Aliens

[Moontanman]

A great many ideas behind the existence of aliens make some sort of assumption, often, i think, unwarranted.

 

There are of course as many different ideas about aliens as there are people who hold these ideas but they seem to revolve around a few basic ideas.

 

Super beings

 

Super technology being wielded by either super beings or regular beings

 

Machine civilizations that either include or do not include biological beings

 

Please feel free to list your own fav if it differs from what I have listed.

 

Super beings are often seen as god like or angelic and if they use super technology to support the illusion of their supernatural nature it is not readily apparent. An example from fiction Might be Q from Star Trek.

 

Super technology would seem to be a bit more difficult to define, I see it as similar to the technology used by starfleet in Star Trek, it is recognizable as technology but has little connection to what we know as technology.

 

Super technology used by super beings brings us back to Q like beings.

 

Machine civilizations that include biological beings might be somewhat like the Borg in Star Trek and purely technological beings might be like the computers in the Novel "A Fire Upon the Deep" by Vernor Vinge where computers become so transcendent they become dangerous or sometimes simply vanish from space time.

 

I think there are of course other possibilities, combinations of possibilities and probably some i haven't thought of.

 

What are some of your thoughts on this matter?

[MonDie]

Technology isn't necessary. In fact, 3.5 billion years of evolution has invented far more than humans have.

 

Space-traveling seeds or endospores.

Many Gram-positive bacteria sporulate, producing dormant endospores surrounded with two membranes and two spore coats. Endospores are resistant to extreme dryness; they'll survive in boiling water for several hours; they are alcohol-proof, bleach-proof, and antibiotic-resistant; and they can tolerate up to 400 rad of radiation; citation Robert W Bauman.

Edited June 24, 2015 by MonDie

[Danijel Gorupec]

Telepathy - I hate this. Very unrealistic. Fantasy.

 

Machine civilization - yes, realistic. Only I think they are going to be small. Miniatures. It is very cumbersome to carry our big bodies around. Small brains can also think faster.

 

Non-intelligent aliens - by all means. I bet there are many of them within 25.5ly.

 

Aliens parasitic on humans - I hate this.

 

Time travelers; beings from 'other dimension' - I hate this too.

 

Anthropomorphic aliens - Please no. I had enough (unless, of course, they intentionally changed their bodies to look like humans for some good reason).

 

 

When I was a kid I was very much interested in various alien forms depicted in SF literature. Read a lot of SF, but still have this feeling that I didn't find something seriously novel. However, I must admit that Lem imagined a truly odd creature in Solaris (this one uses some sort of telepathy, but I liked it anyway). Is there anything stranger than that?

[MonDie]

Continued

 

Dormant endospores have survived 34 years in a sealed tube, and possibly for 250 million years in salt crystals.

 

400 rad = 4 Gy ... or 4 joules radiation per kilogram ... enough to cause acute radiation syndrome.

Edited June 25, 2015 by MonDie

[Moontanman]

Continued

 

Dormant endospores have survived 34 years in a sealed tube, and possibly for 250 million years in salt crystals.

 

400 rad = 4 Gy ... or 4 joules radiation per kilogram ... enough to cause acute radiation syndrome.

 

 

 

Maybe I could have been a bit more specific, civilizations is more of what i had in mind, not spores. Having said that is there any reason spores couldn't be the precursor to a civilization ie the entire ball of wax programmed into a spore that starts life and has a preprogrammed goal in mind?

[MonDie]

 

 

Maybe I could have been a bit more specific, civilizations is more of what i had in mind, not spores. Having said that is there any reason spores couldn't be the precursor to a civilization ie the entire ball of wax programmed into a spore that starts life and has a preprogrammed goal in mind?

 

That was the idea. Even eukaryotes usually just leave the zygote inside a container with a food supply, and we already have bacterial candidates for dormant space travel. It will probably have to reproduce asexually though.

The trait wouldn't be selected for at the level of the ecosystem, but it just needs to appear on one planet one time with a large enough window to make the leap, and then it will thrive in the universe at large. For all I know, something like this could have appeared on Earth at some point. Do we have any continent-hoppers here on Earth? Reptiles sit on rafts for weeks. Some seeds ride the waves. Birds & bugs fly.

Edited June 25, 2015 by MonDie

[Harold Squared]

Alien-human hybrids, ridiculous. Would WE do some creepy stuff like that, and supposedly representing a super-logical race of beings?

 

YES, Mr. Spock, I'm looking at YOU!

 

And wars of invasion, greedy aliens wanting Earth's natural resources?

 

Give me a break. If they wanted to wipe us out they could just push a little garbage out the airlock before braking to enter our solar system, boom, we probably wouldn't even see it coming at any relativistic speed.