Stephen Hawking: Alien contact could be risky

S&F

I'm sure there are beings out there who would love to exploit us and our planet but maybe they are kept in check by the others. I'm sure that the oldest races would keep the others in line. Laws would exist.

I think when we get to the point of traveling amongst the stars we will discover that space is a very scary place, and we are the low man on the totem pole.

Imagine you are part of the last survivors of your planets final hours,you are part of a fleet searching for a new planet,low on fuel,you find Earth.
You can't leave without refueling,and the Earthlings start shooting bombs at you,so you have no choice but to fight.
Of course,having the tech required to get to Earth means that your race has vastly more powerful weapons,so Earth is taken over in a matter of days.
Instant new home.

Originally posted by Nikola014
I think Hawking is working for the government or something.
Like his job is to scare people about upcoming invasion...
I don't know why is he so "scared" of invasion by aliens, when we don't know if aliens even "exist".
We "haven't" found aliens, have we?

Wrong. Not everything is a "conspiracy". Hawkins is a brilliant man (to say it mildly), and what he said simply MAKES SENSE.

Are there extraterrestrials out there? Yes, likely.
The mathematical chances are incredible high that there are other races out there, but this doesn't mean they are anywhere close to us or aware of us. The universe is mind-boggling big and distances are mind boggling also.

Can we assume that "the aliens" are friendly?
Not in the slightest. There is no reason to assume that aliens are friendly. If a technology is so advanced to conduct interstellar space travel THERE IS A REASON why they do it! You don't travel in space "for fun".
One likely scenario is indeed that they are harvesting resources and there is no reason to assume they would respect other species, not if they are thousands of years more advanced.

So...what he said is rather obvious and has nothing to do with fear mongering.

Aliens have had at least 3,500,000,000 to come here and plunder our resourses.

Turning up now when humans have already plundered our resourses would be just main stupid. There must be millions of other planets on which life has not yet achieved sentience and destroyed it. If you wanted water, for example, would you go to the small, muddy, polluted, pool being drunk dry by hundreds of animals, or the one which no animal had yet discovered and was ful of clear, clean water?

If Hawkings things otherwise then he too is stupid.

Edit: put it another way, if you wanted food, would you go to the supermarket whose shelves were virtualy stripped clean and was full of people fighting each other for the last crumbs, or would you go to the one that was choc-a-bloc full of food and had no customers at all?

reply to post by Essan


But,say they have the tech to travel across the galaxy and they experience some kind of accident in the vicinity of our solar system.
Say the fuel factory element of their ship has been hit buy some piece of space debris,meaning they cannot refine stuff into fuel.
They need repairs and fast.
They notice we have already refined certain minerals/metals they need for repairs/fuel,so they head our way.
Maybe they try to negotiate with us for our entire stock of refined minerals and metals-or they could just wipe us out,just to be on the safe side.

Statistically improbable I know,but so are us Humans.

which could try to colonise our planet and plunder our resources

Sounds like the United States government.

Oh man they are already here and acting!

reply to post by Darkmask


Couldn't agree with you more. I too believe that there is a "hierarchy" out there and the bad guys are not allowed in. This reminds me of a similar story concerning the Apollo mission. Weren't we told to get out and stay away from the moon?

And what inspired Kubrick and Clarke (2001 a Space Odyssey) to suggest we are not allowed to go to Europa?

Well, at least I'm not worried about an alien invasion too soon.

Originally posted by mfc1PLAZMUH
This guy started off as a very very clever person but just recentnly has turned into an idiot..

Why because he says something you disagree with? See that is why we will never have disclosure. A guy like Ed Mitchell, 6th man on the moon, says the government knows about and is covering up aliens comes out to tell us that and people say he is old and senile

And by the way 'recently' only had one 'n'

Originally posted by Silcone Synapse
reply to post by Essan

 

But,say they have the tech to travel across the galaxy and they experience some kind of accident in the vicinity of our solar system.
Say the fuel factory element of their ship has been hit buy some piece of space debris,meaning they cannot refine stuff into fuel.
They need repairs and fast.
They notice we have already refined certain minerals/metals they need for repairs/fuel,so they head our way.
Maybe they try to negotiate with us for our entire stock of refined minerals and metals-or they could just wipe us out,just to be on the safe side.

Statistically improbable I know,but so are us Humans.

So if they notice we have refined minerals/metals... why would they wipe us out to be "on the safe side"?
That would be the eqvivalent of blowing up your local gas station after you've filled you car, just to be "on the safe side". Who knows, maybe the gas station clerk wanted to sell you some unhealthy candy that would kill you 50 years.

If they notice we can refine things they need then logically they want us to KEEP doing that for them. Trade is a basic principle of civilization - and a show of intelligence.

Originally posted by Essan
Aliens have had at least 3,500,000,000 to come here and plunder our resourses.

Maybe but they have only heard that we are here for the last 100 years and that message is only out there 100 light years so far and realistically since our early radio wasn't that good yet, I would say 50 light years is about right. Not to many planets in that radius

And that message Carl Sagan stuck on Pioneer? It hasn't even reached the closets star yet

"Communication has been lost since January 23, 2003 because of power constraints, with the probe at a distance of 12 billion-kilometers (80 AU) from Earth.":

But now we are sending messages to Gliese 581 system and you know what the TOP message is?

Hello Gliese 581d inhabitant. Can you help us humans travel through space and become smart like you. Please do not eat us we are a friendly race. Angus Pigott Canberra, Australia

www.hellofromearth.net...

Maybe we are the 'resource'

I thought they were already here?
secnd

Sounds to me like they are just trying to make us afraid of aliens. They are here and if they wanted us to be dead we would be dead. They want our resources? Lol come on. Yup they are after our oil. They need it to travel the universe. I could see why the american government is scared then, the aliens are here for our oil. What goes around comes back around i suppose. If you saw an uncharted island full of 12 yr olds with sticks and stones. Would you kill them all or help them grow up and learn?

What seems more likely to me is that any race floating around in massive ships is not looking for any resource we have here, thats just Human hubris. What is more likely is that every world is unique in its own way in such a way that nobody out there would "covet thy neighbors stuff".

"Gosh Glort, why would we invade the Earth its too "hot/cold, small/big, gas ratios all wrong, liquid water is so gross,etc. etc. etc."

The only thing that we have that might be of interest is art, that is something they can't just make up on their own and they would not want to squash us when the blankets we make are selling for such high profit in the art studios of the milky way.

And lets face it, we can't hide anyway. If at our current level of tech we can detect planets around stars and should be chose to spend a tiny fraction more of our meager science budgets sniff atmospheres, any race even a little more then advanced then us and in the stellar neighborhood knows we are here a long time ago.

Stephen Hawking: Earth could be at risk of an invasion by aliens living in 'massive ships' !!,???

Its not whats up there where we should be worrying, look at what we are capable of. War has raged for many years and so many lives lost in the process. Main causes for war has revolved around money, oil and a quest for power.....yet we share the same abode.

Originally posted by merka
So if they notice we have refined minerals/metals... why would they wipe us out to be "on the safe side"?
That would be the eqvivalent of blowing up your local gas station after you've filled you car, just to be "on the safe side". Who knows, maybe the gas station clerk wanted to sell you some unhealthy candy that would kill you 50 years.

If they notice we can refine things they need then logically they want us to KEEP doing that for them. Trade is a basic principle of civilization - and a show of intelligence.

Well the aliens in their damaged ship have surveyed Earth,and found that they could acquire sufficient fuels from our already refined resources.
The problem is,they would need all of our refined resources to fuel the ships.

Now they have the choice of trying to negotiate-which,if successful, results in all of Earths power stations and commerce shutting down over night due to lack of minerals and the end of civilasation as we know it-Or the aliens could infect us with a one time virus,all humans die,and the aliens scoop up the resources,unopposed.
Which is easier?
Thankfully its statistically improbable though,famous last words...

reply to post by chrismicha77


Maybe his voice synthesizer is glitching, misinterpreting what he intends to say?

Relating to this same series he also poo-pooed the idea that aliens could be here abducting people (in a rather derogatory fashion) ...yet he thinks it is likely that millions of aliens could come here to invade. That doesn't really make logical sense to me.

On the programme, he also came up with all these crazy looking creatures that inhabit various planets but none of them looked anything like any creatures we know or even humanoid, even though some of the planets/moons etc have similar landscapes to Earth.

I think that on this series Stephen Hawking has just speculated about this subject to a large degree with little evidence, which is what many people here on ATS do but in most cases they are derided for it.

Originally posted by requires1231
reply to post by chrismicha77

 

Maybe his voice synthesizer is glitching, misinterpreting what he intends to say?

I have thought this too, it's kind of a wicked thought to have but maybe he's been hacked!

We Humans could be the resource to them we would be nothing but animals. A race could be millions of years more evolved and to them we are just what cows are to us FOOD. 7 billion could feed alot of Aliens.

We have to eat they probally do to.


Hawkins knows more than 99.99% of humans so if he warns us we should listen.

Originally posted by Essan
Aliens have had at least 3,500,000,000 to come here and plunder our resourses.

Turning up now when humans have already plundered our resourses would be just main stupid. There must be millions of other planets on which life has not yet achieved sentience and destroyed it. If you wanted water, for example, would you go to the small, muddy, polluted, pool being drunk dry by hundreds of animals, or the one which no animal had yet discovered and was ful of clear, clean water?

If Hawkings things otherwise then he too is stupid.

Edit: put it another way, if you wanted food, would you go to the supermarket whose shelves were virtualy stripped clean and was full of people fighting each other for the last crumbs, or would you go to the one that was choc-a-bloc full of food and had no customers at all?

edit on 11-12-2011 by Essan because: (no reason given)

Besides fossil fuels, what resources that we have plundered from the ground no longer existing in Earth? If we are talking about preciouse metals or something, it's still all here.

HOWEVER, and having said that, I don't think they may necessarily come looking for a specific resource they would mine out of the ground. I think it is possible that aliens may want some other resource -- perhaps water or just plain old "land". Perhaps they are a species that propagates throughout the galaxy by colonizing planets similar to their own -- and Earth is next in line. So they simply could want the entire Earth to colonize.