1. Most exciting news in recent memory.
CNN had a bit on how NASA has - or has possibly - found liquid water just below the surface of Mars.
Scientists say that Mars is now thought to have had (IIRC even surface) water for much longer than we knew and -(I think) that it was to have had this surface water until more recently than was thought before. <- Increased length of time means more time for life to have had a chance to evolve there. :Woo:
One of the conjectures by scientists may prove to be true: bacterial ancestors from Mars may have hitched a ride here on space debris, and landed on Earth and colonised earth, possibly early on, and been among the first earthlings. And if they didn't seed the planet with the bacterial life that existed back then, they could still have co-evolved with the native bacteria on our planet. The (A)AIT - (Actual) Alien Invasion Theory - could be true! Who knew.
Still a bit worried. Two words have sprung to mind again: "Martian Chronicles" and "Bradbury". ("But that's three words". OK, now's not the time to get all mathematical.) Hope we don't accidentally wipe them out or something... 'Cause you never know with earthlings.
If we can find some space bacteria, we can bring back some cultures to earth and then sequence their genes. We could see if there are any genetic sequences shared with "earthlings". And if there are ....
core: -> long lost relatives.
Oh, for some space bacterial cousins. It could prove so much. Not only that we'll have neighbours at last. But also proof of the existence of many more neighbours out there (and making the case for other "intelligent" life like our own out there more likely).
2. There is another disturbing thing, besides Ray Bradbury's light fiction about humans accidentally wiping out Martian life. Way too many scientists have come out in just the year issuing dreary repetitive warnings about making contact. Apparently METI (sp?) - a.o.t. SETI (which only searches for intelligent alien life) - has been hoping to send "we're out here" messages in the direction of the increasing number of planets that are being found within the habitable zones (i.e. planets where life as we know it could exist). After Hawking's reluctance several years back to try to make alien contact, suddenly many scientists appeared on record far more recently repeating his arguments and discouraging METI and other endeavours from trying to actively contact intelligent alien life forms.
Sagan was right that intelligent life that's lasted sufficiently long need not necessarily be destructive: that they must have survived their own self-destructive phase and that means they might not be destructive towards others. (This view of Sagan was even summarised in the film Contact based on his book of that name.)
I don't want us to infect aliens with our mindviruses. But if they were to genocide humanity - including memorable ISIS/islamania, AmeriKKKa and christowest in general - that means the latter at least can't continue cannibalising the live body of everyone else. From the heathen POV, is extra-terrestrial alien devastation of heathenism that much worse than christoislamic/native alien devastation of heathenism? Surely there's no difference. But the first may be indiscriminate and hence offers the possibility of revenge, which the latter does not.
So, if any intelligent aliens needed earthly collaborators to bring down the earthly powers that be - christowest, US in particular - I'd sign up to sell the latter off without a second thought, whatever the consequences. First of all I have no solidarity with "all humans" and revenge is like the best invention since sliced bread. And if aliens go on a weedkilling rampage on Earth that accidentally avenges the native Americans, Africans, Asians and other dead heathens, will I *really* be sorry. Payback, after all, is totally worth it (SAAB's McQueen's quote on payback is from the victim's POV).
Light-hearted what-ifs aside, I really wonder why some scientists have been coming out in force, issuing statements to the press about why they don't want us to contact intelligent alien life forms out there. Clearly they all know that there is a reasonable chance of intelligent life. But the standard position of scientists is that intelligent aliens would not have harmful intentions. So why the sudden change of heart? It is everyone else who always predicts doom and gloom - the US military but also hollywood cinema (is that conditioning?) - not actual scientists.
And the other question is, there's a flaw in Hawking's argument - and hence in the arguments of other scientists seen discouraging alien contact more recently, as they're essentially parroting Hawking's alarmist projections, but offer no independent reasoning of their own. First, to reprise Hawking's position: aliens may want our resources or something and think we stand in their way.
The flaw in this thinking was already remarked upon by others: that any intelligent life that can come all the way to Earth from wherever they are, surely have the tech necessary to convert whatever space debris and resources out there to fuel their society/civilisation and hardly need the "resources" of planet Earth. Which resources are NOT unique (the same elements of the periodic table are found throughout the universe, and can hardly be magically more abundant on Earth than in every Nth planet in every Nth solar system. That is, at worst, there may be some scale of zooming out at our galaxy/universe at which we could see similar distributions of the same "wealth of resources" as seen on our planet.)
Again: An intelligent tech civilisation that can travel such great distances as to come all the way to earth to wipe us out, would have long ago been able to extract resources from various sources without having to set out to destroy other life as a deliberate "side-effect".
I seriously doubt they'd want to destroy life for the sake of destroying life. That's also something only hollywho can devise.
And fears of "enslavement" - another hollywho trope - can't be it either: tech civilisations can surely manufacture their own AI or lower-scale robotics to do their work.
If they want to recruit us as a tributary - voluntary or no - in their galactic empire "just 'cause we exist" (the way humans have been doing to each other), and end up stationing US bases I mean alien bases all over Earth to control the planet, it's no worse than the US doing the same and holding everyone under their thumb. But it seems unlikely any actually sane alien civilisation would bother to do that.
If they want to set back our space capabilities by claiming the space all around us, well, it's not like we have much of any space capabilities yet. And that's our fault: had it not been for christoislamania, we'd have been out there *centuries* ago.
And if they wanted to steal our unique adaptations to enhance their own (a la the Suliban in ST:E), well, we have NO extraordinary adaptations I can think that sets us widely apart from other species on the planet (and our brains won't compare to intelligent high-tech civilsations) - I mean, we don't even have a prehensile tail, when it would have been such a great advantage.
But even if for some magic reason we had something they wanted to genetically splice into themselves, how are humans going to stop them? Really.
They can't want our tech. We have no tech (mobile phone and ipad/iphone 'tech' from our prehistoric galactic backwater doesn't count, right?)
We have NO [generally available/generally documented] time travel technology - which admittedly would have been something others may want. [Not counting "remote viewing", which is somewhat dubious and as per adherents has only a 22% success rate.]
We have no Warp or even minimum FTI,
We have no advanced AI
No actual abilities with exotic particles to - I don't know - steal infinite energy from other universes
We have like...nothing. Nothing worthwhile. We're like cavemen from the POV of species with interstellar tech.
(I can't even see anyone bothering to make friends with paupers like humanity is at present.)
Oh, but we have heathenism. Except that is not quite genetic. As in: mindviruses can erase it. Besides, heathenisms are ethnic by default.
Oh, but there are heathens with very special heathen abilities (e.g. some heathens have the ability to see in two different directions in the 4th dimension - uh, time - which, while not quite time travel, may be novel to aliens) etc. But just as earthly alien demons have never acquired this from heathens, aliens are unlikely to "acquire" it either. Maybe aliens may want "magic". But like the likelihood of mindviruses existing (or the possibility of their rise) in all the intelligent lifeforms there may be, there's an equal chance of "magic" existing in ancient alien societies.
Like "the force" in Star Wars is based on Chi from Taoism, Jedi skills were specifically based on Taoist masters/Xian skills projected onto fictional alien characters in an alien setting. But there's nothing stopping out-of-left-field abilities of this class also existing elsewhere in the universe.
If aliens wanted to create hybrids using humans, well then, if aliens don't do it first, humans - despite often being xenophobic against miscegenation - may do so themselves one day, even if only to answer the questions of "what if". (Still can't help thinking about Dune and the "abomination" of interbreeding a royal house with the fremen to produce the God Emperor of Dune was it/Worm Hybrid.)
But that last brings me to one further possibility I can think of at present. While Earth is no Dune/no "spice" like unique and pivotal commodity here (unless it be biological rather than chemical, i.e. a unique life form, and unlikely to be us), we could get roped into galactic societal systems we don't want to be part of (:xenophobia
. Perhaps one day to be even drafted into some inter-galactic war. But that is such an out there notion, based on possibility upon possibility upon minute possibility, that it seems to be too unlikely to worry about.
So the question remains: WHY are the scientists who've suddenly started vocalising, so pessimistic and discouraging? What *valid* reason do they have for not wanting us to make contact and find intelligent alien life forms out there? (Xenophobic Species 8472 wanting to "purify the galaxy" by genociding us is kinda... unlikely and like a sci-fi trope. Sounds too much like Sauron - evil for the sake of evil. On the other hand, an alien species who is disgusted by humanity destroying its own planet and other life forms here may legitimately see us as a threat and prevent our advancement into space and perhaps even wipe humanity out "for the greater good to preserve the other earthlings". But such an ethical species may be like documentarians refusing to involve themselves in interspecies conflict, however uneven the match. Or they may have their own prime directive against involvement.)
From what I can think of:
Only a Borg-type alien species may pose an actual nasty threat, and I suppose the Wraith - wanting to "harvest" life on Earth.
Time-altering species with temporal technology are not a threat to Earthlings, as far as I can tell humanity doesn't actually have an ancient and worthwhile civilisation to alter: no fundamental tech (like time-travel or space-travel) whose loss could change the course of our history and our solar system and advance that of others.
I suppose an alien species wanting to experiment on Earthlings for the sake of some galactic biological taxonomy - a la biologists who collect butterflies and dissect frogs - or for the purpose of finding a cure for some illness their species suffers from - a la human scientists into vivisection - may be a threat, but it would hardly be undeserved... I mean, let's face it: one planet's intelligent species may be another's guinea pig, and pecking orders seem to be a reality of nature. So if we find ourselves on the bottom of a galactic hierarchy, too bad. But this is, again, very far-fetched.
So again: what reasonable fear do the naysaying scientistss actually have? Is no one disturbed?
If they boo-ed and hissed at our infecting aliens with our mindviruses, I'd understand (but that's not the reason that Hawking or his recent parrots gave). The reverse is not so scary: humanity are already a self-destructing basket-case under christoislam. Adding any additional crazy memes to the mix can only hasten our demise, but can hardly be worse qua ultimate result?
Good that this was a private ramble. Thank the Taoist Gods no one visits IF. Then again, I don't have a reputation for deepness or seriousness to uphold.
(Channeling Julie Cox "But the saga of Dune was far from over..."
While the rest of the above were the mumblings of the avg person who reads and watches way too much sci-fi,
the only worthwhile part of this post was this next line:
CNN had a bit on how NASA has - or has possibly - found liquid water just below the surface of Mars.
CNN had a bit on how NASA has - or has possibly - found liquid water just below the surface of Mars.
Scientists say that Mars is now thought to have had (IIRC even surface) water for much longer than we knew and -(I think) that it was to have had this surface water until more recently than was thought before. <- Increased length of time means more time for life to have had a chance to evolve there. :Woo:
One of the conjectures by scientists may prove to be true: bacterial ancestors from Mars may have hitched a ride here on space debris, and landed on Earth and colonised earth, possibly early on, and been among the first earthlings. And if they didn't seed the planet with the bacterial life that existed back then, they could still have co-evolved with the native bacteria on our planet. The (A)AIT - (Actual) Alien Invasion Theory - could be true! Who knew.
Still a bit worried. Two words have sprung to mind again: "Martian Chronicles" and "Bradbury". ("But that's three words". OK, now's not the time to get all mathematical.) Hope we don't accidentally wipe them out or something... 'Cause you never know with earthlings.
If we can find some space bacteria, we can bring back some cultures to earth and then sequence their genes. We could see if there are any genetic sequences shared with "earthlings". And if there are ....
core: -> long lost relatives.Oh, for some space bacterial cousins. It could prove so much. Not only that we'll have neighbours at last. But also proof of the existence of many more neighbours out there (and making the case for other "intelligent" life like our own out there more likely).
2. There is another disturbing thing, besides Ray Bradbury's light fiction about humans accidentally wiping out Martian life. Way too many scientists have come out in just the year issuing dreary repetitive warnings about making contact. Apparently METI (sp?) - a.o.t. SETI (which only searches for intelligent alien life) - has been hoping to send "we're out here" messages in the direction of the increasing number of planets that are being found within the habitable zones (i.e. planets where life as we know it could exist). After Hawking's reluctance several years back to try to make alien contact, suddenly many scientists appeared on record far more recently repeating his arguments and discouraging METI and other endeavours from trying to actively contact intelligent alien life forms.
Sagan was right that intelligent life that's lasted sufficiently long need not necessarily be destructive: that they must have survived their own self-destructive phase and that means they might not be destructive towards others. (This view of Sagan was even summarised in the film Contact based on his book of that name.)
I don't want us to infect aliens with our mindviruses. But if they were to genocide humanity - including memorable ISIS/islamania, AmeriKKKa and christowest in general - that means the latter at least can't continue cannibalising the live body of everyone else. From the heathen POV, is extra-terrestrial alien devastation of heathenism that much worse than christoislamic/native alien devastation of heathenism? Surely there's no difference. But the first may be indiscriminate and hence offers the possibility of revenge, which the latter does not.
So, if any intelligent aliens needed earthly collaborators to bring down the earthly powers that be - christowest, US in particular - I'd sign up to sell the latter off without a second thought, whatever the consequences. First of all I have no solidarity with "all humans" and revenge is like the best invention since sliced bread. And if aliens go on a weedkilling rampage on Earth that accidentally avenges the native Americans, Africans, Asians and other dead heathens, will I *really* be sorry. Payback, after all, is totally worth it (SAAB's McQueen's quote on payback is from the victim's POV).
Light-hearted what-ifs aside, I really wonder why some scientists have been coming out in force, issuing statements to the press about why they don't want us to contact intelligent alien life forms out there. Clearly they all know that there is a reasonable chance of intelligent life. But the standard position of scientists is that intelligent aliens would not have harmful intentions. So why the sudden change of heart? It is everyone else who always predicts doom and gloom - the US military but also hollywood cinema (is that conditioning?) - not actual scientists.
And the other question is, there's a flaw in Hawking's argument - and hence in the arguments of other scientists seen discouraging alien contact more recently, as they're essentially parroting Hawking's alarmist projections, but offer no independent reasoning of their own. First, to reprise Hawking's position: aliens may want our resources or something and think we stand in their way.
The flaw in this thinking was already remarked upon by others: that any intelligent life that can come all the way to Earth from wherever they are, surely have the tech necessary to convert whatever space debris and resources out there to fuel their society/civilisation and hardly need the "resources" of planet Earth. Which resources are NOT unique (the same elements of the periodic table are found throughout the universe, and can hardly be magically more abundant on Earth than in every Nth planet in every Nth solar system. That is, at worst, there may be some scale of zooming out at our galaxy/universe at which we could see similar distributions of the same "wealth of resources" as seen on our planet.)
Again: An intelligent tech civilisation that can travel such great distances as to come all the way to earth to wipe us out, would have long ago been able to extract resources from various sources without having to set out to destroy other life as a deliberate "side-effect".
I seriously doubt they'd want to destroy life for the sake of destroying life. That's also something only hollywho can devise.
And fears of "enslavement" - another hollywho trope - can't be it either: tech civilisations can surely manufacture their own AI or lower-scale robotics to do their work.
If they want to recruit us as a tributary - voluntary or no - in their galactic empire "just 'cause we exist" (the way humans have been doing to each other), and end up stationing US bases I mean alien bases all over Earth to control the planet, it's no worse than the US doing the same and holding everyone under their thumb. But it seems unlikely any actually sane alien civilisation would bother to do that.
If they want to set back our space capabilities by claiming the space all around us, well, it's not like we have much of any space capabilities yet. And that's our fault: had it not been for christoislamania, we'd have been out there *centuries* ago.
And if they wanted to steal our unique adaptations to enhance their own (a la the Suliban in ST:E), well, we have NO extraordinary adaptations I can think that sets us widely apart from other species on the planet (and our brains won't compare to intelligent high-tech civilsations) - I mean, we don't even have a prehensile tail, when it would have been such a great advantage.
But even if for some magic reason we had something they wanted to genetically splice into themselves, how are humans going to stop them? Really.
They can't want our tech. We have no tech (mobile phone and ipad/iphone 'tech' from our prehistoric galactic backwater doesn't count, right?)
We have NO [generally available/generally documented] time travel technology - which admittedly would have been something others may want. [Not counting "remote viewing", which is somewhat dubious and as per adherents has only a 22% success rate.]
We have no Warp or even minimum FTI,
We have no advanced AI
No actual abilities with exotic particles to - I don't know - steal infinite energy from other universes
We have like...nothing. Nothing worthwhile. We're like cavemen from the POV of species with interstellar tech.
(I can't even see anyone bothering to make friends with paupers like humanity is at present.)
Oh, but we have heathenism. Except that is not quite genetic. As in: mindviruses can erase it. Besides, heathenisms are ethnic by default.
Oh, but there are heathens with very special heathen abilities (e.g. some heathens have the ability to see in two different directions in the 4th dimension - uh, time - which, while not quite time travel, may be novel to aliens) etc. But just as earthly alien demons have never acquired this from heathens, aliens are unlikely to "acquire" it either. Maybe aliens may want "magic". But like the likelihood of mindviruses existing (or the possibility of their rise) in all the intelligent lifeforms there may be, there's an equal chance of "magic" existing in ancient alien societies.
Like "the force" in Star Wars is based on Chi from Taoism, Jedi skills were specifically based on Taoist masters/Xian skills projected onto fictional alien characters in an alien setting. But there's nothing stopping out-of-left-field abilities of this class also existing elsewhere in the universe.
If aliens wanted to create hybrids using humans, well then, if aliens don't do it first, humans - despite often being xenophobic against miscegenation - may do so themselves one day, even if only to answer the questions of "what if". (Still can't help thinking about Dune and the "abomination" of interbreeding a royal house with the fremen to produce the God Emperor of Dune was it/Worm Hybrid.)
But that last brings me to one further possibility I can think of at present. While Earth is no Dune/no "spice" like unique and pivotal commodity here (unless it be biological rather than chemical, i.e. a unique life form, and unlikely to be us), we could get roped into galactic societal systems we don't want to be part of (:xenophobia
. Perhaps one day to be even drafted into some inter-galactic war. But that is such an out there notion, based on possibility upon possibility upon minute possibility, that it seems to be too unlikely to worry about.So the question remains: WHY are the scientists who've suddenly started vocalising, so pessimistic and discouraging? What *valid* reason do they have for not wanting us to make contact and find intelligent alien life forms out there? (Xenophobic Species 8472 wanting to "purify the galaxy" by genociding us is kinda... unlikely and like a sci-fi trope. Sounds too much like Sauron - evil for the sake of evil. On the other hand, an alien species who is disgusted by humanity destroying its own planet and other life forms here may legitimately see us as a threat and prevent our advancement into space and perhaps even wipe humanity out "for the greater good to preserve the other earthlings". But such an ethical species may be like documentarians refusing to involve themselves in interspecies conflict, however uneven the match. Or they may have their own prime directive against involvement.)
From what I can think of:
Only a Borg-type alien species may pose an actual nasty threat, and I suppose the Wraith - wanting to "harvest" life on Earth.
Time-altering species with temporal technology are not a threat to Earthlings, as far as I can tell humanity doesn't actually have an ancient and worthwhile civilisation to alter: no fundamental tech (like time-travel or space-travel) whose loss could change the course of our history and our solar system and advance that of others.
I suppose an alien species wanting to experiment on Earthlings for the sake of some galactic biological taxonomy - a la biologists who collect butterflies and dissect frogs - or for the purpose of finding a cure for some illness their species suffers from - a la human scientists into vivisection - may be a threat, but it would hardly be undeserved... I mean, let's face it: one planet's intelligent species may be another's guinea pig, and pecking orders seem to be a reality of nature. So if we find ourselves on the bottom of a galactic hierarchy, too bad. But this is, again, very far-fetched.
So again: what reasonable fear do the naysaying scientistss actually have? Is no one disturbed?
If they boo-ed and hissed at our infecting aliens with our mindviruses, I'd understand (but that's not the reason that Hawking or his recent parrots gave). The reverse is not so scary: humanity are already a self-destructing basket-case under christoislam. Adding any additional crazy memes to the mix can only hasten our demise, but can hardly be worse qua ultimate result?
Good that this was a private ramble. Thank the Taoist Gods no one visits IF. Then again, I don't have a reputation for deepness or seriousness to uphold.
(Channeling Julie Cox
"But the saga of Dune was far from over..."While the rest of the above were the mumblings of the avg person who reads and watches way too much sci-fi,
the only worthwhile part of this post was this next line:
CNN had a bit on how NASA has - or has possibly - found liquid water just below the surface of Mars.