Poll: First Contact - If Intelligent Aliens Arive, Would They Invade?

[IOwnTheSpire]

One of the poll options is weird; invading our planet to save/better us seems contradictory.

 

[rcs619]

This is something that comes to mind to me from time to time. If extraterrestrials discover the Earth, do you think that they'll invade the planet?

Personally I'm rather optimistic on the subject, being of the mind that any species that can make interstellar travel won't really have an intention, or a reason to invade the planet. Partly because there's a chance that they won't been keen on the idea of disrupting a species that's barely space faring. There is also the thought that they'll be advanced enough that they won't need to invade the planet. If they need resources it'd be easier for them to take the materials from asteroids and other planets, probably avoiding human attention entirely. Even a species that travels long distances at speeds slower than light will more than likely have the ability to support themselves, with out need to exploit Earth.

So that brings up the question of first contact, will they come to invade us? I personally think that if an advanced species ever makes contact with us, before we get to any sort of interstellar travel, it'll be for different reasons. For instance humans as we are might be more creative at figuring out uses for technology, so first contact could come because they want us to develop new applications for their technology. It's also possible that some of the things that we've invented are things they haven't, leading them to want to trade technology.

Still we might be the only advanced civilization in our galactic neighborhood, if not the entire galaxy, so it's possible we'll go visit other civilizations before they can reach us. It's also possible we might be the only intelligent life in our area, or galaxy, in which case we'd have pretty much free reign.

So Escapists, what do you think?

If we're assuming that they think in a relatively similar way to us, then no, there really isn't a lot of reasons for them to invade in an ideal universe. Basically any resource you can think of could be found in near-infinite supply around the various stars of our galaxy, and I like to think that the *really* bad species just wind up nuking themselves into oblivion shortly after learning to split the atom (we sure almost did). Short of them just being assholes, or having some sort of religious reason behind it, I don't really see reasonable aliens finding the need to hurt us. It's entirely possible that they could be indifferent to us, but indifference doesn't mean malevolence.

I honestly think that if it ever happens, it will be a complete accident. Our radio transmissions have only expanded out in a 100 lightyear sphere around us so far, and until you get significantly closer even that would be far too disbursed to make much out of. If we're assuming a proper, FTL-capable species, 100 lightyears is nothing. It's entirely possible that they come to Earth for some unrelated reason (maybe they're curious about water-bearing planets too? maybe our orbital characteristics match their goldilocks zone as well) and then they arrive and they're just as shocked as we are about the whole thing.

That situation gets slightly awkward if it was an alien colonization mission. Like, say, they were able to determine Earth had a suitable environment via long-range observation and decided to just... send a colony ship that way (maybe to escape bad things happening on their homeworld? Or just to colonize new worlds because exploring is in their veins too). Still doesn't mean it has to end badly though, assuming they're rational beings.

 

[Cartographer]

Depends on material used. for example Uranium that was used in Chernobyl nuclear plan has a half-life 3.5 billion years. Though yes, pretty much 99.9% of current nuclear weapons would degrade before reaching the target. But one should never forget a dirty bomb.

U-235 (ie the stuff you'd make a weapon from) has a half life of 700 million years. Pu-241 is 24,000 years. Neither is likely to decay any time soon, but taken on an interstellar scale...
The conventional explosives in the warhead would degrade long before it reached it's target. Most ICBMs (Trident, M45, R-29R etc.) were not ever intended to last more than 25 years or so.

OT: No, no alien is ever likely to "invade" earth, there are virtually no reasons for a space-faring race that intended us ill to ever bother dropping down the gravity well to face us. A simple orbital strike across the Middle East, Nigeria and the US and Russian oil fields would utterly cripple us. They'd wait 12 months for our petroleum reserves to run out (in most places it's 3 tops, but 12 is more than long enough for the stored stuff to go off. BTW, in the Walking Dead when they start cars after 1+ years sat in the road, that's some serious bu%&*£%, it's just not happening) before landing a few automated retrieval units to get whatever the hell they wanted and there's absolutely nothing we could do about it.

If you're asking would they "philosophically", the only reasons to bother sending anyone beyond your system have been stated, they're running from something or looking for something they no longer have. In either case, ask yourself, do we bother asking the local wildlife if they'd mind us taking their stuff? No, we ignore it and take what we want, if a wolf, bear, lion etc. objects we shoot it but don't bother to go out of our way to interact with it unless we have to. There is no reason ever to imagine a more advanced species than us would behave any differently. An enlightened species that advanced to interstellar travel through cooperation is so staggeringly far-fetched, it's just simply juvenile fiction to posit its existence (no species we have encountered survives without straining and struggling in competition with its environment and neighbours, no culture we have developed does so either; without that conflict it is frankly impossible to imagine any drive to advance or develop the kind of technology that would propel you from your planet).

So yes, if they wanted what we had, they'd take it. We probably wouldn't get a say in the matter, but we'd probably be left alone while they took it. And, unless a miracle of truly stellar proportions occurred and our atmosphere, ambient temperatures and gravity were exactly (to within a few fractions of a %) right, they'd likely not bother with the expense of colonisation either.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Hard to say given since we don't know if the alien would have a similar intelligence/ approach/ logic/ moral to us humans.

Like imagine if the aliens did arrived but they view our natural resourses are crap compared to their standard however toxic waste are valuable to them?

 

[Bad Jim]

My thought about this has always been that if aliens were ever to reach the technological and social level to be able to space travel, they would have to have ascended all the negative sides to humanity. They must have learned not to war and therefor reached world peace. They must have learned to maintain their own planet and resources. If they are warring and throwing their own planet into the garbage bin like we are doing, they will never EVER have reached the point of intergalactic space travel.

This is, unfortunately, a load of rubbish. If you asked someone in the middle ages, they might well tell you that by the time we learned to fly, walk on the moon, hold conversations with people on the other side of the planet, build computers and robots etc that we would have learned to stop killing each other. This hasn't happened, and there's no reason to think we won't get to space travel and still be killing each other.

It's even worse for aliens, as they may have natural advantages that make space travel easy. They may have less gravity on their home planet, so they can get into space more easily. They may hibernate or have some other means of putting themselves in stasis so they don't need as many supplies.

Also, there is the assumption that super intelligent = pacifist, which isn't really true. Living things exist to spread their genes, and one way to do that is to commit genocide and occupy the freshly unoccupied land. It's not nice, but it is logically consistent with what living things have evolved to do.

 

[dyre]

Nick Bostrom has authored a lot of interesting work on this matter. For my part, I subscribe to the belief that it is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself - there will always be those who try to misuse technology for destruction (whether they be religious fanatics or leaders of nations), and as a species becomes more technologically capable, it becomes ever easier for those individuals to cause destruction on a civilization-ending scale, possibly even by accident when limited conflicts spiral out of control. Any species that survives long enough in the nuclear age to reach the age of interstellar travel must have somehow transcended violence. I think this applies to us as well...this shaky peace maintained by today's world powers, grudgingly cooperating to prevent the further spread of weapons, is inadequate as a long term solution and is unlikely to ensure our survival into the coming centuries.

Therefore, I imagine any species that has survived long enough to develop interstellar travel is probably a great deal more peaceful than our own. During the decades or centuries between the invention of nuclear weapons and the invention of interstellar travel, they would have had the means to easily destroy themselves. And yet their civilization survived through all that time, so assuming that they are a species of autonomous individuals, then they must have embraced peace (not just as a means of shaky co-existence, but as the complete rejection of violence to solve conflicts).

On the other hand, if they are a highly evolved hive-mind species (perhaps a post-singularity artificial intelligence), then the situation is probably different. In fact, by definition of technological singularity, I have no idea and cannot comprehend how such a species would act.

 

[dyre]

My thought about this has always been that if aliens were ever to reach the technological and social level to be able to space travel, they would have to have ascended all the negative sides to humanity. They must have learned not to war and therefor reached world peace. They must have learned to maintain their own planet and resources. If they are warring and throwing their own planet into the garbage bin like we are doing, they will never EVER have reached the point of intergalactic space travel.

This is, unfortunately, a load of rubbish. If you asked someone in the middle ages, they might well tell you that by the time we learned to fly, walk on the moon, hold conversations with people on the other side of the planet, build computers and robots etc that we would have learned to stop killing each other. This hasn't happened, and there's no reason to think we won't get to space travel and still be killing each other.

We've got better toys than we did back in the Middle Ages. If we don't stop killing each other, we'll never reach interstellar travel. You can only play with matches so many times before you get burned, and the way we're headed, even stateless terrorists will have access to a lot more than just matches.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Define "threat", though. People get mauled by bears.

An individual might get mauled by bears, that doesn't really motivate us to go purge the bears from the Earth, at least not anymore. Any extraterrestrial species is going to know this planet is inhabited before they establish a parking orbit, that means they'll be aware of us before we are of them. This easily translates to an idea of any weapon we have, is probably something that's far to primitive for them to consider a real threat.

Depends on material used. for example Uranium that was used in Chernobyl nuclear plan has a half-life 3.5 billion years. Though yes, pretty much 99.9% of current nuclear weapons would degrade before reaching the target. But one should never forget a dirty bomb.

The problem is that long term exposure to deep space would cause any atomic bomb's mechanical detonation method to fail. So the weapon wouldn't survive the trip. There's also no guarantee we could hit an extra-stellar planet anyways because we're just now learning how to spot planets around other stars, we spot where they were in the distant past. We can't even be sure at that point any planets we spot are in the same orbit as they originally were. Again in deep trans-stellar space we'd also have to compensate for the gravity of all near by stars, which isn't something we can quiet do yet.

you dont have to be on same technological level to be a threat. cocroaches can be stamped on easily, but we still consider them a threat when we find one. they may not be able to destroy humans, but they are still a nuisance. as a result, we have invented and used variuos ways of killing them and we keep devising more and more efficient ways to do it. somone else made an allusion to aliens seeing us as "ants". we have killed forests ants so much that they are not considered endangered species. i wouldnt want to be an ant in a human world.

We consider cockroaches and ants to be pests, not actual threats, there's a difference. We only really exterminate such things when they're somewhere we don't want them and it's impossible to eliminate something that's measured in metric tons per acre, because to do so we'd have to seriously damage the environment.

When it comes to technology, we have to be within shouting distance of theirs to be a threat, if they're sufficiently advanced, we could never credibly threaten them. The reason being is that a species traveling interstellar distances would likely be able to smack anything we shoot at them down, or simply block it. Trans-stellar space is a brutal place full of virtually invisible space junk traveling extremely fast, along with being filled with radiation and charged particles from stellar winds. So with just the basic materials necessary to traverse trans-stellar distances, we'd have to have something exceptional for a weapon to threaten them with. That's assuming they're not sending any combat ready ships either, any species even acquainted with actual space combat would simply scoff at our tech level's threat potential.

 

[lacktheknack]

Probably they won't. Humans are a really scary bunch, with all kinds of superpowers that most other creatures (and likely the aliens in question) don't get.

For instance, did you know that humans can pursue prey until it collapses, and a decently fit person will pretty much never reach that stage before whatever they're pursuing does?

Yes, they have superior tech, but invasion still means they come down to Earth - likely in environment suits - and fight us on our turf, which we are adapted to.

 

[springheeljack]

I guess it just depends on how advanced they are.
If they are more advanced than us but not by much then yeah they probably would
If they are too advanced they probably wouldn't bother maybe they would try to help us or study us in some way

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

One of the poll options is weird; invading our planet to save/better us seems contradictory.

Not entirely, any aliens could be dogmatic about something, or want to take control of us because they see value in us, but countered by the possibility that we could kill our selves off. So there might be extraterrestrials that would invade and rules with the idea of it being for our own good.

 

[Pirate Of PC Master race]

Probably not for the resources - if they have approx. light speed traveling tech(if they didn't have it we would've found them) to arrive this desolate waste-solar system they could just extract the things they need from non-living inhibited planets. Hell, we have 7 extra planets in this solar system.(much more if you include moons)

If they DO invade it would be for a our planet - as in, Earth is not too hot nor cold and aliens can't be bothered to find a new planet - assuming that they have similar origin of life as we do.

So out fate falls to their ethics.(or their fate to our ethics) Logically, I would eradicate humans and purge the life out of the Earth for the security reasons and continued survival of my(that is, alien) species. Sentient lifeforms can be difficult to understand/predict and are potential threat - especially after the first contact has been made.

However, those aliens may favor the harmony between two intelligent species - after all, space is big enough for the two ruling races. In this case less advanced one hits the jackpot. Rules the galaxy together etc.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

This question needs a shitload more parameters. Intelligent life... in what way? I've always found it terribly limited imagination to think of "intelligent" aliens as some transcendent, pure beings that can communicate with any lifeforms. I guess the first question is will there be anything on Earth that they would find valuable? If that's the case, are we assuming the aliens have concepts of war and conflict? If so, will they have technology that can compete with ours? Is there anything for them to be gained from conflict with Earth?

It's easier to approach it from this angle: if we suddenly opened a gateway to a parallel dimension which is the exact same as ours, and found a way to access the Earth of that universe, would we (or they) attack? My guess is, unfortunately, yes, they/we would.

 

[Bad Jim]

The problem is that long term exposure to deep space would cause any atomic bomb's mechanical detonation method to fail. So the weapon wouldn't survive the trip. There's also no guarantee we could hit an extraterrestrial planet anyways because we're just now learning how to spot planets around other stars, we spot where they were in the distant past. We can't even be sure at that point any planets we spot are in the same orbit as they originally were. Again in deep trans-stellar space we'd also have to compensate for the gravity of all near by stars, which isn't something we can quiet do yet.

These are mere technical constraints with technical solutions, like having an onboard factory that mixed the chemical explosive on approach, or better AI that can analyse planets as it gets to them and head towards the one with the Klingons on it.

The real issue is that there is no stealth in space against a prepared opponent. Any object will get heated by the stars and planets around it to a temperature substantially hotter than background radiation, and it is impossible to just make this heat disappear. You can make it radiate away from the target planet, but if they have a lot of sensor drones patrolling they will see it coming.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect.php#nostealth

Nuclear missiles will be detected months in advance and almost certainly destroyed by any extraterrestrial power worth worrying about.

 

[BreadGod]

Aliens won't bother to do anything. We're so primitive we're not even worth their time.

 

[CeeBod]

For me "first contact" and exterminate are an either/or proposition. Any alien civilization advanced enough to travel interstellar distances is surely able to do the relatively simple (in comparison to interstellar travel) act of flinging a massive asteroid at any problem planets they encounter - if they want us dead, there is zero reason for them to actually invade. Just fling a few big rocks from the Oort cloud or Kuiper belt, wait a few years until the resulting extreme vulcanism has died down and viola a freshly cleansed planet with none of those problematic aggressive monkeys left to worry about.

 

[Marik2]

Aliens would probably be closer to what these guys are talking about

Spoiler

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Aliens would probably be closer to what these guys are talking about

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I think that Calvin and Hobbes quote is probably the closest to true. Not that we're likely to be particularly horrible life forms, but because we're just not worth bothering with, at least not yet. There is also the possibility that any intelligent extraterrestrials don't want anything to do with us, because of the potential of our hostility. Furthermore there it's always possible that we're still so primitive any extraterrestrial species doesn't consider us intelligent. Aside from the possibility that we're so primitive that dealing with us would be dangerous just on principal.

 

[Something Amyss]

The only model we have to go on is one in which exploration favours colonisation and exploitation. Well, basic survival, too. We can't guarantee that all life in the universe will follow the same model, but it's the only one we have to go on.

 

[dyre]

Aliens would probably be closer to what these guys are talking about

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Spoiler

I think that Calvin and Hobbes quote is probably the closest to true. Not that we're likely to be particularly horrible life forms, but because we're just not worth bothering with, at least not yet. There is also the possibility that any intelligent extraterrestrials don't want anything to do with us, because of the potential of our hostility. Furthermore there it's always possible that we're still so primitive any extraterrestrial species doesn't consider us intelligent. Aside from the possibility that we're so primitive that dealing with us would be dangerous just on principal.

I think we're thinking too small when we imagine aliens investigating planets using actual living explorers. Bostrom posits that von Neumann probes - self replicating spacecraft controlled by an AI program - would be the most likely method, and obviously these drones would be able to cover the galaxy a lot faster than individually manned spacecraft.

Another point of his is that the Milky Way is 13 billion years old...it took ~3.7 billion years to develop from the earliest life to humans, who took 2 million years to evolve from their most primitive form to the space-faring civilizations of today. To us, space travel is cutting edge, but statistically speaking, there should be intelligent alien civilizations with literally billions of years of more advancement, and at the current (slow) pace of advancement of space travel, it should only take several million years to cover the entire galaxy. To think that alien races (with hundreds of millions or billion years of time to advance beyond where we are now) haven't reached Earth yet is actually highly disconcerting. Even if there were economic or cultural obstacles to space exploration, they shouldn't take hundreds of years to overcome.

Bostrom thinks the most likely reason is that there may have been intelligent alien civilizations in the past, but by the time humans evolved, they were already all dead, and we are very much alone. Which means statistically speaking, we probably won't be able to achieve interstellar travel/colonization before we are wiped out by the usual world-ending events, e.g., catastrophic asteroid impact, nuclear war, etc. Either that, or, for whatever reason, interstellar travel is truly impossible to achieve.