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Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace!

Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2010 3:53 am
by bystander
Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace!
Discover Blogs / Cosmic Variance
Okay, that’s a bit alarmist. But Stephen Hawking has generated a bit of buzz by pointing out that contact with an advanced alien civilization might not turn out well for us backward humans. In fact, we should just try to keep quiet and avoid being noticed.
“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans,” he said.

Prof Hawking thinks that, rather than actively trying to communicate with extra-terrestrials, humans should do everything possible to avoid contact.

He explained: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.”
Let's take a hard look at Stephen Hawking's theory of interplanetary politics | Daniel W. Drezner

Re: Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace!

Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2010 5:04 am
by makc
I watched pilot episode of V, too

Re: Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace!

Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2010 8:21 am
by wonderboy
Well we're doing a good job so far? No aliens as of yet.

What I thought whilst reading that post though is that all these conspiracy theories about the governments of the world (American in particular) being in contact with Aliens (Area 51) must be lies.

If an Alien race visited earth, and just happened to stumble upon America, wouldn't America want one of their greatest scientists and all time knowledgable-about-space people to know about it and get his advice? I would think so.

Obviously he's not gonna say if he's met an Alien (I would think) but I would tend to believe Prof. Hawking over any American government official anyday.

Regardless of that, bring on the Aliens, if they get to rowdy all we need to do is speak to Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum and arm them with a Cigar each and a nucular weapon.... Sorted. Shame about the whitehouse though :(.


Paul

Re: Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace!

Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2010 8:57 am
by makc
it always bothered me in that movie, how could aliens hack our satellites, and how could we hack their mothership computer, whithout ever having prior experience with these systems? well yeah, they could have been observing our communications for years, but did they evertampered with it? I mean I could watch this guy all I want
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
but I will never be as good unless I get my ass up into mountains and actually try doing this. area 52 guys were in better position since they had their spaceship for half of century, but one would expect alien computer technology to advace somewhat in that time range.

Re: Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace!

Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2010 10:19 am
by wonderboy
what guy? I know you posted a picture, but I can't see it. Whats his name?

Paul

Re: Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace!

Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2010 1:03 pm
by makc
Whats his name?
Tom Wallisch.

Re: Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace!

Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2010 1:16 pm
by wonderboy
Ahhhhh I get your point now, my bad. You are right, theres things in films that just don't make sense quite a lot of the time. I love it when they make a blooper in big budget movies. like the guy who walked by the camera in gladiator wearing jeans hahah. Calvinus Kleinius :P LOL.

Re: Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace!

Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2010 3:02 pm
by bystander
In which I disagree with Stephen Hawking
Discover Blogs / Bad Astronomy
Apparently Stephen Hawking read my book, but not very carefully, because he thinks aliens will come here ala "Independence Day" and eat up all our resources and move on.

I disagree with him. I think in fact it’s more likely that an aggressive alien race would create self-replicating robot probes that will disperse through the galaxy and destroy all life that way.

But more likely still doesn’t equate to likely. I’ve been thinking about this on and off for a few days, in fact, and I suspect a likely answer to Fermi’s Paradox — "Where are they?" — is simply that intelligent life that is capable of interstellar flight doesn’t last long enough to colonize other stars. That would neatly explain why, if stars with planets are common (which we know is almost certainly true), and the conditions for life to arise are relatively common (again, that seems very likely), the galaxy isn’t overrun with life. It should be by now; it’s had billions of years to have space-faring races evolve and colonize the whole shebang.
Stephen Hawking, for One, Does Not Welcome Our Potential Alien Overlords
Discover Blogs / 80beats
In a half-century of hunting, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has turned up nary a whisper from E.T. But for renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, the non-success of SETI and others who hope to contact alien life might be for the best: Aliens, he says, might not like us.

Hawking caused waves with this suggestion in his new Discovery Channel special, which debuted last night. He has long believed that extraterrestrial life exists, simply because of the sheer vastness of the universe. While much of what’s out there might be simple microbial life, there may indeed be new civilizations far more advanced than our own. But that doesn’t mean they’ll be friendly.
[MSNBC]

Re: Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace!

Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2010 12:57 pm
by wonderboy
Typical Humans. We would absoloutly poop our pants if Aliens showed up here. We'd probably nuke them, and all they would be doin is coming round ours to ask for a glass of milk or sugar. Maybe both.

I say bring em on. Lets have them round ours for a BBQ and some brewskis. I don't see why things should change if Aliens showed up. I would hope it wouldn't be the end of the world, but the start of a new one where we carry on with our normal lives but in an easier fashion due to increased technology.


Paul

Re: Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace!

Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2010 10:57 pm
by rstevenson
wonderboy wrote:... and all they would be doin is coming round ours to ask for a glass of milk or sugar. Maybe both. ...
Careful about those ones that ask for a glass of sugar water. :rocketship:

Rob

Re: Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace!

Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2010 11:22 pm
by neufer
wonderboy wrote:Typical Humans. We would absoloutly poop our pants if Aliens showed up here. We'd probably nuke them, and all they would be doin is coming round ours to ask for a glass of milk or sugar. Maybe both. I say bring em on. Lets have them round ours for a BBQ and some brewskis. I don't see why things should change if Aliens showed up. I would hope it wouldn't be the end of the world, but the start of a new one where we carry on with our normal lives but in an easier fashion due to increased technology.
  • Alien: We offered you paradise. You would have experienced emotions
    ___ a hundred times greater than what you call love. And a thousand
    ___ times greater than what you call fun. You would have been treated
    ___ like gods and lived forever in beauty. But, now, because of your
    ___ distrustful nature, that can never be.


    Marge: Mmmm. For a superior race, they really rub it in.

    Stephen Hawkings: THERE WERE MONSTERS ON THAT FLYING SAUCER, AND TRULY WE WERE THEM.

    Homer: See what we mean when we say you're too smart for your own good, Hawkings?

    Bart: Way to go, Steve.

Do Aliens Exist? If So, Will They Kill Us?

Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2010 5:26 am
by bystander
Do Aliens Exist? If So, Will They Kill Us?
Discovery News - 27 April 2010
We're an inquisitive lot, we humans. But could our inquisitiveness ultimately kill us?

In a new Discovery Channel documentary "Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking," the world's most recognized physicist speculates about different forms of alien life and explores efforts under way to search and communicate with intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations. However, he cautions that perhaps we shouldn't be advertising our location; perhaps we should just sit back and listen instead.
Pictures: Do Aliens Exist? If So, Will They Kill Us?
Discovery Channel Gallery: Stephen Hawking's Aliens

Re: Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace!

Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2010 11:38 am
by neufer
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7107207.ece wrote:
Don’t talk to aliens, warns Stephen Hawking
From The Sunday Times
Jonathan Leake April 25, 2010

<<THE aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact.

The suggestions come in a new documentary series in which Hawking, one of the world’s leading scientists, will set out his latest thinking on some of the universe’s greatest mysteries.

Alien life, he will suggest, is almost certain to exist in many other parts of the universe: not just in planets, but perhaps in the centre of stars or even floating in interplanetary space.

Hawking’s logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved.

“To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational,” he said. “The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.”

The answer, he suggests, is that most of it will be the equivalent of microbes or simple animals — the sort of life that has dominated Earth for most of its history.

One scene in his documentary for the Discovery Channel shows herds of two-legged herbivores browsing on an alien cliff-face where they are picked off by flying, yellow lizard-like predators. Another shows glowing fluorescent aquatic animals forming vast shoals in the oceans thought to underlie the thick ice coating Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter.

Such scenes are speculative, but Hawking uses them to lead on to a serious point: that a few life forms could be intelligent and pose a threat. Hawking believes that contact with such a species could be devastating for humanity.

He suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.”

He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

The completion of the documentary marks a triumph for Hawking, now 68, who is paralysed by motor neurone disease and has very limited powers of communication. The project took him and his producers three years, during which he insisted on rewriting large chunks of the script and checking the filming.

John Smithson, executive producer for Discovery, said: “He wanted to make a programme that was entertaining for a general audience as well as scientific and that’s a tough job, given the complexity of the ideas involved.”

Hawking has suggested the possibility of alien life before but his views have been clarified by a series of scientific breakthroughs, such as the discovery, since 1995, of more than 450 planets orbiting distant stars, showing that planets are a common phenomenon.

So far, all the new planets found have been far larger than Earth, but only because the telescopes used to detect them are not sensitive enough to detect Earth-sized bodies at such distances.

Another breakthrough is the discovery that life on Earth has proven able to colonise its most extreme environments. If life can survive and evolve there, scientists reason, then perhaps nowhere is out of bounds.

Hawking’s belief in aliens places him in good scientific company. In his recent Wonders of the Solar System BBC series, Professor Brian Cox backed the idea, too, suggesting Mars, Europa and Titan, a moon of Saturn, as likely places to look.

Similarly, Lord Rees, the astronomer royal, warned in a lecture earlier this year that aliens might prove to be beyond human understanding.

“I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms we can’t conceive,” he said. “Just as a chimpanzee can’t understand quantum theory, it could be there are aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains.”

Stephen Hawking's Universe begins on the Discovery Channel on Sunday May 9 at 9pm>>

Re: Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace!

Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2010 4:15 pm
by neufer

Re: Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace!

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 12:03 am
by jacklap
Wrap it up SETI. Hawking has figured out what the aliens have known all along. Keep our big mouth shut. Keep quite until we are omnipotent! Or possibly, Hawking has watched the classic Twilight Zone "How to Serve Your Fellow Man" one too many times. Rod Serling and Stephen Hawking may be on the same page here.

Re: Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace!

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 12:08 am
by makc
jacklap wrote:Wrap it up SETI. Hawking has figured out what the aliens have known all along.
Right, we can't find aliens because they are affraid of being found and hiding :)

Re: Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace!

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 12:59 am
by neufer
makc wrote:
jacklap wrote:Wrap it up SETI. Hawking has figured out what the aliens have known all along.
Right, we can't find aliens because they are afraid of being found and hiding :)
They are just waiting for their Yevpatoria wake up breakfast call. :shock:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Call wrote:
<<Cosmic Call was the name of two interstellar radio messages that were sent from RT-70 in Yevpatoria (Crimea, Ukraine) in 1999 and 2003 to various nearby stars. The messages were designed with noise resistant format and characters, which make them resistant to alteration by noise.>>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Message_From_Earth wrote:
<<A Message From Earth is a high-powered digital radio signal that was sent on 9 October 2008 towards Gliese 581 c, a large terrestrial extrasolar planet orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 581. The message was sent using the RT-70 radar telescope of Ukraine's National Space Agency. The signal is expected to reach Gliese 581c in early 2029.>>

Re: Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace!

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 10:07 pm
by jacklap
Hawking's warning touches on one factor of the famous Drake SETI equation. This factor is a estimate (or guesstimate) of the fraction of "intelligent races that have the means and desire to communicate". Assumming there are alien counterparts to Stephen Hawking, which have made similar proclaimations, perhaps the current estimate of 10 - 20% is way too high. Maybe it should be 0.1 to 0.2% or less. Care to speculate?

Re: Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace!

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 11:47 pm
by Chris Peterson
jacklap wrote:Hawking's warning touches on one factor of the famous Drake SETI equation. This factor is a estimate (or guesstimate) of the fraction of "intelligent races that have the means and desire to communicate". Assumming there are alien counterparts to Stephen Hawking, which have made similar proclaimations, perhaps the current estimate of 10 - 20% is way too high. Maybe it should be 0.1 to 0.2% or less. Care to speculate?
If anything, I'd consider the term for races with the means and desire to communicate to be very conservative at 10-20%. I have no problem believing the term could come close to 100% (only for technological races, though... perhaps many intelligent races never become technological).

My solution to the Drake Equation resolves to a very small number because I don't think technological civilizations last very long before they destroy themselves.

Re: Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace!

Posted: Sat May 01, 2010 3:03 am
by jacklap
"I have no problem believing the term could come close to 100%...". Spoken like a true human being! I believe that humans have a built in compulsion to communicate, so I could agree with your higher estimates. Technology and communication seems to go hand in hand (no pun intended) with us homo sapiens. But would this be necessarily true for an alien race? Is there a way that a technologically advanced civilization could exist with little or no communication?

Re: Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace!

Posted: Sat May 01, 2010 4:01 am
by Chris Peterson
jacklap wrote:"I have no problem believing the term could come close to 100%...". Spoken like a true human being! I believe that humans have a built in compulsion to communicate, so I could agree with your higher estimates. Technology and communication seems to go hand in hand (no pun intended) with us homo sapiens. But would this be necessarily true for an alien race? Is there a way that a technologically advanced civilization could exist with little or no communication?
Of course, since human beings are the only data point, it's reasonable to view things from our perspective. I have no problem believing the term is near 0%, either- I just lean towards the higher estimate. I think communication is a hallmark of intelligence- technological or otherwise. So a technological race seems likely to develop technological communications methods.

Re: Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace!

Posted: Sat May 01, 2010 7:18 pm
by makc
imagine some small planet covered with water with some sort of fish-like life, and one small island. imagine then that "fish" is asexual and immortal, so that they die from hunger, by getting into underwater volcanos or in fights over territory where they are collecting alien "plankton". then somewhere near the island, a series of mutations in result into "amphibian" creatures that still eat "plankton" but also "mashrooms" on land. however, since the island is small, these amphibians compete against each other, so after some ime their offspring is getting good at killing their older generation competitors. while killing each other, they realize they can eat each other too - all heil "raptors"! after some more time, one of these "raptors" kills everyone else and becomes the only predator on the planet. having no other animals on the land it can kill, it have to stick to "mashrooms" and try to kill "fish" or "amphibians" from time to time - now it has reason to learn, time to learn (everyone is immortal, remember) and, if we add that it has no natural limit of how smart these creatures can be given enough time to learn (or at least place this limit somewhere above humans), after some time he's getting really smarter than everything else on his planet - but - he's alone. he does not communicate with anything, he just builds sophisticated machines to catch fish and spends his free time building various technology. after millions of years, he has computers and telescopes, planes and submarines, but what he does not have is any reason to communicate to anyone.

I know, I know... TL;DR.

any way, gotta go, someone is calling.

UT: Will Aliens Be Hostile?

Posted: Tue May 04, 2010 3:06 pm
by bystander
Will Aliens Be Hostile?
Universe Today - 04 May 2010
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
Watch a clip from the Discovery Channel's "Stephen Hawking's Universe" about fearing aliens.

Re: Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace!

Posted: Tue May 04, 2010 7:28 pm
by jacklap
In an earlier post, I asked: "Is there a way that a technologically advanced civilization could exist with little or no communication?" This thought has been bugging me until finally I refined it to the question: Is there a relationship between longevity and volubleness? Could the average longevity of the members of a technologically advanced civilization be inversely proportional to their volubleness? In other words, my hypothesis is the longer the life span the less talkative (volubleness) they are. Intuitively, does this make sense to anyone else?

Re: Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace!

Posted: Tue May 04, 2010 8:22 pm
by Chris Peterson
jacklap wrote:In an earlier post, I asked: "Is there a way that a technologically advanced civilization could exist with little or no communication?" This thought has been bugging me until finally I refined it to the question: Is there a relationship between longevity and volubleness? Could the average longevity of the members of a technologically advanced civilization be inversely proportional to their volubleness? In other words, my hypothesis is the longer the life span the less talkative (volubleness) they are. Intuitively, does this make sense to anyone else?
It isn't intuitive to me. Of course, it is easy to imagine a long lived, "slow" species having a low rate of communication compared with our own. But that isn't a fair comparison if it simply has a different time base. I just don't see technology developing in the absence of extensive communication between a large number of individuals.

I'll quibble with "civilization" - to me, the term implies a social structure with rich communication. In your context, perhaps "race" or "species" would be a better choice.