Alien Life

Baron Munchausen · #1 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 · #2 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 · #3 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 · #4 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 · #5 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.

DirectorTsaarx · #6 August 15th, 2002, 04:55 PM

The August 2002 issue of Scientific American has a short article on the Drake Equation (the Skeptic column, page 33). The main point of the article is calculating the variable "L", which (in the Drake equation) is the lifetime of a communicating civilization. The article also mentions that, out of the 7 variables in the equation, we only have significant data on 1 variable: the rate of formation of "suitable stars". Of course, the entire equation is based on the idea that Earth-like planets are the only ones capable of sustaining intelligent life. Depending on your definition of intelligent life, that may be accurate, i.e. if "intelligent" is defined as "able to effectively communicate with humans". If "intelligent" is defined in a more philosophical context, there may be many intelligent races in the universe, but we'll never know because we (and they) can't communicate well enough to make that determination.

Just my 2 cents...

geoschmo · #7 August 15th, 2002, 05:15 PM

Unless you are of the belief that life is unique to Earth, the sheer numbers of stars makes it almost a mathematical certainty that there is life elsewhere in the galaxy, let alone the universe as a whole. It really doesn't matter what number you plug into the other variables in the Drake equation, as long as they aren't zero the result is going to be a fairly large number.

The real question is assuming there is life and intelligent life, is there any possible way we could make contact with them considering the vast distances involved.

EDIT:I should say "meaningful contact". We could beam radio message back and forth, but a 50+ year message lag would be a real pain. It's bad enough in the game waiting two turns for a response.

[ August 15, 2002, 16:29: Message edited by: geoschmo ]