Hawking Warns Humanity to Avoid Dangerous Aliens

[The Singularity]

Crazy guy. Also, good work on putting District 9 there. I bet he made all these conclusions from that film.

HAHAHAHA! Very good sarcasm. Steven Hawking is one of the great genius scientists. Hes going to be remembered along with Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton. So yes your intelligence compared to his is like comparing a normal human to a monkey.
I believe he is correct, we need to avoid showing all our cards to the universe, if anything think of this: Weapons we have can destroy our world, and can travel through space without humans. All we have to do is load a ship with hydrogen bombs and send it at a planet.
So what if another Species is more advanced then us?

Also we cannot measure other species at all. Kindness, anger, love emotions etc. might not even exist to another race. Meaning no friendship. They could also just kill us because we might kill them for the same reasons, the other species is another threat to our ENTIRE species.

 

[The Singularity]

God, I love that man.

And really, it's hard not to agree, I mean, by the time a species has actually developed some sort of space travel theve probably used up most of the resouces on there home planet, wether due to wasteful useage, useing the resources to build those ships, or other reasones.

What if they're so advanced that they built a device that allows them to break down any material at the atomic level and reform it into anything they want?

Then we are just more atoms to reshape?

 

[Silva]

"You can't stop the signal."
~ Serenity (2005)

It would be impossible at this point, with control over the media's operations divided over many different corporations and governments, for people to cut off the line to ET even if they wanted to.

Hawking may be right that it would be best if we avoided alien life, but even if he is, his suggestion is untenable. It seems typical for a theoretical physicist to expect something mathematically beautiful but sociologically naive like humanity uniting under one banner on any issue not certain to destroy us all.

As long as there is a chance that sentient aliens are friendly, some signals will get out there. Even if some kind of international movement were to spring up in response to Hawking's statement here, I doubt that it would succeed. Signals get as far as Jupiter and even further without us meaning for them to.

To be precise, the signals we actually send to expressly attract aliens are the bare minimum of what goes out there: everything from David Attenborough to hardcore action flicks zooms around the solar system and beyond. Not to mention radio and every other form of wide wave wireless signal. Earth is a boom-box strapped to a beatnik's shoulder on the streets of the universe.

It's true that aliens won't necessarily detect these random signals properly as compared to our specially made science messages, but we can't be sure.

 

[Methos12]

He's a visionary, an educated man and clearly a genius in his way, but there's really no person on this planet that could claim something like this with any authority whatsoever. So... yeah, no different from any of us present here saying the same thing or something else regarding aliens. We just don't know.

 

[Ithera]

Mr Hawking and the space-jerks. I find his theory plausible, if said aliens are anything like us it's going to get ugly.

On the other hand, I believe that the odds of coming face to face with an alien is dismal at best. Contact of any kind will not happen while the human race is alive and kicking.

 

[Klarinette]

I love that man. I agree with him.
If there is intelligent life in the Universe, finding and traveling to us shows that they are far more advanced than we are, and they will treat us as any dominant species treats subordinate life.

 

[Korten12]

An entire race living in huge ships...imagine what video games they could develop...awesome graphics.

it would be funny if they came down to Earth and the first things they say are "Wanna see OUR video games?" I would laugh and of corse want to see them.

 

[SomeBritishDude]

This is all very hypothetical. We have no way of knowing what a an alien species, even I highly intelligent one, would think or feel. There's ever possibility that there's a species out there as intelligent at us, but not necessarily in the same way. Even looking at a more earthly example, would a race of herbivores have the same violent nature as Christopher Columbus?

Of coarse it's hard to dis agree with the doc, cyborgs are cool.

 

[Mcupobob]

well I say if they aliens come here for resorces then we just hold the earth hostege, say "You kill us we kill the earth" thats the only thing I can think of to stop then.

OT: I'm not sure if I agree with hawkings they might be friendly, having become advance enough to be peaceful and all knowing but mabey he's right and they are after are resorces.

 

[Hurray Forums]

The whole "aliens would come to conquer us because their planet sucks" argument is kind of stupid. The universe is HUGE, it makes no sense to pick a fight with one of the very, very few planets that has life on it that can fight back instead of just going to an uninhabited planet to get whatever stuff they need. If they could get to our planet they would have billions of other options. The whole "they would use as for food" doesn't work either as A) it's highly unlikely we would be tasty or edible to something from an entirely different habitat, and B) Any civilization with such technology that they can get here could easily make food some other way that doesn't involve war. That's not to say aliens might not kill us, they might decide we just suck or be xenophobic assholes, but I highly doubt they will kill us for resources.

 

[Trebort]

He's probably right. Humanity is too stupid to deal with Aliens right now.

Give it 2 or 3 hundred years and we might be in a better position.

 

[FBPH]

Crazy guy. Also, good work on putting District 9 there. I bet he made all these conclusions from that film.

HAHAHAHA! Very good sarcasm. Steven Hawking is one of the great genius scientists. Hes going to be remembered along with Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton. So yes your intelligence compared to his is like comparing a normal human to a monkey.
I believe he is correct, we need to avoid showing all our cards to the universe, if anything think of this: Weapons we have can destroy our world, and can travel through space without humans. All we have to do is load a ship with hydrogen bombs and send it at a planet.
So what if another Species is more advanced then us?

Also we cannot measure other species at all. Kindness, anger, love emotions etc. might not even exist to another race. Meaning no friendship. They could also just kill us because we might kill them for the same reasons, the other species is another threat to our ENTIRE species.

Almost none of our conventional weapons would work in the vacuum of space. explosives don't work, neither do conventional projectiles, lasers aren't strong enough for meaningful damage yet, we pretty much have no defense in space. Except for rail-guns, but we don't have anything that is space functional yet.

 

[SilverUchiha]

Honestly, if aliens did come to earth starting trouble, they will have picked the wrong race. We've been coming up with better and more inventive ways of killing stuff ever since we realised that rocks and sticks hurt.

Thats a lot of R&D on how to send aliens away crying to momma.

If they have technology to get to us, when we can't even get to our moon without a lot of hassle, I would have to assume their military-technology is also far above ours too. Just because we're good at killing things doesn't mean we're close to the best... let's just stick to killing each other... and eventually zombies.

 

[RatRace123]

He is right, we don't know what other intelligent life would be like, but despite the risk I think we have to pursue contact. Either we'll find a peaceful people and our society will merge into the overall galactic society. Or we'll find a hostile race, and then we engage in an exciting balls to the wall last defense of humanity.

Both sound appealing to me.

 

[The Singularity]

Crazy guy. Also, good work on putting District 9 there. I bet he made all these conclusions from that film.

HAHAHAHA! Very good sarcasm. Steven Hawking is one of the great genius scientists. Hes going to be remembered along with Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton. So yes your intelligence compared to his is like comparing a normal human to a monkey.
I believe he is correct, we need to avoid showing all our cards to the universe, if anything think of this: Weapons we have can destroy our world, and can travel through space without humans. All we have to do is load a ship with hydrogen bombs and send it at a planet.
So what if another Species is more advanced then us?

Also we cannot measure other species at all. Kindness, anger, love emotions etc. might not even exist to another race. Meaning no friendship. They could also just kill us because we might kill them for the same reasons, the other species is another threat to our ENTIRE species.

Almost none of our conventional weapons would work in the vacuum of space. explosives don't work, neither do conventional projectiles, lasers aren't strong enough for meaningful damage yet, we pretty much have no defense in space. Except for rail-guns, but we don't have anything that is space functional yet.

Sorry, I talked about sending hydrogen bombs to other planets(so they would work in the atmosphere there), in space we are defenseless. But I was just emphasizing that we are dangerous and aliens could be even more dangerous.
*edit* Actually guns and cannons work even better in space.

 

[FBPH]

"You can't stop the signal."
~ Serenity (2005)

It would be impossible at this point, with control over the media's operations divided over many different corporations and governments, for people to cut off the line to ET even if they wanted to.

Hawking may be right that it would be best if we avoided alien life, but even if he is, his suggestion is untenable. It seems typical for a theoretical physicist to expect something mathematically beautiful but sociologically naive like humanity uniting under one banner on any issue not certain to destroy us all.

As long as there is a chance that sentient aliens are friendly, some signals will get out there. Even if some kind of international movement were to spring up in response to Hawking's statement here, I doubt that it would succeed. Signals get as far as Jupiter and even further without us meaning for them to.

To be precise, the signals we actually send to expressly attract aliens are the bare minimum of what goes out there: everything from David Attenborough to hardcore action flicks zooms around the solar system and beyond. Not to mention radio and every other form of wide wave wireless signal. Earth is a boom-box strapped to a beatnik's shoulder on the streets of the universe.

It's true that aliens won't necessarily detect these random signals properly as compared to our specially made science messages, but we can't be sure.

There's a lot of background radiation already floating around in space. Some of that radiation is residual signals from the Big Bang. Any of our signals would be buried within the rest of the CBR (Cosmic Background Radiation). If anyone were to find our signals they would have to be actively looking for it and filtering it out from the CBR. In fact that is exactly what the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) research facility is doing right now.

My point is essentially this: If aliens were to discover our signals, they would have to be actively looking for them. And in order for them to do that, they have to be fortunate enough to receive our signals before they dissipate or are lost in the CBR

 

[lee1287]

Crazy guy. Also, good work on putting District 9 there. I bet he made all these conclusions from that film.

HAHAHAHA! Very good sarcasm. Steven Hawking is one of the great genius scientists. Hes going to be remembered along with Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton. So yes your intelligence compared to his is like comparing a normal human to a monkey.
I believe he is correct, we need to avoid showing all our cards to the universe, if anything think of this: Weapons we have can destroy our world, and can travel through space without humans. All we have to do is load a ship with hydrogen bombs and send it at a planet.
So what if another Species is more advanced then us?

Also we cannot measure other species at all. Kindness, anger, love emotions etc. might not even exist to another race. Meaning no friendship. They could also just kill us because we might kill them for the same reasons, the other species is another threat to our ENTIRE species.

Almost none of our conventional weapons would work in the vacuum of space. explosives don't work, neither do conventional projectiles, lasers aren't strong enough for meaningful damage yet, we pretty much have no defense in space. Except for rail-guns, but we don't have anything that is space functional yet.

What about MW2? did you not see the nuke in space? LOL.

OT; i won't even argue with that guy. Him and Stephen fry are my gods.

 

[stompythebeast]

i was home today and was watching the history channel with my younger sister. The commercial for his discovery channel show came up and my sister said that she thought he was retarded because of his condition. She thought that all the talks about this smartness was people being jerks and being sarcastic. I corrected her mistake and explained to her some of his crazy theories,which clearly went over her diminutive female brain(jest).

Anyway, to be on topic(more) i agree with the man. The only way the aliens wouldnt invade upon contact is if they are devious little shits (like the ones in V) or they are like the prawns (?) in District 9, where they are just starving fugitives.

 

[lijenstina]

Every Discovery's documentary has to mention some kind of doom and catastrophe that is looming over humanity. It's getting old.

 

[Booze Zombie]

Could be, then again, would an alien race even use resources in the same way as us or even need the same resources as us?

Maybe they wouldn't even know the concept of war?
It could be almost anything.