What will happen when we make contact???

[imac/cheese]

(4) The advanced civilisations have agreed amongst themselves not to interfere with developing races until they've proved they're mature enough*




*© Gene Roddenberry

(5) Gene Roddenberry and the other members of his advanced civilization actually revealed to us everything we needed to know, but disguised it as fiction so no one would believe it. He broke the Prime Directive, but since we don't believe, no harm has been done.

 

[floyde]

BTW, somewhat relevant to this discussion...

Trio of 'super-Earths' discovered

Lol dude, that's the article that inspired the OP to create this thread

Anyway, I've always held the belief that, no matter how abundant life is in the universe, the chances of us meeting with anyone else are very slim. The distances are too big, the maximum allowed speed is too slow. Furthermore, who knows if there is such a thing as "contemporary" space civilizations. Perhaps there was a civilization close enough for contact but it was wiped out by a black hole before man discovered fire. Or perhaps we will self destruct before realizing we can reach some primitive aliens on Alpha Centauri.

 

[Queso]

Lol dude, that's the article that inspired the OP to create this thread

That's the thing with the universe though. You look too far in one direction and you end up back where you started

 

[floyde]

That's the thing with the universe though. You look too far in one direction and you end up back where you started

Touché

 

[nlivo]

BTW, somewhat relevant to this discussion...

Trio of 'super-Earths' discovered

Yeah, thanks. But that was the article I read (and linked to in my original post) that made me start this thread. It was just on a different site.

I know you guys are all interested in other "things" out there. But I'm more interested in how it would effect us. If we did discover life somewhere out there (hypothetically...not that far away), how would this effect us all? Religions would have to start taking this into account, etc.

I'm starting to think that if we did end up finding people and attempted to make contact, whoever was alive to send this message (or whatever it is) to them, would be dead by the time they receive it (or we receive a message back). Either that, or we would all be dead (nuclear war or something like that) before we even found them (or they found us).

 

[redAPPLE]

my take.

disregarding how huge space is and all the theories and reasonings some of you guys posted here...

i would imagine this, if the aliens are "friendly" once they land, then we would probably be fascinated with them in the beginning. later, we would exploit them. unfortunately, maybe even harm them.

the way i see things, we need all to be one happy earth before we are grown up enough to make contact with other beings.

 

[The Doctor]

i think in most science fiction aliens are portrayed as being hostile invaders... i think in reality they would view earth more like a safari... i don't think beings capable of getting here would have any interest in humans... we are like going into the jungle and looking at monkeys... i think they will come here as paleontologists, or something along those lines... but who knows... one thing i feel sure of though, we are not alone.

 

[Tom B.]

I am almost certain that some idiot will ruin any chances of humanity having a good relationship with another intelligent species. I'm sure any aliens capable of finding earth will realise that humans are just too unstable to be worth contacting... yet.