Comments on: Be vewwwwy vewwwwy quiet….

By: Aliens Found! News At 11 « In Other Words

Aliens Found! News At 11 « In Other Words — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 21:07:26 +0000

[...] Found! News At 11 From Cosmic Variance: I have no independent knowledge of the veracity of this report, but a local TV station in the Bay [...]

By: Lawrence B. Crowell

Lawrence B. Crowell — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 14:54:08 +0000

I think that humans will do a perfectly good job of annihilating themselves. Ponder that we have today politicos who advocate starting world war III to bring Jesus back. That will be something really special, particularly if or when it goes nuclear. Our species is essentially engineering the next mass extinction. Life on the planet will survive, and within a few million years evolution will have replaced econiches with new species. We will be fossilizing, or some of our more durable objects will be around for a long time. In particular ceramics, with one big item we make which might exist for many hundreds of millions of years, the toilet.

Lawrence B. Crowell

By: Andre

Andre — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 18:03:59 +0000

Given the content of the radio and television broadcasts from earth over the course of the past century, any eavesdropping ET civilization would be more than justified in concluding that earth should be rid of its human presence as soon as possible, before humans have the technological ability to escape and do the same to possible other life-bearing places in our vicinity that we have been doing both to ourselves and to other lifeforms on this planet. In fact, there is a good argument that earth would be better rid of our presence even if we do not travel.

By: Lawrence B. Crowell

Lawrence B. Crowell — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 13:23:27 +0000

Ultimately the problem with the Science Fiction idea of some beings or madman trying to conquer the universe is that there is really nothing to conquer.

Human activity on Earth might be detectable “out there.” Some SETI types arrgue that EM transmissions will travel out and be detectable. We will never know if Sagan’s Cosmic Connection exists or not unless we look. Even still we might facilitate it if we transmit information ourselves, or erect AC Clarke’s Sentinel or Monolith on moons in extra-solar systems so that maybe in the distant future ETI will find our announcement to the universe and what we know about it. Sagan’s cosmic connection might just amount to distant ETI’s sending bits of information here and there, receiving some in return and each ETI might end up as a rather transient actor in the web.

Lawrence B. Crowell

By: Hal S

Hal S — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:01:08 +0000

maybe we should be hurtling dead cows in space, to the far reaches of the cosmos…the interstellar dead cow network…what’s the decay rate of a dead cow in space? LOL

By: Hal S

Hal S — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 11:57:53 +0000

Martin 82

Maybe Tesla inadvertantly killed cows on ET’s home world and in a case of tit-for-tat are doing the same thing to us…or maybe they think that’s how our civilization communicates…with dead cows lol

By: Hal S

Hal S — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 11:51:05 +0000

Windy 79, Lawrence 80

Lawrence has an excellent point here which can be extended to point out that any civilization that has access and control of the levels of energy needed to conquer space would likely view the resources of Earth as miniscule…a speck of dust.

By: martin g

martin g — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 08:08:07 +0000

Reading about Tesla’s attempts to broadcast usable electric power through the atmosphere from his Colorado lab I wondered if the high power/high frequency broadcasts that he created would be detectable to an ETI. That was a little over a hundred years ago and the broadcasts were just raw energy, but they were artificial and apparently very powerful (able to kill cows at a considerable distance). Should we be looking for a reply? Should we be looking for another Tesla out there doing crazy dangerous experiments trying to see how much he/she/it can get out of there primitive electromagnetic apparatus?

Another thing: Dead cows, Colorado, ET. Think about it.

By: Lawrence B. Crowell

Lawrence B. Crowell — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 02:28:22 +0000

Quick note about

windy on Jan 22nd, 2008 at 8:38 pm

-one of the less advanced cultures uses tech/contacts from the more advanced culture against its neigbours (this has historically been a major danger and could be still, but it’s one that humans would control themselves!)

——————

Before the Iraq invasion I thought about a Sci Fi story where Saddam got interstellar military technology from some ET. The USA starts its war and within a day the entire US military is destroyed and the Iraqi flag is flying over Capital hill.

Lawrence B. Crowell

By: Lawrence B. Crowell

Lawrence B. Crowell — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 02:22:54 +0000

I would not worry about cosmic imperialism. Seriously ETIs are not going to use vast sums of energy to send themselves here so they can use our puny muscle power as slaves. They might come here in order to use the planet for themselves, where we’d be swatted away. But then again can they really get here? Interstellar space is vast, even if it is a little bubble region compared to cosmological distances. A light year is about 10^{13}km, the solar system extends out about 3×10^9 km, the moon is about 5×10^5 km from the Earth. It takes years to travel these distances. Even if ETI used relativistic time dilation to reduce their trip time that would take vast amounts of energy. To cut the trip time in half requires the spaceship have as much mass equivalent in its kinetic energy of motion as the mass of the ship. Then use E = mc^2 to figure out how much energy that is. This might be possible with a modest probe, but is problematic for a 10,000 ton spaceship.

I’d say that we might consider instead of “hiding this little light of mine,” that we let it shine. We might consider instead sending out powerful signals directed at G-class stars announcing ourselves and revealing what we have discovered. Maybe some ETI will get our signal 2000 years from now and be grateful for being able to compare their ideas about the universe with ours. As I have written a book about sending probes to other stars I think that something similar to AC Clarke’s monolith should be send along as well. The probe craft might set up a durable structure that contains information about ourselves and what we have learned. In particular this would be done if the probe explores a bio-active planet. Maybe millions of years in the future some ETI might evolve and they discover this thing and learn about us and our science.

The Fermi paradox does indicate that actual travel between stars is unlikely. Under the exceedingly small probability they come here they probably would be no threat. After all, if the Apollo astronauts were greated by a tribe of angry stone aged “fuzzy-wussies” they would have been in big trouble. So we can play the turtle and pull into our shell, or we can come out and be seen. If we get an ET message they might do much the same.

Lawrence B. Crowell