/sci/ - Science & Math

Given the radical differences in culture, language, physiology, and philosophy, the first few years of contact would be spent spilling spaghetti everywhere as we try to establish a reliable method of communication. From both sides.

This is under the presumption that we aren't getting sphincter-speared by them for our natural resources and capacity for manual labor. In which case, I'll be driving to the nearest Reservation to share a good laugh.

Probably they would just kill us to end an existential threat to their own civilization.

Assuming they DO come in peace, then there'll probably be a long wait-time while we work out a useable language. Then it'll be stuff like history and culture transfers to learn more about each other. Then maybe some tech trades, we'll probably be exploited worse than an indian selling his land for beads at this point.

Then we'll probably enter some kind of economic agreement, and be brought into whatever sort of galactic society exists, if any.

The sheer distances involved make interstellar war of any sort totally ridiculous. There's just no point in conquering a world so far away from you. You'd never get reinforcements in time, you wouldn't be able to respond to a rebellion, etc.

I'd say aliens would come in peace if for no other reason than coming in war would be retarded.

>>5679020

Aliens that came to earth today from another solar system would most likely have the technology to destroy us without reinforcements. No civilization is stupid enough to traverse such distances without it being profitable and more primitive technologies won't allow this. They'd probably even be able to construct new weapons on earth in a fraction of a fraction of the time it would take us to do so.

>>5679058
> No civilization is stupid enough to traverse such distances...

I'd like to know your sample population for that claim. Humans deliberately sent out probes to seek out alien life decades ago. If we actually found one, I bet there'd be an incredible push to send people there.

>>5678932
John Carpenter's The Thing is the most accurate depiction of intelligent alien life

>>5679060

Just because there's a "push" doesn't mean that it'd be an attainable goal in the near future to actually travel to wherever they reside. What would we do when they got there?

>>5679020
>Aliens come
>Trade away Chromium cause we have more then we know what to do with it and they seem to want it.
>Turns out we need Chromium is needed to run their new technologies
>Aliens run back to their planets

I can see it happening.

>>5679058
>No civilization is stupid enough to traverse such distances without it being profitable

And that's what is exactly wrong with the current paradigm. There apparently needs to be some personal benefit in order to explore space. If there wasn't some hope of finding the fountain of youth or spirit transcending psychedelics on another planet then we wouldn't go. Which is of course ridiculous to any enlightened individual. Look at the Apollo Program, we travelled to the moon with the guise that we are doing it for the sake of doing it, but it was actually just a dick waving exercise.

Outside of the idea that this way of thinking is painful to see expressed like it is a good way of thinking is not the only problem I have. Primarily what I'm saying is that you have no clue if the aliens who visit would be thinking of the bottom line the way humans do.

>>5679071

>Turns out we need Chromium is needed to run their new technologies

>>5679058
Profit has no meaning to a communist civilization and communism is almost essential to the low resource/close quarters environment space travel imply.
As far as technology goes if a civilization has a actual need to go to space they will. We could of had interstellar space travel in the 60s if there was a actual reason to sink those kind of resources into it.

>>5678932
First contact if we didn't initiate it will probably be from a probe. The main bus would most likely about the size of the statue of liberty with multiple SUV sized landers. (after the detachment of the deceleration stage)
Such a think would be impossible to hide as it would show up like a torch against the background of space while decelerating. The main cruise stage (which would detach before entering the solar system and the firing of the deceleration stage).

By the time said probe arrives from its origin it would probably be hundreds if not thousands of years old. Anny signals it sends would take years to reach those who sent it and it would probably take many more years to get any kind of back and forth communication going.

>>5678965
We literally have nothing worth taking. Resources of anything are not exactly scarce.

>>5679075
God damnit, I'm sorry. Its late and I'm in pitch black darkness please forgive me.

>>5679078
>communism

fuck off

>>5678932

Why bother speculating? In ten or fifteen years, we'll either see them, or we won't. If we don't, we are the most advanced or we're living inside their domain and they know we're here and haven't destroyed us.

Two out of three are good for us, and the third is a toss up.

>>5679083
Well you certainly are not going to be trading and profiteering in motherfucking space. The distances are to vast for profit to bee a good reason to do anything like this.

The closed environments of a generation ship are also not exactly acceptable for capitalism. Neither is multi generational investment.

>>5679089
Why in ten or fifteen year? I think we are way behind any creature that can take a casual stroll down from one star to another. Its not like we are going to reach some great understanding point anytime soon and some great cosmic beings will take notice and stop by. We are in it for the long haul of incremental progression for now.

>>5679106

Because of the rate our detection capability is expanding at. We hadn't seen any earth sized planets five years ago, we didn't see pluto until pretty recently, and so on.

Chart how long it was between seeing uranus, neptune, pluto, huge extraterrestrial planets, and small extraterrestrial planets. Its exponential. Anything as advanced (or more) than us will put out plenty of energy we can see.

Unless they encompass our whole galaxy or whatever, in which case all we see is them.

>>5679127
He's extrapolating again, guys.

>>5679127
I cant imagine that

A) We will be able to differentiate if a planet has satellites or industry beyond a reasonable doubt of possible regular geological and cosmic activity, especially if the planet is orbiting another star.

B) If we get a pretty good image of a far away planet and see cities, we definitely wont be able to open communication because of all the background noise.

These two things just seem like two logical hard set obstacles for contact based on radio telescopes. Although it would be cool if we contacted a race that is about the same as us and we shared our insights on biology, chemistry, engineering, physics, and math based on their unique perspective shaped by hundreds of years of their alien evolution, alien social evolution and study of their alien flora, fauna, and geology.

That said there are plenty of radio telescopes around the world trained just for the purpose of alien contact. The people behind these projects must have made a plausible case in order to get them financed.

I think that it's very plausible that intelligent civilizations have already lived and died out all over the universe.
We've only been broadcasting radio signals for just over a hundred years, and we are already well down an unsustainable path of accelerating resource consumption.
Assuming the pattern is typical, if a race has a few hundred years between the beginning of broadcasting detectable signals and collapse/extinction, then the likelihood of any two races happening to be in the broadcast/detection phase of civilization at the same time (offset by the distance between them in light years) in a given region of space would be very very small.

>>5679154
Not to mention the necessary chemistry to be there in the right conditions to form life and then evolve it into a sapient creature capable and willing of broadcasting to the universe. All of it is fairly chancy. I personally think there may be just a handful of currently living beings (intelligent in the way we are) living in the galaxy. Life might be a tad bit more abundant, but all of it seems fairly unlikely. I just picture rows and rows of desolate wasteland planets littering the galaxy.

WE won't make contact. They will come here. Regardless if they come for peace or war, they will have the upper hand. We don't even have full understanding of the oceans on our planet. We are still finding new species on our planet. We are still finding new medical and energy sources. Whatever transport they arrive in will look so unique and advanced, we may not even have the proper tools to identify the materials they used to get here. We can't send a person further than the moon.

Personally, and working under the assumption that there is life somewhere out there, there are two possible first contact scenarios.

The first and typical Hollywood scenario is extraterrestrial life coming to us in which case I foresee our alien visitors being much too advanced for humankind to withstand or wage war of any form against in any capacity since intergalactic space faring, especially between civilizations would certainly take an infinitely superior technology to our present own... that being said, I don't see any vastly superior alien species visiting us being an eminent threat because they would have long since transcended such trivial, and from their viewpoint, primitive behavior such as partaking in war. They would likely observe humanity, and if deemed necessary, offer to aid mankind along in its own evolution to avert extinction, etc.

>>5679455

The second scenario sees us advancing enough to cover the vast distances between worlds within a reasonable amount of time, thus visiting a nearby world where we have detected life for exploration, said world being either our technological equal or a more primitive life form as I don't see us finding anyone that is more advanced than us in this scenario as they would likely have discovered us first.

There is also always the chance of humans stumbling upon aliens in a neutral environment such as a desolate alien world where humanity and said aliens have both come to for resources, but this is unlikely...

In any case, this is a fun topic of discussion as it offers endless possibilities and venues for discussion.

>>5679461
The meeting of two complex organisms with two different origins/initial conditions in an unclaimed territory would mean that a more level footed conflict will be played out.
Why is this meeting the least likely? I'd find it the most beneficial encounter for each of the societies.

>>5679074
>There apparently needs to be some personal benefit in order to explore space.

Kind of yeah lol. You're a fucking twat if you're going to rob people of resources because you think you know better what to do with their money than they do.

It's not like we live in fucking utopiaville, we live in constant competition with innumerable variations of neurologies with their innumerable varying psychologies and evaluative systems.

I really can't believe how much of a clueless twat you'd have to be to create your fucking post.

>>5679977

And my honest opinion is that we either end up coming across a developing alien civilization or the civilization that we met is so advanced that we are fucking peanuts and not of much value.

If they're "advanced" enough, they'll probably skip the whole "meet other intelligent life" and just crack apart our planet outright to free the massive amounts of resources from the grasp of gravity.

>>5679977

With that said, exploring space is one of those long-term personal benefit things because really the goal is to go off the planet and go after resources without the crippling smother of gravity.

>>5679211
>Regardless if they come for peace or war, they will have the upper hand.

If we assume this is reality then they won't come to make war since we don't have anything that isn't plainly available all over the galaxy. They might see us as an existential threat as someone else mentioned but beyond that there is no other reason to fight us. So putting that out of the way, the aliens will not come in a massive military fleet. Besides the idea of interstellar warfare is a logistical nightmare, in the history of the universe I think it hasn't occurred too often. Now lets assume they don't initiate contact using our telecommunications systems. That leaves a couple options left.

A) They will send a drone to our solar system. One with superior AI capability to anything we can develop. This drone will relay all kinds of information to us and be limited to the craft and utilities on board that craft. That seems hardly like the upper hand. Why would they install weaponry on a single drone? Especially if it's just meant to explore.

B) One manned ship will arrive. Again, hardly the upper hand. They may have the ability to maneuver and move about in ways that would seem to be impossible for us. If for whatever reason we act hostile to them, they can simply avoid us.

C) They arrive in a massive generation ship/fleet. Presumably something happened and they're trying to find a new place to live. At that point the ball is in our court, I assume we'd let them stay though.

With all that said. If they come here, or send something here, they're in our home court at that point. If they felt like they would destroyed by us when they arrived, they would simply hide, I can't imagine a situation where an exploratory drone/team would have the ability or willingness to act cocky in this star system.

>>5679461
>There is also always the chance of humans stumbling upon aliens in a neutral environment such as a desolate alien world where humanity and said aliens have both come to for resources, but this is unlikely...

I've never imagined that. Picturing robotic factories and ships on Io, extracting precious materials from the moon and returning them back to their home planet in another system would be a fascinating way of making first contact.

>>5679977
>lol
>fucking twat

u having a gigle m8? ill bash ur fucking head in sware on me mum

>>5679078
>all aliens will be communists who don't need any physical resources but will follow the same engineering principles as us hoo-mans

>>5679977
If a civilization was sufficiently advanced, with no fear of scarcity over the horizon, exploration would be done because of more esoteric notions. I think he meant that a space faring civilization needs to think like this.

>>5678932

>Are we even ready for first contact? Will it even ever happen?

We are, or mankind deserves die. We've come too far to 'not be ready' for a fact so obvious as that we're not alone.