Stephen Hawking: Aliens may pose risks

[Golden AWe]

Blackflag, you don't have to worry about aliens. Unlike us humans, they may appreciate vegetables.

[Anonymous]

Ya know... most of you are forgetting something.

After all the years of science fiction films & novels, we tend to believe that aliens will be either humanoids or insectoids.

Who's to say that life cannot be created in conditions completely unlike Earth's? Such life would NOT be something we can imagine. Ever.

And if we cannot even begin to imagine what they look like... will their actions - if they can indeed be called "actions" - ever make any sense at all to us, in case of an encounter?

Hawking is most likely right... but... so what? You can avoid that shit just the same as you can avoid a second Ice Age or the melting of the Polar Circles...

Cheers! :bottle:

[Nickdfresh]

Personally, I believe in the Drake Equation stating that there are probably very few space-faring high tech civilizations because:

a.) civilizations tend to destroy themselves and either have to rebuild (as in after the collapse of the Roman Empire), or are annihilated in a nuclear winter...

b.) we live on a "rare earth" and that few such planets exist capable of sustaining a higher order of life. And even on this earth, lower orders of life such as Gar continue to exist...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis

[Seshmeister]

We have been detectable from our TV waves for about 70 years now so just to a range of 70 light years. That's just to a few dozen stars out of the billion billion in the galaxy. The funny thing is that it looks like what will happen is in the next 50 years or so we'll stop using TV with everyone going to satellite/cable etc so maybe civilisations only have a tiny tiny tiny window where they are detectable.

If the sun is a table tennis ball the Earth is a grain of sand 12 foot away and the next nearest star is over 40 miles away.

[Hardrock69]

One thing that was brought up repearedly in MANY episodes of Star Trek (in all of the different series) was that alien life does not actually have to have 'feelings' or 'emotions'. I mean, if some fucking race like The Borg landed on this planet, and they had say 500 million soldiers, along with advanced technology, we would all be dead.

Or some kind of intergalactic cloud of evil 'psychic' entities that can travel at light speed and do not require oxygen (The Lights Of Zerar, anyone?).

They could just be mindless creatures who are driven to feed by the instinct to survive, much like cattle naturally graze on grass.

I will just say I surely hope any alien races we encounter are friendly, for all our sakes.

[Seshmeister]

As Phil Plait said 'In science fiction spaceships go at the speed of plot.'

[thome]

I BID 400 QUATLOOS...



In between defeating the 500 million aliens, I will teach a alien thigh high hooker boot wearing fox about Human Love.

cause I am sexy like that.

[Baby's On Fire]

I agree, HR. It makes sense what Hawking is saying. The Columbus thing is a great analogy and if they have the technology to get here, they are further advanced than us, who's to say what their intentions are.

Arguments saying that advanced civilization are less likely to be aggressive is based on what??????? Name one advanced civilization that wasn't.

I do think 90% of all UFO's were mistaken sightings or military experiments. It's that 10% that makes you wonder.......

What freaks me out are those audio recordings of airline pilots or Russian military pilots, for example, baffled by what they are seeing...UFOs that they simply can't track or follow due to high speed or impossible maneuvarability.......It wasn't advanced military technology.......I've read a number of books with 80, 000 yeard-old-or-so cave paintings depicting what is obviously a humanoid in a space suit or an obvious typical UFO....There's no way caveman who didn't even have language could fantasize about mechanical machinations...especially those that fit the typical UFO / alien description......No way to fake that shit.

[TAKIN WHISKEY]

What freaks me out are those audio recordings of airline pilots or Russian military pilots, for example, baffled by what they are seeing...UFOs that they simply can't track or follow due to high speed or impossible maneuvarability.......It wasn't advanced military technology.......I've read a number of books with 80, 000 yeard-old-or-so cave paintings depicting what is obviously a humanoid in a space suit or an obvious typical UFO....There's no way caveman who didn't even have language could fantasize about mechanical machinations...especially those that fit the typical UFO / alien description......No way to fake that shit.

Exactly! And the pilots that you mentioned, especially military, would have a pretty damn good idea if there was ANY aircraft, even top secret, that could fly or maneuver like that.

[simarillion]

who is the great watcher over us all? is it time?

[Jesus Christ]

who is the great watcher over us all? is it time?

That would be Me and My Dad.

[Nitro Express]

I think Stephen Hawking may have watched too many science fiction movies.

With all the shit going down caused by humans and natural disasters, some aliens coming is the least of our problems. Holy hell people have gone nuts now. I'm more worried about some asshole driving his car into me and killing me on the road than some aliens coming to butt rape me.

[Nitro Express]

I saw a show on PBS about the universe and they explained how big our Milky Way Galaxy is in terms most people can understand. The Milky Way is a medium size spiral galaxy. If you took a picture of every planet in the Milky Way and put it in a book and started turning pages at a rate of one page every second, how long would it take to see every planet and get to the end of the book? Constant turning and viewing one planet per second would take you Ten Thousand Years to get to the end of the book. That is ONE galaxy. I have never been naive enough, even as a child, to think we are the only life form in the universe.

Also the speed of light is pretty slow on a universal scale. Just getting a healthy person to Mars and back in good health is pushing the envelope. The human body degrades pretty fast in zero gravity and even with exercising everyday, muscle and bone loss is a big problem. We weren't designed to live in zero gravity, it's not our element. I think what we have learned is we are earth beings and we better get our act together and take care of this planet we live on. Look at the other planets in the solar system compared to ours. Mars is a big desolate desert and it's ugly. I think we have the better real estate here so let's take care of it.

[clarathecarrot]

I am a root vegetable

[Nickdfresh]

You're a wart on the ass of humanity...