Alien invaders
I hate to disagree with someone as smarter than me as Stephen Hawking, but I just cannot share his fear of alien visitors:
He suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.”
He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”
If the aliens have the technology for interstellar travel, I doubt there is much point for them in raiding our resources. The resources you can find on Earth you can find in by mining asteroids as well, which is probably easier than dealing with the gravity well of Earth. Plus, if they have the resources to travel between stars, how much need will they have for the resources of Earth anyway?
They might decide to exterminate us just for the heck of it, but raiding our resources I'm just not buying.
As for communicating with aliens in the first place, I am not too optimistic. I'm sure they are out there, mainly as simple life, probably, but also as highly technically evolved civilizations. I just find it highly unlikely that, in the vastness of the Universe, life only evolved on Earth. But what's the chance of finding someone on roughly our level of intelligence? If they are much dumber, we won't be able to communicate with them in the first place, and if they are much smarter than us, why would they want to communicate with us?
I hope they will. There's a lot we can learn from aliens much smarter than we are, but I'm not too optimistic...
Update 27/4: See also Gene Expression: The aliens are out to get us! and Starts with a Bang: If Aliens Exist, should we be eager to meet them?
April 26th, 2010 at 7:40 pm
"if they are much smarter than us, why would they want to communicate with us?"
Anthropology? Maybe the aliens could wax nostalgic: "Look at these noble, primitive people. They are content with crude, pre-quantum computers, and eat crops that are grown in soil rather than synthesized in the lab. Truly, we have much to learn from their simple lifestyle."
April 26th, 2010 at 8:06 pm
It would have to be something like that, yes :)
And probably only if they are only a little smarter than us (or about equally intelligent but more technologically advanced).
If they are as smart compared to us as we are compared to chimps, as discussed in the video clip, it would be more like primatology than anthropology :)
April 26th, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Hawkings analogy of Indians shouting at passing galleons may well be accurate though. And to assume that the only valuable resources are mineral is somewhat short-sighted... A fully functional planet with biosphere? Ten thousand years' accumulated human culture and experiences? Cheap and effective ways to synthesize certain compounds from natural resources? A uniquely human approach to software architecture or genetics? Any of those could be considered riches to an alien race wandering the stars in a generation ship. Still, it's very long odds that they'd show up.
April 26th, 2010 at 8:26 pm
A fully functional planet with biosphere?
If you can build a generation ship that actually takes you through interstellar space, you probably don't have to steal someone's biosphere :) If you can survive for generations between the stars, you can build the habitat you want, and it will be perfectly suited to you (unlike what our planet will be to life forms evolved elsewhere).
Ten thousand years’ accumulated human culture and experiences?
If they come to study us, then yes that is something they might be interested in. In that case, though, I don't see any reason to fear them.
Cheap and effective ways to synthesize certain compounds from natural resources? A uniquely human approach to software architecture or genetics?
If they have the technology for interstellar travel they must be much more technologically advanced than we are, so I doubt we will have much to ofter in that department. Sure, we might have some unique approaches to this and that, but we are more likely to learn from them than they are to learn anything from us ... and again, if this is what they are interested in there isn't really much to fear.
I am not really that afraid of intellectual property theft from aliens :)
Any of those could be considered riches to an alien race wandering the stars in a generation ship.
Except for perhaps the first item, I completely agree. Although I doubt that we can offer them much in the science / tech department, they might find something interesting in the anthropology/primatology department.
I just don't see how they would pose a thread if that is the kind of "resources" they come to steal.
Still, it’s very long odds that they’d show up.
With that I completely agree.
Considering the resources it takes to build an interstellar space craft that can take them here, my bet is that "first contact" will be through some kind of long distance communication ... not that we have any kind of information to calculate the odds in either direction, I guess.
April 27th, 2010 at 7:58 am
Hmm, I'm not as sure as you that a ship-enclosed biosphere will ever be a replacement for a planet. You'd only be able to take a limited amount of stuff with you, and a diverse ecology is hard to balance over time. You have an awful lot of faith in the ability of intelligence to overcome these limits, and limits on power generation, propulsion, and the like. I'd say it's more likely that these ships will be built to a finely tuned mass-acceleration balance, and will be slowly falling degrading over a 30-year journey, and the population might well be subsisting on the equivalent of rice-and-tofu in a marginally-viable biosphere by the time they get here.
On another point, it's not really safe to assume that a space-faring intelligent race will be superior across the board. It seems likely to me that different intelligent species will have talents in different areas. Any species likely to make it to another star will have good ability in physics, mathematics and engineering, but that doesn't necessarily mean they will have music or theatre or even biology. Just as you see differenes in individuals, races are likely to have their own focus as well, if indeed their intelligence is comparable at all.
April 27th, 2010 at 8:19 am
If they can get here in 30 years (even relative, so 30 years in their frame of reference) they are moving fast. Really really fast. They would need to produce a hell of a lot of energy to move that fast, and to do that I would put them at even higher levels of technological advance than I imagined for getting a generation ship here over hundreds or more likely thousands of years.
My reasoning was more along the lines that if they can keep their ship running for tens or hundreds of generations, they can't really be on a ship that is slowly degrading.
As for their intelligence, I agree completely. I find it highly unlikely that they are similar in intelligence to us, but I would not be surprised at all if they are highly superior in some aspects while less in others. Then that begs the question, of course, if they will even find us interesting in those regards ... if they just don't care about music, for example, how impressed will they be about our abilities there?