4 ms·
Let's say we find it, what then?
by squozzer 13y ago
Let's say we find it, what then?
- ChristianBundy 13y agoHow?
- mapleoin 13y agoWe have a whole genre of literature dedicated to answering that question.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 13y agoI suppose they are more than 10 light years away, so I guess if we want to talk then we transmit then wait for a long time. This earth like planet was 2700 light years away: http://www.nbcnews.com/science/8-8-billion-habitable-earth-size-planets-exist-milky-way-8C11529186 http://www.nbcnews.com/science/8-8-billion-habitable-earth-s...
- clavalle 13y agoThere are a ton of candidates in our cosmic neighborhood (less than 70 light years away).
- kbutler 13y agoYou don't transmit and wait, you just keep talking* - we've essentially been doing this since radio broadcasts began, but we haven't heard/recognized a response yet... *I thought this was a NASA quote, but I probably got it from a science fiction story somewhere?
- jeffcoat 13y agoYou're probably thinking of Isaac Asimov's story "My Son, the Physicist". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Son,_the_Physicist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Son,_the_Physicist
- salient 13y agoWe try to invade them, of course.
- Datsundere 13y agoThey're probably just single celled animals if anything. I just don't believe they can be as advanced or better than us. Some people may disagree (people who would die for star wars/trek).
- druiid 13y agoWhy does that have to be the case though? The universe/galaxy are already very old. I can't imagine there's anything preventing alien beings from having gone through an entire life-cycle already, since humans began to walk the earth.
- clavalle 13y agoWe'd probably attempt communication. We'd also probably try to send probes. Hopefully intelligent, self replicating probes that will avoid contaminating any alien biological systems while gathering information and transmitting it back. Of course, that would be an extremely long lasting project so we'd have to set up some way to collect the signal here at home for the next few dozen thousand years. In other words, we will have some interesting questions to ask ourselves and interesting challenges to overcome. Perhaps, for example, we could find a dead moon, planet or stable orbit nearby (to avoid contamination) and set up a station or artifact that any intelligent life that gets to the advanced stage of getting to that body would find. We could have information about ourselves and instructions on how to communicate with us. We could even do this for all candidate planets -- whether we know that they have developed intelligent life or not, yet. Basically lay out a galactic internet protocol so that even if these things are discovered long after we are gone, they could attempt to communicate with others that have found any of the other protocol monuments.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- hereonbusiness 13y agoOn the odd chance that we find life in the Alpha Centauri system, maybe we could lodge that complaint, just in case.