If aliens were visiting earth

[Mr Skeptic]

Suppose aliens have been visiting an inhabited planet, such as Earth. Then, where do you think the aliens would have come from (same planet at a different period, same solar system different planet, different solar system)? What might be their motivations? Might they be colonizing the asteroids in the system, would they bother coming from a different star system just to study alien life? Would they monitor other intelligent life, or not care?

[Sisyphus]

Only the first two options are "aliens," no?

[Moontanman]

Only the first two options are "aliens," no?

 

Basically i guess, seven might be debatable as alien or not.

[Mr Skeptic]

Only the first two options are "aliens," no?

 

Some are more alien than others. This is basically a remake of Moontanman's poll which had not really worked out right, with just a little modification.

[CharonY]

Wouldn't this be more appropriate in speculations?

[Mr Skeptic]

Wouldn't this be more appropriate in speculations?

 

Possibly, and that's where Moontanman put his original poll. However it is these areas of science that would answer this sort of question about alien life's motivations and development. But if this is too speculative to fall under exobiology, then by all means move it.

[Mr Skeptic]

Well, I was hoping that putting this in the "exobiology" section would get some more scientific type answers, but I guess all that gets is a lack of answers. I'll go ahead and move it to speculations.

[AzurePhoenix]

Hypothetically... my only problem with a pre-human terrestrial intelligence is the total lack of artifacts... similar for the earlier human civilization angle... an alternate "shadow civilization" that developed alongside but progressed further quicker isn't bad... but it seems hard to believe such a society could stay so secret...

I just don't buy retrograde time travel... and coming all this way for asteroids seems like a bit of a poor investment...

 

Personally i think the most likely option would be a species advanced enough to invest the resources to come all the way over furtively just for curiosity's sake.

 

... or, pre-invasion scouts, if they aren't "astro-ecologically" stable and do need a suitable living world and/or it's resources. But i don't see them just needing asteroids...

[Spyman]

IMHO, if Aliens have been visiting Earth it is to study the unique ecology here without disturbing it.

 

The Aliens must be highly advanced since they are able to avoid detection and might be so advanced that they could be considered supernatural. With lesser advanced Aliens in an encounter they would either make contact because it could benefit them or not take any chances at all by visiting Earth because we would be able to observe them and might be able to rival their knowledge level in warfare or at least cause them inconvenience enough to avoid us.

 

We have not been around long enough as a advanced civilisation for the possibility that distant Aliens can discover us, as such they don't just "occasionally" stop by, they are either from our neighbourhood of stars or have by lucky chance stumbled upon us.

 

If an Alien race discover us and Earth it is likely a very very rare event, and if they have the means to visit Earth and study I would think that they would be willing to spend an adequate amount of resources to do so, to increase their knowledge.

 

The problem with an earlier and now much more technologically advanced civilisation hiding somewhere in our solar system is that there was a time when it was less advanced and therefor should have left some artifacts on Earth before they moved out, and there are no remnants at all. Why would they first leave Earth but then not continue further and if they stayed why bother to hide from us? Number 4 seems very unlikely.

 

I don't belive it's possible to travel backwards in time and interfere with our past so number 6 is an impossibility for me.

 

The Aliens in alternative 1, 2, 3, and 4 could all be advanced enough to be supernatural and since there is no clear distinction between them and alternative 7, number 7 seems irrelevant.

 

If Earth have been visited then it is not because aliens want asteroids, if they come here they have a reason and the few remnants of asteroids down on Earth is not likely why they came. If they came for the asteroids in our solar system and then discovered us, it is by pure luck and so they could as well have been here for any other reason. Number 1 doesn't cover the nessesary possibilities and focus to much on the asteroids which is unimportant in my opinion.

 

If the early humans in no 3 have evolved so much that they no longer are humans then they might as well be considered as pre-human as in no 4 and otherwise they could as well be like no 5 but hiding elsewhere than on Earth, scratch alternative 3.

 

If they are humans that only have better technology, then I would not call them Aliens, there goes alternative 5.

 

The only option left is alternative 2 which comes very close to my opinion, but it is phrased as if there are several different races of Aliens that visit us when they happen to be passing through our part of the Universe during their journeys. I hardly belive that our solar system is some cind of crossroad for intergalactic travel or that the total amount of Alien races in Milky Way are so huge that there are enough of them to regulary pass through here randomly.

 

Thus I vote for alternative 8 - "Some other option".

Edited May 20, 2010 by Spyman
Added clarifications

[Zolar V]

I voted for poll 8 so I shall explain.

 

Aliens could come to vist earth to either:

A: They would earth over in an effort to colonize it.

B: They would come here to observe our civilization and log it in thier "biology" books in the same fasion that we observe animals living on our planet.

 

What I find particularly amusing about anyones theories on aliens is that they are so different from us. Why would an alien culture ever be so drasticly different? Following evolution they would have a similar sort of stimuli and environment that we had and would thusly evolve accordingly. Their behaviors would obviously reflect upon what stimuli they have in thier evolution. If they were a super advanced civilization then why would they care about a insignificant speices such as ourselves? Of course one can argue that they are interested in us because they have not come across another system with intelligent life, but would they view our obviously primitave civilization as intelligent? Before we make outlandish speculations as to what and aliend would look like and their attitudes we should first compair our attitude toward a similar situation.

IE: Compairing our technology to that of the Chimpanzee, we think them extremely primitave and we just log them in our biology books and move on, looking for "intelligent" life. But are those chimps really primitive? yes they are in our minds. but they may not be in theirs. could we actually spend more time developing a language to converse with them and try to artificially evolve them, rather then spend our time looking for "intelligent" life, life that we probably will not be able to converse with.

[Spyman]

Thus I vote for alternative 8 - "Some other option".[/quote']Please specify what you think number 8 is.

I thought I did explain my opinion in post #9, but shortly I would summarise my alternative 8 like this:

 

If Aliens have been visiting Earth then they most likely are: "Highly advanced travelers who by a rare chance stumbled upon Earth and took the opportunity to study the unique ecology here".

[michel123456]

If we suppose that aliens exist, it means that generally we have presupposed that extraterrestrial life is possible. In this case, there must be a lot of aliens species out there, living upon a lot of other planets in a lot of solar systems in a lot of galaxies. So, what makes us so special to make those aliens so interested in us?

It looks evident that they could gather enough information by observing from a distance (and by Internet) instead of making the journey. We should improve our touristic policy if we want them to come here.

[Zolar V]

I totally agree with michael, and i do believe i have stated this point before.

 

If there are other alien species, and they do see us, why would they view us as special? If they do exist then and if they are present, both physical and as a reference to time, then they probably just leave us alone. We are to them just another fledgling primitive species currently unable to really do anything to any one from another planet.

[AzurePhoenix]

based off of what?

[Moontanman]

My take on this is that a civilization expanding out would loose any need for planets early on. Alien planets would be highly unlikely to be useful to an alien biology due to things like trace elements or biology that incorporates toxic chemicals.

 

On the Earth we have organisms that use arsenic in place of phosphorus, mercury could easily be too abundant on an alien planet for us to use it, something simple as allergens could make an entire planet useless to us. Lots of trace heavy metal element possibilities and this ignores the possibility of pathogens.

 

Artificial colonies made from materials already in orbit make much more sense than trying to adapt an alien ecosystem. artificial colonies would also seem to be the first step in realistic interstellar travel. Using this slow boat methods of colonization an alien species could occupy the entire galaxy in a few million years, a mere blink in cosmic time.

 

If such a civilization formed 10 million years ago they would already be here, already using the resources of the solar system. Hiding from an emerging civilization would just make good sense, studying them to see how they can coexist or even be manipulated makes good sense as well.

 

Religion seems to be a good way to manipulate primitives and it's also possible that attempts at communication could result in religion centering around the aliens even if they didn't want it to happen.

 

it's also quite possible that aliens could be so different from us psychologically they have problems communicating with us. dolphins are thought to be intelligent and even have a language but we cannot really talk to them.

[michel123456]

(...) and i do believe i have stated this point before.

(...)

 

Sorry Zolar for not having read thoroughly all your posts. I get myself involved with aliens stuff very rarely, when I am really boring.

[Zolar V]

Its quite alright, i was just referencing a more eloquent writing on a old thread that related to this topic.

[Moontanman]

Zolar, Michael, see my post above for reasons why aliens might be interested in us. BTW zolar why do they have to be a super civilization? Why couldn't they just be a nuts and bolts civilization much like us? More advanced technology but still within the realm of what we understand to be real and factual. I think the idea of God like beings has been beat to death with no real basis for it except people thinking there is no end to technology and all barriers we currently think of as being laws will be broken.

 

Why would be assume FTL is possible and aliens would be so far advanced from us we would be ant like? Have any ants launched rockets lately? Ants have been around for more than 100 million years, no rockets yet, no fire at all. How ever we can communicate on some level with chimps who have rudimentary technology. I don't think we can expect aliens to be super beings by any definition of the word. Our kind of technology would require beings much like us and unless they wanted to fool us I see no reason why we would see them as super beings.

 

I posted this in another thread but maybe it belongs here.

 

 

What would we see if we were to detect aliens inside our solar system? WISE is looking at infrared but would it really detect an alien base or colony? How much power would aliens really have to be leaking to be seen by WISE or is WISE even capable of detecting aliens unless they set off a nuclear device of some sort?

 

How far away could we detect a nuclear explosion of say one megaton? Would we have to be lucky and looking in the right direction? How far away could the mark one eyeball see a such an explosion? How much thermal energy does one of our own nuclear power plants give off as waste heat? How far away could we detect one of our own nuclear power plants?

 

I guess what i am asking is what would we need to be looking for? And could we detect them by accident or would it take a search that specifically looked for certain things that could not be natural, we do not expect to see, and we normally simply do not look for?

Edited May 26, 2010 by Moontanman

[rigney]

QUOTE: Dr. Livingston, I presume? Supposidly (quotheth?) by, Henry Stanley.

About a hundred and fifty years ago a guy from England by the name of David Livingston went to Africa as a Preacher or an Entrepreneur, looking for among other things, the source of the Nile River and who knows what else? I'm not exactly sure what his real purpose was? But back in those good old days, if the locals caught you, they'd usually put you in a big cook pot, toss in a few yams or sweet potatoes, some guava, a little Vino and "Voile" supper.

Honestly, not for a moment do I believe we've ever been visited by, "ALIENS"

Edited May 31, 2010 by rigney

[Moontanman]

QUOTE: Dr. Livingston, I presume? Supposidly quoth, Henry Stanley.

About a hundred and fifty years ago a guy from England by the name of David Livingston went to Africa as a Preacher or an Entrepreneur, looking for among other things, the source of the Nile River. I'm not exactly sure what his real purpose was? Anyway, back in those good old days, if the locals caught you, they'd usually put you in a big cook pot, toss in a few yams or sweet potatoes, a little Vino and "Voile" supper.

Honestly, not for a moment do I believe we've been visited by, "ALIENS"

 

The point here is not are we being visited, but "if" we are being visited where do they come from, an exercise in logic I think.

[rigney]

I'll not question the logic in any sense Moontan. It's really only a matter of semantics and a toss up at best! But If instantaneous transcendental teleportation is possible, would it really matter from where they would come?

Edited June 1, 2010 by rigney

[Moontanman]

Since we really don't know for sure, it's a toss up! But, If instantaneous transcendental teleportation is possible, would it really matter from where they came?

 

Since for the sake of this question we do not need to know if they are here and since instantaneous transcendental teleportation is not necessary or for that matter what does the term "instantaneous transcendental teleportation" mean?

 

The idea is to understand how such a thing could be possible given real world possibilities and to see that which possibilities are more likely.

 

To me the slow boat theory of a civilization that has already colonized the entire galaxy and are already here is the most likely scenario. Colonizing the entire galaxy shouldn't take more than a few million years at most so if they do exist it's quite possible they are already here.

 

So if they are already here why wouldn't they have taken over the earth would be my next question. I've given many reasons why they would not want the earth but then the next question is why would they be here if not for the earth. The resources of the solar system or any other star system such as asteroids and comets or Kuiper belt objects would be my best guess.

 

Actually if you give this much in the way of credence then stars that do not have planets but have extensive asteroid or Kuiper belt type objects should be high on the list of stars to look around for alien civilizations.

 

The idea (for me) is that no god like super technology is necessary for aliens to be here.

[rigney]

If instantaneous transcendental teleportation is possible, would it really matter from whence they came?

[Moontanman]

If instantaneous transcendental teleportation is possible, would it really matter from whence they came?

 

Are you trying to be dismissive or can you tell me what that term means and why is it important in this conversation?

[Monsieur Catt.]

For me the thought of aliens visiting the earth could very much be in forms we least suspect, a spec of dust, a seed, even a fish LOL..

 

I can remember reading recently-ish about a new species of fish discovered on the ocean bed.. which got me thinking about how we generalise about how aliens would visit the earth, traditional/popular thought is via a space ship, but what if they could visit the earth from the inside out?

 

a new flower/plant? or something so small that we would need to walk around with hubble telescope spectacles on to see them?

 

I recently enjoyed reading the thread about how the earthquake in chile has/may have taken 1.26 microseconds of our day, and with that in mind, it would not be beyond the realms to have alien lifeforms that are smaller than our smallest particles.

 

one thing that is a very popular belief within my social circles is the way technology has come on in leaps and bounds since WWII, technological know-how handed to us on a plate from aliens?