How would people respond if Aliens send us reply to Voyager?

[Akisa]

Lets say after 30 years from now Voyager returns back to our solar system modified pictures/depictions of some alien retrieving it, images of their solar system and returning it back to our solar system. How would world community react?

[Tvtyrant]

Lots of suicides. LOTS. Just think of what rocks floating through space does...

[inexorabletruth]

Well… suicides are a possibility. But I think it could also bring in a second renaissance of discovery. We've been probing the skyline, looking for signs of intelligent life, since the first telescope was invented.

The scientific and theological community will be roused to discussion, speculation and preparation for how this new information will change society as a whole, and an new boom in demand for space exploration and space tourism technology will fuel a new and exciting industry that could create new jobs and new corporate dynasties.

For example, the owner or the company I work for announced this summer that he's taking a moon vacation in 2014 to plot land on the moon for the first moon-hotel. He estimates that each room can be rented for $38,000 a month. At the moment, it seems like the pipe-dream of an eccentric billionaire, but if we have definitive proof that we may even meet new lifeforms out there, then the demand for such types of tourism will increase exponentially.

Of course, there's also the probability that all land-to-air missiles will start pointing towards the heavens, and many extremist factions will go deep underground in panic bunkers until all this "madness" blows over.

I suppose the bottom line is… we could expect many changes. Some good, some bad. But I prefer to think about the good.

[Evandar]

I wouldn't expect many suicides. (although with the number of people on the planet, pretty much everything nowadays has a chance of provoking a suicide)

A lot of scientists would highfive each other.

[Traab]

Well, preferably we would have much better rockets to send out a reply by then. Maybe come up with a way to communicate more rapidly than once every 3-6 decades or so. After that, perhaps by the time we could arrange it, we could setup a meeting place off world somewhere, to figuratively meet them halfway (assuming they are even capable of better space travel than us, they might not if they only sent our own rocket back) Otherwise, just work on finding the next big thing in space travel to reach them eventually.

Just knowing there IS intelligent life out there would be enough to reignite the interest in space travel. Its even remotely possible it could become a joint world effort. Of course its at least as likely it will be every nation for itself, wanting the accolades of making first face to face contact. But either way, technology would start jumping forward again. Working on the moon landing gave us so much new stuff to work with, being able to have the goal of meeting someone outside our solar system? That would get things moving so fast it would be crazy.

[inexorabletruth]

Of course its at least as likely it will be every nation for itself, wanting the accolades of making first face to face contact.

Fear not! Most government funded space travel is an international effort by now. The space station is a great example of that. It's the private sector that's competitive. Virgin and Bigelow lead the way in privatized space travel at the moment, and are even developing a prolific trade in space tours to the lucky 5%'ers who have the money to blow on such diversions.

[Ravens_cry]

I'd be pretty happy. Scared, but happy, that an alien race is so close that they could return Voyager after only 30 years. Either that or they are breaking the known laws of physics in new and interesting ways, and that is also something that would make me happy and scared.

[tensai_oni]

For the aliens' sake, I really hope they have better technology than we do. Possibly of the "bullets bounce off, explosions do nothing" variety.

We're not exactly the most rational lot, the whole of humanity. I expect a violent reaction, aimed not only at aliens but at other humans. I'm not saying everyone will be like that, the vast majority will probably be just anxious or very hopeful, but there will be enough to make Earth a substantially less peaceful place for a while.

But it will be worth it. Making peaceful contact with another civilization from a different planet, knowing you are not alone out there? Totally worth it.

[DeusMortuusEst]

I'd be pretty happy. Scared, but happy, that an alien race is so close that they could return Voyager after only 30 years. Either that or they are breaking the known laws of physics in new and interesting ways, and that is also something that would make me happy and scared.

Very much this. 30 years is not much when exploring space. These aliens pretty much live in our backyard, or they somehow managed to get to our backyard from their home planet. Both of these things would simultaneously excite and scare me. I'm not sure what I'd feel the most.

[Lord Raziere]

I'd be afraid.

there are so many possibilities there is so much that can go wrong.

and even if it goes right....it is very likely that all that we know, will be changed forever. we will no longer be alone. the discoveries that will be made will probably revolutionize society, the changes will be massive, the cultural upheaval will be a tidal wave. if things are not handled well, there is a strong possibility of culture shock, of the gifts they give us and the gifts we give them of causing trouble.

it would be a change of singularity proportions. once they arrive, there is no telling what will happen. and just imagine, what many people think of an earth based singularity, of an artificial intelligence created far more intelligent than we are- a scary godlike figure, prone to thinking humanity inferior, a robotic uprising boogieman created from our own fears that what we create will someday destroy us, now imagine our fears of the aliens invading, of something far more advanced than us, coming to squash us like a bug for reasons that we cannot comprehend, the fear of the predator alien civilization coming to eat its prey, of Cthulhu.

there will be people that will be afraid, and they will cause trouble. hardly an ideal situation for an alien singularity to occur. and even the ideal situation is one fraught with peril, with the possibility of an "Alien's Burden" thinking taking over and treating humanity as primitives who are unenlightened and don't know anything about the universe. Even my most idealistic speculations project great problems, even if all goes well.

[Ravens_cry]

Very much this. 30 years is not much when exploring space. These aliens pretty much live in our backyard, or they somehow managed to get to our backyard from their home planet. Both of these things would simultaneously excite and scare me. I'm not sure what I'd feel the most.
Exactly. It would be . . . terrifically awesome, in both the current and etymological senses.
It should be noted that the Voyagers left Earth over 30 years ago and are only now edging out of our solar system.
Yep, as Douglas Adams put it, "Space is big.You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."

[danirijeka]

It also depends on WHAT the aliens would send back. Should they put in pop culture references implied from our broadcasts, heavens help us all, since we're going to be exterminated. :smalltongue:

[Spiryt]

More bunkers, more pilgrims and prophets on hilltops, more TV programs, more long, heated discussions with "banned" "banned" "banned" aplenty on the first page.

[Traab]

For the aliens' sake, I really hope they have better technology than we do. Possibly of the "bullets bounce off, explosions do nothing" variety.

We're not exactly the most rational lot, the whole of humanity. I expect a violent reaction, aimed not only at aliens but at other humans. I'm not saying everyone will be like that, the vast majority will probably be just anxious or very hopeful, but there will be enough to make Earth a substantially less peaceful place for a while.

But it will be worth it. Making peaceful contact with another civilization from a different planet, knowing you are not alone out there? Totally worth it.

That would probably make it worse. I would personally hope for aliens closer to us in tech because it would help foster the "They arent so different from us" aspect. If they are blatantly superior to us it would make the people living in fear from too many alien invasion movies feel even more justified in their terror because if they are right, then there is precious little we can do about it.

On the other hand, imagine if they are tech level with us? Every communication would come sooner and sooner as our relative tech levels increase and improve. We would see visible progress between us as we both advance and reach out toward the other, (assuming they even really want to) Going into a relationship as equals would be the best way to start things imo. Oh sure it would be NICE if godlike aliens with a benevolent mind set arrived and handed us the keys to our own intergalactic ship to learn from, but there would be something so much more satisfying about being able to work together and maybe even help each other out.

[warty goblin]

There would be a lot of yammering, middle aged guys in conservative suits giving speeches in front of buildings with lots of columns. Billions of words would be written about how 'this changes everything'. Eight months later everybody is back to doing exactly what they were doing before, except there's now a couple new branches of government and at least one new religion. But the cat still needs fed, and the burgers flipped.

The better question is what to write back. I'd go with 'beer, my place?'

[AKA_Bait]

I suspect that a lot of people would also be pretty skeptical as to whether it is genuine (including me) precisely because of the physical distances and technological challenges involved. Something like this happening is pretty unlikely, would have serious cultural/philosophical/religious implications, and so would be a pretty juicy target for an Andy Kaufman/War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast type stunt.

[EmeraldRose]

It also depends on WHAT the aliens would send back. Should they put in pop culture references implied from our broadcasts, heavens help us all, since we're going to be exterminated. :smalltongue:

How strange would it be to have a completely alien culture out there somewhere that has developed the exact same pop culture? And sends us back images of their celebrities and stuff?

I would be very scared. For the entire universe... :smalleek:

[Tyndmyr]

Awesome conspiracy theories.

[danirijeka]

How strange would it be to have a completely alien culture out there somewhere that has developed the exact same pop culture? And sends us back images of their celebrities and stuff?

I would be very scared. For the entire universe... :smalleek:
No, no - I was referring to our TV/Radio broadcasts reaching out into space (I had these two comics in mind: xkcd#1212 (http://xkcd.com/1212/) and Subnormality#56 (language warning) (http://www.viruscomix.com/page423.html)

(yes, I know they'd be very weak signals, but then again Voyager is a speck of dust in the Universe, too)

But your twist is quite scary, too. whyamIthinkingofaliencleavageshotsat8.30inthemorni nggoodheavens

[The Succubus]

They'd probably ask us why Harry Kim is so annoying. :smalltongue:

[Cespenar]

I hope:

1) Either they are much more benevolent than us. Or,
2) The space traveling universe has a watertight law & order system.

If not, well, things will likely go as they do when a civilization discovers a much less advanced civilization than theirs.

Read: not well.

[Kato]

Uhm... if we assume the laws of physics are still in action which means likely no invasion (because distance) but merely certain knowledge there are others out there and possibly really, really slow communication (as in, a message every decade)...
I have no idea. Yeah, I'm sure it will impact human civilization and there will be changes, likely huge ones but I don't see it leading to the end of civilization nor to some big advancement unless the aliens are willing to share whatever they may have that's better than what we got.

[LaZodiac]

Voyager's the one with the panels on it with the male and female human figures on it, and all the collected data about human life, right?

[Trixie]

What makes you guys think anyone would even announce this? :smallconfused:


It's the private sector that's competitive.

It's not competitive. All of private space travel efforts put together are yet to meet level set by Gagarin's flight 52 years ago. Vostok spacecraft was capable of multiple orbits, not just suborbital dip, despite being (from today's perspective) quite simple vehicle.

Quite frankly, there are not even any private highways built without state help, and space infrastructure is orders of magnitude more expensive. Only way to build it is public, not private financing, IMHO.


No, no - I was referring to our TV/Radio broadcasts reaching out into space

Actually, they don't. No one out there will hear us, that have been recently disproved.

[Kato]

Voyager's the one with the panels on it with the male and female human figures on it, and all the collected data about human life, right?

Yeah, if I remember right. (Wikipedia says so as well) Though, I'm not sure how well aliens would understand it.. but then again I know hardly anything about linguistics (or whatever branch would concern itself with it)

[Trixie]

Though, I'm not sure how well aliens would understand it.

Funny thing is, it was a gramophone disc. We, right here on Earth, are rapidly losing capability and devices needed to understand data we recorded on it 35 years ago, aliens would first dig up plans of similar device from their ancient past, if they have any :smalltongue:

But then again, then they would be spared from seeing the horror of seeing very schematic drawing of a human, sans clothes. Can you imagine the outcry it caused back then when some people learned scientists included it on plaque?

[AtlanteanTroll]

Watch the aliens be offended at what's included. What then? What if we've offended their extra-terrestrial decencies!

[Guancyto]

Thirty years is more or less still within our solar system. So yeah, either they're here for a visit or they live here.

Case #1, they're here for a visit. That means their technology is substantially more advanced than our own. They found an exoplanet, determined it contained life, possibly deciphered its broadcasts and found that thing it launched to explain what it was all about. Oh, and crossed the timeless gulf of stars.

Evolution tends to foster organisms in competition with each other. Aliens won't look a thing like Star Trek, but they'll probably understand things like "screwing over beings that are unimportant for one's survival."

Prognosis: If we have something they want, basically an interstellar "scramble for Africa." (This is very bad for us.) Actual alien presence likely to be minimal, it is a freakish biome to them and they don't have to do much when they can park in orbit with a mass driver and have the humans give them things.

People's responses: Not good. Aliens in orbit with mass drivers who have puppet governments all over Earth are pretty bad as 'impetus for social upheaval' goes. Expect a lot of wars, especially if different groups of aliens have set up different puppet governments.

Difference in biome and lack of presence means it's very difficult for us to catch up technologically, as well.

Case #2, they live in our backyard. They deciphered our broadcasts (close proximity means they've been hearing them for years with not a lot of delay), and figured out that they have neighbors. Living far beyond the habitable zone means they're absolutely nothing like us biologically (suck it, Vulcan!) but their tech is likely to be comparable, if not slightly inferior.

They're also unlikely to have anything we want and the difficulty of actual travel between the two planets means that a lot of reasons to come into conflict flat-out aren't there.

Prognosis: Life goes on. Space travel gets a much-needed boost in popularity, many new religions pop up (otherwise known as 'Tuesday'). Scientists give each other high fives and then sit down to figure out what the hell happened on this distant planet. A second planet to study the evolution of probably answers a lot of scientific questions and raises a hell of a lot more.

Xenolinguistics becomes an actual thing. Linguists were never so happy to be relevant.

[Jay R]

Can't speak for anyone else, but if I were face-to face with an alien artifact, I'd be all too tempted to respond, "Klaatu barada nikto".

[Coidzor]

Well, scientists are going to be fairly confident that FTL travel is a possibility unless we shortly encounter the aliens themselves in a generation ship rather than something more interesting, because I'm trying to remember *where* Voyager would be in 30 years time, but it wouldn't make it to another solar system in that time, as it's not traveling at even a significant fraction of light speed.


Prognosis: If we have something they want, basically an interstellar "scramble for Africa." (This is very bad for us.) Actual alien presence likely to be minimal, it is a freakish biome to them and they don't have to do much when they can park in orbit with a mass driver and have the humans give them things.

Which is a pretty big IF.

[Karoht]

If they wanted to invade, they wouldn't bother telling us they are coming.
If we have something they wanted, they would either trade with us, or they wouldn't ask and just take. Which we likely can't stop, so there is no use in worrying about it.
We likely have nothing on planet earth that they would want beyond knowledge of our species of plants and animals and maybe our history and culture. Everything on Earth other than life itself is found more abundantly in places other than Earth. So I'm largely not afraid of them. The threat they pose is quite minimal.

Educating people as to this is the tricky part. Some people are just going to want to stick their fingers in their ears and ignore the facts, much as they already do today. Be that in a bunker or a church or prattling on the internet about how it's all a big conspiracy. That isn't likely to change, even in the face of hard evidence, just look at the Moon Landing denialists or the anti-vaxxers (I would name other groups but that's as close as I want to go to politics or religion for my liking). It would probably take a generation to get people of Earth ready for an actual visit, or any other kind of major interactions.

But yes. The scientific community would totally be high-fiving.

[Akisa]

I wanted the aliens to be friendly or at least unwilling to invade. Because Voyager won't be anywhere near another solar system in 30 years, they would've found it at edges of our solar system or just outside it. They would have capability of traveling to our solar system.

[TuggyNE]

It's not competitive. All of private space travel efforts put together are yet to meet level set by Gagarin's flight 52 years ago. Vostok spacecraft was capable of multiple orbits, not just suborbital dip, despite being (from today's perspective) quite simple vehicle.

That's not what the term "competitive" means. What it does mean is that they are, well, competing with each other: attempting to gain more customers by lowering prices and/or improving service or performance or reliability or whatever else. That's the crucial point, really; if you have a sustainable commercial ecosystem with incentive to keep improving, well, all you need is time to get the rest of the way there.

Ironically, one of the key reasons this is useful is tied into your dismissal of them: the spacecraft being used are vastly complex, right, and are only capable of relatively small missions? But because they are, often, more reusable with less expense, the investments can be spread across more flights, and the cost per flight reduced, and the profits folded into new and improved spacecraft with better capabilities, lower costs per flight, or both. Eventually the result will be something a lot closer to airlines than Apollo.

[madtinker]

People still don't believe we landed on the moon. I think they would have an even more difficult time believing that aliens sent us back our own probe.

[Coidzor]

That's not what the term "competitive" means. What it does mean is that they are, well, competing with each other: attempting to gain more customers by lowering prices and/or improving service or performance or reliability or whatever else. That's the crucial point, really; if you have a sustainable commercial ecosystem with incentive to keep improving, well, all you need is time to get the rest of the way there.

Ironically, one of the key reasons this is useful is tied into your dismissal of them: the spacecraft being used are vastly complex, right, and are only capable of relatively small missions? But because they are, often, more reusable with less expense, the investments can be spread across more flights, and the cost per flight reduced, and the profits folded into new and improved spacecraft with better capabilities, lower costs per flight, or both. Eventually the result will be something a lot closer to airlines than Apollo.

Which would be nice and all, but I'm still sad we don't have a space railgun running up Mount Kilimanjaro. :smallfrown:

[TuggyNE]

Which would be nice and all, but I'm still sad we don't have a space railgun running up Mount Kilimanjaro. :smallfrown:

Give it time.

Actually, one ingenious idea I read a few months back was to use a nuclear cannon to fire cargo up into LEO, probably mostly things like fuel and materials. Orbital cannons can be a lot more efficient than rockets, because they don't have to pack all the fuel for the flight, and nuclear impulse a la Project Orion is a lot easier to manage if you can keep it all underground. The upshot is that for a modest investment (I dunno, a few tens of millions or less? you can probably reuse existing warheads for propulsion) you can get enormous quantities of useful stuff up there for later use, saving probably hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in rocketry. And, of course, once that investment is in place it makes subsequent business a lot more attractive, and the virtuous cycle can really get going.

[pendell]

Lets say after 30 years from now Voyager returns back to our solar system modified pictures/depictions of some alien retrieving it, images of their solar system and returning it back to our solar system. How would world community react?

Track the vector of Voyager back to its point of origin, and prepare a manned expedition. In the meantime, launch a second probe down Voyager's original vector chock full of artifacts, recordings, and anything else we can think of that would allow us to build a common ground. A description of a circle -- Pi is a universal constant. The speed of light, which is also a constant. Sending them as many commonalities as possible, and from those commonalities start to build the ability to communicate with them properly.

See if we can propose an alternate communication mechanism that has a shorter delay than 30 years. This may mean building some giant transmitter in orbit -- worth doing. It might also be worth , say, putting that transmitter around Mars instead of Earth, so that if the aliens follow the message back to us we haven't identified exactly where our one and only home planet is. Not that we would have any reason to distrust them, as yet, but it pays to be prudent when you've only got one planet.

When we can, propose a meeting in neutral space, uninhabited by either party. This might eventually result in a joint colony or space station, like Antarctica or the International Space Station, as we study each other.

This might eventually lead to mutual visits to each other's homeworld.

War for profit over interstellar space with our current technology is a non-starter, so we shouldn't be too afraid of that. Ideological or religious war, however, might be a possibility. Who knows, they might believe that air breathers are an abomination, or they might be equally abominable in our eyes. Restraining the more violent members of our species would take some doing in that case, but I think it could be done, because although wars have been fought for those reasons there is usually some sort of economic basis for it as well. I don't think any rational species would be willing to ship off their species and throw away tons of resources into the void of space beyond recovery just because somewhere out there are crazy tree-apes whose very presence offends the sensory cluster.

I suspect , if worse comes to worse and we can't stand each other, the thing to do is to turn off our radios again and pretend each other doesn't exist. We've rubbed along just fine for thousands if not millions of years without knowing of each other, and we can go on the same way for a million more. Even if at some point we start competing for colonies, space is BIG. There are millions and millions and millions of stars and planets out there. Heck , we might not even share the same biosphere.

Talking like this reminds me of how silly the quarrels of earth are -- why do we spend so much time squabbling over this one little planet, when there are millions out there ? I like the frontier solution -- if you don't like the neighbors, move out until you've got room.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Karoht]

Agreed Brian.

Open questions to the thread:
What 3 questions would you be most interested in asking the other species?
What 3 questions do you predict they might ask us first?

[Frozen_Feet]

Humans are not, as a whole, a "rational species".

What makes you think the aliens will be?

[Kato]

Talking like this reminds me of how silly the quarrels of earth are -- why do we spend so much time squabbling over this one little planet, when there are millions out there ? I like the frontier solution -- if you don't like the neighbors, move out until you've got room.


Uhm... because even if there are other inhabitable planets we can not reach them and the larger part of our planet isn't too friendly for one reason or another?


In general I'll agree there is little reason for an interstellar war from a logical perspective. The one thing that might make sense is slaves. Or maybe an interesting diet...
But ideological reasons are rarely logical. Just turning your back on something that goes against anything you believe is rarely how it works... Maybe it would with an alien race, but I'm afraid if something like this came up we would probably nuke each others planet to make sure these disgusting "others" stop wasting the little bit of space they occupy.

[Jay R]

There are no aliens in the solar system, and we don't have inter-stellar flight. Therefore if aliens reply to us, they will be far more technologically advanced than we are.

For an informed opinion of how that would go, we need only see how higher tech explorers treated lower-tech peoples when they met them on new continents.

[This is not an optimistic thought.]

[warty goblin]

There are no aliens in the solar system, and we don't have inter-stellar flight. Therefore if aliens reply to us, they will be far more technologically advanced than we are.

For an informed opinion of how that would go, we need only see how higher tech explorers treated lower-tech peoples when they met them on new continents.

[This is not an optimistic thought.]

This going horribly mostly depends on the more advanced party deciding they'd really rather the less advanced party got the hell off the land and/or would make convenient slaves. This isn't necessarily the case for any interstellar folks stopping by. If interstellar travel is easy enough, they may simply be curious.

[zlefin]

confusion; because if they're that close, they're more likely to receive our broadcasts than to find the voyager probe itself in the vastness of space in such a time frame.

Voyager only recently passed the interstellar wind boundary, which is still inside the gravity area, so it's really not all that far out. The Oort cloud is much farther out than that and still orbits the sun.
Looking at wiki, it should be something like 127 Astronomical Units out by now.
That's less than one light-day; so why they'd send it back physically makes very little sense. At that range they could just contact us physically as they obviously crossed an interstellar distance.

[Gnoman]

There are no aliens in the solar system, and we don't have inter-stellar flight. Therefore if aliens reply to us, they will be far more technologically advanced than we are.

For an informed opinion of how that would go, we need only see how higher tech explorers treated lower-tech peoples when they met them on new continents.

[This is not an optimistic thought.]

Slightly flawed conjecture there. In historical cases of that sort, the explorers were higher tech in nearly every aspect (not to mention that most of the destruction was caused by disease rather than attack). In the most well-known examples, the natives of the Americas lacked not only the large sailing ships and requisite navigational aids, but technologies as basic as metalworking (soft metals such as gold were in ornamental use but the generally useful ones such as iron were not), and wagons.

All the hypothetical alien race would have to have greater than us is propulsion technology. It is worth noting that current scientific theories on interstellar flight generally (if correct) require only two or three things that our current knowledge base does not provide. (The "warp bubble" theory, for example, only requires the development of one kind of material that can distort space in the manner required, along with a large economic investment in antimatter production.) It is thus entirely possible that our hypothetical aliens would have equal or even lesser tech than we currently possess.



To get back to the OP, the one guaranteed result of First Contact would be the construction of orbital defense installations, either through weapons satellites, warships, or bases on Luna or the other planets in the system. The mere possibility of an external threat would practically demand it.

[The Succubus]

If the Asari from Mass Effect were discovered to be with a relatively reachable distance, NASAs budget would quadruple overnight.

[pendell]

Humans are not, as a whole, a "rational species".

What makes you think the aliens will be?

Oh, I must somewhat disagree. Humans are CAPABLE of rational thought. We build spaceships and decipher DNA, after all.

We are neither screaming monkeys totally incapable of reason, but we are not Vulcans governed only by our reason. Reason is a tool in the service of our id, it is not our governing force.

It's difficult to say what aliens would be like, but I suspect there's no reason they would be much different from us in this: In order to survive their pre-technological ages, they would need pre-rational instincts and urges. The urge to find food and shelter, the urge to reproduce -- which might very well mean for them just finding a place to split into two.

If they could communicate with us over interstellar distances, then obviously they have mastered rational thought to the point of being able to comprehend quite sophisticated scientific principles. But I think it unlikely they will have completely squashed their pre-rational ideals, instincts, and beliefs under rationality. Why should they? Those things may have very well helped them to have survived for millions of years, shame to jettison them and then not have them if their society reverts back to a pre-technological state. Their irrationality may very well be a survival aid, just as ours can be.

I think it most likely that the ones communicating with us initially would be the ones most interested in exploring the unknown, those most diligent in finding out truth, since they're the ones building and operating the radio antenna. Thus, I would expect them to be both most rational but also least representative of their parent species.

Who knows? It might be that both species would ship their weird kids up to talk to each other and those kids would get along quite happily together while the rest of their peoples spent their time screaming irrationally. Wouldn't be the first time it's happened in our history.



What 3 questions would you be most interested in asking the other species?
What 3 questions do you predict they might ask us first?


I can't predict what they would ask us -- it would depend on the species.

My questions:

1) Who are you, and where do you come from? Where are your people from, and what do you believe your destiny is?
-- There's a bit of a trap in that question. What they believe about themselves says much about their future behavior. If the answer is something like "We are the species which encompasses all futures and will grasp all the stars" or something like, well, it's probably time to start building up a space navy, because we're probably going to wind up fighting them at some point.

2) What are your stories ? Tell me the stories you tell your children -- if that phrase makes sense to you.

3) Pragmatically, what are your intentions? Put bluntly, do you intend to kill us all?

The reason this question is in third place rather than first is because until you understand THEM, you can't understand the answer to this question either. It may be that the initial answer would be nasty, but after we'd been able to find a niche in their psychology, it might enable us to coexist.

In this way it's not much different from the way we deal with dragons in D&D. Prior to the 1980s, dragons were in the 'ravening evil monster' slot in the western imagination, and so they would be killed on sight in most games. But now, in OOTS , dragons are in the 'human beings who look different' category slot, and so they are to be talked to and reasoned with, not killed unless there's a reason too.

We need to find out what slots exist in the other's mind, and ensure we fit into an appropriate slot that allows us both to survive, and vice versa. The worst thing that could happen is if they fit us into the 'evil ravening orc' slot, and we put them in the same. In which case, the result would be a war of extermination somewhere along the line.

Towards this end -- at an early opportunity I would want to introduce them to fantasy. I would ask if they have a fantasy analog -- if they have scientific curiosity, then they must have some capacity to imagine things as other than they appear to the senses.

I think I could learn a lot from them by sitting them down to dungeons and dragons, and playing them through their own analog, if they have it. What is a 'hero'? What is a 'villain'? You are confronted by a town -- how do you investigate it? Are you willing to fail rather than compromise your principles, or are you willing to participate in necessary evil for a great good? What does it mean to be 'good'? What does 'evil' mean? If your party comes across a goblin village, is it 'heroic' and 'noble' to massacre them? Do you use cunning, or force ? Do you negotiate? If so , do you do so in good faith, or is good faith not for monsters/outsiders ?

What would this alien party do when the met a dragon, or a wandering goblin?

So I think we would learn a great deal about them and their psychology from their fairy stories and through roleplaying. Do they have fairy stories? Are the characters in their stories friendly beings , or evil ones? Do they hunt small creatures for no other reason than to take the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, something they didn't work for and are not entitled to? Do they go into giant's houses and kill them, for no other reason than they are not human? In other words, are they as predatory, cruel, and vicious as humans are in THEIR fantasies?

That is why, I think, what they do in their fantasy is a very clear guide to what we can ultimately expect from them -- because fantasy is the world you wish or fear it to be , not the world as it is. And I don't think it's unreasonable to expect people to project their fantasies into their real world.

Towards this end, we need to find out what stories exist in their minds and write ourselves in -- we want to be the equivalent of elves or dwarves, not goblins or orcs , and we want to think the same way of them.

Even in this thread above, we haven't even encountered the aliens yet we're already trying to fit them into various stories -- the zombie holocaust, the alien invasion, Columbus discovering the New World, etc. We aren't engaging with them , but with our own minds. The first thing to do, then, is to see past our own minds to who they really *are*. And their stories -- if they have them -- will be a better guide than cold fact. And who knows? It may be that one of the stories they tell themselves is a better fit for two intelligent species encountering each other than any of the stories WE tell. In which case, we should tell their story on our terms, and adopt it. Perhaps they, in turn, will adopt some of our stories into their ideas. And so perhaps we can find a story we can tell together, with our actions -- some other story than some of the tragic and bloody ones we humans have had to tell about ourselves.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Jay R]

Slightly flawed conjecture there.

No conjecture there at all. I was looking at the available data. You are correct that we do not know that the data will apply, but it's the only data we have. Anything else is wild speculation and guesses.


All the hypothetical alien race would have to have greater than us is propulsion technology. It is worth noting that current scientific theories on interstellar flight generally (if correct) require only two or three things that our current knowledge base does not provide. (The "warp bubble" theory, for example, only requires the development of one kind of material that can distort space in the manner required, along with a large economic investment in antimatter production.) It is thus entirely possible that our hypothetical aliens would have equal or even lesser tech than we currently possess.

And all it took to cross the ocean was improved ship technology. But somehow, it just happened that the society with greater tech in one area had greater tech in all areas.

We have many examples of higher tech taking people somewhere new, to meet people who couldn't have traveled the other way. The Americas, Africa, Australia, the Philippines, Hawaii, etc. Can you provide a single example in which the travelers only had superior traveling tech, and not superior materials tech, superior manufacturing tech, and (most relevant) superior war tech?

Besides, antimatter destroys matter. Propulsion technology puts it anywhere they want to put it. Being at the top of the gravity well puts them out of reach of human weapons. Your assumptions already provide them with overwhelming military superiority.


This going horribly mostly depends on ...

It depends on looking at the only data we have. It may not fully apply. But it's what we have.

The biggest weakness is the implicit assumption that aliens think and act in any way like we do. But I don't have any other available data. I just provided the only analogous situation we have.

If you want to guess based on no data, feel free.

[Themrys]

If they wanted to invade, they wouldn't bother telling us they are coming.
If we have something they wanted, they would either trade with us, or they wouldn't ask and just take. Which we likely can't stop, so there is no use in worrying about it

If they are like humans, they are not all the same, so some of them could want to trade with us, while others could want to invade. And the invading ones would then get the upper hand, unless we get saved by a blue alien who becomes more human than all humans ... or something.

On the other hand, I do hope that if aliens exist who have superior technology, they have superior morality as well. As was never the case in human history, sadly.

[pendell]

If they have 'superior morality' I also hope they understand the concept of 'mercy'.

That's the gimmick in The Lydian Option (http://www.lydianoption.com/index.php?id=133). The Tha'Latta do indeed have superior morality and because of that they believe humans need to be in prison. Because the Tha'latta keep their own rules, and have no concept of being a little bad. One of them who breaks the rules is going to go on and break all of them. Because of this, they are extremely harsh and strict.

Small wonder another big gimmick in the series is war between the humans and these other species. Because humans AREN'T boy scouts. Even the best of us breaks the rules from time to time.

To me, that's the great danger of 'superior morality' -- because people who possess or follow 'superior morality' can feel contempt or disgust for those who don't, making them into little children at best or monsters to be destroyed at worst. I think it's significant that a big, big part of 19th century imperialism was the absolute conviction on the part of westerners that their way of life and morality was superior to everyone else's.

To my mind, if an alien race objectively had a superior morality, that might very well make the problem worse, not better, as they would then have objective reasons for viewing us with contempt, and it might tempt them to 'uplift' or 'civilize' us at best, or push us aside in favor of The Good People at worst.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Karoht]

Consider how far into the universe we can see with current technology.

A species capable of interstellar travel would likely be able to see further and with greater fidelity than us, in order to figure out where they want to go and why.
It seems reasonable to suggest that if they discover us, and if we are within their travel range, we are within their observation range. They would observe us until they are ready to reveal themselves, or until they reach the limits of what such observation could teach them.

[SanguisAevum]

One thing is for sure...

If the first question they ask of us is either one of ..

"Who are you?"

or

"what do you want?"

... then we need to worry... a lot!

[CombatOwl]

Lets say after 30 years from now Voyager returns back to our solar system modified pictures/depictions of some alien retrieving it,

Kind of hard, since the camera isn't turned on anymore. Furthermore, it will be out of power for any sort of operations long before 2044.


images of their solar system and returning it back to our solar system. How would world community react?

Aside from the fact that the camera package isn't turned on anymore, it was not an autonomous camera. It wouldn't even be programmed to take a picture, even if that package was powered on.

Here's what would happen if aliens grabbed Voyager and took it somewhere. Voyager's magnetometer or charge particle instruments might detect something very unusual. Controllers on the ground would then lose telemetry. Given the age of the craft, it would probably be assumed to be a catastrophic system failure. Attempts would be made to reestablish contact, but those would fail unless the antenna was pointed back at Earth.

Setting the technical issues aside, I have no idea how people would react. Any number options present themselves. I think some people might have a hard time reconciling conservative religious beliefs (the "well, the bible said it so it must be absolutely 100% truth" types) with intelligent aliens. That might cause some problems. Obviously a lot more people would report UFOs and abductions and whatnot. But I don't think it would cause as much of an issue as people seem to believe.

[Karoht]

One thing is for sure...
If the first question they ask of us is either one of ..

"Who are you?"

or

"what do you want?"

... then we need to worry... a lot!
I ask people those questions on a rather frequent basis. They aren't normally a hostile question or otherwise a cause for concern. I don't think much of it when someone at Starbucks asks me what I want and a name to put on the cup. Why would we need to worry exactly? Care to elaborate?

[Jay R]

One thing is for sure...

If the first question they ask of us is either one of ..

"Who are you?"

or

"what do you want?"

... then we need to worry... a lot!

The traditional phrasing of these questions is:
"What .. is your name?"
"What ... is your quest?"

The tricky question is the third one, about the airspeed of an unladen swallow.

[Akisa]

Kind of hard, since the camera isn't turned on anymore. Furthermore, it will be out of power for any sort of operations long before 2044.



Aside from the fact that the camera package isn't turned on anymore, it was not an autonomous camera. It wouldn't even be programmed to take a picture, even if that package was powered on.


I kind of meant that the aliens put the images themselves not the voyager taking picture.

[zlefin]

I ask people those questions on a rather frequent basis. They aren't normally a hostile question or otherwise a cause for concern. I don't think much of it when someone at Starbucks asks me what I want and a name to put on the cup. Why would we need to worry exactly? Care to elaborate?

Those questions are the standard questions posed by the Vorlons and the Shadows on Babylon 5.

[The Succubus]

One thing is for sure...

If the first question they ask of us is either one of ..

"Who are you?"

or

"what do you want?"

... then we need to worry... a lot!

<3 fellow Babylon 5 geeks. ^_^

The thing is, both of those questions are very powerful on a philosophical level. Know what someone truly wants and that gives you great power over them. Know who you truly are and that gives you enormous internal strength.

[Karoht]

"Who are you?"
We are the humans who are utterly beneath you technologically and unworthy of your effort to destroy or conquor us. Seriously, you could just throw a few rocks at us from the moon and we'd probably be extinct in less than a week. Also we have nothing of value that you could possibly want that you can't find in greater abundance in our asteroid field, let alone the uninhabited planets of this solar system, never mind other uninhabited solar systems.

"What do you want?"
To either be your peaceful and friendly neighbors in this cosmic neighborhood, or to be left alone and ignored. Knowledge of your history and culture would be cool though. Wanna come in for a meal or a cuppa? You can tell us all about it.


If they blow our planet to bits or try and enslave us after that? Well then they're just big unreasonable meanies.

[jaybird]

Cleanse. Purge. Kill.

In the name of the Emperor, let none survive!

[Hyena]

Cleanse. Purge. Kill.

In the name of the Emperor, let none survive!
Cleansing and purging may be problematic with such puny guns.

[Aotrs Commander]

Well, personally, I'd be crippled for simply weeks laughing my boney arse off and pointing and shouting and saying "ahahahahaha! I told you guys! I told you! Now you really will have to stop being so humanocentric all the time!" and then planning on how best to hand Earth over to them on a silver platter, with compliments.



Unless, of course, it was actually ME that turned up, carting Voyager along with a Liches' Wrath superdreadnought, or something, in which case I suspect people would scream, panic (a few would say "oh my frag, he really was a Lich this whole time, we're so flippin' screwed") and be briefly on fire.

*sigh*

I can dream. One day, one day...

[pendell]

But.. but... if you kill ALL the meatbags you can't make them battle to the death in a gladiatorial arena for your amusement. Being a lich, I assume food or drink or .. pleasurable company ... is sort of out, so you've got to have SOME way to amuse yourself over the centuries.

Tongue-in-cheek,

Brian P.

[Arcane_Secrets]

If they wanted to invade, they wouldn't bother telling us they are coming.

Is this necessarily true, though? What if their technology was so advanced that they were convinced that the possibility of humans doing anything to them was infinitesimally small-and they enjoyed making beings that couldn't defend themselves feel fear in advance?

[Arcane_Secrets]

This going horribly mostly depends on the more advanced party deciding they'd really rather the less advanced party got the hell off the land and/or would make convenient slaves.

I'm not sure if this is necessarily true either. What about an Andromeda Strain-type scenario in which the aliens aren't necessarily hostile (or might not even be hostile at all) but their biochemistry is extremely toxic or infectious to us? They could destroy us inadvertently with the solipsistic assumption that alien life forms (to them) ought to be biochemically compatible with them and they just don't realize the harm they could do.

[Aotrs Commander]

But.. but... if you kill ALL the meatbags you can't make them battle to the death in a gladiatorial arena for your amusement. Being a lich, I assume food or drink or .. pleasurable company ... is sort of out, so you've got to have SOME way to amuse yourself over the centuries.

Tongue-in-cheek,

Brian P.

I never was a fan a competative sports...



Is this necessarily true, though? What if their technology was so advanced that they were convinced that the possibility of humans doing anything to them was infinitesimally small-and they enjoyed making beings that couldn't defend themselves feel fear in advance?

I know I certainly do.

[SoC175]

For the aliens' sake, I really hope they have better technology than we do. Possibly of the "bullets bounce off, explosions do nothing" variety.Well, the tec to curbstomp us is basically a side product of the tec required to actually reach us.

Thus any aliens that could reach us wuld be so superior that there wouldn't be any point to resistance and any aliens we could fight with a reasonable chance of winning would be unable to actually reach us.

that they were convinced that the possibility of humans doing anything to them was infinitesimally smallWell, they would be correct :smallbiggrin:

[Trixie]

Well, the tec to curbstomp us is basically a side product of the tec required to actually reach us.

But the question is, is the tech advantage big enough to allow whatever fleet the aliens sent overpower the whole world. Even at 1000:1 kill ratio, you'd need massive numbers, unless they go for attempts of forcing surrender without land presence.

[warty goblin]

But the question is, is the tech advantage big enough to allow whatever fleet the aliens sent overpower the whole world. Even at 1000:1 kill ratio, you'd need massive numbers, unless they go for attempts of forcing surrender without land presence.

Oh that's easy. How 'bout one major city chosen at random ceases to exist every hour until such time as surrender offers become sufficiently generous? And that's if they're feeling direct. The indirect version goes for infrastructure and food supply. Have fun mounting a resistance when there's no food left.

[Karoht]

But the question is, is the tech advantage big enough to allow whatever fleet the aliens sent overpower the whole world. Even at 1000:1 kill ratio, you'd need massive numbers, unless they go for attempts of forcing surrender without land presence.At 1000:1 kill ratio, I'm left wondering the question. How did we manage to even score the 1?

They could likely sit in the asteroid belt (good luck finding them) lobbing rocks at us which we would have extreme difficulty stopping, if we can even stop them at all. We would have no means of striking back, we might not even be aware that we are under an actual attack.

I mean, sure we are tracking enough of those objects to know that something is odd, but how would we even reach them? Our fastest time to Mars is something like a year? By that time earth is decimated. And any ship we send would be seen for a long ways out. This assumes we even have a weapon worth firing at them to shut them down.

[warty goblin]

I mean, sure we are tracking enough of those objects to know that something is odd, but how would we even reach them? Our fastest time to Mars is something like a year? By that time earth is decimated. And any ship we send would be seen for a long ways out. This assumes we even have a weapon worth firing at them to shut them down.
It takes approximately a year to get to Mars via Hohmann Transfer Orbit, which is by far the most fuel efficient way to do things. Depending on the exact position of Mars and Earth, and how much rocket fuel you've got burning a hole in your pocket, you can do it a lot faster than that.

Not that it really matters. Anything we shoot will be pretty trivial for a species capable of clawing its way from star to star to see, at which point it's just a matter of shooting a big wad of shrapnel at it. Either our missile swerves to evade, in which case its ability to score a hit just went out the window, or it gets Swiss cheesed, can no longer maneuver and misses anyway.

[Karoht]

It takes approximately a year to get to Mars via Hohmann Transfer Orbit, which is by far the most fuel efficient way to do things. Depending on the exact position of Mars and Earth, and how much rocket fuel you've got burning a hole in your pocket, you can do it a lot faster than that.

Not that it really matters. Anything we shoot will be pretty trivial for a species capable of clawing its way from star to star to see, at which point it's just a matter of shooting a big wad of shrapnel at it. Either our missile swerves to evade, in which case its ability to score a hit just went out the window, or it gets Swiss cheesed, can no longer maneuver and misses anyway.
Yeah, it's pretty trivial to shoot down a missile.

And again, this assumes we even realize that this is an attack, rather than some freak event in outer space involving the asteroid field. And assuming our space/missile launching capabilities even survive the initial bombardment, which is remarkably unlikely.

Trust me Warty, I'm completely in agreement with you.

[Trixie]

Oh that's easy. How 'bout one major city chosen at random ceases to exist every hour until such time as surrender offers become sufficiently generous? And that's if they're feeling direct. The indirect version goes for infrastructure and food supply. Have fun mounting a resistance when there's no food left.

And? How the aliens pick targets? Let's suppose they bomb country B, then country A starts protesting and says we fight to bitter end as long as it is B that is bombed. What then? Or what if someone for whatever purposes, religious or ideological, says no to surrender, precisely to kill humanity? Would surrender of half of the planet be good enough?

Let's suppose all planet surrenders, then adopts passive aggressive resistance tactics - do you land troops? Do you bomb city where 90% of population is compliant but 2% is actively resisting? What about leaders - do you kill them off if they refuse to comply? Even leaders the death of which will mean instant hate from big part of the population?

It's trivial to force surrender, enforcing it is the problematic part. Plan 'bomb till they give up' is very simplistic and usually doesn't bother with 'let's make the conquered territory not a resource sink' part of it.


At 1000:1 kill ratio, I'm left wondering the question. How did we manage to even score the 1?

They could likely sit in the asteroid belt (good luck finding them) lobbing rocks at us which we would have extreme difficulty stopping, if we can even stop them at all. We would have no means of striking back, we might not even be aware that we are under an actual attack.

If they want to do anything else than bomb us they have to eventually come close. If not, they can bomb I guess but it would be mostly pointless exercise. Killing humanity is easy, doing something you want, on the other hand...


I mean, sure we are tracking enough of those objects to know that something is odd, but how would we even reach them? Our fastest time to Mars is something like a year? By that time earth is decimated. And any ship we send would be seen for a long ways out. This assumes we even have a weapon worth firing at them to shut them down.

We had one in 50s, it was called Project Orion. It never went anywhere due to demilitarization of space but is still perfectly viable. We maybe can't use it to reach to asteroid field that quickly but anything near Earth, sure.


It takes approximately a year to get to Mars via Hohmann Transfer Orbit, which is by far the most fuel efficient way to do things. Depending on the exact position of Mars and Earth, and how much rocket fuel you've got burning a hole in your pocket, you can do it a lot faster than that.

By rocket. How about nuclear impulse drive (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/ProjectOrionConfiguration.png)? :smallamused:

In 60s, we could (theoretically) make a ship capable of 10% speed of light, single stage Earth-Jupiter and back. That capability didn't go anywhere, in fact, making ramming unmanned ship we could push that even further. It's not something on the level of Star Wars aliens, but it exceeds what interplanetary ship needs to reach Earth. The fact that the aliens are above us technologically doesn't mean what limited resources they have on ship or even fleet of ships will always unconditionally beat brute force resource expenditure of an entire planet.

[warty goblin]

And? How the aliens pick targets? Let's suppose they bomb country B, then country A starts protesting and says we fight to bitter end as long as it is B that is bombed. What then? Or what if someone for whatever purposes, religious or ideological, says no to surrender, precisely to kill humanity? Would surrender of half of the planet be good enough?

Let's suppose all planet surrenders, then adopts passive aggressive resistance tactics - do you land troops? Do you bomb city where 90% of population is compliant but 2% is actively resisting? What about leaders - do you kill them off if they refuse to comply? Even leaders the death of which will mean instant hate from big part of the population?

It's trivial to force surrender, enforcing it is the problematic part. Plan 'bomb till they give up' is very simplistic and usually doesn't bother with 'let's make the conquered territory not a resource sink' part of it.

If you don't actually give a rat's ass about the species in question, it's hard to go wrong with indiscriminate vaporization. It's pretty cheap too, the moon's got a lot of rocks. There's no particular reason for our malevolent overlords to care about getting nations to submit, or being popular, or anything else. If the leaders cooperate that's handy. If not, drop rocks on folks until they come up with a leader that does feel more talkative, or everybody's too busy eating each other to survive to care much about you anymore.


If they want to do anything else than bomb us they have to eventually come close. If not, they can bomb I guess but it would be mostly pointless exercise. Killing humanity is easy, doing something you want, on the other hand...
I figure once you destroy most of the major cities, humanity's not really relevant to any sort of alien plan anymore. There's no communication, the economy just ceased to exist, the food distribution network no longer exists, production of things like medicine and weapons and so forth are shut down. Without the ports to service international trade, and the destruction of oil refineries, mobility goes right off the cliff. After New York, Washington DC and LA are reduced to hot lumps of impure carbon, everybody will flee the city, causing mass instability, starvation and mayhem everywhere. We may hate the aliens, but there's precisely squat we can do about the new luxury tentacle vats going up all along the seaboards.


We had one in 50s, it was called Project Orion. It never went anywhere due to demilitarization of space but is still perfectly viable. We maybe can't use it to reach to asteroid field that quickly but anything near Earth, sure.



By rocket. How about nuclear impulse drive (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/ProjectOrionConfiguration.png)? :smallamused:
Faster? Yes. Still really easy to see, and therefore to blow the hell up? Definitely.

Space War has, it seems to me, two rules:
1) The party with the high ground wins.
2) If neither party has the high ground, the party who makes the first move loses save in cases of extraordinary disparity between forces.


In 60s, we could (theoretically) make a ship capable of 10% speed of light, single stage Earth-Jupiter and back. That capability didn't go anywhere, in fact, making ramming unmanned ship we could push that even further. It's not something on the level of Star Wars aliens, but it exceeds what interplanetary ship needs to reach Earth. The fact that the aliens are above us technologically doesn't mean what limited resources they have on ship or even fleet of ships will always unconditionally beat brute force resource expenditure of an entire planet.
Again, it doesn't take a particularly challenging amount of destruction to render the planet incapable of brute force resource expenditure. Knock out the satellites, blow out the internet backbone, drop big rocks in a few harbors, turn a couple capitals into charcoal, and the logistics and organization just aren't there anymore.

[Karoht]

If they want to do anything else than bomb us they have to eventually come close. If not, they can bomb I guess but it would be mostly pointless exercise. Killing humanity is easy, doing something you want, on the other hand...Not if we're all dead, or enough of us are dead to the point where we can't mount a resistance. I argue that even if 100% of the population were left alive we still are unlikely to mount a resistance worth mentioning. And in the unlikely event that we drove them off, they can just come back.


We had one in 50s, it was called Project Orion. It never went anywhere due to demilitarization of space but is still perfectly viable. We maybe can't use it to reach to asteroid field that quickly but anything near Earth, sure.
By rocket. How about nuclear impulse drive (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/ProjectOrionConfiguration.png)? :smallamused:
In 60s, we could (theoretically) make a ship capable of 10% speed of light, single stage Earth-Jupiter and back. That capability didn't go anywhere, in fact, making ramming unmanned ship we could push that even further. It's not something on the level of Star Wars aliens, but it exceeds what interplanetary ship needs to reach Earth. The fact that the aliens are above us technologically doesn't mean what limited resources they have on ship or even fleet of ships will always unconditionally beat brute force resource expenditure of an entire planet.Problem, earth as it is remains unlikely to ever get such a project off the ground, especially in response to some kind of attack. Even if one were to start building it right now, such a rocket is YEARS away from actual construction in terms of development and testing. If an alien species is attacking, you don't have years. You have minutes, maybe hours, maybe days, possibly weeks depending on their timetable.

But, for argument sake, lets say you have one (or even many) of these craft already built, and in Earth orbit rather than on the ground (and therefore not blown to bits in the initial bombardment), gased up, armed, and ready to go the moment you realize you are under attack.
Great. They see us coming days/hours/minutes in advance instead of weeks in advance. You MIGHT be able to get a single shot off at them. Next question, can our weaponry even harm them? Can it even affect them in any discernable way IF it hits. Also, consider that we can respond to missile attacks in seconds, never mind minutes/hours/days (the aliens would have similar response capabilities, or better) so what are the odds your craft will make it to weapons range before being shot down?

And again, that's hinging on if you even realize you are under attack. It's hinging on us even having a means of detecting their ship/s. If you can't detect them (and they know it) they have even more options which we could do precisely nothing about.

Flooding the atmosphere with huge amounts of radiation lethal enough to kill every living thing on earth would be highly effective. If there is something they want after that they can take it freely. Or just leave a highly irradiated planet with buildings and other remains as a grim reminder to anyone else who wants to try and stop them.
Oh, what's that? Polluting the planet ruins it for them too? Well, not really. Most theorized life forms which aren't carbon based like us would likely thrive in an environment filled with enough toxins to kill us. You watched Pacific Rim right? That's a small example. Phosphorus based life forms could potentially breathe and metabolize arsenic, possibly hexafluorine (my memory on this is somewhat sketchy) which is one of the most volitile substances we've ever found let alone how toxic it is. And we've now found fungus which are mostly immune to the kinds of radiation that would outright kill humans, so it isn't unlikely to say that aliens would be immune to radiation or other toxins as well.

Heck, probably the most effective strategy the aliens could use is just show up and blatantly begin terraforming the planet to their specifications. Even if we responded within hours, chances are the environmental damage would be extreme to the point where we would be facing an extinction level event anyway.

[Trixie]

Not if we're all dead, or enough of us are dead to the point where we can't mount a resistance. I argue that even if 100% of the population were left alive we still are unlikely to mount a resistance worth mentioning. And in the unlikely event that we drove them off, they can just come back.

You know Super Orion theoretical starship design could have sent 8 million ton ship to Alpha Centauri within human lifetime? :smallconfused:

Why you guys are so fixated on 'they come here, we lose'? The hypothetical species can send Death Star, but something on the level of still having less resources than Earth in the fleet is far more probable.


Problem, earth as it is remains unlikely to ever get such a project off the ground, especially in response to some kind of attack. Even if one were to start building it right now, such a rocket is YEARS away from actual construction in terms of development and testing. If an alien species is attacking, you don't have years. You have minutes, maybe hours, maybe days, possibly weeks depending on their timetable.

Let me remind you Germany ran multiple massive industrial projects despite 4 years of heavy bombing in WW2. Aliens destroy city a day? So what, there are tens of thousands of cities on Earth. Do they bomb them with bombs? Then brutally speaking, they can run out. Do they try to gather asteroids to fling on us? Then unless the things will be extremely massive, they will piss away a lot of fuel on slow and relatively inefficient bombardment.

There are multiple possible threat levels.


But, for argument sake, lets say you have one (or even many) of these craft already built, and in Earth orbit rather than on the ground (and therefore not blown to bits in the initial bombardment), gased up, armed, and ready to go the moment you realize you are under attack.

Kill vehicle without crew build on these principles will be smaller then ICBM, and we built tens of thousands of these during last 50 years. Frankly, the only thing limiting us is stockpile of fissile material.

And with Orion, it doesn't matter if it's in orbit or not. You're thinking rockets, again, something that can do 10% of lightspeed is fully capable of blasting off gravity well under its own power.


Next question, can our weaponry even harm them? Can it even affect them in any discernable way IF it hits.

Let's see, according to this (http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/), 30 meter long steel projectile going at 10% of speed of light depending on diameter is equivalent of 10^6 to 10^7 megatons of TNT. That is way above even Star Trek level defences.

The only way to do something about it is to dodge, and surprise, the most efficient engines that would be used for interstellar travel on city sized ships are slow. Compare say airplane with any rocket, even today we struggle to make military jets go as fast as even primitive WW2 rockets went.


Also, consider that we can respond to missile attacks in seconds, never mind minutes/hours/days (the aliens would have similar response capabilities, or better) so what are the odds your craft will make it to weapons range before being shot down?

But the thing is, destroying solid piece of steel in space is hard. Nukes, lasers, all will ablate some off its surface and do little to it. The only way to efficiently destroy it is to collide it with much greater mass, like alien starship :smallcool: to explosively vaporize it. That's why I said primitive brute force of even Earth technology can matter more than finesse if we're willing to spend enough.


And again, that's hinging on if you even realize you are under attack. It's hinging on us even having a means of detecting their ship/s. If you can't detect them (and they know it) they have even more options which we could do precisely nothing about.

We can detect an attack, we have programs tracking near Earth asteroids. Suddenly, a bunch of them attacks Earth with uniform speeds? Adding 2+2 will take minutes at most due to improbability of it occurring naturally.

They attacks us with stealth bombs with no attempts at communication? Sorry, unless they took an enormous pile of them they will run out of resources faster than we do, especially seeing bomb will be much easier to kill than asteroid.


Flooding the atmosphere with huge amounts of radiation lethal enough to kill every living thing on earth would be highly effective.

... :smallconfused:

Atmosphere is big. Trying to do anything to measurable change its composition would be one of the least efficient methods of killing anything :smallsigh:


If there is something they want after that they can take it freely.

They came close? Gee, I sure hope they would be immune to say large calibre artillery shell or just someone smuggling backpack nuke in whatever it is they want.


Or just leave a highly irradiated planet with buildings and other remains as a grim reminder to anyone else who wants to try and stop them.

See above.


Most theorized life forms which aren't carbon based like us would likely thrive in an environment filled with enough toxins to kill us.

You do realize there is single other element you can use to base life on, silicon, and it has the tiny problem of not only being much worse than carbon (less than 1/3 of possible chemical organic substances) but also that of their equivalent of Co2 being common sand, meaning such a being would literally drown itself by breathing? :smallconfused:

Silicon based life could work, but not in Earth like environment.


You watched Pacific Rim right? That's a small example.

You mean the movie where aliens had even more IDDQD plot armor than in Avatar? :smallconfused:

Somewhere, a physicist and a chemist are facepalming themselves as people ignorant to how big calibre bullets work write immunity to them into plot without stopping for a second what such durable material would mean. Not only such an alien would need to be somehow armoured better than main battle tank, it would need to be immune to its insides being liquefied by shockwave on impact even if armour isn't penetrated.

And that is without considering something more modern that can punch through 20 cm of steel like thin paper (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYRPrY-HZFI&t=60s). Brute force might be crude, but it works.


Phosphorus based life forms could potentially breathe and metabolize arsenic,

Um, you know what life form is phosphorus chemistry-based? Humans :smallcool:

Now, a life form that unlike humans uses arsenic like we use phosphorus could be dangerous... Except you'd need to burn such an alien on open air to produce any amount of toxic substances and these are easily stopped by WWI gas mask.

Oh, and we would be just as toxic to them.


possibly hexafluorine (my memory on this is somewhat sketchy) which is one of the most volitile substances we've ever found let alone how toxic it is.

Hexafluorides that are biologically useful are all corrosive and react violently with water. Remember that dumb Mel Gibson Sci Fi movie? :smalltongue:


And we've now found fungus which are mostly immune to the kinds of radiation that would outright kill humans, so it isn't unlikely to say that aliens would be immune to radiation or other toxins as well.

If you mean Chernobyl radiotrophes, they do have a little flaw: radioactive resistance comes at very heavy price so they are easily outcompeted by normal organisms. To survive, they literally have to rely on radiation to kill the competition. And it only still works for limited radiation, like one in long inactive reactor. Try to use militarized radiation against them and they would die almost as well as us.


Heck, probably the most effective strategy the aliens could use is just show up and blatantly begin terraforming the planet to their specifications. Even if we responded within hours, chances are the environmental damage would be extreme to the point where we would be facing an extinction level event anyway.

To significantly alter Earth atmosphere or orbit they would literally need to drag a significant % of Earth's mass in supplies with them. This is kinda going a bit too far beyond OP's specifications.

I do like reading on alternative forms of biochemisty and terraforming, but if any of them were better than natural equilibrium on Earth they would have replaced us. The fact they did not means aliens, unless they are exactly like us, will need to not only fight humans, but extremely hostile (to them) environment. It would be like humans trying to wage war with vaccum-breathing aliens on the Moon - imagine the amount of resources we would need to spend to send any credible force there, much less force capable of fighting even small native population, one that could live off the land and not care for punctures in suits or toxic food.

Invasions are expensive, sending a ship here is much easier thing than winning any conflict.


If you don't actually give a rat's ass about the species in question, it's hard to go wrong with indiscriminate vaporization.

The scenario in OP stated civilization capable of sending ship here. This does not mean capable of mass vaporizations. Could, but it's much less likely.


It's pretty cheap too, the moon's got a lot of rocks.

And unless the rock is huge, it will just burn or airburst in atmosphere. Plus, the fuel amount to accelerate credible amount of them to threaten us is colossally huge.


There's no particular reason for our malevolent overlords to care about getting nations to submit, or being popular, or anything else. If the leaders cooperate that's handy. If not, drop rocks on folks until they come up with a leader that does feel more talkative, or everybody's too busy eating each other to survive to care much about you anymore.

Sooo, they not only produce fuel and technology from thin air, they are also psychopaths not caring for any profit from their expenditure as well? :smallconfused:

...oookay.

You could reduce that scenario to 'what if rocks fall, everybody dies? How we defend against that, huh??' but that is not 100% of conditions needed to fulfill OP. That's not even 0.001%. Existence of irrational creatures bombing with magically produced resources for fun isn't related to OP scenario at all.


I figure once you destroy most of the major cities, humanity's not really relevant to any sort of alien plan anymore. There's no communication, the economy just ceased to exist, the food distribution network no longer exists, production of things like medicine and weapons and so forth are shut down.

Or, you know, we do as Germans did 60 years ago and disperse all of that to keep stuff running? :smallconfused:

Thousands of bombers running 4 year long campaign did little to stop military production of III Reich, it only started to drop as allies physically overran the factories. And today, we have far more surplus overhead that can be used to combat effects of bombing that they had back then.


Without the ports to service international trade, and the destruction of oil refineries, mobility goes right off the cliff.

Holzgas, heard of its wartime usage? :smallconfused:

As long as we have anything combustible, we have transport.


After New York, Washington DC and LA are reduced to hot lumps of impure carbon, everybody will flee the city, causing mass instability, starvation and mayhem everywhere.

You know that cities are food sinks? You kill them, the food supply improves. Also, when you disperse humans, you no longer to move the food around, you can save fuel to keep economy running.


Space War has, it seems to me, two rules:
1) The party with the high ground wins.
2) If neither party has the high ground, the party who makes the first move loses save in cases of extraordinary disparity between forces.

No, there is one rule. Who can outspend the other side wins. Technology makes up for that only to a point, to make your spending more efficient, but it won't produce it out of thin air.


Again, it doesn't take a particularly challenging amount of destruction to render the planet incapable of brute force resource expenditure. Knock out the satellites, blow out the internet backbone, drop big rocks in a few harbors, turn a couple capitals into charcoal, and the logistics and organization just aren't there anymore.

1999, the first (and only) attempt at 'air only' war. 3 month bombing by entire NATO vs one small state, scenario where bomber had vastly larger resources than defender, still failed to knock out either military or economy and only threat of land invasion by massively larger force brought the end of the war. That was with attacker being able to mobilize thousands of times more resources, not defender.

Aliens spending their expensive space-bombs on our satellites we can easily replace is net win to us, not them.

[Karoht]

You know Super Orion theoretical starship design could have sent 8 million ton ship to Alpha Centauri within human lifetime? :smallconfused:A theoretical, untested, non-prototyped starship isn't going to get built very fast. As it is theoretical and untested and unprototyped, there will be gaps in the designs. We would be lucky to get one off the ground in a decade if we started today.


Let me remind you Germany ran multiple massive industrial projects despite 4 years of heavy bombing in WW2.Most of those projects stopped testing in 1943 when they ran out of two things. Money to fund the programs, and oil to waste on testing rather than fielding functional planes. You are aware that only about 100 of the Mescherschmidt jet fighters were ever fielded, and due to being a 'pig rushed to market' they were terrible. Even the Germans said so. They were unsafe, their maintenance time to flight time ratio was 4 times that of a conventional plane, and their flight time was short due to a limited fuel tank and an engine that sucked fuel like a hog. Apply this to your super orion concept rocket space fighters.
Also, Germany was building up it's forces since 1933 and even prior to that had some buildup occuring. The ground work for many of the designs you speak of (including the famous V1 and V2 rocket program) and the technologies that lead to them was all laid long before the war started. You are talking about taking an untested unprototyped unfinished design and somehow flying it off planet earth in response to an alien attack. Two entirely different things. One is a scale of years and the other days or even hours. Apples to Oranges, your Germany example does not even remotely apply.


Aliens destroy city a day? So what, there are tens of thousands of cities on Earth. Do they bomb them with bombs? Then brutally speaking, they can run out. Do they try to gather asteroids to fling on us? Then unless the things will be extremely massive, they will piss away a lot of fuel on slow and relatively inefficient bombardment.Actually it is remarkably efficient bombardment, as all they have to do is let gravity do most of the work. It just needs an initial nudge in the right direction, voila. Beats spending ordinance if your ordinance supply is limited.


Kill vehicle without crew build on these principles will be smaller then ICBM, and we built tens of thousands of these during last 50 years.Building missiles and building whole space ships are two entirely different things.
You want to fly them remotely? How do you plan on solving the communication lag issue between here an mars? Never mind here and the asteroid belt.


Let's see, according to this (http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/), 30 meter long steel projectile going at 10% of speed of light depending on diameter is equivalent of 10^6 to 10^7 megatons of TNT. That is way above even Star Trek level defences.And the aliens aren't armed with better because...?
They could sit at the edge of our solar system and fire them, and their fleet could be long gone before these things impact earth.


We can detect an attack, we have programs tracking near Earth asteroids. Suddenly, a bunch of them attacks Earth with uniform speeds? Adding 2+2 will take minutes at most due to improbability of it occurring naturally.Yes. After several of them have already impacted earth. Possibly taking out our best technology and infrastructure towards tracking more of them.
Also, our tracking isn't flawless.
And NASA estimates that only about 90% of objects are actually monitored, and only over a certain size. I'm pretty sure the aliens could slide a few in with that 10% window.
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12842&page=29


They attacks us with stealth bombs with no attempts at communication? Sorry, unless they took an enormous pile of them they will run out of resources faster than we do, especially seeing bomb will be much easier to kill than asteroid.You do realize that a meteor striking the planet larger than a kilometer across has the same explosive impact as the largest of our nukes, right?
You know the asteroid belt has literally millions of asterioids, most of them larger than 1 kilometer across, right? Feel free to tell me how they would run out of ammo any time soon?


They came close? Gee, I sure hope they would be immune to say large calibre artillery shell or just someone smuggling backpack nuke in whatever it is they want.You do know that a 'backpack nuke' doesn't exist right?


You do realize there is single other element you can use to base life on, silicon, and it has the tiny problem of not only being much worse than carbon (less than 1/3 of possible chemical organic substances) but also that of their equivalent of Co2 being common sand, meaning such a being would literally drown itself by breathing? :smallconfused:Yes, because we are apparantly the only race in the universe to design a space suit.


Now, a life form that unlike humans uses arsenic like we use phosphorus could be dangerous... Except you'd need to burn such an alien on open air to produce any amount of toxic substances and these are easily stopped by WWI gas mask. So day 1 of attacks, everyone on earth was just wearing their WWI gas masks, because it just so happened to be "Wear your WWI gas masks to work day" in your world? Right.


Hexafluorides that are biologically useful are all corrosive and react violently with water. Remember that dumb Mel Gibson Sci Fi movie? :smalltongue:I'm pretty sure that referencing that movie scores you negative internets.


If you mean Chernobyl radiotrophes, they do have a little flaw: radioactive resistance comes at very heavy price so they are easily outcompeted by normal organisms. To survive, they literally have to rely on radiation to kill the competition. And it only still works for limited radiation, like one in long inactive reactor. Try to use militarized radiation against them and they would die almost as well as us.The point is, a life form on this planet, which doesn't have to endure the rigors of space travel and cosmic radiation (particularly gamma ray bursts which could shred our atmosphere in seconds) has clearly developed a limited immunity to it. I'm pretty sure that something out there could develop an even broader immunity to such radiation. Ergo, flooding our planet with radiation would be a fine strategy to such a species.


And unless the rock is huge, it will just burn or airburst in atmosphere. Plus, the fuel amount to accelerate credible amount of them to threaten us is colossally huge.To a species where interstellar travel or even intergalactic travel is possible, such an expenditure of energy is trivial at best.
Also, airbursts? Still pretty dangerous.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event
That was an object 60m to 190m across. That little rock was the equal of 30 megatonnes, the equal of any hydrogen bomb.


You know that cities are food sinks? You kill them, the food supply improves. Also, when you disperse humans, you no longer to move the food around, you can save fuel to keep economy running.Can't tell if trolling or...

[Arcane_Secrets]

Atmosphere is big. Trying to do anything to measurable change its composition would be one of the least efficient methods of killing anything :smallsigh:


Instead of changing it, though, what about highly radioactive additives instead-such as some of the longer half-life metallic radioisotopes?



Um, you know what life form is phosphorus chemistry-based? Humans :smallcool:

Now, a life form that unlike humans uses arsenic like we use phosphorus could be dangerous... Except you'd need to burn such an alien on open air to produce any amount of toxic substances and these are easily stopped by WWI gas mask.

Oh, and we would be just as toxic to them.

I agree with you that we'd be just as toxic to them and that a gas mask would be protection. At the same time, I'm not sure if you'd need to actually burn such an alien in order for their to be potential trans-species poisoning-considering that a lot of highly toxic arsenic compounds are organoarsenics which could be secreted by their 'skin' or by their exhaling if they breathe at all.

[Aotrs Commander]

If I was leading a relatively primative space-faring force of aliens to exteriminate Earth (because if we take the example of the Aotrs itself, the technology is so far beyond humans you could offer literally no resistance), I would likely do the following.

First - as always - recon.

Send in - probably weeks to months beforehand - a probe or science team in a stealthy, cold-body (perhaps hiding in the tail of an actual or artifical comet) vessel to monitor transimissions and attempt to translate language. (If this can be done and we can learn to read the internet, then the amount of information we can get is hilariously high). Use this information, combined with hi-res surface imaging to identify strategic targets.

If asteroid bombardmentment is feasible, launch a dozen or so asteroids. (If we can launch all the way up to 1km size, then a dozen of these probably renders any follow-up moot anyway). First target areas are all space-centres and launch sites, plus at least one directly at each ice-cap and any obvious fault-lines (which would have to be data gleaned from human sources). Ice caps are targeted with the specific intention of attempting to melt them with soon-to-be repeated impacts.

Behind each of the first dozen asteroids, riding in the shadow, would be a launch gantry for numerous nuclear (or better) weapons. (The launch gantry itset would be unpiloted and unguided, and simply act as as a cold delivery system.) Launch targets would be pre-programmed to fire slightly before any observation could be made (easy to work out from simple angles) from Earth or satelites.

Targets for these nukes would first be any major broadcasting facilities, large satelites (e.g. Hubble, International Space Station) and any detected missile sites, in that order.

This bombardment would be closely followed by a second barrage of asteroids (smaller if that gives us more options), aimed at any above targets not covered by the nuclear attacks, followed by any major industrial centres, as well as a continuous barrage of both polar ice caps.

With Earth at the very least suppressed in dealing with a steady stream of asteroid attacks, hopefully having eliminated major launch capability (and crucially, a lot of the people whose jobs it is to know that stuff1), as well as eliminating at least some of the information network (along with everything else, this will hopefully start causing panic), and with the dust clouds from the impacts obcuring a some (or better) ground-to-sky observation, a task group of light vessels would be sent it. These vessels would be tasked with eliminating the satelite network, further hampering media and navigation operations.

The asteroid bombardment would continue - after all of the initial targets have been attacked at least once, then major urban areas would be targeted, along with secondary targets such as off-shore oil-rigs (a few more launch gantries with warheads would be interspersed into the mix for good measure).

It we don't have detection methods that can penetrate the dust cloud, obervation vessels would sent in to drop probes over target areas to assess the damage and continuous effects, and locate and destroy any new targets or opportunity.

In the final phase, if practical, the fleet will close to orbit and use energy weapons and/or incendiaries to pick off any remaining targets and start razing large crop fields - or, if the blanket of dust is thick enough, simply wait until a conbination of floods from the poles and green house effect, or global temperatire drop (whichever actually results) catastrophically damages to biosphere. The fleet will bring with them a final salvo of up to 1km asteroids, to be dropped on any targets that demonstrate a sudden ability to fight back over the course of the remaining operations.

These tactics should ensure that the first thing the goes is Earth's ability to launch any kind of extra-planetary resistance, after which, it's just a case of mop-up. And there is very little Earth could do about it.



(With Aotrs technology, it's vastly faster and easier. One Liche's Wrath Superdreadnought would be sufficient... Show up, sit a couple of million kilometres out, loudly announce Earth is going to be razed, and use whoever protests loudly and most publically to be the first target. Even decoupling the temporal compensators from the railguns to drop them to relatisitic speeds, a few 10m diameter railgun slugs travelling at, say 95% of c should be sufficient to cause significant damage - or just wander into 40 000 km and use the main energy weapons to start bombarding the planet and knocking out satelites (since despite their size, orbiting stations may as well be standing still). Also make a point or retrieving the souls of anyone who says "I'd rather die!" and nailing them to the moon and making them watch, just out of sheer spite and to make the point that death isn't an escape, either.)



1My Dad works at Rolls-Royce in the fire precautions department. It is a constant source of frustration to him that he is about the last one left who really understands the job. He is forever having to deal with people who just haven't really understood the job or the problems therein. (Contractors - and some major clients like Boeing - are some of the worst offenders.) Nowhere else is any better. So if you kill a few of the last remaining people that actually know their job, there is a fairly high chance that any attempts humanity makes to do anything will be flawed, inefficient or both.)

[Jay R]

Requirements to kill all the large dinosaurs on earth: one asteroid.

Does anybody think we're all that better armored than an ankylosaurus?

[Arcane_Secrets]

Requirements to kill all the large dinosaurs on earth: one asteroid.

Does anybody think we're all that better armored than an ankylosaurus?

The armor and all of the mass that came with it were liabilities, though, because of all of the food required to sustain them. I'm not saying that humanity would necessarily fare much better but I still thought it needed saying.

[Karoht]

Instead of changing it, though, what about highly radioactive additives instead-such as some of the longer half-life metallic radioisotopes?I remember reading (back in the 90's, so accuracy may be slightly off) that there are quite a few asteroids in the belt comprised of nuclear materials. No I have no idea if their half-lives have caused them to wear out by now, but even a single asteroid 1km wide made of uranium would have a pretty catastrophic effect.


I agree with you that we'd be just as toxic to them and that a gas mask would be protection. At the same time, I'm not sure if you'd need to actually burn such an alien in order for their to be potential trans-species poisoning-considering that a lot of highly toxic arsenic compounds are organoarsenics which could be secreted by their 'skin' or by their exhaling if they breathe at all.This assumes they even set foot on the planet at all. They could just pump their waste (from their reactors, from their bodily waste) directly into the atmosphere. Now sure, that would have a localized effect, but a city pumped full of alien mustard gas farts with no warning is still a city pumped full of alien mustard gas farts.


@Aotrs
Thank you for detailing exactly how simple it would be.
I think even a handful of 1km wide objects would probably be an extinction level event for planet earth (I'm refering to asteroids, not your rail guns), nevermind the alien ships following up with any kind of bombardment.


All of which brings me back to my original point. If they want to kill us, they will, chances are high that they don't even need to use their weapons to do it.
Ergo, if they aren't interested in us, they won't reply, if they are coming to kill us/enslave us they probably won't reply they will just show up.
Which means that IF they reply, it's because they have some peaceful intentions, or at the very least want to put on the ruse of peaceful intentions.

[Aotrs Commander]

@Aotrs
Thank you for detailing exactly how simple it would be.
I think even a handful of 1km wide objects would probably be an extinction level event for planet earth (I'm refering to asteroids, not your rail guns), nevermind the alien ships following up with any kind of bombardment.

*tips helmet*



Actually, I'm really quite curious as to what damage a Liche's Wrath's railguns (constrained from their normal 2-3c temporally-compensated speed1 to 0.95c) would do a planet. The numbers would be quite intereting, I'm sure, if I could figure it out. I'm not sure whether, for example, it's be worse than a 1km asteroid, or whether the baleful energy would slag the whole planet.

(The Aotrs don't, sadly, often get to lay waste to whole planets, as it's kind wasteful, so I've never had the chance to experiment...)



1After someone queried the FTL discharge speed, I actually had to go look it up myself. I'm a necromancer, not a physist, so I'm still not 100% on it myself, but from what I recall, the main reason for FTL speed is not so much increased damage output as it is increased accuracy through reduced transit time.

[Karoht]

*tips helmet*

1After someone queried the FTL discharge speed, I actually had to go look it up myself. I'm a necromancer alien, not a physist, so I'm still not 100% on it myself, but from what I recall, the main reason for FTL speed is not so much increased damage output as it is increased accuracy through reduced transit time.
My thoughts exactly. Even low tech means like asteroids would be pretty devestating, so I can't imagine what high tech gear that even we can't imagine would do a planet or similar sized/mass body in space.


Other bizarro stuff aliens could do:
-Shift the planets axis
-Alter our orbit further from/closer to the sun
-Shove the moon into us
-Fling the whole planet into the sun (skip the pesky shooting business)
-Gamma Ray burst to take out our magnetosphere, which would soon after lead to the loss of most of our atmosphere

Some of the above is a bit absurd, but there it is.

[rs2excelsior]

For a realistic look at a first-contact scenario, I would point you here (http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/aliens.php#id--The_Fermi_Paradox--The_Killing_Star).

Somewhat frightening and depressing, but probably accurate.


All the hypothetical alien race would have to have greater than us is propulsion technology. It is worth noting that current scientific theories on interstellar flight generally (if correct) require only two or three things that our current knowledge base does not provide. (The "warp bubble" theory, for example, only requires the development of one kind of material that can distort space in the manner required, along with a large economic investment in antimatter production.) It is thus entirely possible that our hypothetical aliens would have equal or even lesser tech than we currently possess.

We have built a handful of spacecraft that could reach the moon. In terms of terrestrial distance, that's huge. On interplanetary scale it's insignificant. On an interstellar scale we've barely learned to crawl. Barring a generation ship of some sort, we have no hope of reaching another star with current technology. For these aliens to be able to take a jaunt over here to check out this new species that thinks it's really great? They'd have to be leaps and bounds ahead of us. Probably to the "indistinguishable from magic" point. I doubt we'll see steampunk-style interstellar explorers who've never seen a computer before. As to lesser tech, have we ever sent someone to another star?

And yes, one type of matter would let us make a warp bubble... combined with an efficient means of antimatter production (1% efficiency is still a LONG way off) and a complete rewrite of theoretical physics. Bye, Einstein.


But the question is, is the tech advantage big enough to allow whatever fleet the aliens sent overpower the whole world. Even at 1000:1 kill ratio, you'd need massive numbers, unless they go for attempts of forcing surrender without land presence.

There is nothing on this planet they couldn't get more easily elsewhere. The only military target here is us and the potential threat we could cause. So what if they slag the planet? There are others without all those pesky natives...

[Aotrs Commander]

My thoughts exactly. Even low tech means like asteroids would be pretty devestating, so I can't imagine what high tech gear that even we can't imagine would do a planet or similar sized/mass body in space.

I just recall an XKCD article someone linked once about what would happen if someone threw a baseball at the speed of light, and it basically resulted in a nuclear explosion. So what exactly something several orders of magnitude bigger would do is a good question.

[hamishspence]

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


A 1 kg mass traveling at 99% of the speed of light would have a kinetic energy of 5.47 ×1017 joules. In explosive terms, it would be equal to 132 megatons of TNT

[Asta Kask]

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

How much mass and how much energy would it take to accelerate something up to that speed?

[rs2excelsior]

To accelerate it so that it has 5.47x10^17 joules? 5.47x10^17 joules.

Note, though, that all velocities are relative. So you need all of that energy to get it to that speed relative to target if the projectile and the target are stationary with respect to each other. If your target is already going at 99%c relative to your projectile, just casually toss it in their path...

Of course, by that point, relativistic effects start getting weird (actually, have been since about 30%c or so), and the target isn't actually where you see it. But that's another issue entirely.

[Asta Kask]

To accelerate it so that it has 5.47x10^17 joules? 5.47x10^17 joules.

And mass? Momentum is conserved. Also, do we really assume 100% efficiency?

[rs2excelsior]

No, we don't assume 100% efficiency. But it requires that much energy be put into the projectile. But with literally no information about the launching/propulsion system, there's no way to say any more.

If by mass you mean reaction mass, that depends. If you've got a launched projectile or one that's externally powered, none. If it's rocket powered, you're looking for the rocket equation, delta-v=ve*ln(R), where delta-v is change in velocity (.99c), ve is the exhaust velocity, and R is the mass ratio (mass including propellant divided by mass without propellant, or "wet mass" over "dry mass"). So R=e^(delta-v/ve). If your exhaust velocity is .99c, you need about 1.7 times the projectile's mass (R=e, and propellant*dry mass=R-1). If the exhaust velocity is less (certainly the case, which is why we can't make things go this fast with current technology) R goes up exponentially.

So with the information given the only thing we can say is "mass required=ridiculous" and "energy required=ridiculous".

[Jay R]

How much mass and how much energy would it take to accelerate something up to that speed?

If you are already in a tree above somebody with a rock in your hand, how much energy does it take to drop it on his head?

None.

It already has all the potential energy needed. Note that nobody had to add energy to the one that killed most of the big dinosaurs.

[Asta Kask]

Yeah, but we're talking 99% of the speed of light. Unless they turn the Earth into a black hole I strongly doubt that gravitational energy is going to do the trick.

[Coidzor]

How much mass and how much energy would it take to accelerate something up to that speed?

A trivial amount for any entity interested in exterminating all but the most sequestered life on earth and capable of traveling across vast interstellar distances to do so, of course.

[Asta Kask]

Did you read the post I was answering to? A 1 kg mass accelerated to 99% the speed of light.

[Coidzor]

Did you read the post I was answering to? A 1 kg mass accelerated to 99% the speed of light.

The actual numbers involved don't matter nearly so much as that, is the thing.

They're just "Big Enough."

[Kislath]

The world wouldn't react.

Only a tiny handful of people would ever hear about it, and they wouldn't live long enough tell anyone. If they DID, it would only get "debunked" as a silly "tinfoil hat society myth" and quickly forgotten as every shred of evidence vanished.

[Karoht]

The world wouldn't react.

Only a tiny handful of people would ever hear about it, and they wouldn't live long enough tell anyone. If they DID, it would only get "debunked" as a silly "tinfoil hat society myth" and quickly forgotten as every shred of evidence vanished.The conspiracy theorist in me wants to agree with you, it really does. I do think that knowledge of it would be suppressed for as long as it could be suppressed.

How long could it be suppressed these days? Not long really. 10-20-30 years ago where smartphones and email weren't quite such a big deal? Much easier to suppress them then. Today?

Lets just say that the message sent to us is in a format we can work with. For argument's sake lets just say radio. The minute one place picks up the suspect transmission, they are giving the info to probably a dozen places for verification, and recordings of it go to even more places than that. Unless the spies are in pretty deep, and at all levels and all locations of reception, verification, and recording? They aren't going to get ALL of the places that the data could go, nevermind will go. Plus, any deaths related to the signal/s would be extremely suspicious. Wikileaks and the like would be FLOODED with stuff on such a case. It would be way too public to stay buried for long.

[Kislath]

I'd like to think you're right, but... since when have little bothersome details like those ever stopped ..them?

Did you know, for example, that over the past decade all of the world's most major league microbiologists have been murdered one by one? I'm talking almost 3 dozen highly suspicious deaths of the most important people in the entire field. At first they looked like strange accidents or sloppy suicides, but after awhile they just gave up on that and started just plain shooting or bludgeoning them.
Why? Beats me. I'm sure it's something awful. The thing is, they've been doing it and getting away with it all these years now, and today most folks think it's just a wacky coincidence or a nutjob "conspiracy theory" to be ignored.
If they can make something like this go away with all of the physical evidence in plain view, then making everyone believe that the "alien signal" was just a "reflection", a simple mistake, or a hoax, would be child's play.

Now, if the aliens responded to everyone directly, sending a signal that was heard on every frequency around the world... well... THAT would be something that couldn't be covered up so well. ( but you can bet they'd try anyway )
If that turned out to be the case, then.. hooboy. The entire internet would crash from all the traffic overload, most of it being spent just on message board flamewars! LOL!

[Karoht]

I'd like to think you're right, but... since when have little bothersome details like those ever stopped ..them?Ukranian Revolution, Egypt, Syria. Plenty of things have gone down in those locations, most of which the news media is less able to talk about, but the social media has spread it plenty fine. I have no worries at all about scientists being able to spread info like that quickly. Also, I think you greatly underestimate the number of places that would likely pick up a signal.


Did you know, for example, that over the past decade all of the world's most major league microbiologists have been murdered one by one? I'm talking almost 3 dozen highly suspicious deaths of the most important people in the entire field. At first they looked like strange accidents or sloppy suicides, but after awhile they just gave up on that and started just plain shooting or bludgeoning them.
Why? Beats me. I'm sure it's something awful. The thing is, they've been doing it and getting away with it all these years now, and today most folks think it's just a wacky coincidence or a nutjob "conspiracy theory" to be ignored.
If they can make something like this go away with all of the physical evidence in plain view, then making everyone believe that the "alien signal" was just a "reflection", a simple mistake, or a hoax, would be child's play.Source Plox.
Also, all it takes is one guy leaking it to youtube, twitter, facebook, wikileaks, and it's basically out in the open these days. Again, evidenced by the fact that previous 'conspiracy' type events in the last decade have had whistleblowers, almost all of whom used the internet as the major means to spread the story. At which point the media HAD to pay attention to them. 20 years ago, a guy like Snowden might have just disappeared but not these days.

[Coidzor]

The world wouldn't react.

Only a tiny handful of people would ever hear about it, and they wouldn't live long enough tell anyone. If they DID, it would only get "debunked" as a silly "tinfoil hat society myth" and quickly forgotten as every shred of evidence vanished.

Most of NASA getting offed would be fairly hard to cover up. And not be of interest to the powers that be unless they already have an XCOM, in which case they'd already be aware of aliens.

[Aotrs Commander]

Isn't it funny what you learn, sometimes?

While debating with a fellow on a My Little Pony fanfiction on how the Chicxulub impact could have easily been absorbed by intercepting it with the moon (don't ask, save to say that we wouldn't have had a discussion if he'd not tied the story to actual Earth pre-history with an incomplete amount of research...!), it has actually given us some numbers on those wicked asteroid impacts.

The Chicxulub impact (that is, the one that finally knobbled the dinosaurs) was caused by an impact of a 10km asteroid travelling at (from the (http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/Chicxulub.html) source (http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/effects.pdf) I looked at, which looks at least reasonably credible) 20 km/s, with a net energy estimated at 130 million tons on TNT. A 1km asteroid travelling at the same speed will have approximately 1/1000th the mass (and thus energy).

However, 20km/s is a paltry 0.000067% of lightspeed. So you could afford to speed it up a hundred times and only need ten 1 km asteroids to impart the same energy as the Cretacious extinction! And even at only ten times, a hundred should be sufficient to ruin Earth's day.

Also, notably a glancing blow by an asteroid 170km in diamter apparently caused the second largest impact crater in the solar system (on the moon), which had a thousand times more energy than the Chicxulub impact.

So, I now have a much clearer idea of how much I need to throw at it to destroy the Earth with asteroids!

Thanks ponies!

[russdm]

I thought I would throw in some two cents/credits)

First off, there is no reason for an alien race to grab voyager and haul it to their solar system to take pictures and then send it back to ours. Its not likely to actually happen. It makes more sense for the aliens to just pick it up and examine it.

Secondly, the aliens would need to figure out some way of communicating with us if it mattered. If it didn't matter, then why would they bother? Also, look at ants compared to us; we don't really care what the ants say when we step on them. Are we really going to assign humanistic values to an alien race that might view us the same way as ants?

Thirdly, whatever the message said, or if it caused a stir, it should be remembered, we lack, as a species, the ability to defend ourselves beyond our own world. We have nukes sure, but how far can actually use them? To be really honest, we can barely get back to the moon and chosen to rely on robotic explorers like the Rovers on Mars, and the ones on the moon. Our largest space presence is the stuff we have sent out and the crews on the international space station. America completely lacks any real space program, we didn't bother to make anything to replace the space shuttles while we could have. Now, America has to pay the Russians to use their ships to get into space.

The private competition is all about getting cargoes up into LEO, low earth orbit, not actual space. So viewing them as possessing any kind of ability to be useful is wrong. None of the private companies are making anything that could go beyond the range of our planet. In time, the private companies could make something, but they are all profit driven so its not likely.

America has simply lost interest in space beyond using robotic explorers. Nor does any other country really have the means to invest heavily in this. When Nasa had the space shuttles available, it should have been thinking about what would happen when the shuttles were unusable. That never happened. Right now, a lot of companies are working on remaking stuff from when Nasa was doing the Mercury stuff. Getting Space suits made up, new vehicles for moving around, and other materials that are going to be needed. Even more so, a new exploration vehicle to carry people is needed, but there is almost nothing in the works. With that kind of progress, it will likely decades before we are ready to send a mission to an asteroid or to Mars.

The only reason that so few people even recognize this as an issue is because it has never come up yet. But if we discover aliens, the glaring issues of human readiness to handle anything will show up and most likely cause despair.

We actually can't really detect asteroids that well, and trying to stop one from hitting us is nearly impossible. There is almost no way we are capable of handling another species showing up. Who leads the world? We have problems even getting the UN to actually work.

As for the aliens using the resources in our solar system, well, because we don't anyway of setting foot anywhere, it pretty much means that they are free to take it from us without challenge. We can try talking big or whatever, but in reality we don't have a chance if an alien race called our bluff.

We are totally exposed and vulnerable, so we just don't have any chances. It's better to simply not have signs of alien life revealed if we do find any because it will just cause a panic.

[Kato]

Secondly, the aliens would need to figure out some way of communicating with us if it mattered. If it didn't matter, then why would they bother? Also, look at ants compared to us; we don't really care what the ants say when we step on them. Are we really going to assign humanistic values to an alien race that might view us the same way as ants?
Having a realistic look on the universe... I think they would be quiet interested. Yeah, applying human values to aliens is a bit of a far stretch but the only one we can really make. So if we consider they are somewhat like us, and then even if they are technologically ahead of us, the idea of their being other (sentient) life should be at least intriguing. If ants started building cars we would certainly be interested. We are already somewhat curious when animals build stuff, and wonder how they do it. It's just most things animals build is quite primitive (no offense to them, but there's a difference between a burrow or a nest and an engine) We are constantly amazed at what apes can do, so why wouldn't aliens be curious who shoots metal things into space? (Kind of assuming they are aware what Voyager even is)


To be really honest, we can barely get back to the moon and chosen to rely on robotic explorers like the Rovers on Mars, and the ones on the moon. Our largest space presence is the stuff we have sent out and the crews on the international space station.
We can quite easily get to the moon? We could likely get people to Mars but what then? They couldn't land and get back, and spending the rest of your life on mars is kind of boring.
The thing is... most other bodies in our solar system are pretty boring and/or dangerous. Nobody wants to go there because there's no gain in it and it would be pretty uncomfortable. LEO is actually somewhat harder to reach than actual space because you want to stay there and not just leave the gravity well (citation needed) and we are only interested in it because it's of use to us on earth. Wasting time and money on things which will get us nowhere just doesn't pay off. And likely, deep space exploration will never be really lucrative... Or at least until we make some breakthrough discoveries



We actually can't really detect asteroids that well, and trying to stop one from hitting us is nearly impossible. There is almost no way we are capable of handling another species showing up. Who leads the world? We have problems even getting the UN to actually work.
Well, can't really blame anyone for space being so goddamn big. We could plaster the planet with radio telescopes trying to observe any point in space, sure... (And as for stopping them... Well, I guess we could use some laser death ray satellites in space :smalltongue:)
Without getting into politics, I guess it would be a serious issue who's allowed to talk to the aliens if they ever showed up. Maybe they'd just hack into the internet and then run away disgusted?


As for the aliens using the resources in our solar system, well, because we don't anyway of setting foot anywhere, it pretty much means that they are free to take it from us without challenge.
See above. Why would we care? They can take whatever they want as long as they leave earth alone. If they do care for giant balls of rock. Or gas. Or sand.


We are totally exposed and vulnerable, so we just don't have any chances. It's better to simply not have signs of alien life revealed if we do find any because it will just cause a panic.
Pessimist :smalltongue:

[Karoht]

Pessimist :smalltongue:You say pessimist, I say realist. Poh-tay-toe/pah-tah-toe.


Secondly, the aliens would need to figure out some way of communicating with us if it mattered. If it didn't matter, then why would they bother? Also, look at ants compared to us; we don't really care what the ants say when we step on them. Are we really going to assign humanistic values to an alien race that might view us the same way as ants?"And I for one welcome our new insect overlords."--Kent Brockman

[Coidzor]

Isn't it funny what you learn, sometimes?

While debating with a fellow on a My Little Pony fanfiction on how the Chicxulub impact could have easily been absorbed by intercepting it with the moon (don't ask, save to say that we wouldn't have had a discussion if he'd not tied the story to actual Earth pre-history with an incomplete amount of research...!), it has actually given us some numbers on those wicked asteroid impacts.

The Chicxulub impact (that is, the one that finally knobbled the dinosaurs) was caused by an impact of a 10km asteroid travelling at (from the (http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/Chicxulub.html) source (http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/effects.pdf) I looked at, which looks at least reasonably credible) 20 km/s, with a net energy estimated at 130 million tons on TNT. A 1km asteroid travelling at the same speed will have approximately 1/1000th the mass (and thus energy).

However, 20km/s is a paltry 0.000067% of lightspeed. So you could afford to speed it up a hundred times and only need ten 1 km asteroids to impart the same energy as the Cretacious extinction! And even at only ten times, a hundred should be sufficient to ruin Earth's day.

Also, notably a glancing blow by an asteroid 170km in diamter apparently caused the second largest impact crater in the solar system (on the moon), which had a thousand times more energy than the Chicxulub impact.

So, I now have a much clearer idea of how much I need to throw at it to destroy the Earth with asteroids!

Thanks ponies!

Indeed (http://qntm.org/destroy#sec3). :smallsmile: And here's some stuff including a video of what they think the impact that formed the moon looked like. (http://www.swri.org/press/impact.htm)

For further reading in order to make it as over the top as possible. (http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/jul99/931435915.As.r.html)

As far as maneuvering large bodies in space goes, this might be of interest to some folks unless I just missed it getting brought up before... (http://qntm.org/moving)

[MonkeyBusiness]

Coidzor, you are the smart one. What cool links!

And to answer the OP, I personally would probably react the way I do right before any guests arrive: rushing around to clean up.

-Monkey

.

[Aotrs Commander]

Indeed (http://qntm.org/destroy#sec3). :smallsmile: And here's some stuff including a video of what they think the impact that formed the moon looked like. (http://www.swri.org/press/impact.htm)

For further reading in order to make it as over the top as possible. (http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/jul99/931435915.As.r.html)

As far as maneuvering large bodies in space goes, this might be of interest to some folks unless I just missed it getting brought up before... (http://qntm.org/moving)

*sounds of rapid note taking*

[Techmagss]

To be honest, I imagine a Half-Life 2 scenario.

Big Bad Alien Race lands.
BBAR sends advanced troops which decimate ours.
Destroy most if not all cities.
Drain Earth's resources with remaining humans as slaves..
No more reproduction.

Earth's resources completely drained.
BBAR leaves planet.
Everyone dies.
The end.


I'm probably just imagining this because I want to be a CP or OTA :smallcool:

Really, though, I imagine they will just enslave humanity if they're more advanced..
Or just be like any normal 'country' and trade, diplomacise, etc.

[Avilan the Grey]

My personal response would be "Cool! About time!".