Alien Life

rdouglass · #1 August 12th, 2002, 09:51 PM

Hrumph! Punny hu-man "bags of mostly water"! You know not what universe is like. Hrumph! You only observe 3 dimentions! What you know!

You can't figure how many species are on your own planet - never mind how many planets there are. Next contact we make will instruct you as to where to go to be harvested....

Here's one attempt to calculate how many planets could contain intelligent life - the Drake Equation. Many of you know it already but here it is for those of you who don't.... Drake Equation.

By the way - who determines if life is intelligent or not? ...hopefully NOT my brother-in-law...

disabled · #2 August 13th, 2002, 12:39 AM

While on the topic, has anyone read the martian chronicles? As soon as mars was colonized, earth became expendable.....

By not venturing into space, we might be PREVENTING out own extinction..

Baron Munchausen · #3 August 13th, 2002, 02:33 AM

Expendable? How do you gather from the Martian Chronicles that Earth became expendable? Every time there was a war on Earth the various colonies on Mars would become ghost towns as people went home. Not only did they want to help defend their native countries, but there was a good stretch of time when no space ships were even available to make the trip to Mars and the colonies were left to their own barely self-sufficient resources. This was a major plot point in some of the stories, of course. Vast, empty distances, long travel times, etc.

Personally, I think Bradbury is a Short Story writer who just happened to mix some SciFi elements into his works. The 'Mars' of the Martian Chronicles is more like the American West than a new planet.

[ August 13, 2002, 01:36: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

jimbob · #4 August 13th, 2002, 02:43 AM

Friendly Aliens: I voted that they'd be "Aggressive" towards us, not so much because they would consider themselves aggressive, but because we would. Consider the biologist studying Elephants (or any other animal for that matter) in the wild. The biologist means them no harm, but the Elephants don't know this, and will run/charge/attack in an attempt to end contact. And lets face it, a lot of the 'good' things biologists do include shooting, trapping, drugging, radio collaring, banding, blood sampling, other liquids/solids sampled, etc. Now a race that can travel to Earth from another location is going to be a little more advanced in all areas than we are. They'll likely make Vulcans look like school children

Drake Equation: In My Not Nearly Humble Enough Opinion (IMNNHO?

) the Drake Equation is only slightly less "black box" than the original statement by Azmov that there'd be life every thousand stars (I believe he said you needed the correct star type... 1/10, the presence of water... 1/10, and something else... 1/10). Now Azmov was shooting from the hip in the interview but the stuff you see in the press (like Discover, Sci. American, even Science and Nature) is just about that simple still!

I'll look through a few books at home and blather more tomorrow...

Cheers

[ August 13, 2002, 01:45: Message edited by: jimbob ]

disabled · #5 August 13th, 2002, 02:47 AM

You have to realize, humanity still had limited information on mars beyond observation.

I gathered earth was expendable from the usage of nukes. Also, pay attention to the chapter with the empty house.

Lord_Shleepy · #6 August 13th, 2002, 09:34 PM

Odds are that an encounter with an alien race would be effectively "hostile". Between miscommunication, culture clash, human/alien paranoia, economic pressures, matters of racial supremacy, etc. things would probably end up quite nasty even if the original intentions of both sides were good. Not that such an encounter is particularly likely...

Lemmy · #7 August 13th, 2002, 10:10 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Lord_Shleepy:
Odds are that an encounter with an alien race would be effectively "hostile". Between miscommunication, culture clash, human/alien paranoia, economic pressures, matters of racial supremacy, etc. things would probably end up quite nasty even if the original intentions of both sides were good. Not that such an encounter is particularly likely...

that Last bit reminds me of an Outer Limits episode, where an alien race wants to peacefully live in our ocean, and lands there, but we can't understand their msg, so we think they are invading us, and lauch all the nukes we have at them, they don't even get hurt and start attacking all the big cities.