Life is Only on Earth

Trakar said:
Who is this "we" you are talking about?

Looking at our own history (small pox infected blankets for one of many examples), I'd say you are mistaken.
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There is a difference between killing competitors for resources and spending massive fractions of a solar system's output in order to try to destroy something 50-light years away when they will have 5,000 years of development to spot this and retaliate and other civilisations might as well and determine that your species is obviously a threat and destroy you for the good of the galaxy.
 
Trakar said:
Who is this "we" you are talking about?

Looking at our own history (small pox infected blankets for one of many examples), I'd say you are mistaken.
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If you want to use small pox as an example, it's worth pointing out that the accidental exposure to small pox was far more devastating than any subsequent intentional efforts.

Not that this lessens the risks from aliens. After all, they might accidentally introduce devastating microbes to us as well.
 
Trakar said:
Who is this "we" you are talking about? Looking at our own history (small pox infected blankets for one of many examples), I'd say you are mistaken.
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Human society. It would take a huge chunk of our entire civilisation's gdp, over many years, to assemble the necessary planet-killing kit. And we'd need an overwhelmingly powerful reason to do it. What's more, the will to do it would have to survive the comings and goings of political leaders and the beliefs of their followers.

Invading another country 'down here', or just bombing them, or infecting some of their population, is very small beer indeed in comparison.
 
GlennB said:
It would take a huge chunk of our entire civilisation's gdp, over many years, to assemble the necessary planet-killing kit. And we'd need an overwhelmingly powerful reason to do it. What's more, the will to do it would have to survive the comings and goings of political leaders and the beliefs of their followers.
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Sure, but...

Ziggurat said:
I'm convinced that any space-faring civilization we encounter will be religious, in a broad sense. By that, I mean that they will have some arational (not necessarily irrational) shared belief and value system. The amount of resources necessary to leave a solar system are so astronomical (ha!) that only religion (in this broad sense) could motivate a society to spend the required resources on an endeavor with so little payoff to those expending the resources.

So who knows what the hell they'll decide to do to/with us when they encounter us. But we can't depend on rationality.
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Ziggurat said:
If you want to use small pox as an example, it's worth pointing out that the accidental exposure to small pox was far more devastating than any subsequent intentional efforts.

Not that this lessens the risks from aliens. After all, they might accidentally introduce devastating microbes to us as well.
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AFIK, there is exactly one historically documented instance if Indians being deliberately infected with smallpox (of course, it's possible that it was done at other times and not documented). However, accidental infection stared with Columbus and continued with every visit by Europeans to the new world. By the time Europeans got around to actually settling in the new world, the native population had already been devastated by smallpox.

Actually, I think the chance that any aliens would carry microbes that could infect humans (or any other local life) is extremely small.
 
jimbob said:
Face it, if the hypothetical strike was launched at us in the time of Alexander the Great (indistinguishable from stone age at 50 light years) it still would have another 2500years to impact...
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In general, I'm not thinking that such a civilization would be very concerned about the level of development their targets, but would launch the attacks and then worry about committing to them and damage assessments at the appropriate times. Commitment time is probably a few hundred years prior to impact as transmission time and even slight course corrections at that point can cause the impactors to casually miss the target. They would not be concerned about devastating impacts on planets which were less developed than they suspected, and if a target civ. was, after launch of the attack, found to be of a high enough level to potentially detect the attack as an attack, survive the attack and track it back to its origin, then they would have to re-examine their decision, options and course of action.

The unmentioned issue is that, barring a "come to Jesus" moment, the attacking civilization will also continue to grow and advance in its technological prowess with a couple thousand (+) year advantage (Paleolithic era existed for about 2million years, Neolithic era lasted for about 10 thousand years, Alex's empire was actually quite well into the post-Neolithic period and it's disingenuous to use it as you did, but, I understand and accept that there is a modicum of reason within its hyperbole). It doesn't seem unimaginable that a xenophobic tech species civ. might be able to generate a couple hundred light-year bubble around their home system that is devoid of alien competition through a systematic bombardment of any planetary systems within that bubble which seem to be producing diverse and proliferate biomes, perhaps periodically. Of course, none of the planetary systems within that bubble might have ever developed into a competitive threat to begin with, but xenophobia isn't rational in individuals, much less societies.
 
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CORed said:
AFIK, there is exactly one historically documented instance if Indians being deliberately infected with smallpox (of course, it's possible that it was done at other times and not documented). However, accidental infection stared with Columbus and continued with every visit by Europeans to the new world. By the time Europeans got around to actually settling in the new world, the native population had already been devastated by smallpox.

Actually, I think the chance that any aliens would carry microbes that could infect humans (or any other local life) is extremely small.
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That's why they've been studying us, to develop microbes to exterminate us! Wake up sheeple! ;) And then all die from the common cold per HG Wells.
 
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Trakar said:
In general, I'm not thinking that such a civilization would be very concerned about the level of development their targets, but would launch the attacks and then worry about committing to them and damage assessments at the appropriate times. Commitment time is probably a few hundred years prior to impact as transmission time and even slight course corrections at that point can cause the impactors to casually miss the target. They would not be concerned about devastating impacts on planets which were less developed than they suspected, and if a target civ. was, after launch of the attack, found to be of a high enough level to potentially detect the attack as an attack, survive the attack and track it back to its origin, then they would have to re-examine their decision, options and course of action.

The unmentioned issue is that, barring a "come to Jesus" moment, the attacking civilization will also continue to grow and advance in its technological prowess with a couple thousand (+) year advantage (Paleolithic era existed for about 2million years, Neolithic era lasted for about 10 thousand years, Alex's empire was actually quite well into the post-Neolithic period and it's disingenuous to use it as you did, but, I understand and accept that there is a modicum of reason within its hyperbole). It doesn't seem unimaginable that a xenophobic tech species civ. might be able to generate a couple hundred light-year bubble around their home system that is devoid of alien competition through a systematic bombardment of any planetary systems within that bubble which seem to be producing diverse and proliferate biomes, perhaps periodically. Of course, none of the planetary systems within that bubble might have ever developed into a competitive threat to begin with, but xenophobia isn't rational in individuals, much less societies.
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I wasn't saying that Alexander's time was in the Neolithic - I am saying that it would be indistinguishable from Neolithic technology from 50 light years. Given the lead spike in the Greenland ice-cap from the peak of the Roman Empire, I am allowing that a hypothetical civilisation might be able to spot the spectral signature of the Roman Empire from interstellar distances.
 
GlennB said:
Human society. It would take a huge chunk of our entire civilisation's gdp, over many years, to assemble the necessary planet-killing kit. And we'd need an overwhelmingly powerful reason to do it. What's more, the will to do it would have to survive the comings and goings of political leaders and the beliefs of their followers...
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If we were to attempt such today, you are probably more correct than incorrect. If we were already well on our way to colonizing our own planetary system, the technology and expense are minor diversions of existent infrastructure.

There are significant portions of our population that consider many of society's current expensive, and often counter-productive, sociopolitical agenda items to be the result of overwhelmingly powerful reasons. I see the existence of a very xenophobic, advanced technological civilization as, at the least, plausible. As for surviving political leaders and beliefs is that kinda like the Chinese kingdoms building the Great Wall, the Egyptians building the pyramids, etc.? We haven't (historically) formed tremendously stable societies, yet. We aren't the most social of species, for better, or worse.
 
CORed said:
Actually, I think the chance that any aliens would carry microbes that could infect humans (or any other local life) is extremely small.
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It wouldn't have to infect us directly. If it can infect anything, then it could be like the cane toads in Australia, or any of the other invasive species that wreak havoc on new ecosystems, possibly enough to threaten global catastrophe. And I'm not confident that the chances are small either. Maybe they are, but we have no data on which to make such a conclusion.
 
jimbob said:
I wasn't saying that Alexander's time was in the Neolithic - I am saying that it would be indistinguishable from Neolithic technology from 50 light years. Given the lead spike in the Greenland ice-cap from the peak of the Roman Empire, I am allowing that a hypothetical civilisation might be able to spot the spectral signature of the Roman Empire from interstellar distances.
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hilited - depends upon how you look and how you understand what you see.

as previously addressed, I don't think a xenophobic alien civ. would feel need to worry about the specific level of development at the time of construction and launch. They would simply target all potentially proliferate life planets within say a 200ly radius of their home system. There's always time to change their minds, or targeting. Probably wouldn't be one-shot affairs, you might have successive launches at the same target within a couple centuries(or tens of millennia) giving you follow-up capabilities. Even if none of these worlds actually possessed a nascent civ. of any sort, the psychological Lebensraum provided may, at least temporarily, satisfy the xenophobe desire for isolation.
 
We've got an episode of the Outer Limits here. Powerful Xenophobic race targets all planets with missiles traveling at 10% of light speed. Two weeks after the missiles have passed the last opportunity to get a recall signal to them SETI receivers detect a transmission that scientists on the targeted planet have discovered a cure for a disease sweeping the galaxy and about to wipe out the xenophobes. Dramatic last minute reveal: The xenophobes are us, 200 years from now.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
We've got an episode of the Outer Limits here. Powerful Xenophobic race targets all planets with missiles traveling at 10% of light speed. Two weeks after the missiles have passed the last opportunity to get a recall signal to them SETI receivers detect a transmission that scientists on the targeted planet have discovered a cure for a disease sweeping the galaxy and about to wipe out the xenophobes. Dramatic last minute reveal: The xenophobes are us, 200 years from now.
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Amen, bro.

Or are you really a "bro", and not a shape-shifting interstellar toad-like being, sent among us to decide which hideous fate awaits us before zooming off in your slime-filled space capsule. Hmmmm ...
 
GlennB said:
Amen, bro.

Or are you really a "bro", and not a shape-shifting interstellar toad-like being, sent among us to decide which hideous fate awaits us before zooming off in your slime-filled space capsule. Hmmmm ...
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Ziggurat said:
It wouldn't have to infect us directly. If it can infect anything, then it could be like the cane toads in Australia, or any of the other invasive species that wreak havoc on new ecosystems, possibly enough to threaten global catastrophe. And I'm not confident that the chances are small either. Maybe they are, but we have no data on which to make such a conclusion.
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It's a good point that an extraterrestrial organism could cause some sort of ecological catastrophe .It wouldn't necessarily have to be a microbe either (think insects or rodents, or similar extra-terrestrial organisms).

Also, you are correct that there is no data to go by. We really don't know how similar to earth life extra-terrestrial live might be.
 
CORed said:
It's a good point that an extraterrestrial organism could cause some sort of ecological catastrophe .It wouldn't necessarily have to be a microbe either (think insects or rodents, or similar extra-terrestrial organisms).

Also, you are correct that there is no data to go by. We really don't know how similar to earth life extra-terrestrial live might be.
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It would need a soft landing though, not flown in on the surface of an asteroid. Whichever way you cook it, that means a long journey and a life-support system that would cover multiple generations of the critters. Presumably with some guarantee they'd do serious harm. How might a hostile alien race know what's going to be damaging?

It's all very silly. Outer Limits/Twilight Zone indeed.
 
Trakar said:
hilited - depends upon how you look and how you understand what you see.

as previously addressed, I don't think a xenophobic alien civ. would feel need to worry about the specific level of development at the time of construction and launch. They would simply target all potentially proliferate life planets within say a 200ly radius of their home system. There's always time to change their minds, or targeting. Probably wouldn't be one-shot affairs, you might have successive launches at the same target within a couple centuries(or tens of millennia) giving you follow-up capabilities. Even if none of these worlds actually possessed a nascent civ. of any sort, the psychological Lebensraum provided may, at least temporarily, satisfy the xenophobe desire for isolation.
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It would be a pretty poor decision to attack a civilization's home planet if most of its power resides off the planet and they have the motivation and resources to respond in kind but faster, because they had decided to use the resources of uninhabited nearby solar systems.

Alternatively, you are targeting all these star systems but the first ones you hit are indeed say equivalent to dinosaurs. Your high-subluminal strike draws attention of another advanced civilization within the 200 ly radius and they then have a warning of your intentions and the time to look for counters as well as retaliation. You are talking up to 20,000 years travelling time but only 400 years for the evidence to travel across this globe.
 
Trakar said:
hilited - depends upon how you look and how you understand what you see.

as previously addressed, I don't think a xenophobic alien civ. would feel need to worry about the specific level of development at the time of construction and launch. They would simply target all potentially proliferate life planets within say a 200ly radius of their home system. There's always time to change their minds, or targeting. Probably wouldn't be one-shot affairs, you might have successive launches at the same target within a couple centuries(or tens of millennia) giving you follow-up capabilities. Even if none of these worlds actually possessed a nascent civ. of any sort, the psychological Lebensraum provided may, at least temporarily, satisfy the xenophobe desire for isolation.
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I was being very generous to any hypothetical technology. 500BC was well into the Iron Age, yet Iron and Bronze were still expensive - metal smelting was pretty limited. There really wasn't much in the atmosphere to point to a metalworking civilsation - certainly not from 50 light years.
[ETA: What were you thinking of as how you look at it and how you inerpret what you see - it would be easier than spotting the active ingredient in a homoeopathic dilution, but not much]

Remember your 0.01c is still 3000km km per second and you are now talking about travelling at that average speed for 20,000 years.

That is a lot of effort and as GlennB says, it would be costly even for a civilsation with access to most of a solar system's resources.

It would probably be easier to make a ringworld - even though the sums for that really don't work.
 
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jimbob said:
I was being very generous to any hypothetical technology. 500BC was well into the Iron Age, yet Iron and Bronze were still expensive - metal smelting was pretty limited. There really wasn't much in the atmosphere to point to a metalworking civilsation - certainly not from 50 light years.
[ETA: What were you thinking of as how you look at it and how you inerpret what you see - it would be easier than spotting the active ingredient in a homoeopathic dilution, but not much]...
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We don't know what we don't know. I was thinking more about a technological civ. that is much older than ours, whose understandings of star and planetary system formations, the details of abiogenesis, etc., which are thousands, if not millions, of years ahead of ours. Combine this with the advanced astronomic, computational, and engineering technologies of a civ that colonized their home system at some point in time they currently relate to as being as ancient as we consider the deep Paleolithic era. The point being, absolutely ruling out a potential, merely because we might find it incredibly difficult, and a tremendous burden upon our current economy, technology and socio-political infrastructure, does not mean that a potential alien technological civilization would experience, or be bound by these same particular considerations.

To be clear, I am not arguing that there is any alien civ., yet alone a xenophobic technological civilization, as I have seen no compelling evidence for any civ. beyond our planet. I am arguing that such is not implausible, and possibly not even unlikely, in a universe where life is common, diverse and proliferate.
 
jimbob said:
It would be a pretty poor decision to attack a civilization's home planet if most of its power resides off the planet and they have the motivation and resources to respond in kind but faster, because they had decided to use the resources of uninhabited nearby solar systems...
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You seem determined to have the xenophobes be incompetents and idiots, I don't think that is a safe bet.

jimbob said:
Alternatively, you are targeting all these star systems but the first ones you hit are indeed say equivalent to dinosaurs....
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These strikes, even with periodicity, are not particularly outstanding in most planet's histories from what we can already see, here and throughout most of our planetary system. They are just usually made with a bit bigger masses travelling a bit slower.


jimbob said:
Your high-subluminal strike draws attention of another advanced civilization within the 200 ly radius and they then have a warning of your intentions and the time to look for counters as well as retaliation. ..
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As stated before...
"... if a target civ. was, after launch of the attack, found to be of a high enough level to potentially detect the attack as an attack, survive the attack and track it back to its origin, then they would have to re-examine their decision, options and course of action..." such would also include the potential observation of actions by nearby more advanced civ. (unless the attackers are incompetent or idiots), who would probably be the first targets of impactors rather than the last.

As a xenophobic society, they've probably been watching and examining all the stars that transit their target bubble since before they left the confines of their own home-world and colonized their own system. The paranoid are hard to sneak up on or surprise. They are probably more afraid of demons that look and act like themselves than any of their targets.

jimbob said:
You are talking up to 20,000 years travelling time but only 400 years for the evidence to travel across this globe.
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For the rare few not yet impacted, and looking with great precision and timing, perhaps. Whether or not they accurately understand and interpret what has been seen is another question. As we've already explored, unless the target has already spread beyond their home-world, they are vulnerable, and any effort of retaliation, especially from a tech civ. who doesn't already have at least the initial infrastructure to allow extensive system exploration and self-sustainable, off-world colonies, the expense and difficulty of making interstellar strikes of significance becomes prohibitive.
 
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jimbob said:
Alternatively, you are targeting all these star systems but the first ones you hit are indeed say equivalent to dinosaurs. Your high-subluminal strike draws attention of another advanced civilization within the 200 ly radius and they then have a warning of your intentions and the time to look for counters as well as retaliation. You are talking up to 20,000 years travelling time but only 400 years for the evidence to travel across this globe.
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That could have some dire consequences you know? Your actions could result, 65 million years later, in the evolution of an advanced race that will come and wipe YOU out!
 
smartcooky said:
That could have some dire consequences you know? Your actions could result, 65 million years later, in the evolution of an advanced race that will come and wipe YOU out!
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You spotted my train of thought...

:)
 
Ziggurat said:
It wouldn't have to infect us directly. If it can infect anything, then it could be like the cane toads in Australia, or any of the other invasive species that wreak havoc on new ecosystems, possibly enough to threaten global catastrophe. And I'm not confident that the chances are small either. Maybe they are, but we have no data on which to make such a conclusion.
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Well I just don't think said microbes, if they developed independently of life on earth, would be compatible with our biology in a way that allows them to infect anything on Earth. At worst they could, say, obstruct the respiratory system or somesuch, but they couldn't latch to cells' DNA to reproduce like viruses do, etc.
 
Belz... said:
Well I just don't think said microbes, if they developed independently of life on earth, would be compatible with our biology in a way that allows them to infect anything on Earth. At worst they could, say, obstruct the respiratory system or somesuch, but they couldn't latch to cells' DNA to reproduce like viruses do, etc.
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Indeed.

The fact that most viral diseases cannot even cross species gaps in species from this planet, despite the high percentage similarities in DNA, pretty much much indicates that. For example, despite the fact the dogs and people share about 85% of their DNA, humans cannot get Canine Distemper. Sure, the virus can replicate in the human system, but it produces no illness and no symptoms.

However, on the other side of the coin... swine flu, bird flu.


NOTE: For the contrarian nitpickers out there who will now go off to Googleversity and find a list of diseases that can transmit across the human/canine species gap, I remind you that I said "most".
 
smartcooky said:
FTFY

Yes
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Thank you Doctor.
It is important to understand that 2 collisions were necessary for us to be here to debate, Theia and Chuxlub, spelling wrong yes, but we are beguiled by the profligacy of objects in the universe at the expense of exploring simple statistics.
I am just warming up.
 
Belz... said:
Well I just don't think said microbes, if they developed independently of life on earth, would be compatible with our biology in a way that allows them to infect anything on Earth. At worst they could, say, obstruct the respiratory system or somesuch, but they couldn't latch to cells' DNA to reproduce like viruses do, etc.
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Viruses need to be extremely compatible with their target hosts, but bacteria and other non-viral microbes don't need to be so specialized. All they need is an available food source, and nothing to kill them faster than they reproduce. So if life-supporting chemistry is limited (ie, nothing really exotic like silicon-based life), then the odds may not be that low. And a degree of incompatibility is a danger too: while it may limit what alien life forms could attack earth life, it also limits the ability of earth life to fight back.
 
Ziggurat said:
Viruses need to be extremely compatible with their target hosts, but bacteria and other non-viral microbes don't need to be so specialized.
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That's true. But how well can they kill something that's in a completely different class of organism? Do their enzymes work as well in our biological context, for instance?
 
Belz... said:
That's true. But how well can they kill something that's in a completely different class of organism? Do their enzymes work as well in our biological context, for instance?
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The big unknown here is how much variability in life is possible (and our sample size is only 1). We know, for example, that other enantiomers of many common biological chemicals are possible, and life forms with opposite chirality would be incompatible. But that's a barrier of only 50%, not enough to be comfortable. And we don't know how much other variability can exist which would preclude compatibility (ie, silicon-based chemistry, etc). Maybe lots (in which case the risk is probably low), maybe none (in which case the risk could be high). Maybe the basic chemistry on earth (plus its enantiomers) are really the only options for complex life.
 
Rather than leaving it to chance it would make sense for aliens to send a small intelligent laboratory capable of analyzing existing conditions and engineering fast spreading life forms that could feed off of our environment and change it to be toxic to current life on Earth.
 
jrhowell said:
Rather than leaving it to chance it would make sense for aliens to send a small intelligent laboratory capable of analyzing existing conditions and engineering fast spreading life forms that could feed off of our environment and change it to be toxic to current life on Earth.
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Directed by Ridley Scott.
 
jrhowell said:
Rather than leaving it to chance it would make sense for aliens to send a small intelligent laboratory capable of analyzing existing conditions and engineering fast spreading life forms that could feed off of our environment and change it to be toxic to current life on Earth.
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Maybe what we're dealing with right now isn't AGW, but XGW.
 
Ziggurat said:
I'm convinced that any space-faring civilization we encounter will be religious, in a broad sense. By that, I mean that they will have some arational (not necessarily irrational) shared belief and value system. The amount of resources necessary to leave a solar system are so astronomical (ha!) that only religion (in this broad sense) could motivate a society to spend the required resources on an endeavor with so little payoff to those expending the resources.

So who knows what the hell they'll decide to do to/with us when they encounter us. But we can't depend on rationality.
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Pretty sure searching for God is not the motivation for space exploration. As for the resources to leave the solar system, I would think the current theory is it will become cheaper and faster as technology evolves.

Ziggurat said:
It wouldn't have to infect us directly. If it can infect anything, then it could be like the cane toads in Australia, or any of the other invasive species that wreak havoc on new ecosystems, possibly enough to threaten global catastrophe. And I'm not confident that the chances are small either. Maybe they are, but we have no data on which to make such a conclusion.
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Chances are extremely low that microorganisms which evolved in a different biosystem would infect us. We know that because even now microorganisms have difficulty crossing species barriers. The one reason they can is because we share a lot of genetic code and that results in some crossover cell surfaces and other microbe survival conditions. But if it were easy then most all pathogens would infect most all species and that just doesn't happen.
 
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Skeptic Ginger said:
Pretty sure searching for God is not the motivation for space exploration. As for the resources to leave the solar system, I would think the current theory is it will become cheaper and faster as technology evolves.
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I think what Ziggurat is saying is: "Of those civilisations capable of interstellar travel, only the 'religious' ones will make the effort", and if that is indeed what he's saying I tend to agree. The non-religious ones are more likely to devote the huge resources required for such a trip on building a luxurious life on their home planet.
 
Ziggurat said:
The big unknown here is how much variability in life is possible (and our sample size is only 1). We know, for example, that other enantiomers of many common biological chemicals are possible, and life forms with opposite chirality would be incompatible. But that's a barrier of only 50%, not enough to be comfortable. And we don't know how much other variability can exist which would preclude compatibility (ie, silicon-based chemistry, etc). Maybe lots (in which case the risk is probably low), maybe none (in which case the risk could be high). Maybe the basic chemistry on earth (plus its enantiomers) are really the only options for complex life.
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Especially if it was seeded from somewhere or, according to some ideas, everywhere.
 
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