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In search of ET: Fear of what’s out there causes split among space scientists

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Re: In search of ET: Fear of what’s out there causes split among space scientists

#41

Post by kyriakos »

jandrese wrote: post #27
NickM wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sort of agree, but to be fair a nice habitable planet could be a really rare and valuable resource in and of itself, assuming there are any life forms out there with biology similar enough to our own to find Earth desirable.

Also assumes there aren't a bunch of Earth-like worlds that are otherwise uninhabited that would be much easier to colonize than one with potentially hostile/poisonous natives.

or that the potential alien invaders are not adapted to a completely different environment than earth's

Re: In search of ET: Fear of what’s out there causes split among space scientists

#42

Post by zokier »

coleifer wrote: post #7

Not discussed by the article, but I wonder...Is it more terrible to find out that nobody's out there? Nobody's listening?

Doing exhaustive search of the universe is pretty big task; I don't think we can anytime soon determine that nobody is out there.

Re: In search of ET: Fear of what’s out there causes split among space scientists

#43

Post by kyriakos »

Sounds like a lot of scientist have been reading the Three Body Problem.

I think we should worry more about AI taking over rather than aliens. Its actually much closer to home. On the other hand the only alien intelligence which has the luxury of interstellar travel is the one which has no sense of time and that would be alien AI again.

Re: In search of ET: Fear of what’s out there causes split among space scientists

#44

Post by tigen »

sbuttgereit wrote: post #19

I think the fears of some ET empire with Darth Vader (or similar) at the head is very misplaced. Just think of the economics... "let's go exploit that world 10 LY away from us that we don't fully understand and which will still takes us an insane amount of time to enslave and milk resources from!" What a scalable strategy given the size of space... one might even say it's astronomically large! The resource consumptio…

You can't know or understand possible ET motivations or capabilities.

Humans routinely drive other species on Earth to extinction, our own cousins. We also damage our own planet's environment.

It may be logical for an ET to just destroy us the way you might destroy a harmful bacteria, which might otherwise spread unpredictably. It wouldn't be about wanting slaves or raw resources (although as someone said, Earth itself might be considered somewhat valuable).

Re: In search of ET: Fear of what’s out there causes split among space scientists

#45

Post by pmoriarty »

jandrese wrote: post #22

This is not something I'm worried about. Unless FTL travel is real, the amount of resources necessary to make the trip to kill off/enslave humans makes the entire effort unprofitable. Basically, if you have the ability to travel between star systems, you already have the technology to exist effectively forever in a self contained environment. You can mine asteroids/planets forever in your own solar system for effecti…

Even mere humans, who've only reaped the fruits of serious scientific advancement for a few hundred years have already come up with a way to get to Alpha Centauri within 44 years.[1]

All such spacecraft would have to do to cause massive devastation is aim at Earth and not stop, though it's likely that more advanced civilizations could come up with more effective means of destruction.

Alien civilizations could have advanced scientifically for thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years. It is unlikely that we can accurately put limits on their capabilities.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propu...

Re: In search of ET: Fear of what’s out there causes split among space scientists

#46

Post by blotter_paper »

evolvedcleaning wrote: post #8

Being enslaved by evil aliens is among the worst of fears. The risk isn’t death or annhilation; it’s being denied the mercy of a short (100 years) existence, in bondage and suffering. I fully support a careful approach to combing the cosmos. Edit: May I ask why this is being downvoted?

I didn't downvote you, but this seems extraordinarily unlikely to me. Why would our extraterrestrial overlords want to use us as slaves? They travelled a long way to get here, surely they should have robots or a genetically engineered underclass or something. We're in the process of making human labor obsolete ourselves. The only scenario I can imagine where this makes sense is one where the aliens have interstellar travel but lack decent genetic engineering, and they're interested in exploring/building/mining in places that are inhospitable to both their own biology and robotics but not our biology (like a planet whose gravity would crush them that also has an EM field that would fry circuits without exceptional shielding). This seems like a stretch to me. I feel like wiping out a potential future threat is a much more reasonable incentive, with exploitation/study of an already existent biosphere being a runner up. Most of the things they could want humans for would be more efficiently accomplished by phytoplankton and krill. You're right that nigh-perpetual enslavement is the most horrifying possibility, it just seems implausible.

Re: In search of ET: Fear of what’s out there causes split among space scientists

#47

Post by kerbalspacepro »

kyriakos wrote: post #43

Sounds like a lot of scientist have been reading the Three Body Problem. I think we should worry more about AI taking over rather than aliens. Its actually much closer to home. On the other hand the only alien intelligence which has the luxury of interstellar travel is the one which has no sense of time and that would be alien AI again.

The Three Body Problem and ASI are two songs on the same instrument: value misalignment in cases of massive power differentials.

In an indifferent universe, two optimizers optimizing different things will be in conflict. Can we build machines that optimize what we want to optimize? Can we align our optimization with aliens before it becomes optimal for one of us to annihilate the other?

Re: In search of ET: Fear of what’s out there causes split among space scientists

#48

Post by kmm »

CharlesColeman wrote: post #26
jandrese wrote: post #22

This is not something I'm worried about. Unless FTL travel is real, the amount of resources necessary to make the trip to kill off/enslave humans makes the entire effort unprofitable. Basically, if you have the ability to travel between star systems, you already have the technology to exist effectively forever in a self contained environment. You can mine asteroids/planets forever in your own solar system for effecti…

That's assuming aliens prioritize profit. Perhaps they're technologically advanced and have everything they need, but have deeply internalized the logic of using preemptive strikes to protect themselves from potential future threats. Such a strike might not even be that expensive or need FTL technology: just send out a few one-way nuclear-armed suicide drones at 0.12 c [1], via a path that obscures their origin (e.g.…

Or send a chunk of metal at near light speed. Things in space move very predictably for thousands of years, and as the projectile only barely trails the signal of its departure, it would come as a total surprise even for very advanced civilizations.

Let's say an advanced civilization around Sirius wants to take us out. A chunk of metal (or anything really) of about 1000 metric tonnes would be completely invisible until it were very close. Travelling at 99.99% of the speed of light, it would impact with the energy of 13 times the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs. The light of the projectile being "fired" would reach us in 10 years, and the projectile itself would arrive just 8 hours later. There is no foreseeable way to defend ourselves against that.

An overly cautious civilization with that kind of technology might just decide to start sterilizing all the planets in its surroundings without having to leave their solar system, just in case.

Re: In search of ET: Fear of what’s out there causes split among space scientists

#49

Post by dfilppi »

Dumb statement: "Television and radio signals would long ago have signaled our presence to malevolent space ruffians, he said." There are only 11 known habitable exoplanets within 50 light years that we know of. Assume there are 1000 within 100 light years. The odds of a super predator in that small of a sample are virtually 0. Plus, even if they had their armada on standby, it takes at least 100 years to get here. Apparently there is little intelligent life on earth.

Re: In search of ET: Fear of what’s out there causes split among space scientists

#50

Post by jandrese »

pmoriarty wrote: post #45
jandrese wrote: post #22

This is not something I'm worried about. Unless FTL travel is real, the amount of resources necessary to make the trip to kill off/enslave humans makes the entire effort unprofitable. Basically, if you have the ability to travel between star systems, you already have the technology to exist effectively forever in a self contained environment. You can mine asteroids/planets forever in your own solar system for effecti…

Even mere humans, who've only reaped the fruits of serious scientific advancement for a few hundred years have already come up with a way to get to Alpha Centauri within 44 years.[1] All such spacecraft would have to do to cause massive devastation is aim at Earth and not stop, though it's likely that more advanced civilizations could come up with more effective means of destruction. Alien civilizations could have ad…

Project Orion is a cocktail napkin estimate. The actual problem is much much harder.

But as you point out, anything that can travel between the stars can trivially wipe out all life on Earth without warning. They also know we exist already thanks to the changes in the chemical composition of our atmosphere. If they want to kill us then we're dead.

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