Stephen Hawking warns over making contact with aliens
 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8642558.stm

But he warned that aliens might simply raid Earth for resources, then move on.

"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," he said


That would be so surreal if that happened..

Wake up, the Aliens are already here and they are taking our resources and getting fake id cards and protesting new laws, oh wait, you were talking about extraterrestrials?

Bravo! :thumbsup


.

There will be never aliens on earth, not in 1000000 years. The universe is so big, the closest place where something similar to what we represent may exist is too far away to travel. Always will be.

'Never' and 'Always' are very big and definitive words that will 'never' exist in science or logic, only in make-believe.

In fact, 'alien lifeforms' in the shape of simple organisms ride in on meteors. Some would say that's what planted the seed of life on this planet.

Fact is, we raid our own ressources - and we can't move on :Oh crap

No disrespect, but if I have to put any trust in the subject I'm gonna trust Steven fucking Hawking over a guy who sells porn on the internet. Just sayin. :winkwink:

at some point the earth was flat and the center of the universe - and every scientist was convinced that this will never change

Any aliens that could get here may do that, but may be smarter and just bleed us dry slowly.

Thats a kind of silly statement. Any guess we have on how far away they might be and how long it would take to get here is based on what we know, if we are theorizing aliens find us first , they obviously would be much smarter.

He must have been drinking and watching AVATAR when he came up with that.

better he write some new book, he got wrong so many time

Shit Ill be selling those aliens porn when they land... .they would love it

What makes you think that they wouldnt have limitless energy in the first place?

lets say at this point they do not have limitless energy why would they waste all that energy contacting us and ship resources light years away wasting even more energy? makes 0 sense.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

I'd say earth is the black sheep of many universes, save yourself aliens: stay away. This planet has serious baggage.

maybe humans are like gas in their interstellar spacecraft, they just need to stop and refuel. Maybe we are just a pit-stop on the journey to someplace else

They hunt and eat us for the lulz

Hopefully they just stop for a leak.

It was Steven Hawking who said this before. I'm not talking about living organism on some planet we can maybe some day visit. I'm talking about living organism that develops the something similar to human kind, something that can travel the universe.

Wrong! Illegal aliens already exist here on earth and in plentiful supply.

bad drug trip

If intelligent life does exist on another planet, and let's assume that they are at least as technologically developed as humans, they won't send manned missions. Instead they will send unmanned probes to collect information about us and our planet, pretty much like what we do with all of our probes.

Why do we spend hundreds of billions of dollars on a space program just to explore? Do we find things that are ever useful and helpful? Sure, does it make up for the massive cost and use of resources? Probably not.

So far the nearest possible Earthlike planets exist in Alpha Centauri which in relative terms is very close only 4.36 light years away. If light travels at 186,000 miles per second in a vacuum then we are looking at only 60,000 years with our current technology to reach these planets. Recent thoughts are that it will be possible to travel faster than light by folding space, much like they did in "DUNE" but so far we do not have anywhere near enough power to do this.:Oh crap

Will someone please pass the bong?

i LOLD :1orglaugh:1orglaugh

i never say never!

im saying i believe that aliens if they have the ability to reach us i think by that advanced technology wise they would have a limitless energy. there is a technical name for it i cant put my head around it.

basically im saying they wont have a need to rape our resources because they will have discovered a resource that is unlimited. like harnessing the power of gravity.

if aliens did have the capacity to reach us, they would likely have the technological ability to get their resources from uninhabited places. if they were so primative that they could reach us but only to take our "resources", then they would likely be vulnerable to nuclear weapons in which case we could make short work of them

Electromagnetic propulsion, refuel by simply gliding through our atmosphere and recharging from the static caused from the friction.

I sort of agree with Hawkings on this one (usually a safe bet..lol)

But think about it, assuming there are other life forms flying around the galaxy and interacting, any life form that has been around long enough to build the technology to reach us is probably pretty bad ass considering that no other life forms have come along and destroyed them.

Let's use Earth as a mini version of the Galaxy. For the most part, any organism is better off have having no interactions with other life forms as opposed to having many interactions. For example, if I put you in the middle of the African jungle and said I would be back to pick you up in a few days, you would be pretty silly to go out seeking interactions with other creatures. Instead you would be smart to lay low. Yelling and screaming and seeking out interactions would probably lead to you being eaten.

That sounds much like the TV show V

btw - either this guy was smoking something really good, or had the talent of Jules Verne (just 2000 years earlier) or the aliens have been already here:

:winkwink:

Think of it this way:

If they are smart enough to be able to come to this planet, they probably won't want to destroy, but would rather observe us learn about life on this planet. If they destroy us, there wouldn't be much to learn from.

More than likely, they are self sufficient enough to not need our natural resources, since the majority of which can be found on other 'baren' planets/moons/stars.

Once they study the life on Earth long enough to determine if we are even worthy to communicate with, they will probably have identified our social structure to be able to contact some one other than Billy Bob driving his truck home on a dark country road late at night. Not saying that Billy Bob didn't really get abducted and probed, just that he was a science experiment rather than an attempt at communication.

Prof Hawking thinks that, rather than actively trying to communicate with extra-terrestrials, humans should do everything possible to avoid contact.

I agree. Not only do I not want to meet with smarter-than-human-aliens, but sometimes I also avoid contact with humans of higher IQ than me.

Right now I am searching for a woman dumber than me, but I cannot find her.

Im with Christopher Dawkins on this one.

The problem with this and what I find laughable, as I'm a major physics geek, is that you assume that all the known laws of physics and the way the universe works has been already discovered. This couldn't be further from the truth for several reasons:
1. We are far from knowing a fraction of the physics that rules the universe. I mean for fucks sakes, we still power our machines off dirty fuel to include our means of getting INTO space.
2. Our understanding of physics is in a constant state of flux BECAUSE we know so very little given the very short time we have been dabbling in it. Think of what a civilization might accomplish in oh... I don't know, say a million years of scientific research.
3. You also assume that said alien civilization would not be much more advanced than we are, and we aren't even advanced enough to be considered a Class 1 civilization. The universe as WE have figured it is roughly 14 billion years old and earth is about 4.5 billion years old and "modern" man didn't appear on its surface until 50,000 years ago OF WHICH our primitive discovery and foundations of science didn't even really start until around 4000 - 3000 BC. That means we have only been playing scientist for about 6,000 years and most of that time WE HAD A LOT OF IT WRONG. We only JUST started figuring out things properly for a mere 200 years. BUT our knowledge and technology has exploded in those 200 years.

So that leads us to at least logically surmise that:
a. If an alien civilization has existed for millions of years and survived their own ages of stupidity, which we are STILL drowning in, AND they have been bettering their science and technology for millions of years as fast as we retarded humans have then I MUST borrow the words of Arthur C Clarke. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." We would literally think they were gods... hmmmm.

b. We cannot project our own inadequacies onto a wholly separate race of beings that have developed quite separately from us, within wholly different surroundings(place in the Universe) than us, and hindered or limited by their own different sets of mythology/ideology/religion etc.


There are plenty of "supposed" evidence that has been recorded since history HAS been recorded and has been visually recorded since the invention of the camera. The only problem is you have to decided whether you believe the evidence or not, aside from the obvious fakes.

:2 cents:

I always wonder about aliens social life? Are they doing a porn or something?:question

I guess it comes down to whether or not you have a Star Trek view or a Star Wars view.

Personally, I suspect that super intelligent aliens won't treat us with any respect. Look at how we treat animals. We put them in boxes until it's time to grind them up into food. Same with smart humans over less intelligent humans, they get exploited.

There isn't much proof of intelligence being a virtue.

I understand where you are coming from, and it's easy to think that ET's would be shitty beings like humans. However, when I go outside and see squirrels playing in the trees, I don't take aim with a BB gun and try to see how many headshots I can get. I'll watch them chase each other, running around enjoying life and whatnot. That's pretty much the same for anyone that isn't a budding serial killer.

Humans, for the most part, only kill animals out of necessity. But what if we didn't have to depend on killing animals for food? We would probably not be so aggressive towards the 'lower' life-forms here at that point.

So let's assume that ET's don't eat humans, and that they don't need to round us up and use our carcasses for anything. They will most likely be super-efficient in pretty much everything they do, meaning that they probably won't kill without reason. Although, if their TV's are powered by human blood, we are fucked!

And the world is flat too?

I rememeber a guy I used to work for, thought aliens were a hoax, and we are the only beings in the universe. He really believed that we are really the only planet with life on it.

I was amazed. I had never thought that really someone could be so stupid. I mean he really thought that.

From then on, the word I use to describe this type of person was simply "small". A small person is really stupid, almost non-existant person, someone that doesnt matter and will never matter.

"There is nothing more to invent"
"The world is flat"
"The internet will never make money"


...small people.

I feel for you, it would be an impossible task to find anyone dumber than you. Good luck on your quest.

Wow... Really? You better re-read my post as either a. it went over your head or b. well I don't know what b. is.

I never once stated, supposed, or even assumed there IS in fact alien civilizations. Let me highlight every time I referred to "said" alien civilizations. I in fact barely even mentioned an alien civilization other than to facilitate a point which I will reiterate at the end since it clearly was not comprehended.

Let us rehash that. When I refer to the "alien civilization" it is in context to the original article and this thread. Hence I use the words "said" and "if" when speaking of the unproven existence of an alien race.

Let us forget the fact I only mentioned them twice in my post. Let us focus on your statement that I originally quoted where you assume you know what and how they would use their highly advanced technology. In truth we wouldn't have the first clue of what they can do or how they would use it let alone even understand it OR their intellect. It would be like what a pet must think, or not think in this case, when it looks at it's owner.

So trust me, I understand my own points very well and even Frank Drake would agree that extraterrestrial life is at best still a probabilistic uncertainty. As the saying goes... "the proof is in the pudding."

:winkwink:

Well, humans don't need to run factory farms and cattle feed lots to survive, but they do and a majority of people could care less. Granted we don't shoot squirrels as you say, but we have arbitrarily chosen certain animals to be treated like shit, and others to be spared cruel treatment. So will the aliens make the same choice with us? Will aliens treat us like we treat dogs, or will they treat us like we treat chickens and cattle?

I would agree that the best we could hope for is that aliens see us as so beneath them that they don't even bother to stop and interfere, they simply keep on flying by and don't give us a second look.

There may be something to the point about TV. It's possible there is one thing humans do that the aliens will find really entertaining, the same way we find it hysterical when a cat chases a laser pointer. Maybe some sport or activity will really captivate the aliens and they'll spare us.

The human race is still in its infancy.

I once heard it explained on TV like this..... If the timeline of the dinosaurs ruling the earth stretches from New York City to Los Angeles, the timeline of human rule is so far one city block long.

We can't possibly comprehend here in 2010 what humans will be doing in 50,000 years when it's hard to look ahead even 100 years.

Also consider these two key points:

- Life did not necessarily begin on all planets in the universe simultaneously. Humans are at the beginning of our life. Another life form somewhere out there could be nearing the end of their existence, and thus posses knowledge that we will not know for one million years.

- The universe is both infinitely large, and infinitely small. There could be life on a planet 100,000 light years away where if you took our most powerful microscope to that point in space, you couldn't even see their solar system through it because it was so small. Likewise, the universe as we know it -- as far east to west as our telescopes can see -- could be sitting on a spec of space dust. The blackness that is the backdrop of space could actually be a solid object, but we don't have the field of view to see it.

Nothing known travels faster than the speed of light through the universe. The Universe itself is said to expand faster than the speed of light but nothing can travel through the universe faster than the speed of light. We have only been able to send out radio waves in the last 90 years, so our imprint in the Universe is maybe, and I mean MAYBE 90 light years out from us. We can easily see that 100 light years from earth there are no habitable plants besides ours. The odds of our reaching out to other life forms are pretty nil.

Then there are whole other ?dimensions? haha, but that is way too much to type out on GFY...I love this shit...it is my all time favorite subject. If you study time, the earth, space you know humans are nothing and this whole "green thing" is nothing more than politicians shitting out their mouths and people following what they are told...which BTW is my 2nd favorite subject...LOL

Oh one more thing, if you believe in the bending of the space time continuum then of course aliens are here walking around us...LOL :winkwink:

Very well said... :thumbsup :thumbsup