How Do You Greet an Extraterrestrial? 803
The LA Times is running a story about Earth Speaks, a companion project to SETI, which focuses on how we would communicate with intelligent extraterrestrial life, should we happen to discover it. Far more effort has been devoted to searching for signals or a means to communicate than the question of what we might say once contact is established, and the folks at SETI have set up a website to gather opinions on what the best questions and statements are. "So far, the messages break down into a few distinct categories. Some people want to throw a block party to welcome the aliens to the neighborhood. Others, less trusting, would warn the aliens that we've got guns and know how to use them. Another group, possibly influenced by having seen too many movies, would have us hide under the bed until they go away. 'If we discover intelligent life beyond Earth, we should not reply — we should freeze and play dead,' wrote one contributor." What would you say first to an alien?
Read FootFall (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone thinking about how we greet aliens should realize several things
a) anyone in orbit is in a very powerful position. Essentially the ultimate higher attack position.
b) anyone arriving in orbit has very advanced technology
c) kinetic energy
Read Footfall, it posits aliens with the barest of interstellar travel capabilities arriving
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footfall [wikipedia.org]
Re:I know (Score:5, Informative)
My greeting... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Atomic Rockets (Score:1, Informative)
From Run To The Stars by Michael Scott Rohan (1982). The heroes have discovered the Dreadful Secret that the BC world government is hiding: explorers have discovered the first known alien species, and BC is sending a huge missile to kill all the aliens.
"Alien," muttered Ryly, and coughed rackingly, unpleasant in the confined space. "The Colony - people, that was different, but - Bellamy, hey, hold on. Think a minute. So what you say's true - couldn't the BC still be right? I mean, these're aliens, man! Better we'd never contacted them, but now they've found us - hell, we can't trust them! We can't be sure! It's the human race at stake."
"Ye're sayin' that genocide - worse than that, even - that ye like the idea?" demanded Kirsty.
"Hell, no, think I'm Stalin or somethin'? Like I said - better we'd laid low, shut up, kept to ourselves, safe, Earth and the Colony both. But these things, we can't afford to take a risk with them! Better the missile cleans the mistake off the slate, things quiet down an' we're safe again. I don't like it, I hate it - but then I'm not so wild about some of the things you feel you were justified in doin' either..."
"If that missile hits the target," said Kristy venomously, "we'll have tae hide. Shrink back into our own wee system, never make a noise, never stir outside it. What if any other race ever found out what we'd done? Then we'd never be safe. They'd never trust us. Not for an instant. There's bound to be some of them who think like you, Ryly. We'd be giving them grand evidence, wouldn't we? They'd wipe us out like plague germs and feel good about it!"
My own imagination was striking sparks off Kirsty's and kindling an evil flame. "Unless..." I began, and actually had trouble shaping the thought. "Unless we got them first. At once, on first contact. A pre-emptive strike, before they could possibly have a chance to find out about us. Hellfire, isn't that a glorious future history for us! A race of paranoid killers, skulking in our own backwater system when we might have had the stars! Clamping down on exploration, communications, anything that might lead someone else to us and make us stain our hands again with the same old crime... Carrying that weight down the generations. What would that make of us?"
"Predators," breathed Kirsty, "Carrion-eaters - no, worse, ghouls, vampires, killing just tae carry on our own worthless shadow-lives."
Re:I know (Score:4, Informative)
It's called Rishathra if you do it with aliens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rishathra [wikipedia.org]
Re:It really all depends on resources (Score:4, Informative)
Gathering resources and returning wouldn't be worth it unless their world(s) were truly in need. But the more obvious need would be to spread their civilization and avoid extinction. Any civilization that wants to avoid extinction must move away from the star it was "born" at eventually.
Re:Poppycock! (Score:3, Informative)
The implied logic of the GP is that if you annihilate another civilisation, you have indicated to other civilisations that you are a threat to them or their allies. You'd therefore better be certain that you can therefore get everyone in one go, because otherwise, out of sheer logical necessity, they're like to turn on you. The GP has missed another possibility which is that the annihilating civilisation is beyond being threatened themselves and doesn't need to fear reprisals. But this latter is unlikely for two reasons: Firstly, if you've reached a particular technological level it doesn't seem there's any reason why another couldn't do so. Secondly, if you're beyond being threatened, why go out of your way to wipe out others. The former is a more concrete argument than the former because we don't know our hypothetical alien's psychology, but both arguments carry weight.
Closest Star is 3,900 years away (Score:5, Informative)
The barrier between us and the stars is not some insurmountable technology one, its a matter of money and willpower.
You sir, are confused.
The fastest man-made item http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/spacecraft/q0109c.shtml [aerospaceweb.org] reached 150,000 mph (41.67 mi/sec). Voyager 1, launched in 1977, is going only 38,500 mph as it leaves our solar system. The closest star to our solar system is about 4 light years away (5,800,000,000,000,000 miles away).
That works out to about 3,941 years to travel there at 150,000 mi/hr.
We definitely do not have the technology to accomplish or even begin that goal. We'd need a multi-generational ship, capable of growing food without sunlight. It would need to survive longer than any culture or nation has by far.
So perhaps you understand why we aren't planning to visit other stars at all now?