Space now terrifies me

[Frankster]

More terrifying then aliens our size, what I fear most is "monster of the deep" type scenarios, just like there are potentially massive creatures lurking in the depth of our seas (giant squids are best example, apparently we only found baby ones and they are already the size of buses D, so there might be gigantic (relative to our size) entities who would barely register our spacefaring vessels as more then insects to be consumed for a quick snack (or just ignore us completely, whether they are hostile or not matters little to me).

Kinda like how in the olden times seafaring vessels used to be scared of encountering giant creatures that would sink the boat, that would be my personal fear when traveling into space, crusing along and mapping a new area of space only to realize that the disturbance/absense of reading in a sector of space isn't an anomaly, but a living entity.

 

[BoredDragon]

I'm sorry but I must post this

 

[Yokai]

Azathoth. Need I say more?

Really though, I think running into aliens would be awesome, even if they tried to bite my head off. I'd much prefer to exist in a universe with aliens trying to kill us than be all alone in this endless void...

 

[kingpocky]

If aliens need resources, there are plenty of places they could get them elsewhere, there's nothing special about earth.

If aliens ever make hostile contact with earth, there is one realistic way for things to turn out. They'll annihilate us before we even see them coming. If they have the technology to get across space without taking millions of years, they can smash our planet into oblivion with the push of a button. Anything going at around 86% of lightspeed packs as much energy as its own weight in antimatter. A ship the size of one of our airplanes going at relativistic velocities would wipe out all life on the planet

 

[Heathrow]

Resources are not abundant in the galaxy when you stop to consider the distance between them and how many resources you'd have to burn up just to travel anywhere. I agree with Hawking who said that any intelligence that gets here has put huge amounts of resource into the trip, and even if they are just stopping by to say hello, would at the very least still need to top off their tank.

And how do you know a fascist society couldn't become advanced? The Nazis created jet propulsion, fer crissakes.

With all due respect to Mr Hawking, he is a physicist; alien life is not necessarily his area of expertise.

Something less certain than alien biology is alien technology. We can barely even begin to make assumptions about how alien species might travel the universe because we have no idea what's practicable ourselves. We can be reasonably well assured that any practical alien (and that includes the hot headed ones) will have their fuel sorted out before they leave. And if that includes a fuel stop in our neck of the woods then I can't think of any element from Earth that couldn't be got easier someplace else in the solar system.

As to fascism. Fascism is an unstable societal state, because it inherently creates groups of people who are dissatisfied. Interstellar travel will likely require the resources of an entire planet so until whatever civil disputes a species might have are resolved then it's highly unlikely that they'll be exploring the universe. This obviously doesn't apply to only fascistic cultures.

 

[Tiger Sora]

Hollywood has put the image that aliens are out for our brains or resources. Which if they exist is stupid. Any race smart enough for intergalactic travel has obviously no need to do anything evil.
And enslaving is out too cause hey robots man.
So if anything they'd teach us, and befriend us.

 

[Hawk of Battle]

I would just like to post this;

So you can all sleep soundly tonight...

 

[James Joseph Emerald]

As long as there's not Goblin sharks in space, it's a damn sight better than Earth.

I just looked that up, and I have to say... WHAT THE FUCK?

Spoiler: the sea is way scarier than space

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Hollywood has put the image that aliens are out for our brains or resources. Which if they exist is stupid. Any race smart enough for intergalactic travel has obviously no need to do anything evil.
And enslaving is out too cause hey robots man.
So if anything they'd teach us, and befriend us.

Don't get me wrong, when we do make first contact, I want it to be with the peaceful, non-human eviserating type of alien.


It's just fun to think of stuff that could kill us.

 

[Popido]

Implausible? How so? There's too much space out there for there not to be intelligent life. What's to say this life isn't the spacefaring fuck up your entire day kind?

What evolutionary imperative promotes the annihilation of random species you know nothing about? You wouldn't eat them, their biology would likely be toxic to you. You wouldn't destroy them for their resources, resources are too abundant in this universe to waste time squabbling over. If the aliens are xenophobic it's much easier to avoid us. If they subscribe to a fascist superiority of their species then they aren't advanced enough to be space faring.

More to the point violent and warlike species will probably blow themselves up long before alien races get the chance.

You're judging evolution by the way it works on this planet.

It could just as easily be something completely different in another part of the galaxy.

Like gravity. And the speed of light.

Its still going to be pretty much the same shit where ever you go.

The worst thing we could possibly find in space is religion.

 

[Dark Prophet]

I'd prefere the alians to be like the ones from the novel "Roadside Picnic" rather the ones from novel "The Andromeda Strain" or the 1996 movie "Independence Day".

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Implausible? How so? There's too much space out there for there not to be intelligent life. What's to say this life isn't the spacefaring fuck up your entire day kind?

What evolutionary imperative promotes the annihilation of random species you know nothing about? You wouldn't eat them, their biology would likely be toxic to you. You wouldn't destroy them for their resources, resources are too abundant in this universe to waste time squabbling over. If the aliens are xenophobic it's much easier to avoid us. If they subscribe to a fascist superiority of their species then they aren't advanced enough to be space faring.

More to the point violent and warlike species will probably blow themselves up long before alien races get the chance.

You're judging evolution by the way it works on this planet.

It could just as easily be something completely different in another part of the galaxy.

Like gravity. And the speed of light.

Its still going to be pretty much the same shit where ever you go.

Everything you knew about physics goes out of the window. The life that is produced after one of these things, would probably be so different that we couldn't comprehend it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum#Vacuum_metastability_event

 

[kingpocky]

However, it might be possible that any alien species would want to destroy us - not because they want our resources or slaves or because they're evil - but because they're scared and care about their own survival. If it's possible for them to wipe us out, then for all they know, we might have the same technology. Many humans are still willing to wipe out other members of our own species just because of minor cultural or genetic differences, is it so hard to believe that we would be willing to destroy something completely alien? Look up "The prisoner's dilemma", in situations where the game is only played once, it doesn't end well if the players are rational. Societies don't get ahead by being self-sacrificing either.

There is, however, one reason it might not be a good idea to destroy other planets - if there are at least two intelligent civilizations in the galaxy, there are probably more out there somewhere. A third civilization would be able to see what happened, and trace it back to the planet it came from, and hardly anyone could blame them for delivering justice.

 

[Popido]

Implausible? How so? There's too much space out there for there not to be intelligent life. What's to say this life isn't the spacefaring fuck up your entire day kind?

What evolutionary imperative promotes the annihilation of random species you know nothing about? You wouldn't eat them, their biology would likely be toxic to you. You wouldn't destroy them for their resources, resources are too abundant in this universe to waste time squabbling over. If the aliens are xenophobic it's much easier to avoid us. If they subscribe to a fascist superiority of their species then they aren't advanced enough to be space faring.

More to the point violent and warlike species will probably blow themselves up long before alien races get the chance.

You're judging evolution by the way it works on this planet.

It could just as easily be something completely different in another part of the galaxy.

Like gravity. And the speed of light.

Its still going to be pretty much the same shit where ever you go.

Everything you knew about physics goes out of the window.

May God help us!

But then this is a pretty silly thing to be worried about. The spaceships hold up by science would magically turn into marshmallows and cupcakes when entering a new zone of scientific laws.

 

[Traun]

You are scared of the things in space? Really? Here's some example of what we have down on Earh:

The brain can provide a pleasant, nurturing environment for parasites, because it has structures that prevent many of the immune system?s cells from entering, at least in the early stages of infection. Add to that plenty of oxygen and nutrients, and the brain seems like a rather nice place to live.

- http://eands.caltech.edu/articles/LXVI4/brainworms.html

 

[Alphakirby]

I think this is relevant.

EDIT:

I'm sorry but I must post this

Damn ninjas...

 

[Agayek]

What evolutionary imperative promotes the annihilation of random species you know nothing about? You wouldn't eat them, their biology would likely be toxic to you. You wouldn't destroy them for their resources, resources are too abundant in this universe to waste time squabbling over. If the aliens are xenophobic it's much easier to avoid us. If they subscribe to a fascist superiority of their species then they aren't advanced enough to be space faring.

More to the point violent and warlike species will probably blow themselves up long before alien races get the chance.

I shall point to you the several centuries of human colonization, butchery and enslavement of foreign peoples. The principle is exactly the same. Why would you go across the ocean, murder everyone there that didn't give you what you wanted, then enslave the rest and come back home?

There is a logical flaw in this argument, in that aliens are just that, and we cannot therefore properly apply human reasoning to their behavior. Without any other metric though, being hostile and violent to outsiders is a perfectly acceptable conclusion to reach regarding extraterrestrials.

Also, resources that are right here are infinitely more valuable than resources on the other side of the universe. That's plenty of reason for an alien fleet in the Solar system to murder all of humanity.

 

[Internet Kraken]

then you have no imagination and are boring. lame answer. 'nuff said.

Tell that to all the scientists and great thinkers who spend their days trying to come up with theories of what alien life will actually be like when we finally do meet it. I find your shallow mind to be, as you say, "lame".

Notice how your acting superior about something you don't understand. Nobody knows what alien life would be like. We can make, at best, educated guesses about how species would have evolved on other planets. We have no clue about what an intelligent, space-faring species would be like since we have not even reached that level yet. Think about how many different environments there are on earth and how much diversity we see here. Think about what a species could be like if genetic modifications were incredibly common and they had altered themselves to the point where they did not even resemble there original form. Then you need to take into consideration what impact their technology may have had on society.

When you make all of this into consideration, I find you saying something like this;

I find terrifying aliens to be implausible and therefore not compelling. I prefer to think about what aliens might actually be like.

to be laughably absurd.

OT: I find space to be terrifying, but not because of aliens. Frankly I have no idea what another intelligent species would be like. The fear from the scenarios you depicted in the OP don't really stem from the conflict being in space anyways. What I find to be terrifying about space is how empty it is. Think about how freaky isolation can be here on Earth. Now imagine you are in space. You are alone, with nothing around for an incomprehensible amount of distance. You are but a tiny blip in an enormous expanse. A thousand species could comb through space for a thousand years and never even come close to locating you. To be lost in space would mean you are lost forever.

That terrifies me.

More terrifying then aliens our size, what I fear most is "monster of the deep" type scenarios, just like there are potentially massive creatures lurking in the depth of our seas (giant squids are best example, apparently we only found baby ones and they are already the size of buses D, so there might be gigantic (relative to our size) entities who would barely register our spacefaring vessels as more then insects to be consumed for a quick snack (or just ignore us completely, whether they are hostile or not matters little to me).

Kinda like how in the olden times seafaring vessels used to be scared of encountering giant creatures that would sink the boat, that would be my personal fear when traveling into space, crusing along and mapping a new area of space only to realize that the disturbance/absense of reading in a sector of space isn't an anomaly, but a living entity.

That's a pretty big exaggeration. The largest species of squid is not the giant squid, but rather the colossal squid. While scientists still know little about this species, from what has been deduced from pieces of corpses and the few live specimen found have not been as big as bus, and these were mature adults. Though that's not to say there might not be huge creature lurking in the deep. There's a tendency for many species to grow incredibly large compared to their cousins higher up, and with how little we have explored of the deep it's hard to know what might be down there.

Though I don't think you need to worry about something coming up from the deep and killing you. Most creatures down there would die shortly after being brought to the surface.

 

[Agayek]

And there you go. Another part of the galaxy. If even that. Could be another one in our local group, or one much farther out than that. Point is, space is big. Monstrously fucking huge, and the whole speed of light velocity limit means travelling to even the closest planet with intelligent life, unless it's in your solar system, won't be worth the resources, if it's even feasable at all.

The nearest galaxy to us is 2.5 million light years away. Anyone viewing earth from there, with even the most technologically advanced equipment, won't see any evidence of human life for another 2.4 million years.

There actually isn't a limit on velocity. We can travel as fast as we want to. The problem is accelerating enough to reach that speed.

We're actually not that far from effective FTL travel, to be honest. It's not going to happen in my lifetime, and likely not in that of my children, but it will be coming soon enough. What we need to figure out is the fundamentals of gravity (ie, how and why it functions). Once we do that, we'll know how to manipulate space-time and can basically teleport ourselves anywhere we want.

 

[Internet Kraken]

-snip-

No it's not relevant. Stop driving that joke into the ground.