So what would really happen if aliens did make contact?

[spaceboy]

There is a lot of reference to sex in that post AstroBABE :D:D

[Demonperformer]

There is of course the obvious problem here, we can not even recognize that we have other intelligent life on our own planet. The rest of it just gets on with the life it has and doesn't need the whole escapism part.. What would a crocodile want with a BMW and a TV, they've been doing fine for a few million years.

"On planet earth man had always considered himself to be more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much: the wheel, New York, wars, and so on, while all the dolphins ever achieved was splashing about in the oceans having a good time. Curiously, the dolphins had always considered themselves to be more intelligent than man for precisely the same reason."

[Douglas Adams]

[Macavity]

"On our planet we have 15 sexes... By the time they've all got together

half of them have lost interest". - From 'Round the Horn (perhaps)?

[Specman]

Well I posted a fantasticly detailed post on this last night (took me hours) but SGL lost it before it got posted. Made me log in again then hours of work gone

So here is a brief summary of my post

Anybody seen the History Channel program, Ancient Aliens? It’s thought provoking!

Ancient Aliens: The Evidence (Season 1: Episode 1/5) - YouTube

Here’s a wiki link on it

Ancient Aliens - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There is evidence in Egyptian monuments and carvings that is compelling, can we really believe that thousands if not millions of tons of stone, some weighing 200 tons were moved purely by men and cut and carved with a precision that modern tools would struggle with. Maybe, maybe not!

Ancient Aliens: The Evidence (Season 1: Episode 1/5) - YouTube

Then there is Tiwanaku in South America, 12,500 metres above sea level you couldn’t grow enough food to sustain the thousands of people you would need to move stones to that altitude and build monuments, some as heavy as 400 tons!

Tiwanaku - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Then there is the Nazca lines, only visble from the air, huge carvings and “runways”

UFO Files - Ancient Aliens

Why would ancient people go to so much effort if it is only visible from the air?

World Mysteries - Mystic Places - Nazca (Nasca) Lines

Many ancient cultures have documented in some way, gods coming from the skies

The following text is from Above TopSecret website, link at the end

“The Chinese believe that their first emperor descended from the skies. There it said that the “Gods” came out of the belly of flying Dragons. Contrary to the popular notion of the Dragons themselves being deities to worship, these references clearly implied that they are only vehicles. The image of fire-spitting, flying dragons landing and “Gods” getting out of their “belly” comes up again and again throughout Chinese Mythology. This is how our ancestors would most likely describe air- and spacecraft if they had no word for or concept of them.

Was the first Chinese Emperor an Extraterrestrial?

Huang-Di (2697-2598 B.C.) or “The Yellow Emperor” is considered to be the first emperor of China and the ancestor of all Chinese.

Chinese scholars have always argued whether Huang-Di was “real” or “mythical”. Depending on the source you can either read that he was a god-king, a mythical-king, a real king, a god-like-king, a “son of the heavens” or a half-god. I would like to suggest that the solution may lie somewhere in between: He was real but not human. We know from other ancient cultures and especially from ancient Egypt that those kings and rules that descended from the skies were referred to as “Gods” and their offspring (from relations to humans) as “half-gods”. Chinese accounts are no different in this respect.

According to legend, before Huang-Di was born there was “a radiance from the great star Chi and the Dipper Constellation (Ursa Major). His conception was marked by a “thunderclap on a clear day in the skies”. Huang-Di then begins his unification of China and is also credited with being a culture-hero, having brought traditional Chinese Medicine (including acupuncture) to the country. His wife taught the Chinese how to make silk. (this is consistent other ancient legends that also attributes a woman “who came from the skies” to have taught silk manufacture. More on this later).

He was said to live in the Kunlun-Mountains which are in the heart of Tibet. After he lived and ruled for over 100 years he is said to have prepared his “return to the skies”. Then a metallic Dragon “descended from the sky and took Huang-Di away”. Some sources say that he did not die then but lived another 200 years in the Syuan Yuan stars (the Leo Constellation).

Huang-Di is also said to have authored a book called “Bai Ze Tu” which describes 11520 types of “shapeshifters, monsters, spirits, beings” in the Universe. This book is considered lost. A book of his that was not lost is titled “Handbook on Sex” and is probably the oldest known book on Sex known to us. Some sources also cite Huang-Di as having instructed Lao Tzu…the originator of Taoism.

Aliens of Ancient China, page 1

Finally, look in Google images for anciet aliens.

ancient aliens - Google Search

Some facinating ancient carvings of beings decending from the skies. And Egyptian carvings of 'Space Men'!

ancient%20aliens2[1].jpg

You can't deny the solid, physical archiology is incredible. If there is no truth in it, why would ancient civilizations be so compelled to document it.

I have an open mind on the subject, I leave it to you to separate the wheat from the chaff.

[Thirdway]

It's a 2D view. Principally everything we experience externally is alien. It's of the same thinking as Icarus, or building a ladder to the Moon, in that it seems entirely plausible, yet, a few centuries on, the reality is so vastly different. We shrink distance with radio, travelling faster than we could ever do with a spaceship. These are leaps, we try and go faster on the ground only to find that we can fly, we try and fly faster only to find that we can span the distance faster by telephone. It's impossible to conceive much beyond a narrow horizon because even a short distance in the future completely alters the perspective. What looked like a small grey smudge is now a mountain. What looked like a massive mountain is now an infinitesimally small pin ***** in the infinite cosmos.

[ollypenrice]

Highly intelligent vegetables might well be carnivorous. Uh oh.

Olly

[SamAndrew]

Our technology/society has advanced so much in the last few hundered years, think how much more advanced the aliens will be if they are 1000 years more advanced? or 100,000 years ? 1 million years ? 1 billion years ?

I imagin we will just be another species they will catalogue and study (we can assume that life is fairly common if two races are to encounter each other given the size of the universe) and that they may make contact as part of this study (just like we make contact with the wildlife we study) but to them, comunicating with us would be like having a conversation with a rabbit.

[assasincz]

Apart from the fact that we are not listening to the outer space for a long time, the communication silence up to now might prove several things: Fermi was right, Drake was wrong, and Einstein was a party pooper

[titan79]

The problem for man kind is human thought is thousands of years ahead of human science, maybe even on the other side of our milky way there is more planets like ours but seeing as we can only just see ones that are fairly close and the fact we will struggle to get anywhere near even these star systems then maybe we should give up these silly wars and spend our money on something that will change the world !

[Thirdway]

Greed drives wars and war drives technological development.

The second world war really accelerated things, computers, jet engines, rockets, nuclear power, surgical techniques, not to mention optics technology, positioning systems, chemical etc.

Looking back, virtually everything we rely on today was created during the war. Although the designs have been improved, all most beyond recognition, the original foundations had been laid. Without German rocket design we would not have travelled into space, without the war I'm not certain we would have seen a need for designing something which would appear to have no direct commercial gains beyond the use as a missile. Even the space race was part of the cold war with Russia, miniaturisation and reliability of components resulted in a plethora of computers we now see embedded in everything from toasters to mobile phones.

[Macavity]

And then there's "Philosophy"? It would seem quite HARD to disprove the (traditional?) idea that we are not living in some more-advanced (human / alien) computer simulation of reality... That said, I've never managed to sit through (repeated) TV showings of "The Matrix" without falling asleep...

[MrTreyLynch]

Aw and this is why I am going to school for astrobiology

[Thirdway]

And then there's "Philosophy"? It would seem quite HARD to disprove the (traditional?) idea that we are not living in some more-advanced (human / alien) computer simulation of reality... That said, I've never managed to sit through (repeated) TV showings of "The Matrix" without falling asleep...

You don't need to be in someone else's simulation, we are all doing very well with our own individual illusion of reality. A quick way to blow your mind is to practice a bit of self inquiry and work on removing duality. Very funky and is guaranteed to give weird dreams at the least.

http://www.non-dualitypress.com/sample/The%20Direct%20Path_Greg%20Goode_Sample.pdf

[ollypenrice]

I'd like to push my question about technology and intelligence again. Just because our intelligence has led us to become technological does not mean that all intelligences have to develop in that way. It happens that on Earth the selection pressures favour (in the short term!) creatures who become technological. Now while I expect (but cannot be certain) that evolution by natural selection will be widespread I cannot be sure that it is the only evolutionary channel to be found eleswhere. Nor can I be certain that selection pressures will favour technology. A superior intelligence might never have felt the need for it. Pure thought might be more powerful.

Alien visitors in the past? More arrogance on our part, I think. Just because we don't know how to move large stones without cranes does not mean that our forbears didn't.

Olly

[symesie04]

Yes fair point Olly. However one flaw in that the title of the thread is "So what would really happen if aliens did make contact?" which by my book would indicate they are contacting us. If so then they would of undoubtedly achieved a very high technological standard (at least far superior to ours). This in tern would indicate evolution is indeed a factor on their world and like our own favours intelligence.

[ollypenrice]

...or could they attempt to make contact by means of pure thought? There is much of the brain that we don't understand. There may be missing physics preventing us from understanding it. However, I agree that communication implies technology and take your point about the thread title.

Olly

[Cath]

maybe we should give up these silly wars and spend our money on something that will change the world !

Now theirs a novel idea!

I'm with you with that way of thought Titan, but it seems 90% of em out there have other ideas

[ollypenrice]

My favourite bit of satire on the nature of war comes in Catch 22 when the wheeler-dealing USAF quartermaster, Milo Minderbinder, does a deal with the Germans to bomb his own air base for the cost of the operation plus ten percent. Funny and profound, I think.

Olly

[Cath]

Highly intelligent vegetables might well be carnivorous. Uh oh.

Olly

All the more reason to eat ur veggies! .. before they eat you

[jfox61]

Well first off the neo cons and so forth would demand they be not allowed to claim benefits and questions would be asked about whether to deprt them back to their point of origin. It would all take months of course and the ECHR would have to rule on whether sending them back was humane etc etc.

In the interim they would start setting up their own restuarants I expect. Vegan take away perhaps .....come to think of it Vegan....they are already here I wondered why veggies always look so pasty and seldom seem very human. That Hitler bloke was a vegetarian.....ahhhhhhhhhh it all makes sense now.

Anyway first generation would set up restuarants and be model citizens. Taking on all the jobs others dont want. Later on second generation would start an Alien religion and become all fundamental or possibly laze around claiming benefits. There would be calls for deportation and so forth. Chavs would go on TV to say how aliens had stolen their jobs. Jeremy Kyle would have a new class of people to be on the show so chavs might even lose the Kyle show as a source of income.

Thered be issues of mixed marriages.....no daughter of mine is going to marry a blob of slime. We'd have to think up insulting names to call them I suppose. Like Bug Eyes or Slimeballs or something.

Dawkins would see it as final proof the is no God and then the Aliens would turn out to have theor own religion and who knows maybe have proof there is a God. Wouldnt that be fun ?

The red top papers would run daily horror stories, An Alien Ate my Poodle, Alien in Sex Swap Scam etc etc. plus the kiss and tells My Nights of Sex with an Insectoid from Betelgeuse 5.

In the end it would all settle down until the next species arrives when we could run through the whole saga all over again.

You've been watching Eastenders again haven't you?

[phat tony]

who knows what would happen, i just hope they are nothing like us. when i think of the human race having the power to travel freely around the universe i am left thinking about the Borg and resistance is futile. if we find a planet with what we see as a lesser or less advanced life form, we will take their planet and eat them if they taste nice hahahaha. we are effected by space and deep space in a bad way, i mean its not good for us. we dont know how other life forms from deep space are effected by space or deep space maybe they need all that radiation and stuff to live. we need crafts and protection but maybe they don't. they might have left their planet thousands of years ago and are swimming trough space looking for adventure. silly but why not. they might be as smart as a plant or bug (star ship troopers)hehehe.

[rfdesigner]

Looking at other life forms on our planet, most do not naturally equalize. They spread as far as they can, mice, locusts, rabbits all have become plagues. If you go to a little island off the coast of (I think) madagasca, there is a population of lizards that are found no where else on earth, so they're an endangered species, but on that one tiny island, they're virtually a plague, you have to be careful when eating your lunch in case one of the little blighters has snuck in and stared eating the filling first.

Point is life spreads.. as far as it can, until it gets eaten, starves or dies of old age.

No the reason we havn't been invaded is: BBC News - Super-Earths 'in the billions'

Why invade another planet and get the local population giving you such a hard time when you can have your own planet all to yourself.

Possibly they've also seen War of the Worlds

Derek

[Ganymede12]

They may annihilate the earth just to make way for an interstellar bypass!

[richbyers]

the real question is not what would they do, but what would the public do? would there be wars between those groups of strong non-believers whose lives run on religion that ETs would completely mess up? i mean its sort of a party stopper for those people who have beliefs that strongly rule out other life

so yeah.....my worry is how humanity will handle it

[Mike Hackenbacker]

the way i see it is that whoever they are,they came saw and turned back in disgust,why well if they did land how would we greet them? with open arms or fear and suspision?.unfortunately when it comes to destroying there is none beter than us (apart from the daleks),our greatest achievement landing on the moon some want to riddicule and call it fake,most of our achievements have come from war,but why did it take war for those scientific and medical breakthroughs?.we have to evolve and learn to understand that there are things in this universe that we humans have not grown up enough to unlock thier secrets,because what would we do with such power?.untill we can handle that power without trying to kill eachother with it,if you look just left of pluto you will see a detour sign,waving ships past,saying nothing to see here move along.come back in ten thousand years or so..