EPTindependence day?
hell, starcraft?
not like these are new and innovative ideas. I like that he's thinking on this, and I'm not questioning his intelligence, but I believe he has lost his edge a little and should go back to black holes or w/e.
Stephen Hawking says don't talk to aliens - Page 3
| Blogs > Lobotomy |
|
Bill Murray
United States9292 Posts
independence day? hell, starcraft? not like these are new and innovative ideas. I like that he's thinking on this, and I'm not questioning his intelligence, but I believe he has lost his edge a little and should go back to black holes or w/e. | ||
|
LonelyMargarita
1845 Posts
I don't think they'd go out of their way to harm us, or choose our planet over any similar-but-uninhabited planet. I just think if they did make their way 'here' (whether that means location, time, dimension, or something else we don't understand yet), our existence won't have any influence on their actions - positive or negative. On the other hand, I also doubt any attempt to outreach to aliens (high powered radio waves, probes, etc) will have any influence on whether aliens actually find us. Until we figure out a way to (knowingly & controllably) send something FTL, our reach is too small and their technology will undoubtedly discover us with or without our efforts to be found. | ||
|
fulmetljaket
482 Posts
On April 27 2010 23:33 Hawk wrote: wouldn't necessarily be too bad. This would be bitchin' bump | ||
|
DanCeWithDevil
United States87 Posts
they decided to come to america and mass genocide the indians and steal all the resources...and thats their own race! imagine what aliens would not hesitate to do to us! | ||
|
XazXio
United States356 Posts
| ||
|
Lysis
United States147 Posts
On April 28 2010 02:39 Ian Ian Ian wrote: Why does everyone always assume aliens are evil :s Because obviously the Ancients and the Asgard are just non-existent. If there was intelligent life out there that could reach us in the next few generations, there is a pretty good chance that'd we'd never know due to technological and communication differences. Part of me still wants to believe that Stargate is a government cover-up (as depicted in actual episodes) of the actual Stargate program that could be running right under us. | ||
|
Coagulation
United States9633 Posts
| ||
|
obesechicken13
United States10467 Posts
And the third and final point to make is that an advanced enough life, if it moved past its colonization phase without developing a technology capable of finding earth, would probably have developed to a stage past human comprehension. They wouldn't be little green men. It's an interesting theory, but it competes with every single other plausible but not probable theory of alien life out there, without having any notable advantage. edit: spelt his name wrong  | ||
|
Boblion
France8043 Posts
On April 28 2010 06:51 Coagulation wrote: i have a hard time believing human kind would be of any interest to life forms that have evolved to the point of being able to observe us. Why do you think we enjoy reading blogs on TL ?  | ||
|
EntertainMe
864 Posts
On April 28 2010 02:14 tyCe wrote: Sure, but if they were carbon-based organisms like ourselves and other forms of life on Earth, then it's logical that they would have extra affinity for a world like Earth, which to our current knowledge, is the only place capable of sustaining carbon-based life forms. Too seek out aliens would be like dangling meat in front of a wolf. Also, your usage of the term, "number theory", doesn't make sense. Number theory is a branch of pure maths. Maybe you mean statistical likelihood - although statistics cannot exist for something that is unknown like life on other planets. Therefore, logically speaking, there is no basis to determine whether life exists in other parts of the universe or its nature. If extraterrestrial life were carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphor based organism like ourselves, covergionism, then yes, that likely can be the case. However, the majority believes in divergionism, which means the universe is not limited to the variety we have on Earth, but can convergently evolve. Too seek out aliens then would be like dangling meat in front of a lamb. And yes, the usuage of the term "number theory" didn't make sense. It was a reference to his quote inside the article: “To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational,” | ||
|
DreaM)XeRO
Korea (South)4667 Posts
On April 28 2010 06:56 obesechicken13 wrote: I think Hawking needs to rethink his theory for more reasons than one. As people have said an advanced enough civilization would not need to find resources as we do, colonizing planets and stripping it of resources (Hawking's been playing too much DOW2 lol). In addition as someone else said an advanced civilization, if it wanted to find other civilizations, would have already found us if it were capable of finding us at all. And the third and final point to make is that an advanced enough life, if it moved past its colonization phase without developing a technology capable of finding earth, would probably have developed to a stage past human comprehension. They wouldn't be little green men. It's an interesting theory, but it competes with every single other plausible but not probable theory of alien life out there, without having any notable advantage. edit: spelt his name wrong curious. you. an average what. college -goer thinks that one of the smartest men in the world should change his theory? dont you think he spends a BIT more time thinking things over than you? | ||
|
StorkHwaiting
United States3465 Posts
On April 27 2010 23:11 R0YAL wrote: i actually saw the majority of this show and though it is a pretty obvious concept that there is most likely aliens out there somewhere, he did have some pretty interesting theories, but then again, nothing Hollywood hasnt thought of =P Hollywood hasn't thought of anything -_-. They buy the ideas from SF writers! | ||
|
StorkHwaiting
United States3465 Posts
On April 28 2010 06:56 obesechicken13 wrote: I think Hawking needs to rethink his theory for more reasons than one. As people have said an advanced enough civilization would not need to find resources as we do, colonizing planets and stripping it of resources (Hawking's been playing too much DOW2 lol). In addition as someone else said an advanced civilization, if it wanted to find other civilizations, would have already found us if it were capable of finding us at all. And the third and final point to make is that an advanced enough life, if it moved past its colonization phase without developing a technology capable of finding earth, would probably have developed to a stage past human comprehension. They wouldn't be little green men. It's an interesting theory, but it competes with every single other plausible but not probable theory of alien life out there, without having any notable advantage. edit: spelt his name wrong You're thinking of "resources" in a simplistic sense. The basis of resources and scarcity within the physical universe is simply energy/matter. Matter translates into energy and vice versa. This is the "stuff" with which the physical world is made of. Potential energy, stored energy, etc are all resources for an advanced civilization. We're not talking about lumber and deer skins here. It doesn't matter how advanced a civilization is, it most likely cannot create matter/energy out of a vacuum. It will still have an economy that relies on energy/matter conversion, storage, and circulation. Therefore, the "resources" of planet Earth would be its energy potential, geothermal, kinetic etc. The same with our sun. It's basically a giant fusion energy reactor. While an alien species may not come down to our planet as little green men and shoot us with lasers, they could just as easily fly into our solar system, encase our sun in a dyson sphere that is designed to siphon the energy emanating from it, and thereby starve our solar system of energy. That would be absolute catastrophe for the human species, and to the alien species it's as simple as plugging a power cord into an outlet. Even when you advance the thought of alien civilizations to the point of superconduction, lossless systems, virtualized existences etc, they are still reliant on energy as a resource. I can't really comment about dark matter, anti-matter, other exotic forms etc because I don't know nearly enough about those fields, but I'm pretty confident in saying that energy/matter economy is what a normal living civilization will use as their supply/demand model. And no, FTL does not imply that this civilization is god-like, omniscient, etc. While our current understanding of physics rules out the possibility of FTL travel, that doesn't mean it's really light years ahead of us. It wasn't too long ago that humans thought the earth was flat and there was no way to get from Europe to India by going west. Also, the concept of "millions of years ahead of us" is flawed because it doesn't account for the relativity of time. There is no set amount of progress per year a civilization has existed. Take for instance our modern civilization. In ten years, we progress faster than the human species has in the previous 10,000 years. And this effect is exponential. So, a civilization with FTL travel could be only a century or two ahead of us in terms of sophistication. And truthfully, there is no concrete way to describe technological sophistication. Sometimes, it takes one breakthrough to have the whole species leap forward. There's the diffusion of application technology which takes longer, but the theoretical is what's revolutionary, and that really can't be measured in terms of years. | ||
|
Qikz
United Kingdom12056 Posts
| ||
|
Faronel
United States658 Posts
| ||
|
zer0das
United States8519 Posts
As far as life ever encountering us goes, it's really a matter of the improbability of life forming (that can communicate in a way that at least rivals speaking in terms of flexibility, build tools, have the desire to invent things, be far in advanced of what we are capable technologically) versus the size of the universe. No one has a solid grasp of all the requisites that need to be fulfilled for an alien to show up on Earth. Suffice to say the list is probably quite long, and several of the variables probably have a very low probability. If the magnitudes of these two things are roughly the same, we'd probably never observe them. Also, I will cite Starcontrol 2 http://sc2.sourceforge.net/ (the open source made by the original authors)- it's often assumed aliens will have similar interests to us, but that's a really bad assumption. Or maybe they're similar, but to the point it would actually inhibit them caring about finding other life forms (ie, Earthcraft 2 just came out, and the entire population just plays the game all day long trying to become a professional... wait a second...). | ||
|
EntertainMe
864 Posts
On April 28 2010 09:37 Faronel wrote: Agreed... Stephen Hawking is just rehashing the plot of Independence Day. (PROTOSS USER) Agreed... Stephen Hawking is just rehashing the plot of Starship Trooper. (ZERG USER) editted  | ||
|
nayumi
Australia6499 Posts
| ||
|
KingofHearts
Japan562 Posts
i add this Agreed... Stephen Hawking is just rehashing the plot of District 9 (TERRAN USER) | ||
|
il0seonpurpose
Korea (South)5638 Posts
| ||
| ||
