The Aliens Are Coming!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Briareus Delta]

Originally Posted by Interference

Maybe it's just me, but does anyone else think it's odd that on a SciFi forum there are so few people who believe in the existence of extra-terrestrial biological entities?

Hm, I think we might be back with Scott's original post here. I firmly believe that ET is out there somewhere. The chances of us being alone in this vast place we call the universe are pretty remote. However, what I (and I think most people) have an issue with here is that there is simply no concrete evidence to suggest that they have visited us or that they have carried out 'abductions'. And what circumstantial evidence exists is pretty flimsy.

There's sure to be other life. But they may be more primitive than us. Or, like us, struggling with limited technology and unable to get farther than the nearest moon. Or technologically superior and well aware of our existence but obeying some kind of 'prime directive' not to interfere with our evolutionary development. Or, as we speak, making plans for a hyper-space bypass that will obliterate the Earth altogether.

Knowing my luck, the latter. Now, where did I put that towel...?

[Interference]

Originally Posted by Briareus Delta

Or, as we speak, making plans for a hyper-space bypass that will obliterate the Earth altogether.

Statistically, I read somewhere how someone had worked out - and, you know, I think it might have been Carl Sagan - that the likelihood of an advanced civilisation living close enough to us to make the trip was very slim. I think it's almost a given now that life is out there in some form and probably many forms, but remember that in all the millions of years the dinosaurs had to themselves, they seem not to have evolved very much at all in a technological sense.

But look back over this thread and there is a form of consensus suggesting we should be exploring space and discovering life and I'm not alone in wondering what form that exploration might take, even in our currently 'enlightened' stage of development.

On finding a planet supporting life, first reaction is to sample it and bring it back to earth. This is unarguably what happens today with soil and rock samples, it is undoubtedly what will happen with organic samples, be it grass or bacteria. It's almost certainly the bringing back to earth aspect that will enable us to discover the life form in the first place. We won't have working labs on other planets in the first week.

So a soil sample has been brought back from a planet somewhere across the galaxy, are we going to send the ants we find in it back at a cost of billions? Are we going to release the creatures into the wild? No, we're going to create an artificial environment for them and watch what they do. The presumption will be that they won't know any different.

But what if they do? What if you take the queen bee out of a hive? Or the scouting party of a food hunt. Or some creatures wife.

It would take years for science to discover whether these creatures have a culture or primitive civilisation and in the mean time legs will be pulled off to see if they go deaf, microscopic bisections will be done on tiny torsoes, all long before there's any certainty as to whether they have a nervous system of any type.

I think this will happen, the day we discover extra-terrestrial life. And we're supposed to be the smart, caring ones of the galaxy. What if that's what's been happening to us, though not as often as is reported. What if the aliens got here, studied us and only later found we had feelings of our own? Maybe they've stopped altogether now, but I wouldn't be too sure about that. We still breed and slaughter pig, even though they are more intelligent than dogs. We give chickens freedom to run around the farmyard because we know they suffer distress if we cage them, but we still cut their heads off and consume their corpses.

Once again, I'm not supporting the totality of abduction theory, but whether or not it happens, can we not draw lessons for our own treatment of the life that coexists on this planet with us from the idea that it might and the form it might take? Will those lessons not be an important part of how we conduct ourselves when we travel the stars?