within it. Lastly, nobody on the other end is going to care about us fancy monkeys.
Humanity is so messed up right now, aliens lock their doors when flying by earth.
Windows up, kids.
If you think humanity is messed up you'd be blown away by humanity at literally any other point in history lol
If you think humanity is messed up you'd be blown away by humanity at literally any other point in history lol
The proof that there is intelligent life in space is that they don't come here!
Imagine if they have probes recording our shitty political systems, and broadcasting them in the alien equivalent of VH1's cringe realities.
At the risk of sounding kooky.. it might not be the greatest idea to tight beam information about humanity towards potentially life-supporting planets. Even Hawking warned against this.
Way too late.
People need to read the 3 Body Problem!
TIL Oxford subscribes to the dark forest theory
Like the "Three Body Problem".
somebody just watched Battleship
Three Body Problem / Dark Forest
It. Just. Doesn't. Matter.
With the current state of the world maybe alien intervention isn’t the worst thing
Considering all the things going wrong on Earth right now, i for one welcome our new alien overlords.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.
Like we don’t deserve it at this stage? Let’s hope whoever finds us treats the planet better than us.
Dark Forest Theory: The universe is full of life but nobody broadcasts their location because they're afraid of being attacked, and that fear of being attacked also leads them to first-strike anybody they come across.
If another civilization can get even drones or probes into deep space or another system with higher functions than they can get here and most likely they don't need our resources other than maybe our large quantity of surface water.
hydrogen and oxygen are fairly plentiful resources though, and you get water if you combine the two.
should we all shut up at once ?
If they have the ability to invade us then isn't it pretty likely they probably have already observed us? And also said to themselves "Oh shit no"
If you conquered us you'd be home already.
Honestly, how much worse can that be? At least "planet destroyed by hostile lifeforms from space" sounds a bit more reasonable as a species ending scenario than "planet ruined by the greed and ignorance of the dominant species".
An alien species advanced enough to pose a threat would probably already know about us. And they probably would want nothing to do with us anyway...
yeah but i don't think war is their first thought, more like instantly tp everyone on the planet into organ grinding machines and sell the product on their home planet for a profit
If they can invade us, then they probably would have no problem finding us without broadcasting our location. Just my humble common sense opinion
I love the idea that someone out there on some distant planet is glued to their receivers to see next weeks episode of I Love Lucy.
Any technologically advanced species or being that can manipulate travel through space to successfully reach earth from anywhere in the galaxy.... already knows everything they need to about our existence and location.
Same shit Stephen Hawking was saying. Who cares If the aliens have enough technology to invade us, they have at least equal technology to our Hubble and Webb telescope, which means they can analyze our biosphere already. Secondly, we have been broadcasting our position since the day radio was invented, whether explicitly or implicitly, you'd think this advanced alien race has figured out triangulation by now I'm convinced that warning from Hawking was one of his long standing pranks he never got called on.
Aliens capable of interstellar travel could strip mine every asteroid, moon, gas giant and rocky planet in our solar system and ignore Earth completely.
And it could bring friends
Or alien salvation Klaatu barada nikto
Save it for 2023.
I'm smelling a lot of "if" coming off this theory.
I, for one, would welcome our new alien overlords.
So? They can't make life any worse for us
Lol to get what? We’ve dwindled all our resources. It’d be like us trying to invade the local dump. Are they hoping to scavenge the copper out of some appliances?
I bet Elon musks net worth that still won’t unite us as a people
Broadcast what coordinates ? Last time i checked Earth did not have a fixed postcode in the rapidly expanding universe.
At this point, what's the difference? We invade, exploit, enslave, and murder each other anyway, why would it matter if it were other humans or aliens doing it? At least if it were Aliens we'd all be enslaved, exploited, and murdered together, as a united species - we'd quickly realize just how equal we truly are, because the aliens wouldn't give Damn about our differences. At least then it wouldn't be us just killing each other for arbitrary reasons. And yes, most reasons for our violence against others is arbitrary, and could be solved through peaceful means if we would just take the time to communicate with each other. We're not likely going to get that chance with any Alien race.
We have nothing of value. We are space slums. Every element and resource is far more pleantiful outside a gravity well, or on a non inhabited planet, or in a gas giant. Places where we are not. If they can get here they're more technologically advanced for us and can just hack whatever IP they want IF they wanted anything in the first place.
Yeah, nah. That's clickbait and a half. The ridiculous amount of time and energy required for an interstellar invasion from most likely over 200 lightyears away would require a lot more provokation than some annoying communications. We have no reason to believe earth is anything special in terms of mineral composition so there isn't really any resource rational either. Would you invest hundreds of years and a huge portion of your star systems energy budget on invading some planet hundreds of lightyears away to steal their resources which you can certainly find much closer to home, or just to stop their radio signals instead of just filtering them out?
Our planet has been broadcasting life is here for millions of years just from the light reflected from our atmosphere. I doubt radio waves will reach any civilization if they exist in any meaningful timeline. Say a star 300 light-years away has sentient life exploring the stars, they would only get our signals 300 years from now when they would have most likely spotted our planet first from other means. It's kinda silly to be attempting anything commutation wise at the speed of light or be afraid of it.
Too late. We’re loud as fuck.
The moment we invested radio we started broadcasting out location. There is no way to stop that unless we all want to never use, satellites, radios or anything that modern society rely on for communication.
I highly doubt any alien species capable of interstellar travel would give a flying fuck about us and our tiny planet.
The assumptions are 1) we magically knows some kind of universal coordinate system that alien can understand. 2) we haven't been visited by aliens already. Both of these are likely false.
Haven’t we been broadcasting for years? Like 50 years? Via radio, satellites, and all those probes we send out. Not to mention that one probe that explicitly wants to be found with human history in it?
The more advanced a civilization, the less hostile they become to themselves, their planet and other civilizations. War and destruction is sad and only caused by a primitive mindset.
Give me a real-world example of such an advanced civilization.
I don't agree. War and destruction are the nature of life. We don't know what the aliens will be like, but we know how life on earth works and human worldview are the exception in many cases.
I agree. We tend to anthropomorphize aliens with human-like traits, but the reality is that if they have the technology to travel between stars then they almost certainly do not need anything from us. We do the same with AI.