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Steven Hawking warns not to talk to aliens

The Sum of Awe

The Sum of Awe

Brought to you by the moment that spacetime began.
Shermana said:
Don’t talk to aliens, warns Stephen Hawking - Times Online

Kinda like being told not to talk to strangers....Now, Hawking is a major proponent of the idea that other beings are out there...but it's better off not letting them know about us and keeping a low profile....

Is Hawking right, or should humanity be trying to communicate with other races?
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I have to say I'm disappointed that a smart person like him would think of extraterrestrial beings in such a way...

Unless they are human-looking creatures that have aircrafts of types, I wouldn't be too worried. They, just as we, are another species of animals, evolved differently.


Unless... -thinking smiley face- he is an alien that escaped from his home planet and came to protect us and teach us, and wants to warn us that his kind are evil...

Eh.
 
Oneatatime

Oneatatime

Huh?
I'm kind of with Hawkins on this one, primarily because its generally unwise to advertise where you are if you don't actually know whats out there.

Maybe I've just read too many sci-fi books which include beligerant aliens and self-replicating machines bent of anihilating other forms of life.
 
gnomon

gnomon

Well-Known Member
Shermana said:
Don’t talk to aliens, warns Stephen Hawking - Times Online

Kinda like being told not to talk to strangers....Now, Hawking is a major proponent of the idea that other beings are out there...but it's better off not letting them know about us and keeping a low profile....

Is Hawking right, or should humanity be trying to communicate with other races?
Click to expand...

It's not a crazy hypothetical in the sense that if there was an intelligent life form that had the capability and was traveling through space the sheer raw materials required to do so would probably mean they left a dead planet and are looking for resources or a new home. Looking for a new home would probably mean a low tolerance for a pre-existing intelligent species that is already consuming the resources on that planet on a large scale.

However, the other hypothetical is that we would stay under the radar of another intelligent species communicating through space that is not essentially a band of nomadic raiders. Of course, if they are communicating from their planet or even just from the edge of their solar system the delays in communication between worlds would be maddening. Alpha Centauri is "only" 4 light years away so that would mean at the best a four year delay in communications.

And it would horrifyingly be like twitter.
 
J

jelly

Active Member
gnomon said:
It's not a crazy hypothetical in the sense that if there was an intelligent life form that had the capability and was traveling through space the sheer raw materials required to do so would probably mean they left a dead planet and are looking for resources or a new home. Looking for a new home would probably mean a low tolerance for a pre-existing intelligent species that is already consuming the resources on that planet on a large scale.

However, the other hypothetical is that we would stay under the radar of another intelligent species communicating through space that is not essentially a band of nomadic raiders. Of course, if they are communicating from their planet or even just from the edge of their solar system the delays in communication between worlds would be maddening. Alpha Centauri is "only" 4 light years away so that would mean at the best a four year delay in communications.

And it would horrifyingly be like twitter.
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I have read that if aliens are going to our solar system it would be for the Sun not for the planets that surround it.
If they had some sense of empathy they might stop and "save" a portion or all of us from what would happen after they arrive.
 
Vendetta

Vendetta

"Oscar the grouch"
Has anyone seen the movie K-Pax if such is this movie is true then aliens have already lived among us and it is not aliens we should be worried about but aliens worries about is. If a spacecraft hovered ove time square with no audio presentation on why its there there would be curiosity, worrying, happiness and most of all mass hysteria. Earth is a young planet and humans a young species I believe there are life forms that are much older than us and have been here before.
 
J

jelly

Active Member
Vendetta said:
Has anyone seen the movie K-Pax if such is this movie is true then aliens have already lived among us and it is not aliens we should be worried about but aliens worries about is. If a spacecraft hovered ove time square with no audio presentation on why its there there would be curiosity, worrying, happiness and most of all mass hysteria. Earth is a young planet and humans a young species I believe there are life forms that are much older than us and have been here before.
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does it seem plausible that an alien civilization or one alien could travel interstellar by planetoid energy alone?
 
Vendetta

Vendetta

"Oscar the grouch"
jelly said:
does it seem plausible that an alien civilization or one alien could travel interstellar by planetoid energy alone?
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Yes. If these aliens took billions of years to figure out space flight before our existence why not?
 
J

jelly

Active Member
Vendetta said:
Yes. If these aliens took billions of years to figure out space flight before our existence why not?
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figuring out spaceflight is one thing.
voluntary interstellar travel would require stellar energy because it takes more energy than planetoids could yield to get to another star.
if you took all the planetoids in a given star system you couldn't escape the gravitational pull of the centroid star(s) of the star system.
how do you propose to manipulate the planetoids of a given star system to yield an energy that is greater than the centroid star(s)'s gravitational pull?
 
McBell

McBell

mantra-chanting henotheistic snake handler
jelly said:
how do you propose to manipulate the planetoids of a given star system to yield an energy that is greater than the centroid star(s)'s gravitational pull?
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Seems to me that that would be THEIR problem, not mine....
 
Otherright

Otherright

Otherright
Yeah, if they have the technology to get here, they have the technology to do whatever they want when they get here.
 
Otherright

Otherright

Otherright
jelly said:
figuring out spaceflight is one thing.
voluntary interstellar travel would require stellar energy because it takes more energy than planetoids could yield to get to another star.
if you took all the planetoids in a given star system you couldn't escape the gravitational pull of the centroid star(s) of the star system.
how do you propose to manipulate the planetoids of a given star system to yield an energy that is greater than the centroid star(s)'s gravitational pull?
Click to expand...

Unless singularity is right.
 
Otherright

Otherright

Otherright
Also, if you could collapse a human being into a wave function, you could probably go anywhere you wanted in the universe instantly, theoretically. But since this can't and never will happen, and since FTL travel will never happen either, I don't think we have much to worry about.
 
Otherright

Otherright

Otherright
jelly said:
my question was a prompt for a reply that included how the means of voluntary interstellar travel would work would work not simply the means by which it would be named.
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OK, fair enough. It wouldn't work. The only chance you have to go that distance is wave function collapse, and you can't do that either. This is why I stay in the realm of cyberpunk and contemporary fantasy when I do these types of projects.
 
J

jelly

Active Member
Otherright said:
OK, fair enough. It wouldn't work. The only chance you have to go that distance is wave function collapse, and you can't do that either. This is why I stay in the realm of cyberpunk and contemporary fantasy when I do these types of projects.
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I am a bit more optimistic, however my technical knowledge is limited.
I still drive a car, soon though I can be just a passenger to the machine.
I can say this though:
The arrangement of molecules to survive the temperate climate of a star should be an objective if an energy dependent civilization is to ever get away from their star system. I speculate they can mine the centroid star(s) to reduce its/thier energy while at the same harvesting the energy that is removed. I also speculate some kind of engine or apparatus of some type devoted to energy manipulation so forced solar flares or equivalent can be harvested... "The Flux Capacitor" or "The If Jesus Only Told Us Box" might be cool names.
 
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