So They Showed Up In Orbit - What Do We Do Now?

Well, these scenarios are quite archaic. If we see anything like a first contact its going to be more exotic. Such as a dimensional appearance. The saucer/rocket ship landing on the white house lawn will never happen. Me personally, I'm pretty certain it has already happened secretly. And I think this planet has been occupied for hundreds of thousands of years. If not millions. We see it already with left over pyramids and other ancient cities. They were built far longer in history than "they" say. And the whole "Independence Day" invasion thing... I think that has already happened (about 12,000 years ago) and we are whats left.

a reply to: elgaz

If ET's have mastered nanotech, their devices would be microscopic or pebble sized (depending on their purposes). And if they've mastered bioengineering, they'd have living organisms as some of their machinery. Combine the 2 and they may arrive as camouflaged, cyborg "insects" lol. No one that I know of is dissecting mosquitoes to see if there are microscopic alien tech inside controlling them. And for the scientists that have looked, they may have called that technology "viruses" (or even confused it for a natural variation of life).

And you're right that they may not use craft at all. I just imagined that the scenarios in the OP take so long to reach Earth because the ET's are simply checking each planet and its moons along the way. And doing other up close studies throughout the solar system, like studying and getting samples from a lot of objects in the Kuiper belt (just an example, it doesn't have to be that specifically). Our amateur astronomer in the OP just so happened to spot them while they were on step 1,260,000 of a 2 millon step campaign. And visiting Earth just happens to be step 1,365,247.

If they were capable of teleportation, I think the best use would be for things like sending back samples and retrieving packages (like food and maintenance supplies). They may even have limits to their teleportation technology, such as only being able to send objects a certain distance or having to build "receiving and sending stations" along the way. And depending on their internal laws/policies, they may have limits for how much they can send at once because of environmental or alien workers' rights issues, meaning they'd have a backlog of samples to send back. These would also explain their relatively slow advance through our solar system.

Speaking of digital cameras. How is it we can see across the sky and yet do not have a decent photo of certain spots on the moon and Mars?

There is a great deal of human centric thinking in this thread.

In the year of our Lord 17 hundred and 23.

"I wish I could go and visit Aunt Melrose, but she lives damn near 30 miles away. That is a three day round trip before we even stop to visit. We can't leave the farm for that long."

In the year of our Lord 2017.

"Going to visit Aunt Milly, back in a couple of hours."

Many are assuming that the Aliens can't just pop in for a visit whenever they feel like it. Perhaps they can.

P

If manned, I suspect a major fault may of happened on their ship and they need some type of fuel, material, or some type of matter synthesized for them.

At that point if we did help them, I suspect we would do everything in our power to prevent them from leaving - our history of back stabbing and paranoia leads me to that.

If a probe - we may try to destroy it, capture it/steal it and attempt to study and copy tech that we do not have - the probe could have a message saying that there is a vast intergalactic empire, and they want us to take our first steps in joining it - and we would still do that.

Colony - Oh God, I do not have to respond to that, how well that would go down - not to mention we would probably attempt some Vivisections in the mix of it.

Bad Guys - We have the MAD protocol between our worlds nations, it's simple - Annihilation.

We're a messed up species.

In one scenario, I can imagine aliens arrive in their massive mother ships and no human notices but the aliens are very fearful of us. Their alien massive mothership is no bigger than a gnat. I could have a fleet of alien ships in my house and not even notice. My air conditioning duct might appear like a space corridor.

We've discussed at length the various different ways ET could potentially arrive.

What's even more interesting to me is how they would communicate with us. On Earth, we don't even share a global language (as far as native tongues go) so the likelihood of an alien dialect being understandable to us is very low.

Of course, the world's foremost language experts would no doubt be involved and would help humanity cross that bridge.

There are common denominators throughout the universe which would help us, of course. Assuming Aliens arrive in physical form (rather than being interdimensional beings or whatever), then they are subject to the same rules of physics - fundamentally - and likely understanding of the same concepts that we are. Mathematical rules, for example. Maths is something that can be a constant throughout the universe. If they can relate to our basic binary system, for example, we're off to a start.

I'd hope that in time, a common language would be formed and we could understand the nuances of their language. Language and culture are often intertwined - in some places on Earth for example, it's respectful to bow your head - whilst in other places it's considered insulting. Last thing we'd want to do is piss off Mr Alien because of a mistaken gesture or word.

a reply to: elgaz

I believe that Ai will soon solve the language issue. If Facebook has an AI smart enough to create its own language to avoid ours, perhaps it can also use the capabilities to quickly master whatever language they are using as well. It undobutedly would be far more simple than english with out words all a jumble and confusing like two,to, too.

The flip side of that is that their advances far greater than ours would feature some translator technology as well.
And they could likely gather most all languages almost instantly by accessing streams of satellite communications, or cellular content.

if an 'alien' spaceship shows up, humanoids life form, with the same kind of thinking patterns as us, there is absolutely nothing we could do, except listen to their terms.

The technological advance they would have would be phenomenal.

But it is not very probable. The universe is too vast, and in the unlikely event that our own galaxy is populated by many different evolved civilizations, a bit like in Star Wars, there would be a sort of Space collaboration program among them already in place. I doubt a species could go anywhere and do what they want.

a reply to: eriktheawful

We'd cuddle up to our smallpox blankets they gave us and wait for the end.

a reply to: eriktheawful

I think we should all learn yoga....so we can kiss our own arses goodbye.😀😀😀

a reply to: enlightenedservant

The elite already have some connection or tech to these alternate dimensions or planets. Some have seen that the viewing portal used by the elite to view these other planets or dimensions.