My argument against alien contact.
culinaryoverlord
Regular
I am willing to entertain the idea of alien intervention in human development. Humanity has tremendous potential, we could eventually control our own genome, develop seed ships, and migrate to the stars. It would be easy for a technologically advanced race to shape human evolution by using virus' to alter the genome, maybe giving us a little kick start in the right direction, or passing on a genetic "toolkit" that helped us become more intelligent and adaptable. Maybe they did this as an experiment, maybe they're just nice, maybe they have an agenda.
The argument against such intervention is pretty solid though. For another race to have had contact with Earth, they would have to know this is a planet capable of supporting life, and then get here. If you think there is a lot of crap on the internet, don't even bother with the rest of the universe. There are very few habitable solar systems, even if you are amazingly optimistic, most of what's out there is too hot, too cold, or has some high order fuckup that prevents the formation of nice planets like ours.
For an alien race to invest the resources required to get here, they would have to have a good reason. To go solar system to solar system, checking out possible habitable planets discovered by spectrographic analysis would be a waste of time. The first really good indication we have given the universe that something intelligent lives here was the first, and successive, atomic bombs. Each bomb generated an electromagnetic pulse that broadcast to the cosmos "YO! beeatches!, we are here, and we do the fusion thing, motherfuckers!".
I think the radio signature from an atomic bomb would be pretty distinct, especially when Operation Ivy was testing deuterium fusion bombs in the 50's. Solar "noise" would make this hard to distinguish, but I think if anyone was listening closely enough, they would be able to sort it out.
So lets take 1960 as a start point, emf radiation travels at the speed of light, so anyone within 50 light years or so has a chance of noticing it. Lets say the aliens in question have already noticed that our solar system is pretty cool, and has a planet in the "green zone", not too big, not too small, good atmosphere, possibly habitable, and are listening out of sheer curiosity. "Hey theres someone else out there, lets go kill/help/exploit them!" The ship is built, and heads towards us.
Let us also assume that the aliens in question are not "god like" beings that have the ability to go faster than the speed of light, cuz if they are, I'm in sooo much trouble. The ship travels fast, about 1/3 the speed of light, about as fast as you can go without the matter in some of the higher energy state parts of your ship bogging down in some nasty quantum rhetoric.
If they launched the ship 25-50 years ago, the soonest we can can expect "visitors", is in about 500 years or so. Math ain't jiving for ya?, did you forget acceleration and deceleration?, yeah I thought so. We have a probe in orbit around Mercury right now, MESSENGER, it was launched in 2004, picked up velocity heading towards the sun, passed Venus in 2006, then spent 5 years losing that velocity to get it down to a speed that would allow orbital insertion around Mercury.
A craft carrying visitors would need to either carry or collect enough fuel to decelerate after they got close to us. Even if you were carrying your cargo as simple DNA, too much acceleration or deceleration would turn it into scrambled eggs. Half the voyage would be spent speeding up, the rest slowing down. I figure they will arrive about 400 years after we send something to check them out.
I will admit that all of the preceding is based on what we know about physics, but new discoveries and theories about dark matter, dark energy, and quantum theory, apply only to the smallest observable quantae. Once you are in the realm of big ships carrying physical matter, Newtonian physics hold the cards.
I will never totally write off any alien or UFO theory, fuck, I saw one myself once. But I am very skeptical, and would need some serious physical proof to make me change my mind.
This was originally written as a response to a thread, but I think it needs its own.
C/O
"I don't care if anyone reads this, I had fun writing it"
The argument against such intervention is pretty solid though. For another race to have had contact with Earth, they would have to know this is a planet capable of supporting life, and then get here. If you think there is a lot of crap on the internet, don't even bother with the rest of the universe. There are very few habitable solar systems, even if you are amazingly optimistic, most of what's out there is too hot, too cold, or has some high order fuckup that prevents the formation of nice planets like ours.
For an alien race to invest the resources required to get here, they would have to have a good reason. To go solar system to solar system, checking out possible habitable planets discovered by spectrographic analysis would be a waste of time. The first really good indication we have given the universe that something intelligent lives here was the first, and successive, atomic bombs. Each bomb generated an electromagnetic pulse that broadcast to the cosmos "YO! beeatches!, we are here, and we do the fusion thing, motherfuckers!".
I think the radio signature from an atomic bomb would be pretty distinct, especially when Operation Ivy was testing deuterium fusion bombs in the 50's. Solar "noise" would make this hard to distinguish, but I think if anyone was listening closely enough, they would be able to sort it out.
So lets take 1960 as a start point, emf radiation travels at the speed of light, so anyone within 50 light years or so has a chance of noticing it. Lets say the aliens in question have already noticed that our solar system is pretty cool, and has a planet in the "green zone", not too big, not too small, good atmosphere, possibly habitable, and are listening out of sheer curiosity. "Hey theres someone else out there, lets go kill/help/exploit them!" The ship is built, and heads towards us.
Let us also assume that the aliens in question are not "god like" beings that have the ability to go faster than the speed of light, cuz if they are, I'm in sooo much trouble. The ship travels fast, about 1/3 the speed of light, about as fast as you can go without the matter in some of the higher energy state parts of your ship bogging down in some nasty quantum rhetoric.
If they launched the ship 25-50 years ago, the soonest we can can expect "visitors", is in about 500 years or so. Math ain't jiving for ya?, did you forget acceleration and deceleration?, yeah I thought so. We have a probe in orbit around Mercury right now, MESSENGER, it was launched in 2004, picked up velocity heading towards the sun, passed Venus in 2006, then spent 5 years losing that velocity to get it down to a speed that would allow orbital insertion around Mercury.
A craft carrying visitors would need to either carry or collect enough fuel to decelerate after they got close to us. Even if you were carrying your cargo as simple DNA, too much acceleration or deceleration would turn it into scrambled eggs. Half the voyage would be spent speeding up, the rest slowing down. I figure they will arrive about 400 years after we send something to check them out.
I will admit that all of the preceding is based on what we know about physics, but new discoveries and theories about dark matter, dark energy, and quantum theory, apply only to the smallest observable quantae. Once you are in the realm of big ships carrying physical matter, Newtonian physics hold the cards.
I will never totally write off any alien or UFO theory, fuck, I saw one myself once. But I am very skeptical, and would need some serious physical proof to make me change my mind.
This was originally written as a response to a thread, but I think it needs its own.
C/O
"I don't care if anyone reads this, I had fun writing it"
Comments
Signs - Why did aliens who melt when they come into contact with water invade a planet that is around 60% water, it rains water and the dominant species on the planet (humans) are also made up of water. Why didn't they wear some sort of suit, why the hell would they fight hand to hand while naked.
War of the Worlds - Same as above, why the hell are the aliens naked and putting random objects in their mouths in that basement, didn't they detect viruses in the air?
Skyline - Why would aliens come here to steal our water? Water is everywhere, our asteroid belt contains more than is on the Earth. Also, they are meant to be able to build massive ships and travel here, but they can't make synthetic water?
Agreed, popular media has given most people a scientifically unfounded view of aliens and extraterrestrial contact. There is not one thing on earth that could not be found elsewhere, except for habitable land, and unique genetics. Colonization, sure, we could be the Indians watching the Mayflower come into the bay one day. If that ever happens, I hope global paranoia prevails and we nuke the fuckers. "oh maybe we could learn something from them, lets not kill them", bullshit! If one alien comes here, lets make friends, if a dozen come, lets negotiate, if a fucking shipfull shows up on our doorstep, kill them all before the liberal fucks start giving them rights.
You are limiting your detection methods to those know by us. If such an alien race existed it would be more than feasible that they would posses technology we can't even imagine. Much like people 1000 years ago could not imagine televison, radio, or even the waves of energy which they operate off of. Perhaps they would have technology which can detect the wave lengths of brain activity across vast distances. Or perhaps they have developed a technology which can measure the waves emanated from plant life from great distances.
Just because we don't have it or thought of it does not mean it does not exist. Thousands of years ago man could not imagine the solar system or the stars in a manner that is in line with what we have discovered about then thus far. I am not taking the position that aliens have engineered the human race or that they have had a hand in human development. But to state that they likely did not based on the limitations of our current technology and resources is not realistic either.
I was not ruling out the possibility, just arguing against it. In response to your post the "waves" you speak of would still have to travel a great distance, be received, and something sent to check out the source. If you think faster than light travel is possible, for matter or information, then the possibility of extraterrestrial contact becomes very likely. But I don't think anything other than a stream of very mangled energy could make it through a wormhole, never mind a ship. To argue the "it could exist, we just can't conceive how yet" point is valid, but unenlightening, do better.
C/O
"Quantum cheeseburgers, best on the block"