Hawking says contact with Aliens could be risky

[Mike Oxlong]

Sounds like an interesting documentary coming out. It's an interesting viewpoint from him making a visit from Extra terrestrials more like "Independence Day" than a peaceful mission.

I doubt it is anything we will ever experience in our lifetimes but I am very interested to see the documenary and hear his thoughts.



"The 68-year-old scientist says a visit by extraterrestrials to Earth would be like Christopher Columbus arriving in the Americas, "which didn't turn out very well for the native Americans." He speculates most extraterrestial life will be similar to microbes, or small animals - but adds advanced lifeforms may be "nomads, looking to conquer and colonise."

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/...713451-ap.html

[underGRADFlame]

[EtchySketch9]

Very interesting. Thanks for the article!

[IliketoPuck]

If Aliens can travel through space, and make it to earth....something tells me their technology is going to make our nukes look like rocks compared to guns.

[Sainters7]

I'll see y'all in the sugar caves.

[IliketoPuck]

We should greet our new ant overlords with respect.....and sugar water.

[Huntingwhale]

It probably would be risky, because I'm sure the Americans the first thing they would look at is the security threat they pose (and rightfully so...).

[HotHotHeat]

Originally Posted by IliketoPuck

If Aliens can travel through space, and make it to earth....something tells me their technology is going to make our nukes look like rocks compared to guns.

I'm fairly sure that Nuclear bombs don't care whether aliens have fancy technology...They're still going to blow up when and where we tell them to. If there's one thing humans have got figured out, it's how to kill things with excellent efficiency.

[GreenLantern]

I was just thinking that.. if we were the ones looking at a civilization from the outside, first thing we would say, or do say, is how big of a threat? How do we neutralize it?

I can bet that if we went and landed in droves on some foreign planet without being able to communicate our actions first, they wouldn't sit around waiting for us to get comfortable.

[Russic]

Originally Posted by HotHotHeat

I'm fairly sure that Nuclear bombs don't care whether aliens have fancy technology...They're still going to blow up when and where we tell them to. If there's one thing humans have got figured out, it's how to kill things with excellent efficiency.

I can't help but think if you've got the technology to get to earth, you've got the technology to shield yourself from nuclear weapons. Has Independence Day taught you nothing?

[CaptainCrunch]

I remember a series of bloom county comics where Alien Invaders came to Earth and started eating humans and enslaving our woman. Their first question was "Are human beings dark or white meat"

Of course in typical bloom county fashion the aliens were pulled in front of congress and these nasty enslaving aliens looked like cute puppies.

One congressman was incensed at the hostile treatment that the aliens received and humanity fell in love with them.

I'm betting our worst nightmare hostile aliens will probably look like puppies.

[GreenLantern]

Originally Posted by HotHotHeat

I'm fairly sure that Nuclear bombs don't care whether aliens have fancy technology...They're still going to blow up when and where we tell them to. If there's one thing humans have got figured out, it's how to kill things with excellent efficiency.

Another good point, just because they have great technology doesn't mean they have had the reasons to create weapons as advanced or capable of such destruction as we have..

Not that I think any reasons are valid, but they have happened and here we are. We assume in every case just because that is how our civilization turned out that technology = advanced weapons. It could typically be a smaller group, maybe 100,000 living on a tiny planet that were just able to get ahead in the space travel game.

But in either case I would say it is better off just to assume that they are bringing big guns to the table.

[TheyCallMeBruce]

This makes sense. Why would a being leave their planet to venture this far, if space travel is indeed limited to the speed of light. Even if a being can travel at light speed, reaching us would probably take them centuries. If that is the case, that means something must have happened to their home planet, and they no longer have a sense of attachment to it. Quite possible their planet may have died, or their sun may be dying.

It would make sense for a being to colonize our planet. They'd probably need to wipe us out, and change our environment to suit them. Maybe they are high oxygen beings and require our planet to be saturated with very high levels of oxygen very much like in the prehistoric times. Either way, we're doomed.

[peter12]

Master Chief will save us.

[IliketoPuck]

Long range no scopes and sticky grenades for the win.

[photon]

The energies involved in interstellar space travel (let alone interstellar space travel at anything approaching a reasonable subjective timeframe) virtually guarantee that any aliens visiting here will be able to deal with nuclear weapons.

A grain of sand has that much energy at close enough to light speed, and they'll have to protect their ships.

At any rate it's an interesting (and not new by any means) idea, much Science Fiction has been written on the premise that the ecosystem on a galactic scale is no different than that on a local scale; there are predators and prey, and sometimes the best defense isn't to be as strong as the predator, it's to hide.

And give the virtually guaranteed disparity between our tech level and that of any other civilization, being very quiet seems like the reasonable approach.

However since we've been blasting out radio waves for the past 70 years, that cat is out of the bag for anyone listening and that's close enough.

On the plus side our outgoing radio waves have only traveled far enough to go about 0.001% of the way to the other edge of the galaxy, so a relevant question will be will our civilization make itself known to other civilizations before or after it's long gone.

[IliketoPuck]

Or maybe the aliens will be a society of Kate Beckinsale lookalikes, and will just want me for breeding purposes due to my superior genes...

[You Need a Thneed]

Originally Posted by HotHotHeat

I'm fairly sure that Nuclear bombs don't care whether aliens have fancy technology...They're still going to blow up when and where we tell them to. If there's one thing humans have got figured out, it's how to kill things with excellent efficiency.

This.

One thing that bugs me about Star Trek:TNG when the Borg are threatening to invade earth, and the Enterprise doesn't have any weapons aboard that can damage the Borg ship.

The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima would have completely destroyed the Borg ship.

Even if aliens had shielding technology, there's still the fact that you must absorb the force of the shockwave. Unless that theoretical spaceship is absolutely huge, it simply could not withstand the forces exterted by the nuclear weapons we have now. If we could get a powerful nuke close enough to whatever ship they have, they'd have no chance.

[HotHotHeat]

Originally Posted by Russic

I can't help but think if you've got the technology to get to earth, you've got the technology to shield yourself from nuclear weapons. Has Independence Day taught you nothing?

Just that plasma bubbles are bogus...

[photon]

If they can't deal with the forces of a nuclear weapon, then they wouldn't be here to begin with since they couldn't deal with interstellar dust and debris at relativistic speeds.