Let's assume there are highly developed aliens out there
Since mankind stepped down from trees, they're always acting the same. "There's food, I must have it."
A second one thinks similar. Boom, we have two individuals fighting for food. That's basically the beginning of war.
Later on, we're fighting for possessions, beliefs, and prestige. Basically, that's all we do -- the nature of humanity.
Now, we send out a message to outer space saying that we are peaceful and won't harm anybody. If there was an alien culture reading this, they'd probably say: "awesome, when they don't resist, we can annex their territory."
Well, funny times.
Let's assume there are low-developed aliens out there
According to Darwin, species adjust to their environment to survive. There are bacteria, worms, and other glibbery stuff living right at the edge of underwater-volcanos. I guess they wouldn't give a damn about a message received from elsewhere. The only question they might have is: "is it eatible?"
So even if they "received" the message, they would not be able to interpret it in a matter as we wanted them to.
Let's assume there are no aliens at all out there
This is also unlikely, seeing that live on earth came from out of nowhere, with just a few carbon-compounds. As rare as carbon is in space, it is existent, and it's possible to form living beings from such. Eyes might not be necessary, hearing neither. Their senses might totally deviate from what we can imagine. So anyways, the chance is low that there we are the only living beings in space.
The facts:
• The closest star is ~4 light years away from us; so we will not be able to physically visit it without reproducing on a spaceship (estimated travel-time: ~100 million years with modern methods of traveling (could maybe be reduced by a factor of 10-100 with new energy forms))
• assuming that the universe is a sphere, so is its radius between 3 and 30Gpc (which is 9.6 - 96 x 10
9 light years). If there was a foreign culture scattered anywhere; chances are high they won't receive the messages we send before humanity extincts and vice versa.
• socalled "wormholes" are (according to physics) possible, yet, they're not like one every 100km. Reaching such a wormhole would itself take many many many years.
--> Aliens are possible, but we will never meet each other.
The Lost Global Mod edited this post 05-23-2010 10:15 AM because: |
i thought we agreed to each other that women are aliens and mh is a robot! |