Would contact with extraterrestrials benefit or harm humanity? A scenario analysis

murrayp4

Interesting paper here:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.4462

helimachoptor

Thanks Murray, interesting read!

Kidchameleon

Enjoyed reading that. Thanks for the link OP.

I would think that if at the very least we found microbe life in the solar system that dident orignate on Earth, it would have a huge impact for humanity. It would open up all sorts of doors in peoples belief systems. We would know for a fact that there is life out there and people would not be able to deny the possible existence of intelligent life.

slade_x

Kidchameleon wrote: »

It would open up all sorts of doors in peoples belief systems.

If history and current times are anything to go by people seem to be less accepting of alternatives when it comes to their beliefs.

Kidchameleon wrote: »

We would know for a fact that there is life out there and people would not be able to deny the possible existence of intelligent life.

You'd think facts/ imperical evidence would be enough to go on, unfortunately some types of people don't seem to follow that sort of reasoning

Rubecula

If we are contacted by ET then they are almost certain to be higher technologically than ourselves, simply because we can not contact anyone ourselves.

A higher technology would look at at is either as a benevolent society or as a malevolent one. A benevolent one would 'guide' us, and become our 'masters' , and a malevolent one would subdue us and become our masters.

The best thing we can do IMO is get out there and be ready for contact so we are not subsumed by someone.

Just my own opinion mind.

Kidchameleon

Im not sure why so many people would be afraid of ET. Surly any civilization capable of contacting us would be advanced enough to not want to take over Earth!

looksee

Surly any civilization capable of contacting us would be advanced enough to not want to take over Earth!

Not even if they have been sent out by politicians from an overcrowded planet whose environment they have destroyed in the process of becoming more 'advanced'?

Kidchameleon

looksee wrote: »

Not even if they have been sent out by politicians from an overcrowded planet whose environment they have destroyed in the process of becoming more 'advanced'?

Well if they are so advanced to be able to travel interstellar distances, perhaps they would not be too stupid to overcrowd their planet :rolleyes:

Amtmann

*meh* to that article. Absolutely no new perspectives or fresh thinking in it. I facepalmed when he mentioned HHGttG.

My own sense is that the galaxy is teeming with life: water worlds, rainforest worlds, desert worlds, all full of interesting biota. I also think that intelligent life often develops, but seldom does it develop on several worlds at the same time.

Humanity has only been technologized since the 1840s; less than 200 years out of the earth's 4.5 bn-year history. How many intelligent civilizations existed elsewhere during those 4.5 billion years that have since been extinguished?

Kidchameleon

Tremelo wrote: »

I facepalmed when he mentioned HHGttG.

Star Trek was mentioned before that, did you not facepalm then?

Amtmann

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Star Trek was mentioned before that, did you not facepalm then?

No, but I furrowed my brow.

murrayp4

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Star Trek was mentioned before that, did you not facepalm then?

I have to admit, even though I'm the OP, I did facepalm at that...

b318isp

Tremelo wrote: »

Humanity has only been technologized since the 1840s; less than 200 years out of the earth's 4.5 bn-year history. How many intelligent civilizations existed elsewhere during those 4.5 billion years that have since been extinguished?

And add another 200 years of development on top of that and I'm sure our technology would look very different from today's.

A small matter of a few hundred years can make huge differences for sufficient evolved technologies.

Over at A&A, this has been discussed in relation to humanity's beliefs in deities - with a conclusion that it wouldn't make much difference. Atheists would argue that it rebufs the notion of a God, and the religious would claim they are God's creation too.

oneillMan999

The best analogy i ever heard was if an alien civlisation was advanced enough to visit Earth they would probably see us as we see an ant farm.. mildly interesting to a few but insignificant as a whole.

slade_x

oneillMan999 wrote: »

The best analogy i ever heard was if an alien civlisation was advanced enough to visit Earth they would probably see us as we see an ant farm.. mildly interesting to a few but insignificant as a whole.

The best argument i have heard regarding other intelligent life and how they might respond to us was posited by Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

He said (not exact quote, i guess i paraphrase a lot) "Take a look at our nearest genetic match, the Chimpanzee with which we share an almost identical match; upwards of 98% between our DNA", Now look at how we perceive them and the enourmous boundary we face communicating with them.

There is only a 1 or 2 percent difference between us and chimpanzees and look at what that difference makes. Imagine a species that has progressed much further or is just at least 1 or 2 percent different than us in the same regard.

Would they even think twice about even bothering to communicate with such a primitive species, Our greatest living mind currently Stephen Hawking, capable of performing complex astrophysics calculations in his head, an ability which could be nothing more than childsplay for the young of a species with that slight genetic difference from us.

A 1 or 2 Percent difference above us could produce a species so much more capable and intelligent than us, than our brightest minds could possibly ever even imagine

For Illustration Purposes:

3ndahalfof6

Surely all of the major collisions with earth would of sent material back out to space, this material would /could hold life attaching itself to different space objects and as they enter the atmosphere of other planets would they not deposit the building blocks,

we had to start from somewhere.

as for contact, why would it have to be superior intelligence, if we recieved some sort of message or radio signal would they not be in a similar situation to ourselves,

I think the 1st message we recieve from space will be the return of the 1st one we sent out to space.

Rubecula

3ndahalfof6 wrote: »

Surely all of the major collisions with earth would of sent material back out to space, this material would /could hold life attaching itself to different space objects and as they enter the atmosphere of other planets would they not deposit the building blocks,

This is broadly accepted these days. Life within the solar system gets interchanged between planetary bodies. It is not definitive though, just something muted within various circles.

slade_x

3ndahalfof6 wrote: »

as for contact, why would it have to be superior intelligence, if we recieved some sort of message or radio signal would they not be in a similar situation to ourselves,

The problem with radio is the fastest it could travel is just over 299 million m/s, A signal ignoring attenuation, countless upon countless of other radiation sources in with which it could be completely unrecognisable by the time it gets to its destination would take about 100 million years just to cross the galaxy.

If it were to happen in our own back yard so to say the civilisation sending the message could either be so vastly different from what they were when they sent it to what they are by the time it gets received by anyone that it wouldnt give us much of an approximation of what they could be like present day.

A message from another civilisation would be monumental but what could we do with it afterward? Send a message back and hope we are not extinct by the time we could get a reply from what very well could be a different progressive species that first communicated with us?

We have only had radio for what? 100 years, just say if there is a similar region across our galaxy to our own solar system and life with the same capabilities as ours right now resides there and sends a message right at the same time we discovered how to transmit, We wont receive it for another 99.9 million years

Tomk1

Another thing to consider, would the information carried on the RF wave even mean anything to another species? voice could be considered as just noise or nonsensable language, music might be interpretated as some form of digital information, with some poor ET spending it's whole life trying to decipher.

You would think the first signals an ET might get (know to be unnatural) would be morse-code, even if we did get a morse-code type message today, it would mean nothing '._' could mean some letter in some language, could mean a number, could mean electron-proton, could mean logic low-high. Like the titanic SOS '... _ _ _ ...' would be giberish.

I know this is not quite on topic but I see SETI is back in opperation.

muppeteer

slade_x wrote: »

The problem with radio is the fastest it could travel is just over 299 million m/s, A signal ignoring attenuation, countless upon countless of other radiation sources in with which it could be completely unrecognisable by the time it gets to its destination would take about 100 million years just to cross the galaxy.

Isn't the milky way only 100000 light years accross? So the maximum time for a radio signal to cross it is about 100000 years.
So only about 20 times as long as human civilisation has existed to recieve a reply from the opposite side:)

slade_x

muppeteer wrote: »

Isn't the milky way only 100000 light years accross? So the maximum time for a radio signal to cross it is about 100000 years.
So only about 20 times as long as human civilisation has existed to recieve a reply from the opposite side:)

Yes of course i apologize, i meant 100 thousand years not sure what happened to make me go to 100 million, maybe by chance intelligent civilisations if there are any out there are seperated by millions of lights years which is what makes it so difficult. After 2 days you were the only person to notice that, People pay attention Thanks for the correction, that was an astronomical blunder.

A lot has happened to the earliest species of hominids in the last 2 or so million years, we believe we have only been at this stage of evolution for the past 50 to 100 thousand years, so with the correction of 100 thousand years the signal could make the trip in approximately the same amount of time as we believe we have been at this stage in development. Also in just that time a lot can change for a species, we are living proof.

If it were 20 times as long as humans have existed in our present evolutionary state it would be 2 Million years, but as you made the correction the milky way is infact 100 thousand light years across so it would just be the same amount of time or (1 times as long as human civilisation has existed)

Plug

I wonder would other advanced civilizations have other ways of communicating? Light or other technology's. They hardly all communicate by radio, I don't think so. As pointed out early on in this thread we are only technologized less than 200 years, who says we wont come up with a completely different form of communication and then when we use it for the first time all of a sudden we hear ET.

NoQuarter

We should also consider that humans can only work with what raw materials can be found on our planet. Another planet in another part of the galaxy could have different elements available in its soil or wherever and that could open the door to completely different technologies.

I think when we think of intelligent life we base it off our own intelligence standard. However as slade said, the difference in a 2% DNA mismatch is enormous and so there is nothing to say that other life forms out there could be 5%, 10% or completely different than ours, all in a "better" way, and so if there is a species with all of their DNA better than ours, the mind boggles as to what they could achieve!

As Neil DeGrasse Tyson said, little johnny from the super ET race could have made the hubble telescope in his kindergarden class and have it stuck up on his fridge!!

muppeteer

slade_x wrote: »

Yes of course i apologize, i meant 100 thousand years not sure what happened to make me go to 100 million, maybe by chance intelligent civilisations if there are any out there are seperated by millions of lights years which is what makes it so difficult. After 2 days you were the only person to notice that, People pay attention Thanks for the correction, that was an astronomical blunder.

A lot has happened to the earliest species of hominids in the last 2 or so million years, we believe we have only been at this stage of evolution for the past 50 to 100 thousand years, so with the correction of 100 thousand years the signal could make the trip in approximately the same amount of time as we believe we have been at this stage in development. Also in just that time a lot can change for a species, we are living proof.

If it were 20 times as long as humans have existed in our present evolutionary state it would be 2 Million years, but as you made the correction the milky way is infact 100 thousand light years across so it would just be the same amount of time or (1 times as long as human civilisation has existed)

Sorry i was using the ballpark figure of 10000 years since the agricultural revolution which is thought to have kick started civilisation, as in villages, more technological advancement etc, not the 100000 years or so of how long modern humans have existed. Sorry should have been clearer.

slade_x

NoQuarter wrote: »

We should also consider that humans can only work with what raw materials can be found on our planet. Another planet in another part of the galaxy could have different elements available in its soil or wherever and that could open the door to completely different technologies.

The universe has the same elements no matter where you look. We list them on our periodic table. The elements would just be found in different abundances. I couldnt imagine a planet being covered in radioactive material to produce a succesfull intelligent species. Life will favour stable but reactive elements/ chemistry

NoQuarter

slade_x wrote: »

The universe has the same elements no matter where you look. We list them on our periodic table. The elements would just be found in different abundances. I couldnt imagine a planet being covered in radioactive material to produce a succesfull intelligent species. Life will favour stable but reactive elements/ chemistry

Isnt it possible that there are other elements out there? I may have a misunderstanding of that point?

Didnt the periodic table grow with time? Therefore there may be some elements we still havent found?

k.p.h

NoQuarter wrote: »

Isnt it possible that there are other elements out there? I may have a misunderstanding of that point?

Didnt the periodic table grow with time? Therefore there may be some elements we still havent found?

From my basic understanding It's a numbers game, the number of protons in an atom's atomic nucleus to be precise.

We have gone from 1 - 118 currently IIRC (with the last 9 or so being manufactured synthetically) so the only place we could discover a new element is at number 119 ..

And AFAIK the higher the number the less stable the element gets hence all the radioactive elements at the higher numbers.

shanered

Would the whole possibility of different dimensions and inter dimensional beings and things that exist in different wave lengths and the whole anti-matter things present us with elements and substances and beings that may be outside our understanding and not fitting snugly into our periodic table?

slade_x

shanered wrote: »

Would the whole possibility of different dimensions and inter dimensional beings and things that exist in different wave lengths and the whole anti-matter things present us with elements and substances and beings that may be outside our understanding and not fitting snugly into our periodic table?

A different dimension refers to different spacial dimensions outside of what we would normally define with the possibility of up/ down, backward/ forward and side to side motion. You cant simply enter another dimension by moving in any of these 3 spacial dimensions. Time is considered an extra dimension as its a very important coordinate within what we perceive as our 3 dimensional universe, the dimension of time adds that all important extra coordinate.

We havent currently detected the existance of extra dimensions yet.

As for things that exist in different wavelengths i am unsure what you mean as even though our eyes dont see all the wavelengths of light or our ears cant hear all the wavelengths of sound we can still detect them. The properties of a wave can be thought of as a function plotted against time. we plot waves on graphs like for example the propogation of sinusoidal waves of alternating current. A wave is a function or consequense of motion; light travels, sound travels, ripples of energy from displacement (for eg) through a pond travel in waves. A wave is motion

And the whole antimatter thing? Antimatter is the opposite of matter for example a positron is the antiparticle of an electron, both particles are exactly the same in mass and energy with the only difference being they are oppositely charged (electron = negative / positrons = positive). So if you read through the periodic table imagining what antimatter may be like just reverse the charge on the elements constituent parts and you will get their exact counterpart. If you wanted to imagine an antimatter universe it would be the same as ours just with the positively charged elements negatively charged and the negatively charged elements positively charged.

Just think of the difference between +5v and -5v from 0. both differ from a potential in the exact same regard, they will both be capable of the exact same work with reference to ground /0v.

It is still a mystery for physics as to why normal matter won out over antimatter. The properties of antimatter are only unique and of interest because of its reaction to normal matter. If we existed in an antimatter universe that would be the normal matter of that universe so the opposite of that matter would be unique and of interest.

Medical science currently benefits from the properties of antimatter and matter reactions for imaging the body in PET scanners

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positron_emission_tomography

And a big step in energy production would be to harness enough of it for fuel. Of course its not without its dangers, matter and antimatter reactions would produce twice as much enery output per mass than the lightest of nuclear fusion reactions. If it ever happens the first large scale anti matter on matter annihalation disaster would probably be our last as a true revelation of the energy released can be realised in einsteins: e=mc^2 equation.

For all we know our universe tried and tried again with an almost infinite possibility of different types of a configuration of energy until finally in all the randomness it settled and the universe we know was able to evolve from its elusive beginnings.