Life Beyond Earth

[jabber2033]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/scientists-just-sent-message-possible-alien-civilization-could-164053507.html

 

So this happened.

 

With scientists now actively trying to contact forms of extraterrestrial life, it seems we may finally know the answer to the age-old question, "Are we alone?" in just a few short decades.  It is very possible we may find microscopic life before then, but intelligent life is a whole other story.

 

The idea of space-faring ETs has been around for a long time, but there has been debate on whether or not to actually try to make contact.  Some believe that First Contact will lead to a new age of universal knowledge and technological advancement, while others think that it will lead to the annihilation or enslavement of humanity.  

 

There is also the possibility that there are advanced civilizations out there, but they are simply too far away.  They might be like us: aware of the possibility of intelligent ETs, but too far away or too primitive to do anything about it.

 

Whichever outcome, the debate continues.  And it continues here on YCM.  Have at it, guys.

[Yui]

Speaking as an American (the OG "find more primitive people then kill them all and take their land" nation), the colonists didn't exactly come in here guns blazing indiscriminately shooting anything that moves. Granted, that doesn't mean we didn't eventually start doing that over valuable resources and living space. My point is, if and when we make first contact with aliens, I doubt we'll just get trampled over first thing. We'll hang out for a while, maybe be chill, and then we'll get trampled over. Unless they do happen to be super-friendly aliens, which is the possibility I like to believe in. Humans are shitty people, but for all we know, on the intergalactic scale, we may just be a preschool bully compared to all these kind and level-headed adult alien species (we only first reached the stars not even a century ago, remember). I like to think when we meet alien life, sticking to the over-aggressive toddler analogy, we'll just get a quick spanking, be put in time-out for a bit, then when we're ready to behave, we can be put back in class and learn so many things from this highly-advanced species that's been in space possibly longer than we've had history. As far as the sides of the fence mentioned in the opening post, I'm in the "universal knowledge and technological advancement" camp.

 

Though I won't rule out the possibility that it'll also lead to our extinction, quite possibly at our own hands once we have much bigger and scarier guns to kill each other with. The more I think about it though, unless we clean up our act as a planet before first contact, we may be screwed. If you were a super-advanced race that received a primitive signal in space, saw it was from a budding new player on the intergalactic stage, then went to check out the planet and they were all killing each other, you'd probably want to fry them all before they figure out faster-than-light travel, starship-grade laser cannons, or other possible benchmarks of interstellar war. Of course, there's no telling if we'll clean up said act or not before first contact, so really it's all up in the air. If we're chill and peaceful, knowledge and technology. If not, enslavement and extinction.

 

Granted, if they treat their slaves like people instead of animals, it's win-win since hey, at least we're being treated somewhat properly, and we get to see whole new planets and cultures we wouldn't have seen anytime soon. We can't be bitter about going extinct if we're dead, and if we get knowledge and technology I will unironically wager my firstborn child that it leads to a golden age for humanity.

[Tentacruel]

We honestly don't know anything about what might be out there.  Coming from a Judeo-Christian background, I'd say nothing, but that's all hearsay. 

 

Everything we try to dream up about what might exist is based on human Earth culture and what we have here.   Plus, while this one planet may be habitable in theory, we're talking about one system.  There are 300 billion stars in our galaxy and an observable 100 billion galaxies that we know of.  That is a fuckton of possible places for sexy blue lesbians to be hiding and most are well out of reach. 

 

I guess I'm a pessimist but that's how I see it. 

 

Speaking as an American (the OG "find more primitive people then kill them all and take their land" nation),

Well technically England and Spain did that first. 

[Dad]

We honestly don't know anything about what might be out there.  Coming from a Judeo-Christian background, I'd say nothing, but that's all hearsay. 

 

Everything we try to dream up about what might exist is based on human Earth culture and what we have here.   Plus, while this one planet may be habitable in theory, we're talking about one system.  There are 300 billion stars in our galaxy and an observable 100 billion galaxies that we know of.  That is a fuckton of possible places for sexy blue lesbians to be hiding and most are well out of reach. 

 

I guess I'm a pessimist but that's how I see it. 

 

Well technically England and Spain did that first. 

 

Points for subtle Spanish Inquisition joke.

 

Subtopic:

 

If life outside of our planet was successfully contacted and said life approached earth, what course of action would you recommend and why? 

[Dova]

If life outside of our planet was successfully contacted and said life approached earth, what course of action would you recommend and why? 

If said life is able to contact us and we are able to detect that it is immediately heading our way, there's not much really to do. Their technology would be way more advanced than ours, whatever their intentions. If they're friendly, great. If they're hostile...well, hopefully we will have prepared a few bunkers just in case. Either that or a computer virus that can hack into alien systems for some reason.

 

So yeah, sit tight with a little contingency plan in the works.

[Sunshine Jesse]

If aliens do end up coming, watch all of their technological advancement be focused solely on space travel and they have no means to actually defend themselves.

[LordCowCowCowCowCowCowCowCow]

If aliens do end up coming, watch all of their technological advancement be focused solely on space travel and they have no means to actually defend themselves.

Thinking about it it's theoretically possible that there exists another species similar to us but dedicated most of their resources to space travel. Given how much we'd need to advance to consider traveling outside of nearby planets (not counting the billions of possibilities that aliens could be so vastly different from us that space travel is easy) I could totally see a race of aliens that mastered space travel not being advanced in other ways.

[Dova]

If aliens do end up coming, watch all of their technological advancement be focused solely on space travel and they have no means to actually defend themselves.

 

except like

 

space travel away

 

Interesting idea though. As for the actual topic being discussed, I tend towards there either being nothing out there, or anything out there being too far away to consider contacting (either in space or in time). On the off chance that there are Aliens within walking talking distance, it's hard for me to imagine any sort of culture wherein they mostly just feel like doing good to other civilizations or even just the universe in general, but considering said culture will be...well...alien to us, I'd be very interested to see whether, and if so, how, they developed different ethical/moral codes.