Contact with other forms of life?

[Angey]

Why would we want contact with other forms of life in space, isnt it dangerous for our selfs on earth? What if we find contact with something evil?

 

[Wolfshadw]

What if we find a race that has a cure for cancer?
What if we find a race that can show us how to safely produce energy at much lower cost of resources?

IF (and I stress the "IF") there are advanced alien races out there, I'd say it's about 50/50 as to whether they would be beneficial or harmful to our race, planet, solar system (or even galaxy). Regardless, the fact remains that contact may not be intentional. We've been broadcasting our existence into space for nearly a century.

-Wolf sends

 

[Clovis]

That's assuming they are intelligent and cooperative. The late Steven Hawking warned us that it may end up like the Spaniards
meeting the Aztecs and the Mayans. Mankind is still driven by greed, causeing a long history or wars, death and destruction.
Not to mention perversions on a massive scale.

 

[Clovis]

As for announcing our existence for nearly a century, perhaps they are just not interested in getting involved with us.
Famous words from Klatuu: " technology is not your problem, you are your problem ". Not until we are standing on the eve of our own destruction, will we be willing to change.

 

[voidpotentialenergy]

I figure if they have technology to get to us we are screwed anyway.
If they are much more advanced than us they already know we exist so contact isn't a problem.
Doesn't hurt to just listen though

 

[Catastrophe]

Contact with other forms of life?

What is the most likely eventuality in the (short time)(near space) scenario?

That is, near to us and not very long off? If we are to have contact with any other (extra terrestrial) life form it will be far less developed than we are.
My reasons? If it were more advanced it would have contacted us, or decided to ignore us.

Thus if we find any extra terrestrial life, it is likely (virtually certain) to be microorganismal. The one, very unlikely, possibility is that we are just at the point of being discovered by an advanced civilisation that would exploit us, rather than ignore us.

Cat

 

[voidpotentialenergy]

Contact with other forms of life?

What is the most likely eventuality in the (short time)(near space) scenario?

That is, near to us and not very long off? If we are to have contact with any other (extra terrestrial) life form it will be far less developed than we are.
My reasons? If it were more advanced it would have contacted us, or decided to ignore us.

Thus if we find any extra terrestrial life, it is likely (virtually certain) to be microorganismal. The one, very unlikely, possibility is that we are just at the point of being discovered by an advanced civilisation that would exploit us, rather than ignore us.

Cat

If it's a game of odds then they probably have no interest in contacting us.
To primitive and war like to be members of star fleet

If we did make contact i agree we are probably going to be more advanced.
A pretty big fluke though for 2 civilizations to be just a few 100 years apart in tech in such a range of different star ages.
Before that we couldn't make any contact.

I think if we did make contact it would be us listening to lucky chatter of a much more advanced civilization or AI that replaced them.

Or we could be just listening to static forever and next door is many galaxy's away never to be heard.

 

[Lariliss]

They might have contacted, but there still no such a Big Data project to go through all the signals that we have received.
Voynich manuscript, 240 pages of text and pictures. Still unknown data.

 

[Pogo]

If we ever do meet someone, we’ll probably corporate greed them to death.

 

[KC Strom]

Extraterrestrials may well be chattering in our ear and humans don't hear it. Or, humans may hear the "sounds" and not understand the purpose or meaning. Our communication skills are not the best. There is an awful lot of diverse biology on earth that seems to be communicating at some level, yet we have little idea what on earth they are discussing. My dog is a decent example...

 

[voidpotentialenergy]

Extraterrestrials may well be chattering in our ear and humans don't hear it. Or, humans may hear the "sounds" and not understand the purpose or meaning. Our communication skills are not the best. There is an awful lot of diverse biology on earth that seems to be communicating at some level, yet we have little idea what on earth they are discussing. My dog is a decent example...

Could be our technology is in infant mode and we just don't have the tech to listen yet.
Sky could be filled with Spooky action communication at instant speed and we don't have a radio to listen to it yet.

 

[voidpotentialenergy]

If we ever do meet someone, we’ll probably corporate greed them to death.

Miss universe would get very weird

 

[Catastrophe]

The contest to choose the judges might be even more weird.

Cat

 

[Lariliss]

Extraterrestrials may well be chattering in our ear and humans don't hear it. Or, humans may hear the "sounds" and not understand the purpose or meaning. Our communication skills are not the best. There is an awful lot of diverse biology on earth that seems to be communicating at some level, yet we have little idea what on earth they are discussing. My dog is a decent example...

There was a good 'meme' some time ago.
An aged man and woman sitting near to fireplace in comfortable armchairs. Man is reading a book, woman is knitting.
A dog lies near to them with a ball in front of it.
Man: 'oh, those dogs think only playing'.
Dog in the same time: calculating trajectory of the ball with different starting impulse and direction scenarios.

 

[Clovis]

Extraterrestrials may well be chattering in our ear and humans don't hear it. Or, humans may hear the "sounds" and not understand the purpose or meaning. Our communication skills are not the best. There is an awful lot of diverse biology on earth that seems to be communicating at some level, yet we have little idea what on earth they are discussing. My dog is a decent example...

If the extraterrestrials were that far advanced, they would already know that about us.

 

[Catastrophe]

On the subject of multi-messaging, I have just seen images built up of radio signals. Just like "seeing" with other wavelengths. Nay, not "just like" it is seeing with non-visual wavelengths.

Cat

 

[Lariliss]

On the subject of multi-messaging, I have just seen images built up of radio signals. Just like "seeing" with other wavelengths. Nay, not "just like" it is seeing with non-visual wavelengths.

Cat

SOHO are actually seeing sounds of the sun daily.

 

[Catastrophe]

Yes, the examples are legion. I was particularly impressed by the one I mentioned in #16. It was in Astronomy Now, out today. Heights measured by radar and presented as a colour contour map.


Cat

 

[Helio]

Yep, helioseismology is a science that goes deeper than others.

 

[Catastrophe]

May I remind you of:


Heliochromology: Agreed terms help sensible discussion

Cat

 

[NIOMARVIN83]

I'm going to answer before this gets sidetracked into the 50th merry-go-round of ancient aliens crap.

The probes that have been sent out during the last 20 years or so have found more evidence that oceans likely existed auto xloo on Venus and Mars in the past, before Mars froze, and Venus' greenhouse effect created an atmosphere of sulphur compounds and jacked the heat up so Venus is hotter than Mercury.

As for life, there was a recent article hypothesizing that sulphur-loving extremophiles might exist in Venus' atmosphere. And of course we've been looking for remnants of organic life on Mars for decades.

Where will we actually find current life elsewhere in the solar system? I would say that either the Venus hypothesis might be right, or more likely, Ceres (in the asteroid belt) or Enceladus and/or Titan (two of Saturn's moons).

However, it's doubtful that life would be intelligent, at least by the standards we know of now.
Therefore, I do not think that we should be afraid of an invasion of dangerous, bloodthirsty aliens that can take over the universe. Much worse, as for me, mosquitoes, I don’t know how aliens, but there is no salvation from the latter)

 

[Catastrophe]

I think we need consider the nature of any communication . . . . . . . . . what medium could we share which would enable us to transmorph any signals - even if we did recognize them as signals. Probably the best medium would be tv, because, if the aliens understood, they could 'borrow' recognized channels. Even without sound, pictures could show beings, surroundings, sequences . . . . . . . . .

Cat


Addition: Of course, they would have to know the line count to be compatible.

 

[Helio]

May I remind you of:


Heliochromology: Agreed terms help sensible discussion

Cat

Yes. Although helioseismology goes deep, heliochromology goes too deep.

 

[Lariliss]

I'm going to answer before this gets sidetracked into the 50th merry-go-round of ancient aliens crap.

The probes that have been sent out during the last 20 years or so have found more evidence that oceans likely existed auto xloo on Venus and Mars in the past, before Mars froze, and Venus' greenhouse effect created an atmosphere of sulphur compounds and jacked the heat up so Venus is hotter than Mercury.

As for life, there was a recent article hypothesizing that sulphur-loving extremophiles might exist in Venus' atmosphere. And of course we've been looking for remnants of organic life on Mars for decades.

Where will we actually find current life elsewhere in the solar system? I would say that either the Venus hypothesis might be right, or more likely, Ceres (in the asteroid belt) or Enceladus and/or Titan (two of Saturn's moons).

However, it's doubtful that life would be intelligent, at least by the standards we know of now.
Therefore, I do not think that we should be afraid of an invasion of dangerous, bloodthirsty aliens that can take over the universe. Much worse, as for me, mosquitoes, I don’t know how aliens, but there is no salvation from the latter)

A not intelligent contact still can be contagious.

 

[Helio]

A not intelligent contact still can be contagious.

This is a curious topic for me.

Some have said that we have strong immunity to alien life forms. I assume they are saying that our DNA structure for our cells will easily reject them so that they can't sneak into our cell system.

Is this correct?

If so, what happens when we grill some alien "cattle" on the grill? Can we digest such dissimilar bioforms?