Aliens are alien. We would likely barely be able to recognize each other as sentient beings. As such, we really wouldn’t interact that much. I mean, think about it, what could they possibly get from us (through trade or conquest) that they couldn’t just as eaisly just take from any of the millions of uninhabited bodies that they have access to? Perhaps labor, though you’d think a race that’s mastered interstellar travel could meet their needs through automation before they turned to the ultimate form of outsourcing.
Earth biology may be interesting to them, but that would be more a matter of sampling teams than a full-scale invasion. They may do trade in exchange for the right to do their research unmolested (this is very good news for nations with rainforests and other biomes of high biodiversity within their borders). Likewise, they may have an intellectual curiosity about human culture, and may trade us for our cultural artifacts (one recalls American Indians selling cheap jewlery to white tourists at the roadside). But for the most part, they’d probably just leave us alone.
Or else just roll over us like we weren’t even their, like a bulldozer running into an anthill.
Not necessarily. There would certainly be differences, perhaps a lot of significant ones, but we’re very conspicuously technological and it seems unlikely they’d fail to notice that.
And there are plenty of things that we very probably would have in common - the chemical elements, and their abundances are likely to be quite similar where they come from - two and two will make four on their planet, just like they do here, and I’m sure they would also have to use 14 k of g in a f p d, just like us.
On this I must respond. If books the likes of Rare Earth are correct, then intelligent life capable of crafting technology will be of intense interest to them, if for no other reason than to compare and contrast how we got to that point vs. how they got to that point (and onwards).
Of course that assumes the aliens are curious and inquisitive, which is hardly no given. Most cultures/subcultures through the years who have pondered what extraterrestrials might look and be like have all tended to project their own concerns onto the imagined aliens. Sagan surmised that those societies which managed not to destroy themselves would come out of it with highly evolved sensibilities and would be essentially benevolent-but I never really bought that. They might be a benevolent Federation-like society-or they might be the Borg, or even Berserkers-we have no way of knowing.
There is no reason to believe that bipedalism is in any way uniquely characteristic of sapience. Our form is the result of a particular path of evolution in which preceding species inhabited first an arboreal environment and then the open savannas of Africa, and there isn’t even general agreement why we evolved plantigrade bipedalism (although there are some good speculations), much less a consensus that is inherent to intelligence. Parallel or convergent evolution makes for an interesting plot device in science fiction novels, but it is not considered a general principle of evolution by biologists but an artifact of “finding” common solutions to particular evolutionary pressures or functions, such as vision or thermoregulation, and even when it occurs (say, a comparison between the vertebrate eye and that of cephalopods) although the end function may be common, there are significant differences in the details of organogenesis and the function of the organ.
I’d agree with this. It’s quite possible that they wouldn’t readily discern us as intelligent life, at least based on their own standards, and vice versa. (I’m reminded of “Ford Prefect”, who took his odd name on the basis that it would be “nicely inconspicuous” in blending in with the dominant population.) Even if they did, we may not share anything like similar fundamental concepts or interests; I doubt they could even comprehend human art or literature, certainly not without the cultural grounding that we gain in growing up, and they may be substantially different in the ways they even perceive the world or conceptualize it, and of course ditto us for them. I would expect initial communications to be using fundamental mathematical principles and binary logic, those most likely (but not guaranteed) to be universally used principles.
I suppose we might well recognize them even if they aren’t a carbon-based lifeform on the basis of cellular organizational principles and thermodynamic regulation (which we’d expect in life of any complexity) but it might not be a simple determination. It goes without saying that we probably won’t find any bumpy-headed humanoid aliens flying around interstellar space with warp drives. Something more along the lines of Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama is what I would anticipate as a contact scenario.
I think this is a big assumption. Who is to say that they master space travel and that they have access to anything they want? They might be seriously resource strapped. This might be their maiden voyage with no provision for the return trip. It might be a pirate ship hiding from the law. A damaged ship lost and with no way to call for help. Earth (Sol/Milky Way) might be of strategic value to them.
It doesn’t have to be a routine scientific expedition by a super advanced civilization.
I have to say that I hope the first species we have contact with is an Intelligent Pitcher Plant species which has a lot of questions about our dietary patterns. And that the first Human representative is a Vegan. I want to see how that conversation goes down.
There was a great Robotman strip (now Monty, I believe) about this. They had been showing them making contact with an alien race for a few strips, but never showed the aliens. As the conversation isn’t going well, Monty says “we are peaceful, we are vegetarians”. The next panel is the alien ship and the aliens are vegetables. Can’t find it, though.
Good for us simply because we would finally get over the ways we separate ourselves from each other (color, religion, natinality) and all be “earthlings” vs. “Aliens”
Any entity or group capable of interstellar travel isn’t going to be “resource strapped.” By definition, they’re going to have to use an incredible amount of resources–energy and materials–to cross interstellar space at all. Space opera science fiction has left us with the notion that it’s scarcely more difficult to flit from one star to another than to point at the helm and say, “Engage.” However, the reality when you start looking at the kind of energies required to attain sufficient speed to cross between even nearby stars in anything like a reasonable timeframe–say, a thousand years–it is an enormous amount, easily comparable or in excess of the energy production and material exploitation of the entire Earth for years if not decades. Any alien race capable of interstellar travel will have not only technology vastly beyond anything we have now but also be capable of stripping resources from the easily accessible asteroids rather than draw them up from Earth’s gravity well. Anything available on Earth–water, structural metals, radioactives, volatiles, et cetera–is even more available in interplanetary space, and in greater quantities.
This isn’t to say they couldn’t defeat us if they were so motivated, but it would be likely be less effort for them than for you to dig up an anthill. They might even do it without realizing, or caring about eradicating a species of crude, delicate, barely functional, mostly harmelss monkeys who spend most of their time trying to market hair enhancement products to one another despite the fact that evolution has conspired to eliminate most of their body hair. Sometimes I think that marketing, and brand management in particular, is a strategy to roll back the last five million years or so of selection for intelligence and critical thinking.
Not sure of the exact quote or who said it, but, something like this:
***"There are two mutually exclusive statements, either of which is of stupefying significance, and one of which must be true: ‘Humanity is the only intelligent life in the Universe’ or ‘Humanity is not the only intelligent life in the Universe.’ ***
Consider generation ships, ship with crew in stasis, or something to that effect. They do a cheap shot at the stars and let millenia do the job. They go in a set course with no chance to gather stuff on their way. Upon arrival, they have their super technology, and only a little time to use it to secure resources for the next leg of their journey.
If, by any circumstance, space travel is a major risk or investment to this species, they are likely to arrive wanting to make the best of their effort. Only if space travel is a casual thing for them, they are likely to be considerate to what they find and be free to decide to leave the locals alone.
So yes, space travel is a major resource hog, and this exactly why I believe that it is more likely that it be a big deal to them, than an indicator of even bigger access to resources. Think of most of our enterprises, they are on the edge of our ability and reflections of our needs, not a measure of our surplus.
As long as it’s not the Vogons, it should be good, the last thing we’d need are more bureaucrats…
we could probably defeat the Borg by uploading an unlicensed copy of Vista to them, then set the Redmond Collective against them, hopefully they’d mutually annihilate each other…
I like this post, but I must disagree slightly with some of your premises. I think if a civilization existed and they made it to our earth they may or may not have used stasis and interstellar travel in the way you are thinking about it.
I think of it as more of a bending of spacetime, worm hole type things. And they would be travelign to specific places quickly and with intent.
Lets take for example the generally accepted view of an abduction. Let’s say they have abducted people and they are doing it on a semi-regular basis. If you look at abduction as a whole it’s not a earth shattering event. Poked prodded impregnated with an alien spawn then abducted again to have it removed…whatever your view of abduction is, it is not a full scale invasion with guns blaring ala Independence Day.
It’s a rather mild experience, and one where the aliens have ALREADY decided not to come to earth guns a blaz’in and to have a minimally invasive touch on earthlings.
This being said it would appear aliens are [if they are real and abducting people] quite docile and uncourageous in terms of taking over our puny planet.
I would also look at the psychology behind it. If aliens are a different species all together than the primate-esque humanoids we have here, then we should be asking different psychological questions to find out their means. Perhaps they are evolved forms of humanoids and they are a dying breed. Another oft postulated scenerio with the tin hat types. Then I doubt they’d be taking over, as they would be trying to further thier own evolution.
I find it a bit unlikely that any aliens would visit us and just not care at all. That would be like an earth (ocean) ship finding a new and previously unexplored island in the pacific ocean, seeing that it has an entire ecosystem full of utterly unique and different creatures, noticing that some of them make tools, and just not caring.
I think they’d be alien. Odds are they wouldn’t think in a way remotely like ours. We could probably recognize each other as sentient beings, likely through mathematics. But could we ever understand each other? Could we understand what they wanted? OTTOMH The Dance Of The Changer And The Three deals with just this problem. LeGuinn’s Field Of Vision has a section on the difficulties of understanding a truly alien mind as well.
I suspect that whether they are “good” or “bad” would largely depend on their interests, motivations and physical makeup.
They could be explorers that through convergent evolution are vaguely humanoid in nature - like E.T. or the big-eyed gray Close Encounters aliens. Our interaction with them may resemble the Europeans interactions with Africa or the Americas. In other words, benevolant when it is in their interests, antagonistic when it isn’t.
Or they could be some sort of wandering giant AI vessel that simply lands on Earth and gobbles up whatever resources it needs with no more regard to the inhabitants than a farmer has to the insects in his field.
Even “generation ships” are going to be massively expensive in terms of resources and energy expenditure. I don’t time to seek out the thread offhand, but a couple of years ago there was a discussion regarding what kind of technology it would take to travel between stars and how much more advanced over current technology it would have to be. I did some calculations that showed the energy requirements to go from Sol to Alpha Centuri in 1000 years to be in the gigajoule/kilogram range. It’s hard to imagine any resource needs that would justify that kind of effort in order just to go to another star system. I suspect that when or if we (or any other sapient species) ventures beyond their home system it’ll be out of curiosity, not need.
This is pure science fiction. Sure, there are some mathematical exceptions in Special and General Relativity that do permit (or rather, do not forbid) non-local connections between areas of spacetime, but we have no idea how to physically form those connections, and most physicists think that the concentrations of energy required to create such phenomena would be prohibitive and would be self-censoring, as are closed space-like paths around massive rotating objects; you might be able to go backward in time, but you can’t get off until you get back to where you started.
It’s possible that someone may find a real, exploitable way of superluminal transit in the future, but nothing in current understanding of physics supports that, and more than likely we’ll be exploring the universe via the proxy of self-sustaining probes and unmanned craft. What you see on Star Trek or Star Wars bears about as much resemblance to the likely future of space travel as a goldfish bowl does to the Pacific Ocean.
