7 ms·
1. I looked up the phase diagram of water. If the mass is 10 times the earth, their athmospheric pressure might be one hundred times of ours. At that pressure,
by _nalply 3y ago
1. I looked up the phase diagram of water. If the mass is 10 times the earth, their athmospheric pressure might be one hundred times of ours. At that pressure, water boils at about 300°C. If ambient temperature is about 200°C then their chemistry would be completely incompatible with ours. And with hydrogen athmosphere anyway.
2. Re the Dark Forest hypothesis: maybe. They will discover our radio in about 60 years (assuming that our broadcasting only started to be strong enough to notice 60 years ago). Then they might assemble something like a robotic attack army and send it over after, let's say 10 years. And if they are capable to send something half the light speed, then we might encounter our demise after 240 years more. So we still can enjoy our Earth 300 years or more if we don't destroy our livelyhood basis on Earth ourselves before that. Perhaps we could retaliate and send something back, but probably the odds are bad.
3. However there's the Loud Aliens And We Are Early hypothesis as well: maybe. There's life on that planet but not as advanced as ours. We will find more signs of life the next decades in that case. Then maybe send several robot probes. Contact could be possible after: 30 years of building the first probe, sending it over: 600 years (assuming we can reach 20% of light speed) and first reporting back 120 years, in total 750 years.
Caveat emptor: This is all speculation.
- dividedbyzero 3y ago> Then they might assemble something like a robotic attack army and send it over Why would they want to though? What do we have here that someone who could do the above couldn't get much easier otherwise?
- _nalply 3y agoRead more about the Dark Forest Hypothesis. I don't mean that this hypothesis is valid but it makes sense to think about it.
- swarnie 3y ago[flagged]
- bartread 3y ago[flagged]
- Retric 3y agoThings have gone poorly for them, but they didn’t know it would happen like this when they invaded. In theory the USSR could have greatly benefited from a short war that gained them resource rich territory at minimal cost like the previous time they invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea in 2014. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_occupation_of_Crimea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_occupation_of_Crimea However, an alien civilization has little reason to invade a planet they can’t live on. Imagine someone suggesting we invade Jupiter,
- SiempreViernes 3y agoI don't think Russia gained materially from that. While they ruthlessly exploited whatever resources they could get hold of in the Donbas, that of course that leaves the region much poorer so the have just concentrated wealth, not creates more of it overall.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Retric 3y agoA thief doesn’t care about overall economic outcomes. Crimea may be worse off but that’s not necessarily relevant to Russia’s leadership.
- leetcodesucks 3y ago[dead]
- SiempreViernes 3y agoSure, leadership might gain via corruption but the parent I responded to was more likely speaking of the nation as a whole and not simply leadership.
- pharmakom 3y agoTo ensure that we don’t do the same.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago"They might be hostile. So lets send an army of robots to wipe them out." But if the army of robots fails, then they'll definitely be hostile. That's... putting a lot of trust in your robots to win when faced with completely unknown conditions.
- jayGlow 3y agothe dark forest requires a relatively simple cheap and effective way of sterilizing a stat system. if there is an easy way to do that then a first strike becomes a more reasonable first contract option.
- jl6 3y agoHopefully there is no way to drop a contaminant into a star to affect its output. A +/-10% change in brightness over a sustained period would probably neutralize us.
- Enginerrrd 3y agoPlanetary bombardment is almost certainly going to be the cheaper option there. Less mass and energy overall. You will still have to accelerate it to a significant speed though.
- baja_blast 3y agoBut the environments that they evolved in and the environment we evolved is completely different. Earth to them would be unbearable for them to live on, and any resource they could possibly want would be readily available via asteroids. One last thing is the biology of Earth would most likely be toxic and incompatible with their biology.
- checkyoursudo 3y ago
- tchaffee 3y agoDivisive politics to the point of violence or even self destruction. Some pests you try to exterminate.
- blkhawk 3y agoThe mass isn't directly correlated to the gravity (~5-6G assuming rocky planet density in this case) and the amount of atmosphere also isn't guaranteed. It might have an atmosphere that merely doesn't extend as far into space. Basically an anti-Venus since it has similar mass to earth but a much thicker atmosphere.
- _nalply 3y agoOf course. It's all ballpark.
- andy_ppp 3y agoHow would we even get off planet if gravity was 5x what it is, we’d have no chance?
- tw04 3y agoPresumably when we're talking about actually traveling across the galaxy at anything approaching the speed of light, we've developed something more sophisticated than "burn a bunch of fuel" to both get to space and travel through it. Anti-gravity seems the most likely candidate, but who knows if that's even possible.
- navigate8310 3y agoWhen I hear about life on alien planets I always think about bacteria, virus and other micro organisms.
- Enginerrrd 3y agoRealistically, it's very unlikely we'd have compatible chemistry for them. It's like, our bacteria would be hopeless against ammonia blood or something. But fungi/protozoa are probably a better analogy... they're more generalists and would stand a better chance of being invaders. Against something totally alien, if it could survive or thrive in an animal, I'm skeptical our immune system would be worth much, but I don't know.
- baja_blast 3y agoThat's probably the case for the majority of planets, also even with multicellular life there is no guarantee that intelligent life would evolve. Earth went 4.5 billion years with 700 million with multicellular life and imagine if early hominids got wiped out, would another intelligent species follow our trajectory? Also I would like to point out that the vast majority of planets we detect happen to be around red dwarf planets since we need 3 transits for a positive detection which would require years for larger stars. Additionally to do atmospheric spectroscopy the solar system needs to be within a perpendicular line-of-sight of our solar system. So keep in mind the planets/solar systems we are studying do not represent the typical solar systems around exo K/G type stars.
- reacharavindh 3y ago600 years at 20% speed of light. So, we are not going to visit the planet unless we find a way to create worm holes at will.
- _nalply 3y agoIf you think as a species, then 600 years is nothing. If you think as an individual, then 600 years is dismaying.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoNot if you're a fruit fly.
- wfhBrian 3y ago> Then they might assemble something like a robotic attack army and send it over after Violence is undeniably primitive behavior. It amazes me how many humans assume that other species would advance technologically to the point of interstellar travel while still holding on to primitive roots. It's extra surprising from a community like HN where an abundance mindset is the status quo.
- ducharmdev 3y agoYou're setting up a binary between advanced/primitive; I would hesitate to speculate that they would conform to our ideas of these concepts. The other thing to consider is, we might perceive some actions as violence, while the other species may not view it at violence at all. We may simply be materials that can be reallocated for other purposes, just like how humans often view living things in our environment.
- jl6 3y agoTechnological progress can be used for good and evil. It’s very plausible that a society with advanced technology could still act unethically. We have examples of that right here on Earth.
- atkailash 3y ago[dead]
- throw1234651234 3y agoIt's a complete myth that far-away planets can pick up our radio signals from background noise (especially from our own sun). We can't even talk to the nearest star system at 4ly. https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/22617/can-we-communicate-with-tau-ceti https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/22617/can-we-commu... This misconception fuels the false "why are we alone" question that implies we would have detected intelligent life if it's there. Not so fast.
- juanani 3y ago[dead]
- nojvek 3y ago> Perhaps we could retaliate and send something back, but probably the odds are bad. Only took 60 years from first flight to man on the moon. 300 years is plenty long time. Suppose we crack true general artificial intelligence, nuclear fusion, ability to design self-assembling beings with DNA compilers, advanced material synthesis then we could very well launch a retaliating attack.
- seafoam 3y agoIn principle yes, it is enough time, however it is important not to underestimate our novel hostility to doing anything both meaningful and new.
- belter 3y agoAs the mass is 10 times Earth, gravity will be much stronger. So the invading aliens might be of a different size to us. To their disadvantage. The outcome might be likely to be ...as hinted in this old Dutch commercial from an insurance company - https://youtu.be/XcdC-Y2dQto https://youtu.be/XcdC-Y2dQto