An Advanced Civilization has been discovered?

[Queen Michael]

One word: Batman.

 

[General_Potatoes]

It may end up like District 9. We enslave them and never let them leave.

 

[Bobbity]

Just as a random thought, I'm thinking how cool first contact would be, assuming that neither of us had violent intentions. Can you imagine aliens making contact with out governing bodies, appearing on television for the first time, or whatevs? That blows my mind.

 

[GLo Jones]

Hmm, I think the thread is intersting.
I'd best start it off with Carke's third law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Thus I wouldn't even bother with advancements based on state of the art science, as it has some disadvantages: firstly, it's quite a lot to research if you want to be accurate. Secondly, no matter how much you research it, you have to expand upon it in a fantastical way, which is hard to pull off without getting rediculous.
So rather than scientifically back it up, chose things they are capable of and don't ever try to explain them. Just look at what Lucas did with the Force. With one sentence he degraded a mystical power to a benevolent infection. Let your space travelling be godlike, unfathomable in powers, and define them rather by morality than by technology. Given the advantage they have, how would they cope with the problems of earth? Would the intervene, or observe? etc.
Also, explore the impact on humankind, economics and religion.

And as a small sidenote on flying cars and timetravel: While the first one is one of the tropes of futurism, I don't think we will ever see flight as a indivudial way of travel for the masses. Most people can barely cope with the two dimensions of ground level traffic, so better not add a third one. Also, as flight takes much more energy than driving, it won't happen as long as we haven't found a more efficient way to generate and store it than via oil.
And I don't think that unlimited time travel is possible for one reason: we would've met time travellers or at least found artifacts of them. Because even if time travel was limited to a small elite, it still would cause myriads of time travellers over time being able to travel to the past, and, even if they are guided by a common directive of stealth, somebody is ought botch it up sometime (murphy's law), thus we'd have some sort of proof of time travellers.
The only way I think time travel would be possible would be like in a corridor: So if a time machine was invented, time travel would be possible from the point where it was turned on until the point it was turned off.

Wow, this. I typed out a long post, before realising you'd better explained everything I'd put.

 

[Griffolion]

Probably (obviously) capability to make wormholes at will to make faster-than-light travel faster.

FTL Travel is theoretically impossible in conventional physics, the use of wormholes is simply a manipulation of space-time to travel to another part of the universe without having to traverse the space in between. You're still travelling at sub-luminal speeds but taking a short-cut which when compared to actually traversing the space in between could be called 'faster-than-light'. But then again, the fact that comparison is made of two different methods is invalid.

Still, they could have figured out true FTL and shatter our notion of physics as it stands. Perhaps similar to the way warp drives work in EVE Online.

Besides, FTL travel is useless without FTL communication, though I suspect the solution to that may have something to do with quantum entanglement.

 

[Jewrean]

Soooo they're an Evil Empire of sorts with a major religious motive?
But wouldn't there be the issue of some not believing that their Crusade is the real reason for the oppression and assimilation of many different peoples all over the galaxy?

Anyway thats just another thing to consider.
With a goal like that within an advanced race theres obviously going to be the ocassional non believer,

Yes. That would be the main character.

and I'm sure the subjugated people themselves won't exactly care too much for the goals of their new masters which they can't even comprehend.

Brainwashing in all different forms is implemented on the enslaved.

So there would most likely need to be an immensely strong and all knowing government to keep everyone in check.

In this case, yes. Although technologically and scientifically speaking the species is advanced, this one still adopts a regal hierarchy. It's followers are tied to it's religion and are extremely devout.

The beliefs of the people fall into two major categories:
a) Those that believe in the religious stand-point of unification (the government, the lower and middle classes, the brainwashed masses)
b) Those that thrive on the idea of conquering and dominating others (military, slave-traders, etc)

And what are the advanced races military capabilities? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Is conquering a planet a matter of hours or years? Do they fight directly or do they have immensely powerful killing machines do it for them?

Rather than using technology for their fighting, the species relies on its super-powered beings. Some are capable of destroying an entire planet single-handedly. As a further extent to proving their dominance they often fight in close-quarters. However if there is no worthy combat to be had by other beings of power (ie: Earth) then they simply teleport our entire species onto their ships for transportation.

If they attempt to assimilate other species instead of exterminating them they'd likely need some sort of shock and awe way of forcing their enemies into submission as quickly as possible.

Based on the scenario, the species has been known to completely annihilate a planet if it seemed annoying to them and didn't have any worthwhile value. This species also exterminates entire races only to resurrect them at a later time.

As someone suggested earlier, this brings up an issue of over-population and age-caps and can effectively make their important people (such as super-powered beings or royalty) immortal.

Also this sounds a bit similar to an idea of my own, though the whole religious concept was forgotten and abandoned very long ago and the master assimilatory race keeps doing what it does because its just what they now do.

Anyways, just some stuff to consider, and it sounds like a cool concept.

I decided to keep the religious concept to keep it relate-able. The species in question is very close to human (/humanoid) and thus is assimilating others that are similar. A story reason (which I won't get into) explains why so many of the species share so many similarities (think all the races on Star Trek). This particular setting I've explained describes one in a series of 3 atm. The book before this (the prequel) focuses on segregation of differences and this book of unification to become whole.

Anyway, if you get yours on paper I'd love to read it some time.

 

[Jewrean]

A thread titled 'What are you wearing' gets 9 pages of responses and this gets a grand total of 0 responses? Are you serious? Not a single intelligent thought? I guess I'll go make a new thread entitled 'What tastes better, lighter fluid or Turpentine?'.

And with that attitude you get a horseshit response.

HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORSE.

Well an entire page went by without a single response. If that usually happens, there pretty much won't be a response.

Case in point: bump was necessary for at least 1 response.

 

[General Vagueness]

Well if they need another species, to replace a degrading RNA strand or some such, I would consider that a resource.

Yeah, it reminds me of the Destroy All Humans games come to think of it.

 

[Jewrean]

Edit; Also, why this thread isn't popping your wanted 11 page-streak is because this is all but a question derived from a book little to perhaps none know of. People have nothing to go for but guesses and what they would feel from the information suddenly given.

Also, in a way, it's boring. So there, I said it. A title about 'Coffee vs Beer' would peak more interest because said failing reasons do not apply, and basically everyone over 18 can comment without repercussion.
I might be wrong but... Hey, try it!

Hope you enjoy my rude honest, providing criticism that is in no way supposed to strive for anger and/or offense ^.^

1) I honestly don't care about having a crap-load of responses. I just wanted 1. I mean if you make a thread on a forum you kind of expect people to at least say something... anything. Hell I go to threads I don't understand or don't care about and comment even if they are 'boring'. It's the 'social protocol' of the internetz! =D

2) It didn't matter if you knew the book or not. That was irrelevant. I was giving background information to those that were curious. You can clearly see in bold 'The Question' that I pose which remains separate as to the 'Why?'.

3) Coffee vs Beer doesn't interest me so I didn't make a thread on it. Clearly my thread doesn't interest you. That's fine, you are entitled to your opinion and I mine. I wasn't making a thread for the hell of it. I had a goal in mind, to get someones opinion on something that I was interested in. Mission accomplished. Purpose of thread = Successful. I got some intelligent view-points (albeit some trollish ones too) and I walk away happy that I was able to communicate in a way that matters to me. Again... don't care about response count.

4) No offence taken.

 

[Spygon]

As we have developed we have increased the average life expentacy of life so i assume a more advance society would have an average life expectancy of at least several hundred years.

 

[thejboy88]

Hopefully we'd be able to get faster-than-light travel from them. Given the distance between planets and the likelihood of how long it would take something less fast than light to get there, it would have to be faster than light for them to get to us.

If they give it to us we can finally leave Earth and our problems behind and start again somewhere else.

Go even further with that and maybe we can have each nation find a planet of their own. That would stop international conflicts.

 

[Zyst]

Now you've piqued my interest! If you DO release your book over the internet please do tell me, I'll add you on the Escapist. Best of Luck!

 

[LiudvikasT]

Ok, let me give you a few ideas:
1. Immortal obviously, I honestly believe we ourselves are not that far. Aliens more advanced by few hundred years, would surely opt out of dying.
2. Non-organic or at least heavily modified with synthetics. There's nothing special about organics, so I doubt more advanced civilization would cling to it.
3. I doubt they would have an unified governing body like it is portrayed in many sci-fi. When you become an immortal post-human there's really no need for politics. Even the ones visiting us would probably be just curious individuals, instead of ambassadors of their race.

 

[SilentCom]

If aliens came to earth, I think they may do something like this:

 

[MrSean]

If aliens came to earth, I think they may do something like this:

And then, this.

Spoiler: Large image

 

[PneumaticSuicide]

You can't beat them, so why not join them and what better way to introduce yourself than with this as your on theme music

http://youtu.be/P3WJX1cIuY4

 

[nukethetuna]

Well, with successful cloning, couldn't any alien folks have basically infinite food? Jeez and what if they found a way to condense the time it took to produce fossil fuel to only a few hours? They clone organisms, only to be made into fossil fuels.

But then why would they want to come bother us...

 

[Koshok]

The technology to convert heat directly into electrical energy.

I am aware this breaks the second law of thermodynamics, but they could have found a loophole to the law.

 

[Ham_authority95]

The Question?
If Aliens came down and visited us what are some of the things you would think a species more advanced than us would be capable of?

Another way of asking this is what are some awesome things that haven't been invented yet but plausibly with enough time could be?

Now obviously there are flying cars, extremely tall buildings (ala the Fifth element), space-travel, time-travel and so on to consider. But I'm looking for answers beyond the obvious. Maybe a true unified field theory? You know? That thing Einstein was working on for 30 years that can explain everything in the universe Mathematically?

Why am I asking you this?
The makings of a good book have been musing around in my head for many years. There is an advanced civilization in it and I wanted them to really appear advanced in so many ways, not just technologically. I was also researching String theory and was thinking if it truly was the real answer and if we would ever know.

A species more advanced than us wouldn't waste their time visiting idiots like us, that's for sure.

A truly "advanced" species wouldn't have cities and they wouldn't need any physical items.

 

[Ham_authority95]

A thread titled 'What are you wearing' gets 9 pages of responses and this gets a grand total of 0 responses? Are you serious? Not a single intelligent thought? I guess I'll go make a new thread entitled 'What tastes better, lighter fluid or Turpentine?'.

Heh, bumping your own thread is looked down upon. If people want to post, they will, and you only gave it 25 minutes....