Okay, who is going to sign up for a boat trip there?

It’s hard not to sign up, because the chance for knowledge is so alluring. On the other hand, it’s a BIG risk. If you have all sorts of mystical beliefs, such as “Any super-advanced culture must necessarily be peaceful,” then I guess you’ll climb aboard with no qualms. But we’d seem super-advanced to the Victorians, and look at the things we do!

So the question is…

Do you feel lucky, punk?

Sorry, didn’t mean to cast aspersions on all astronomers. I believe Jared Diamond was referring to the Voyager Golden Record and the earlier Pioneer plaques. The original idea, that the Pioneer spacecraft should carry a message from mankind, was first mentioned by Eric Burgess when he visited the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California during the Mariner 9 mission. Together with Richard Hoagland, he approached Dr. Carl Sagan, who had lectured about communication with extraterrestrial intelligences at a conference in Crimea. Dr. Sagan was enthusiastic about the idea of sending a message with the Pioneer spacecraft. NASA agreed to the plan and gave him three weeks to prepare a message.

edd: … it’ll take decades for our emails to arrive, let alone for us to get an answer back. The worst case scenario is that you end up in a very drawn out conversation with the intergalactic equivalent of an internet troll.

I’m not so sure.

Let’s suppose that an alien empire is only capable of setting up bases in systems with rocky planets, not the more common gas giants.

If I understand this page correctly, the closest star with rocky planets is about 20 light-years away, or 120,000 astronomical units (one AU is the distance from the Earth to the Sun). With our technology, it takes a space probe six months to travel one AU, so this would be a journey of at least 60,000 years.

Presumably it’s also possible to develop faster space travel. Travel at one-tenth the speed of light would reduce the travel time to 200 years.

Even without faster travel, an alien civilization may have technology that would allow them to send representatives here. Machine-based intelligence, for example: an alien may not be able to survive a journey of hundreds of thousands of years, but machines would be able to.

As Diamond points out, based on historical precedents, this is a prospect to be feared rather than welcomed.

Of course, we haven’t been invaded by aliens, so it appears that there aren’t any alien civilizations near us.

I find it mind-boggling that the astronomers now eager to spend a hundred million dollars on the search for extraterrestrial life have never thought seriously about the most obvious question: what would happen if we found it, or if it found us.

is that it’s simply not that hard (given a few hundred million dollars or whatever) to put an instrument into space capable of detecting earth-like planets, or building a radio telescope to detect signals from other civilisations, but once you’ve actually detected aliens no amount of money is going to get you a warp drive to go and pay them a visit.

As for if it found us, does that have any impact on what an astronomer does? If the aliens are going to spot us they’re not going to be noticing the astronomers (who are desperately trying to keep areas sufficiently radio quiet to use their radio telescopes) but will be noticing the military radar. It’s not a question that has a particularly good answer until you find it.

The astronomers tacitly assume that we and the little green monsters would welcome each other and settle down to fascinating guidance.

No, absolutely not. The astronomers assume that if we welcome each other at all it’ll take decades for our emails to arrive, let alone for us to get an answer back. The worst case scenario is that you end up in a very drawn out conversation with the intergalactic equivalent of an internet troll.

But this question did remind of this rather creepy science fiction book.

I mean, after all, why are we so sure they’d even bother? The egotism of humans!

Oh yeah, see FelliniBlank’s point above. Statistically, you just have to bet on there being other life out there.

As to whether or not it’s visited us? I remain highly skeptical.

Of course, this totally ignores alien bodies I keep in the trunk of my ‘64 Malibu, but that is neither here nor there.

I do think there is other life out there, but I suspect that we will never make contact. Even if we could exceed light speed, the distances are still, for lack of a better word, astronomical.

If it is out there, and aware of us, and just being bashful…well, that would seem rather strange to me. It would be like going to the dance, and there are only one or two other people in the entire room, and just hanging out by the punchbowl all night. Of course, trying to comprehend alien psychology and sociology is a losing proposition from the start. Perhaps they are waiting for us to become aware of them.

And I’m jealous that you have the X-files box set. I gave up on the show in its last few years, but I’ve always believed that was because I missed some key episodes, so nothing made sense anymore. I’d love to see it all without interruption.

I find it mind-boggling that the astronomers now eager to spend a hundred million dollars on the search for extraterrestrial life have never thought seriously about the most obvious question: what would happen if we found it, or if it found us. The astronomers tacitly assume that we and the little green monsters would welcome each other and settle down to fascinating guidance. We’ve already discovered two species that are very intelligent but technically less advanced than we are—the common chimpanzee and pygmy chimpanzee. Has our response been to sit down and try to communicate with them? Of course not. Instead we shoot them, dissect them, cut off their hands for trophies, put them on exhibit in cages, inject them with AIDS virus as a medical experiment, and destroy or take over their habitats. That response was predictable, because human explorers who discovered technically less advanced humans also regularly responded by shooting them, decimating their populations with new diseases, and destroying or taking over their habitats.

Is the animus dominandi peculiar to humans? Is it plausible that an independently evolved civilization would not have the same drive to dominate others? Andrew Schmookler’s parable of the tribes suggests that the answer is no.

What if there is intelligent life, it knows about us, it could get here if it liked, but it’s just a bit bashful? Or just likes to keep to itself—oh, Earth, I’m sure you’re perfectly nice and I don’t mean it as a personal affront, I just, well, I’d rather stay in with a good holocinema and a bottle of xrrf this epoch or something like that.

“Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.”

We’ve not yet detected any earthlike ones of course, but we’re also not able to detect earthlike planets with current experiments, so that shouldn’t be a reason to think they’re not there.

I totally believe there is other life… out there. But I really, really don’t think extraterrestrials swish about in their hot-rods in our atmosphere for funsies, abduct us, probe us, impregnate us, brainwash us, use our wheat fields for Alien Photoshop, and have kinky snuff fun with our cows. I do think that if, say, there were suddenly a lot of popular fiction in the form of books, television shows and films about bizarre “DeepEarth Dwellers” we’d soon being hearing about more and more real-life first-person accounts of contact with the molelike men.

Now, whether it’s sentient or wears a fedora, I don’t know. I doubt that They’ve been here because if they had the technology to get here, it’d be silly for them to hide from puny little us. If they can get here, they can undoubtedly know plenty about us long distance. And the way we envision these ETs is just way too conveniently humanoid to be plausible.

But I defer to those with knowledge of actual science.

Or contact may already have happened, but the aliens have an unhealthy and fiercely private obsession with rednecks’ arseholes.