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Here's the link to the actual letter, for any one curious
it's worth a read. Though, ask yourself... given the capability of interstellar travel, and knowing humans had the psychotic tendency to nuke themselves... multiple times... Would you visit here on vacation?
I just want to know what the lights on all those UFOs people see are for. Too dark in space?
Aliens obey FAA regulations regarding navigation lights.
navigation/position markers on helicopters, or some kind of sUAS, probably. If it's dark enough, you won't see the aircraft itself, especially at a distance, unless it occludes something lit behind it, and helicopters can move in ways you wouldn't necessarily expect. (for example, these are full-collective RC helicopters. The only reasons we don't see full sized birds doing that are the power to weight ratio, human limitations and... the unfortunately boring question of "why")
edit to add: here's the Wildcats demo team, they're a UK based acrobatics team flying. The tictocs, inverted flying, etc, are things you see in rc heli 3d flying; a consequence of the ridiculous power to weight ratio and being able to adjust the throw on the swashplate so that the blades can go "negative pitch" (relative to the aircraft, the rotors would be pushing down instead of up. there's no reason to do that on a full scale bird; besides making passengers vomit. Which is easy enough to do anyhow. Wildcats love taking fighter pilots up...)
ETA2: the UK Chinook demo team, too
I don't think you realize how big space is.
Space is big. I mean, really really big. You may think it's a long walk down the street to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
I do, actually. I'm just ignoring that discussion because it usually gets eyes to gloss over. (edit, and there's a lot of handwavium that even JJ Abrams could be proud of there.)
So I'm going with the "would you want to visit a psychotic species that has nuked itself hundreds of times?" (only 2 were done in anger, but there were more than 500 atmospheric tests. Thousands of underground/sea tests, as well.)
Also, for clarification, I'm saying they're seeing human-made aircraft, either helicopters or sUAS's performing in ways that people who aren't quite as familiar wouldn't expect. if you can't see the aircraft body and just guess off navigation markers, you can wind up with some rather wild assumptions.
That’s a relative statement.
And you're a relative badger.
That’s Honey Badger to you.
That is one of the only cases where discussing size is not relative actually. Space is always big. It's big compared to a person, it's big compared to a planet, it's big compared to a star system, it's big compared to a galaxy, it's big compared to a galactic cluster, and it's approximately equal in size to the universe.
My comment was a humorous play on words, especially if understood in the context of physics and the theory of relativity, which deals with the fabric of space and time. In this context, I’m making a joke about the concept of “big” being relative in the vast and complex expanse of the universe.
That's like a spastic dragon fly.
TBH as an RC heli pilot I am no where near that skilled. I can manage to not crash and maybe get inverted a bit and do some funnels, maybe a few ticktocks by accident (where the rotor goes mostly on edge and pounces between slightly not-inverted and slightly inverted)
these guys are phenomenal.
Mostly, I like building whacky things, or like, scale models of sci-fi ships, and doing my best to hide the rotors and stuff. one of my favorites is Klatu's ship from the 1950's version of the Day the Earth Stood Still. I may have fucked around with a cop that was "Catching up on his reports" (aka napping).
I mean, humans would do it. We would hold Running Man contests on pay-per-view to help pay for it. The contestants would literally kill each other for the ability to take an interstellar flight to a planet with deadly alien life. Just for the chance see and probably be killed by an alien.
That or just Wildlife videos.
"So begins the mating dance of the dominant species on this planet, a mostly hairless ape that is nearly sapient, capable of great feats of intuitive engineering but shockingly lacking in yfgiiizghi thought processes. Their unfortunate lack of competition has already created a devastating ecological catastrophe that shall yet grow worse, but that matters not to Brad, who appears to be exaggerating the size of a fish he caught to Becky."
If you had the tech for FTL travel, you could destroy any planet with a single ship.
Just kamikaze it and your target literally couldn't see it coming.
It makes a nuke look a balloon popping.
If they existed and knew about humans, and for some reason were scared of us... First contact would be Earth getting vaporized.
It would be the equivalent of a human putting down a rabid racoon to that species.
First, FTL travel cannot exist with our current understanding of physics. This is why you see most sci-fi going to either wormholes/jump drives - Orion’s arm, star gate, BSG; or by jumping into not-our-universe- Star Wars, also star gate, and andromeda. Maybe Star Trek, but Alcubierre drives themselves would not be able to go FTL. The short explanation is it would violate causality. (Wormholes don’t actually violate causality, but otherwise bridge two points in space-time)
Secondly, it should be noted that while technological advancement does impart military advantages… evaporating a space rock serves no real purpose; and doing so would represent a massive economic investment; further on this point, the sightings are insisting they’re visiting frequently.
Which given our instability (they have every season of the Jerry springer show, for example.)… the question isn’t would they decide to send us to oblivion, or not. But visit us.
And given the energies involved getting here, a species that hasn’t thought twice about nuking themselves isn’t going to think twice about reverse engineering their tech and doing exactly what you propose. And we are very likely to take their presence… the wrong way.
Final though: if aliens were to show up on earth? It’s either to harvest the only thing that makes earth special: life. (Aka they’re slavers or something.) alternatively, they’re space Mormons.
I might prefer the slavers.
Wouldn’t it be annoying if they were both?
There would be a reason to destroy Earth if you were an alien species and the reason some scientists say we should silence our communications to the rest of the universe. Namely, to eliminate us as a potential threat/competitor. SETI has written about it themselves. The example given is from Greg Bear's novel, The Forge of God:
http://www.setileague.org/editor/wolves.htm
This is an answer to the Fermi paradox. The idea that one species grows so xenophobic or territorial or whatever as to destroy all other life.
The good news is that such an end would be quick, so I tend to not worry about it.
The other answer is… they actively avoid us. Which seems more reasonable and optimistic.
Yep, only those 2 options exist.
None others at all.
until you manage to rewrite our understanding of how the universe around us works... yes.
it is possible for stuff to exist that is already going FTL. But it's not possible to accelerate a massive particle to c. (this would require infinite energy, and definitely violates our understanding of physics,) and in any case, being able to transmit information (including, massive particles) faster than c; violates causality (by creating a closed timelike curve,)
The only way I see to get around it - is to literally go around it. That is to say, not travel through spacetime. ergo, either traveling in some other plane of existence (hyperspace, slipspace, whatever.) or simply connecting two distant physical points (wormholes.)
As for motivations of some proposed alien species…. There’s very little we can offer them that wouldn’t be easier to get elsewhere. They don’t need our physical resources, and they don’t need our help with science or knowledge.
As you suggest, if they wanted us gone, we’d be gone before we ever knew it.
That leaves either physical labor or culture. We certainly pump our “culture” out to the stars, so there’s really no need for them to actually come all the way here.
Im not who replied to, so no, I didnt suggest that.
And then you contridict yourself by pointing out other options that exist beyond FTL travel.
Another example: Von Newman probes? There could easily be something in the solar system that was sent eons ago to solar systems with habitable planets that reports home occasionally. Would also explain crashes, the expendable probes are made to be just that. Expendable.
Just today we had a comet that was detected until right before it was on top of us.
I contradicted myself?
Where?
According to our understanding of physics, the only two ways to get stuff from point a to point b in an apparently FTL (but not really) manner is to go outside of spacetime to do it. Either by going in to some other kind of space time (hyperspace- Star Wars, Babylon 5; Slip space of Andromeda,) or simply jumping from one point to another (as in Stargate, or battle star galactica)
Whatever is being moved never actually goes FTL; and therefore never violated causality or consumes shitloads of energy. (Read: consumed all the energy in the universe then fails because physics is uncaring.)
Von Newman probes are interesting, but it’s really unlikely. First the theories assert that they’re here and in regular interaction. We’d notice the extraction of materials if it was happening on earth, or the moon. Or any body we have under regular surveillance.
Remember, as far as we know, the only thing that makes earth special is its life. We know this because we can detect composition of things like stars and gas giants and the atmosphere if rocky worlds. (Isn’t the JWST amazing?). While I wouldn’t say we know if life exists elsewhere, we do know that there’s not much point in coming here for inert resources.
Iron, rare earth elements, water, oxygen, carbon, unobtainium, obtainium. They’re all equally rare or not-all-that-rare here and in other places.
The only thing actually unique to earth is its life- and that may just be a question of flavor over actual scarcity. (We don’t know.)
The only reasons to come here are to study us (xenopology? Or whatever you want to call alien anthropology.) which largely can happen remotely. Fuck we even sent a message out including genetic structure. It would consist of scientific curiosity to come and study us further, and most of that can be done without ever coming into the system, nevermind directly visiting earth.
Did I mention the nukes? Radio isotopes are in our atmosphere and presumably detectable by anyone one with more than our current level of technology. That we do that to ourselves is a good indication they should maybe not introduce themselves, and leave us as an uncontacted species.
Similar to how we leave the Solomon Islanders mostly uncontacted. Because they tend to kill whoever shows up. (Yeah, that missionary guy… I don’t blame them.)
Which leaves the illicit or the religious. The illicit would have to be us- slaves for labor, or something else. Entertainment, maybe. Or a zoo. The religous sorts are probably not anything like actual Mormons. I just thing “Space Mormons” sounds more exciting than “Space Evangelicals” and I like keeping my head firmly attached so I won’t be making any jokes about “Space Muslims”. No matter what analogue you go with, though, their motives would be to proselytize.
Unless, of course they had some cultural imperative to conquer.
None of these options really explain why they’re not immediately obvious, however. Religious sorts would want broad exposure, slavers… wouldn’t care to be subtle and would likely not be able to profit significantly off just a few handfuls of people. Conquerors would make themselves known,
Of course all this is rampant speculation. It’s unlikely we’d even recognize whatever is even alive nevermind sentient. It’s psychology and motivations are its own and probably only understandable in the most basic levels.
We have mathematically worked out near light speed travel, we just lack the energy requirements to test it currently. There are two methods proposed, one being riding a wave we create and the other riding under space(this one was way more confusing). The wave one would accumulate debris ahead of the wave so you aim at a planet then stop short propelling everything the wave has gathered at near light speed into the planet, instant obliteration. We are trying really hard to solve fission which is the only thing holding us up right now. Optimistically we might see a practical test in our life time albeit very late into our lives.
No we haven’t. There is no known mechanism to create an alcubierre drive.
At the risk of being dismissive, there’s no known way to mess with things in such a manner- nevermind enough understanding to say what happened to debris in the path.
What we have are hypothetical models that assume we have these things. But everyone acknowledges they’re purely speculative. (Fun, even possibly useful, but speculation all the same.)
ELI5 how we go under space?
I think we humans are probably a bit self-centered or narcissistic in our fascination with aliens, like the belief they may wish to control or take our planet, or something. Objects in space are all pretty much made out of the same elements, so we probably have nothing they would need if they have technology that makes traveling to us trivial. Space is so vast it would be easier for them at that technology level to obtain whatever they need from uninhabited planets or asteroids and avoid any unnecessary hassle or contamination. I've often felt that if we've actually been noticed by any alien presence, we're probably regarded much the same way an anthill at the edge of a truck stop parking lot is, rarely acknowledged, much less cared about when we are.
Except for the entomologist-types that are into that sort of thing, or we piss off the wrong proverbial trucker and they pour out a proverbial gallon of gas and set the anthill on fire, sure.
The entomologist types would be careful enough to not give us anything crazy… unless they’re polish. At which point, they might just let the proverbial cannibal ants out. (Seriously, did they not realize cannibal ants in an abandoned Soviet nuclear bunker is how the world ends? They need to watch more b-rated sci-fi…)
Guy who didn't want the job whines about the job in public after refusing to do it