NASA recently funded a study which was pursued by an ecumenical school and the topic was 'societal implications of astrobiology.' The result was predictable but we wonder why such a limited focus. (BBC: If we made contact with aliens, how would religions react?)
Religions will likely go catatonic but the Catholic Church is relatively magnanimous about it. We'll see how long that lasts when a Big Green Monster who drips slime invites them over for dinner and fellowship as they eat, well, whatever they eat.
The reason for the question of the limitation is religions will have obvious problems but NASA didn't word the question with any constraints in that way. It's likely there will be all manner of sociological changes as a result of any alien contact since they will be more advanced than we if they get here before we get there.
Expecting the space aliens to be good capitalists is improbable since possibly they're some kind of hive species and they have no concept of ownership, bartering, etc. Likely their economy works better than this one since there's clear evidence they're well-endowed with discretionary funds when they're flying about in interstellar spacecraft.
Maybe it takes five of them to produce offspring and they gather after the delivery to decide whether the new arrival is worthy. If not, they eat him to ensure the strength of their tribe. Roll with it. This is not your culture.
There's not been any particular revelation from the brainiacs regarding any way to get around time dilation so travel at anywhere near the speed of light or above it will have the same result with them as it will for us. Radio waves travel at the speed of light as well so communication is improbable also unless it's intended only to be one-way.
Astronomers have been turning up exoplanets at an extraordinary rate and they expect the number of them will be shown to be uncountable within the foreseeable future. That research gets progressively better all the time and it's not their problem to solve but how will we get to these planets.
Unless space aliens have solved the problem of time dilation, they will have the same problem and any stellar exploration would be pointless except for the purpose of colonization.
Ed: the only reason to come here would be to whack us?
They probably wouldn't be so wasteful. More likely they would eat us.
Think it through since time dilation works the same for them and the spacecraft would be far out of sync with its home planet with decades or possibly centuries separating them. It's not just that they won't go back but rather they can't because their culture may have advanced enormously in all that time.
Ed: how can you tell if they have superior science and simply want to share it or they want to eat us?
Unless you can find Jeff Goldblum, you're probably screwed.
Ed: that's so Christmas to think of being eaten by space aliens!
Well, think of it as the Christmas dinner except we're the turkeys. Who gets the drumstick, huh?
Religions will likely go catatonic but the Catholic Church is relatively magnanimous about it. We'll see how long that lasts when a Big Green Monster who drips slime invites them over for dinner and fellowship as they eat, well, whatever they eat.
The reason for the question of the limitation is religions will have obvious problems but NASA didn't word the question with any constraints in that way. It's likely there will be all manner of sociological changes as a result of any alien contact since they will be more advanced than we if they get here before we get there.
Expecting the space aliens to be good capitalists is improbable since possibly they're some kind of hive species and they have no concept of ownership, bartering, etc. Likely their economy works better than this one since there's clear evidence they're well-endowed with discretionary funds when they're flying about in interstellar spacecraft.
Maybe it takes five of them to produce offspring and they gather after the delivery to decide whether the new arrival is worthy. If not, they eat him to ensure the strength of their tribe. Roll with it. This is not your culture.
There's not been any particular revelation from the brainiacs regarding any way to get around time dilation so travel at anywhere near the speed of light or above it will have the same result with them as it will for us. Radio waves travel at the speed of light as well so communication is improbable also unless it's intended only to be one-way.
Astronomers have been turning up exoplanets at an extraordinary rate and they expect the number of them will be shown to be uncountable within the foreseeable future. That research gets progressively better all the time and it's not their problem to solve but how will we get to these planets.
Unless space aliens have solved the problem of time dilation, they will have the same problem and any stellar exploration would be pointless except for the purpose of colonization.
Ed: the only reason to come here would be to whack us?
They probably wouldn't be so wasteful. More likely they would eat us.
Think it through since time dilation works the same for them and the spacecraft would be far out of sync with its home planet with decades or possibly centuries separating them. It's not just that they won't go back but rather they can't because their culture may have advanced enormously in all that time.
Ed: how can you tell if they have superior science and simply want to share it or they want to eat us?
Unless you can find Jeff Goldblum, you're probably screwed.
Ed: that's so Christmas to think of being eaten by space aliens!
Well, think of it as the Christmas dinner except we're the turkeys. Who gets the drumstick, huh?
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