Photon, is the techonology in star trek anywhere near acurate for the type of capabilities they display? Or is it totally out to lunch?
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I read this yesterday and while I hate to diss on Stephen Hawking because you know... he's a genious and I'm not, I kind of thought this was not a revelation worthy of someone of his intellect. Really, sci-fi writers and nerds have been saying the same thing since the 1950s.
If there is an alien civilization capable of ever developing the technology to physically visit us (I doubt it), then they will probably be so intelligent compared to us that we will look like nothing more than wildlife to them.
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"A pessimist thinks things can't get any worse. An optimist knows they can."
But to imagine malevolent aliens? Why? Destroying us would be like crushing a colony of microbes just for kicks to them. Their technological level must be at least hundreds, if not tens of thousands of years beyond ours. Can you imagine even the greatest military force from the Napoleonic Era even lasting a few weeks against our modern warfare technologies? It simply wouldn't happen.
But what irks me most of all is the cowardice behind a viewpoint that we shouldn't rush to meet a peer in this Universe. It would be like forgetting the best part of being human: our bravery, our sense of adventure, our will to explore, our thirst for learning and discovery, our curiosity, and our desire to experience all that existence has to offer.
I am eager. I want to meet them. I want to know the answers to those questions. Right now, when I put the numbers I think are most likely into the Drake equation, I find it very unlikely that there ought to be another intelligent civilization within a hundred million light years of us. But if there is, I'm going to try to find them.
I read this yesterday and while I hate to diss on Stephen Hawking because you know... he's a genious and I'm not, I kind of thought this was not a revelation worthy of someone of his intellect. Really, sci-fi writers and nerds have been saying the same thing since the 1950s.
If there is an alien civilization capable of ever developing the technology to physically visit us (I doubt it), then they will probably be so intelligent compared to us that we will look like nothing more than wildlife to them.
I disagree, we'll look like primitive sentient beings. Even our primitive civilization will still stick out clearly amongst our animal kingdom, we have cities, aviation, satellites in space, a space station.
No way will they not understand they are dealing with an intelligence capable of communication with them, and I think for that reason alone they will want to communicate with us.
I just don't see a alien race being able to evolve to such an advanced state without learning to deal with the barbaric times it must have endured in order to become deep space explorers.
If sentient life is as rare in this Universe as we think it is, I don't see them coming all this way just to destroy it. Considering how rare planets like Earth must be.
Photon, is the techonology in star trek anywhere near acurate for the type of capabilities they display? Or is it totally out to lunch?
Hard to say, Star Trek basically equates to not much more than magic from our point of view.. the idea behind Star Trek warp drive is that inside the field space is distorted so that you are only traveling at sublight speeds through your local spacetime but your bubble of spacetime is traveling at faster than light.. but that's all just speculation, nothing really indicates that such a thing is possible or that the energy to so such a thing would be readily available.
The universe is pretty good at keeping it's limits, for example you could in theory build a perfectly rigid bar 1 light year long, and if you could move that bar at one end the other end would move instantly, thus violating causality.. except the universe also prevents you from building a perfectly rigid bar
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
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I disagree, we'll look like primitive sentient beings. Even our primitive civilization will still stick out clearly amongst our animal kingdom, we have cities, aviation, satellites in space, a space station.
No way will they not understand they are dealing with an intelligence capable of communication with them, and I think for that reason alone they will want to communicate with us.
I just don't see a alien race being able to evolve to such an advanced state without learning to deal with the barbaric times it must have endured in order to become deep space explorers.
If sentient life is as rare in this Universe as we think it is, I don't see them coming all this way just to destroy it. Considering how rare planets like Earth must be.
I'll paraphrase Carl Sagan (for your sake) when discussions were going around about what messages we should or should not be broadcasting specifically for ET contact. Sagan advised against broadcasting Mozart or Bach or something because that would be bragging.
Our accomplishments in philosophy, literature and art far outstrip those in science by a considerable amount. In fact, going back to the Greeks you can see that thinking has always been extremely sophisticated.
I'd hope an alien race sufficiently advanced in technology for cross-galactic travel would have avoided some of the strains of progressive historicism that have infected our minds in the past century. Simply put, technological advances have no bearing on the advancement of our nature. Culturally, we are more than primitive sentients.
I remember reading a book a few years ago, I can't remember the name of it now, but it dealt with the premise of multiple timelines, and technology developed to enable human's to move from one timeline to another through "bubbles" or something...I think it was written by Chricton or an author along those lines. The main character ended up going back in time like 400 years, and was leaving clues for his archaeolgist friends so that they knew they had to help him...it was certainly an interesting read.
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Pylon on the Edmonton Oilers:
"I am actually more excited for the Oilers game tomorrow than the Flames game. I am praying for multiple jersey tosses. The Oilers are my new favourite team for all the wrong reasons. I hate them so much I love them."
"I am actually more excited for the Oilers game tomorrow than the Flames game. I am praying for multiple jersey tosses. The Oilers are my new favourite team for all the wrong reasons. I hate them so much I love them."
I disagree, we'll look like primitive sentient beings. Even our primitive civilization will still stick out clearly amongst our animal kingdom, we have cities, aviation, satellites in space, a space station.
No way will they not understand they are dealing with an intelligence capable of communication with them, and I think for that reason alone they will want to communicate with us.
I just don't see a alien race being able to evolve to such an advanced state without learning to deal with the barbaric times it must have endured in order to become deep space explorers.
If sentient life is as rare in this Universe as we think it is, I don't see them coming all this way just to destroy it. Considering how rare planets like Earth must be.
This is a human way of looking at it, but there is no reason to think that aliens would evolve with the romantic ideas or the same lines drawn of what is "intelligent" and what isn't.
For example, on Earth, we have drawn a line between us and the animal world. Even though we are technically part of the animal world, most humans don't see it that way. We tend to diminish the value of their acheivements because quite frankly, we can do the same but better most of the time. We tend to think that we are the "intelligent" beings and everything else is far below us when in fact, there are varying degree of intelligent beings on this planet. Regardless, we tend to draw the line at us.
For all we know, building cities, aviation, satellites, ect.. would be so far below an alien race that it would be like us watching termites building mounds or crows using twigs to build a nest. Perhaps they draw the line of what is and isn't "intelligence" at something more advanced than what we are. Intelligence is subjective.
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"A pessimist thinks things can't get any worse. An optimist knows they can."
Last edited by FlamesAddiction; 04-27-2010 at 01:55 PM.
And the Bad Astronomer doesn't agree with Hawking:
Quote:
Apparently Stephen Hawking read my book, but not very carefully, because he thinks aliens will come here ala "Independence Day"* and eat up all our resources and move on.
I disagree with him. I think in fact it’s more likely that an aggressive alien race would create self-replicating robot probes that will disperse through the galaxy and destroy all life that way.
But more likely still doesn’t equate to likely. I’ve been thinking about this on and off for a few days, in fact, and I suspect a likely answer to Fermi’s Paradox — "Where are they?" — is simply that intelligent life that is capable of interstellar flight doesn’t last long enough to colonize other stars. That would neatly explain why, if stars with planets are common (which we know is almost certainly true), and the conditions for life to arise are relatively common (again, that seems very likely), the galaxy isn’t overrun with life. It should be by now; it’s had billions of years to have space-faring races evolve and colonize the whole shebang.
Maybe we are the most advanced civilization in the universe? If you believe in the exponential growth of technology you would have to wonder why we haven't heard from anything so far. Maybe civilizations cannot reach a level of intergalactic travel because the process by which to get to that level is too difficult socially and environmentally to the point that the civilization destroys itself in the process.
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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.
Great thread!
This is the point I've been trying to make on the "Climategate" thread.
Our Sun will eventuallly go nova and destroy this planet.
Instead of worrying about Global Warming which will happen anyway, as the Sun heats up as it ages thereby warming the Earth, we should be developing our space travel capability in order to escape this doomed planet.
One thing always struck me as an unexplored possibility in a first contact scenario. All too often Sci-fi scenarios regarding first contact are with a truly horrific alien species that isn't particularly intelligent, yet manages to rip the heads off of every human on board the ship with the exception of one lone survivor. What is the possibility, the chance, that if we met an alien from another world, that we might not scare the pants off of him? What if we were the monsters? It would explain why no alien has tried to contact us as a species - perhaps they have, and it always turned into a nightmare scenario for them?
Instead of worrying about Global Warming which will happen anyway, as the Sun heats up as it ages thereby warming the Earth, we should be developing our space travel capability in order to escape this doomed planet.
Oh god are you effin serious?
Our star will 'eventually' die? Yeah in billions of years. Our planet will eventually heat that it cannot sustain its current level of biodiversity in 50 to 100 years. What the hell man. Horrible.
One thing always struck me as an unexplored possibility in a first contact scenario. All too often Sci-fi scenarios regarding first contact are with a truly horrific alien species that isn't particularly intelligent, yet manages to rip the heads off of every human on board the ship with the exception of one lone survivor. What is the possibility, the chance, that if we met an alien from another world, that we might not scare the pants off of him? What if we were the monsters? It would explain why no alien has tried to contact us as a species - perhaps they have, and it always turned into a nightmare scenario for them?
Our accomplishments in philosophy, literature and art far outstrip those in science by a considerable amount. In fact, going back to the Greeks you can see that thinking has always been extremely sophisticated.
I'm not sure culture and science are qualitatively comparable. Science is a naked tool used to discover limited truths about the physical universe. Art is the creative and unlimited output of intelligence. They both serve and nurture us.
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"I am actually more excited for the Oilers game tomorrow than the Flames game. I am praying for multiple jersey tosses. The Oilers are my new favourite team for all the wrong reasons. I hate them so much I love them."
I'm not sure culture and science are qualitatively comparable. Science is a naked tool used to discover limited truths about the physical universe. Art is the creative and unlimited output of intelligence. They both serve and nurture us.
I would one step further and say that culture is the spirit which motivates us. Science is a tool directed by that spirit.
