Shostak: 'we will find ET within 20 years'

[Occams Razor]

Why in the world would they invade? That would make no sense at all given the expenditure needed. Just find an empty planet.

For the very reasons you, yourself, gave above. Nice, habitable. comfortable "Goldilocks" planets may be very few and far between. And they may need one to keep their species alive.

[Thorvir]

I'm afraid it is defenseless.

The only reason an extraterrestrial species would come here with hostile intent is to take the planet, not to take anything from it. They would want to live here. They would disperse a bio-weapon into the atmosphere without anyone detecting a thing, and everyone would die immediately. There wouldn't be a shot fired. Then they would go away for a year or two, and then come back and sweep up all the bones, they wouldn't have any nasty bio-material to deal with, they would just sweep up all the bones and move in.

It may even be that some of the people that claim they have been abducted by aliens are telling the truth, the aliens would need a very extensive collection of DNA samples to be able to develop a bio-weapon that would be guaranteed to kill every person on earth.

If they released said bio-agent, then, yes, we would have problems. If they put troops on the ground to face us, then that gives us a chance. That's what I'm saying. We aren't totally defenseless, except in the case of extreme circumstances.

What makes you think that aliens would have such a bio-weapon in the first place? Just because we have developed similar weapons doesn't mean other civilizations have. Where do you get this information from?

I swear too many people have taken sci-fi alien invasion movies way too seriously, and have no faith in their own species. Sad, very very sad.

Edited March 22, 2014 by Hida Akechi

[Occams Razor]

I am inclined to that view because otherwise why wasn't the earth colonized in all the billions of years we've been sitting here?

It may be that any hostile extraterrestrial species wasn't technologically advanced enough to get here before now. We are out in the boondocks galactically speaking, perhaps they have been able to find/take suitable planets closer to home.

[Frank Merton]

We are out in the boondocks? What does that mean? As I understand it ET is more likely out here than closer in.

[Occams Razor]

If they released said bio-agent, then, yes, we would have problems. If they put troops on the ground to face us, then that gives us a chance. That's what I'm saying. We aren't totally defenseless, except in the case of extreme circumstances.

An invading extraterrestrial species would have to be tactically incompetent to put boots on the ground and get involved in a shooting war that would give us a chance. They wouldn't be that stupid.

What makes you think that aliens would have such a bio-weapon in the first place? Just because we have developed similar weapons doesn't mean other civilizations have. Where do you get this information from?

I didn't get this information from anywhere, it's my opinion. An extraterrestrial species smart enough to develop the technology required to get here will be smart across the board. They are bound to have bio-weapons for planet cleansing.

I swear too many people have taken sci-fi alien invasion movies way too seriously, and have no faith in their own species. Sad, very very sad.

Hollywood always gives us a way to win because it makes for a good action movie. People just keeling over and dying wouldn't sell many tickets.

[Occams Razor]

We are out in the boondocks? What does that mean? As I understand it ET is more likely out here than closer in.

We are out towards the end of a spiral arm:

http://www.universet...-the-milky-way/

The stars are far more bunched up close to the galactic centre, more stars = more planets=more chance of life developing, and many are only light weeks apart, so getting to any of these useful planets requires far less effort and technology.

Edited March 22, 2014 by Occams Razor

[Thorvir]

An invading extraterrestrial species would have to be tactically incompetent to put boots on the ground and get involved in a shooting war that would give us a chance. They wouldn't be that stupid..

How do you know that? Inter-stellar technology doesn't mean it has to equal advanced strategic thinking.

[Frank Merton]

We are out towards the end of a spiral arm:

http://www.universet...-the-milky-way/

The stars are far more bunched up close to the galactic centre, more stars = more planets=more chance of life developing, and many are only light weeks apart, so getting to any of these useful planets requires far less effort and technology.

We know those things: you didn't address my point. Stars close to the center of things are less likely to have the minerals need for rocky planets.

[Frank Merton]

I get the feeling a lot of people are just throwing their hat in the air without knowing much astronomy, such as having a sense of the distances involved.

[Occams Razor]

As you know, with Roswell Stanton Friedman even made up aliens to spice up the story.

Yes indeed, Stanton Friedman and others have been making a very good living out of this Roswell nonsense for years.

Edited March 22, 2014 by Occams Razor

[Occams Razor]

How do you know that? Inter-stellar technology doesn't mean it has to equal advanced strategic thinking.

Intelligence is intelligence, strategic thinking is strategic thinking etc etc etc ...

We know those things: you didn't address my point. Stars close to the center of things are less likely to have the minerals need for rocky planets.

Says who?

[spacelizard667]

After all of those fantastic crop circles and they are ' still looking for extraterrestrial life ', out there somewhere else.

Edited March 22, 2014 by spacelizard667

[+Noteverythingisaconspiracy]

You do know that crop circles are man made right ?

[+Noteverythingisaconspiracy]

Intelligence is intelligence, strategic thinking is strategic thinking etc etc etc ...

Says who?

Astronomers, who else ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_habitable_zone

[Occams Razor]

Astronomers, who else ?

http://en.wikipedia...._habitable_zone

This article says they have no idea...

[Lilly]

The truth is, nobody actually knows anything about ET.

We have no idea if they exist, where they exist, how they think, if they employ space travel, if they've ever paid us a visit, what they look like...etc. We simply don't know. Oh, we can speculate until the proverbial 'cows come home' but nobody really knows.

[Frank Merton]

I thought I was going to have to present an astronomy lesson, but someone else did it for me. Thanks I think those who are not informed about a scientific subject would do well to stick to the less technical debates.

[+Noteverythingisaconspiracy]

This article says they have no idea...

Nobody said it was impossible to have habitable planets near the galactic center, just that the enviroment is much worse than in the supposed boondocks we live in.

[Thorvir]

Intelligence is intelligence, strategic thinking is strategic thinking etc etc etc ...

Um, yeah. that's my point.

The two are not necessarily linked to one another. I am glad you agree with me. Now the silly notion of Earth's complete undefendable-ness can be put to rest. Though, if anything, we are definitely unprepared at the moment.

[Frank Merton]

I'm much more concerned with a solar flare. We came close to getting fried (at least our electronics) this year.

[toast]

The two are not necessarily linked to one another. I am glad you agree with me. Now the silly notion of Earth's complete undefendable-ness can be put to rest. Though, if anything, we are definitely unprepared at the moment.

I have wrote this in another thread already:

Assuming that a hypothetical alien force will be of aggressive behavior and with the target to annihilate the human race due to resource capturing of which kind ever, there will be no chance for us to defense us. If the aliens are of aggressive nature it must be taken into consideration that they had developed their combat strategy and technics over a long period of time with perfection as the target. If not, they didn’t had survived.

It´s the simple evolutionary stream that we can also monitor here on earth. A very good example is the shark, a perfect organism with an evolutionary background of 400 Million years. Taken into perfection in all details to survive, like sensor systems, cognition capability, group behavior, speed, health, design in relation to fluid mechanics, metabolism and others. But, sharks do not fight with their marsupials even not with simple pinnipeds. They do attack them out of the off, badly injure them in a blink of an eye, and go into distance to the marsupial, waiting for it to die. The “system” shark prevents the option to get injured, on the highest level possible.

The same trend can be monitored in mankind. Bow and arrow, the first effective distance weapon, came into the scene 30KY BC. Just 100 years ago, the man-to-man combat was a main reason for the loss of combat capacity. Later on ICBMs and WMD were developed, to be used from the distance and to keep the aggressor distanced from the point of event. Also the opponent infrastructure became more important to be attacked. This all is the evolutionary stream. Attack, but don´t endanger yourself or minimize the chance that you get attacked and yr system manipulated also.

This strategy I would presume would be the strategy of a hypothetical aggressive alien force. They will attack from a distance that we cannot manage. We still have no technical equipment to protect ourselves from stupid NEO´s, nor even to detect them all in a timeline that might be suitable for an effective defense. We have the technology to wipe out man made satellites out of our lower orbit. This technology, or better to say the level of effectiveness, is based on the average speed of our orbital satellites, that´s approx. 8km/sec /. There are known NEO´s with a speed of >24km/sec.

So, based on our current stage of technology there is nothing we can do for our defense in case of an aggressive attack by an extraterrestrial force, performed out of the orbit of Saturn or from behind for example, with the use of high speed interplanetary drones containing weapons of kind of whatever. Game over.

Edited March 22, 2014 by toast

[Thorvir]

I have wrote this in another thread already:

If they use those tactics. Nothing you have stated changes the fact that we aren't actually defenseless in a ground war. If they invade, we have a chance to win.

I did, earlier in this thread (and/or another) mention that the use of extreme tactics (such as high orbital bombardment, and the possibility of bio-warfare) could render us defeated in a short time.

And just because one can imagine such diverse and powerful tactics from our alien invaders, does not mean that they use such tactics. Aggressiveness does not always equal military genius, either.

I tend to favor the home team, and I tend to not be biased against my own race--I'm seeing a lot of the latter in these forums, and it's troubling. I will agree that we are unprepared, but, except for the use of extreme and wildly imaginative tactics, we aren't defenseless.

[Frank Merton]

For some reason I just can't figure I am not worried about alien invasion. We would long ago have been invaded (billions of years ago) if that were in the cards.

[Occams Razor]

I thought I was going to have to present an astronomy lesson, but someone else did it for me. Thanks I think those who are not informed about a scientific subject would do well to stick to the less technical debates.

Yes, you certainly should Frank.

[Occams Razor]

Um, yeah. that's my point.... The two are not necessarily linked to one another.

You missed the point entirely. Intelligence isn't selective, of course they are "linked to one another", if they are intelligent enough to develop inter-stellar travel they will be intelligent right across the board, including bio-weapons development and strategic planning.

Edited March 22, 2014 by Occams Razor