The dangers in searching for extra-terrestial intelligence.

[Malboury]

The signals would be faint enough,but space is much more empty than it is full. If our star was a grain of sand, Alpha Centauri would still be 6km away by comparison. For example,the transmitters used to send us info from the mars lander was no more powerful than a mobile phone. Now, that's much closer to us,it's true. But we have been using much more powerful transmitters here on earth over the years. If one of the nearby stars was transmiting anything, we could point a radio telescope at it and probably hear something.

[Lazarus]

Bloody hell, you are an ignorant lot. Do none of you watch "Torchwood". The "rift" in the Time Continuum or somesuch means that the aliens are dropping in by the dozen, all the time. Distance does not come into it at all. Dimensions are your man.

And for those of our Posters who are Gay, there is the absolutely gorgeous Captain Jack Harkness who runs Torchwood to drool over, as do all us women as well, as he is not averse to a bit of skirt either, wow, he can invade me anytime. But he does like the men. Always the same. The best ones are either married or Gay.

[reknaw]

A meeting between us and an alien civilisation will be an encounter between two civilisations on vastly different levels of technology, and the ones capable of interstellar travel to get here will be way ahead of us.

As Stephen Hawking has pointed out, the history of encounters between civilisations on different levels of development has not been a happy one for the less advanced here on Earth, so we might well be advised to keep our heads down and prepare for the worst when ET turns up.

[Thranduil]

As Stephen Hawking has pointed out, the history of encounters between civilisations on different levels of development has not been a happy one for the less advanced here on Earth, so we might well be advised to keep our heads down and prepare for the worst when ET turns up.

No comparison, two human competing civilisations are in extremely strong competition with each other, they want all the same resources... there is no telling what kind of resources an alien civilisation would want here on Earth but if they wanted something that we have why didn't they take some of it or all of it already in the last billion years?

I tend to think extra-terrestrial intelligence is extremely rare and traversing the distances between stars is a lot more problematic than we imagine in our movie treatments on the subject, that even incredibly advanced (relative to us) civilisations find it a major hurdle. That being the case i think curiosity and fascination would govern how the aliens reacted to us, rather than aggression, the only danger might be if they decide that the other 99.9999% of the species on this planet are (combined) more interesting than us and they see us as threatening the existence of those other species then they might act against us, regarding us as a kind of galactic weed that needs to be pruned... That they might judge us by our own behaviour is the greatest risk.

[cry freedom]

No comparison, two human competing civilisations are in extremely strong competition with each other, they want all the same resources... there is no telling what kind of resources an alien civilisation would want here on Earth but if they wanted something that we have why didn't they take some of it or all of it already in the last billion years?

I tend to think extra-terrestrial intelligence is extremely rare and traversing the distances between stars is a lot more problematic than we imagine in our movie treatments on the subject, that even incredibly advanced (relative to us) civilisations find it a major hurdle. That being the case i think curiosity and fascination would govern how the aliens reacted to us, rather than aggression, the only danger might be if they decide that the other 99.9999% of the species on this planet are (combined) more interesting than us and they see us as threatening the existence of those other species then they might act against us, regarding us as a kind of galactic weed that needs to be pruned... That they might judge us by our own behaviour is the greatest risk.

Good point!

[greenporcupine]

Extra terrestial intelligence?

I would like to see if could spot terrestial Intelligence for there appears to be bugger all here on Earth!

Totally agree,and some on this sight,demonstrate that.

[greenporcupine]

Bloody hell, you are an ignorant lot. Do none of you watch "Torchwood". The "rift" in the Time Continuum or somesuch means that the aliens are dropping in by the dozen, all the time. Distance does not come into it at all. Dimensions are your man.

And for those of our Posters who are Gay, there is the absolutely gorgeous Captain Jack Harkness who runs Torchwood to drool over, as do all us women as well, as he is not averse to a bit of skirt either, wow, he can invade me anytime. But he does like the men. Always the same. The best ones are either married or Gay.

I see your brush with death has taught you nothing of significance.
A pity ,because we don't always get a second chance to get it right.

[Lazarus]

I see your brush with death has taught you nothing of significance.
A pity ,because we don't always get a second chance to get it right.

What it has taught me is to have a sense of humour, which is obviously something that you lack, entirely,

What drove you to write such a whining, stupid reply? What a pity, to live a life totally devoid of humour and fun, is not living. Its existing. Your username certainly matches your personality. A porcupine being full of prícks!

[Malbekh]

I hate it when unknowns nick your ideas and make a fortune out of them.

Stephen Hawking: alien life is out there, scientist warns - Telegraph

[cottage_economist]

Something I read years ago now comes to mind.

If an alien civilisation is less advanced than our own, by as little as 100 years or so, it will be unable to pick up our radio signals or intercept our probes, and so will be unaware of us and we of them.

If the alien civilisation is at our own stage of development, it may detect our radio signals but could only reply by the same method, probably after years of delay. This is probably the best outcome of alien contact.

If the alien civilisation is more advanced than ours, it may decide to pay us a visit. As stated earlier, examples on our own planet of the events following contact between an advanced civilisation and one less so, do not offer much hope for a mutually beneficial outcome for us. Think of Incas, American Indians and Australian Aborigines, amongst many examples.

Hopefully the attached directions were along lines of, "A white bungalow near a hill, past a bend in the road, just before where the Murphy's used to live until the old place burned down in 1953."