[jambutty]

Originally Posted by Boeing Guy

IF and it is a bloody big if, there is other life out there and they can reach us by interstellar travel, which is quite hard after all even if you can travel at the speed of light you will only travel 5,878,625,373,183.61 Miles in a year. In comparison our Galaxy the Milky Way is 100,000 light years across.
So these Aliens are really really clever.... SO why do they only pick up Mad American Rednecks? Slightly unhinged people? If such beings exist, why have they not landed at the UN? or the White House? or Red Square? If they can travel such vast distances, they will be able to translate our language. No problem.
I have no doubt that there is intelligent life out there, but whether they can visit us, well I doubt that.

I agree that it is highly unlikely that anyone from outside our galaxy has made the trip to liddle ol’ earth. But then we don’t know where our technology can lead to. And we know even less about any prospective alien technology.

So why indeed should an alien wish to come here? After all our solar system is very low down on a scale of universal significance.

Even if some advanced civilisation had the ability to travel vast distances in very short periods of time (via hyperspace if such a place exists?) what is so special about this planet? Well our green and pleasant earth can support our type of lifeform even if we are doing our best to destroy this attribute. Our planet is alive and self sustaining if given the chance and that must be attractive to a would be explorer.

Oxygen and water are the mainstays of our life and without either we would cease to exist. So any other lifeform that finds us would need to be similar to us to make it worth their while to land here. It is always possible that a lifeform that uses nitrogen or carbon dioxide as we use oxygen would find our planet a place to covet as both those gasses are plentiful in our atmosphere. Then there is gravity and the effects of living in a different gravitational field to the one that they were evolved into.

Any lifeform that has other living requirements would see earth as a hostile environment in the same way that we view Mars, Venus or the moon and would only give us just a cursory glance unless our planet was abundant in any minerals, energy or food sources that they would covet. They may be interested in Earth if they had the technology to make whatever alterations that they need or were able to adapt themselves to our environment. But that has to be some technology to alter a global environment or their own structure. We haven't colonised the oceans of the world because of the life threatening hostile environment underwater and have only rarely visited such areas.

So any visitation has to be from our own Galaxy. It is hard to imagine a being from another Galaxy being able and interested enough to go to another Galaxy. Even if they had the technology to "jump" from one Galactic Empire to another, surely their own Galaxy is more than big enough to keep them occupied for millions of years, unless they started millions of years ago. If the civilisation is that old, just imagine how far advanced they should be and would we interest them? Except for the odd "expert" are we as a species interested in the amoeba?

So with the assumption that it is highly unlikely that beings from another Galaxy would visit us, that only leaves creatures from our part of the Universe.

Our Galaxy is, as you say, 100,00 light years across so for anyone to leap from one end to the other they will need a very advanced technology. If Einstein is to be believed that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light then space travel is very limited indeed because of the vast distances and short life spans involved. They will need the capability to travel throughout our bit of the Cosmos in less than one tenth of their life span. Anything more would be hopelessly impractical unless their longevity is in the order of hundreds of years. Even so imagine using one fifth of your life to go somewhere and come back. If you relate it to humans then a journey of fifteen years away to somewhere and then fifteen years back is something that very few would contemplate. We can barely keep a man in space circling the globe for six months let alone thirty years. And even then we have to re-supply him with food etc. at short and regular intervals.

Just suppose that there is a lifeform out there that has evolved and advanced sufficiently to be able to make such a journey, would they come here as adversaries, explorers or what? I would suggest that any being from out there would come as an explorer or by accident. I find it hard to believe that an alien would come with a view to conquering the planet.

No one would venture on a journey of exploration without having some means of defending themselves and if they have the technology to get here quickly then surely they will have weapons that we can only dream about in our worst nightmares.

So if anyone is capable of visiting us they must do so as explorers or survivors.

Would the alien visitation be just one craft with a handful of crew? Unlikely unless he was sort of lost in space. If his visit were deliberate or exploratory then there would be a number of craft each carrying plenty of voyagers especially if they thought that there was a prospect of coming across other lifeforms. The lone starship exploring the Galaxy is a concept confined to Star Trek etc. and not reality. After all wouldn't he have some sort of back-up system like other craft in case of accidental damage to one of them? Columbus wasn't on his own when he discovered America.

So there we have it, an alien from our own Galaxy arrives to be greeted by us, a hostile and suspicious race only too ready to fear the worst. Wouldn't that alien reconnoitre first to see what we are like before committing himself to a meeting?

Would he just land in Hyde Park and announce to a startled passer by, "Take me to your leader?" Er! No! For a start he would have to have learned how to speak English, as it is very unlikely that his mother tongue was the same as ours.

He would observe our world from a distance and monitor our radio signals to try and find out something about us. He may even decide to come closer for a look see and having discovered that we have reached a particular level of progress in technological terms, would, I suspect, be wary of making contact especially if his was the only craft around with only a handful of crew. Even with a fleet at his command I suspect that before making an attempt to contact with us he would try and find out as much about us as possible, especially our defensive and offensive capabilities.

Any alien worth his salt would quickly establish that our flying machines in the atmosphere are limited for speed by that atmosphere and our miserable attempts to invade our own solar system are a joke, at least by his standards. He may observe our missiles and judge them to be a possible threat. Being clever enough to have got here from millions of miles away he would reason that except for a lucky break we are no match for him and would make a few sorties into our atmosphere for a closer look. He may even attempt to snatch a creature or two for analysis and that includes humans. After all don't we take specimens of lifeforms when we explore new lands and we don't put them back? Not that there are many areas left.

Even so his visits would be intended to be secretive except with the billions of people on this planet it is always possible that someone, somewhere would observe something.

Now comes the vexing question of, has there been a conspiracy of silence with some world governments?

If governments can keep secrets locked away for fifty years or more "in the national interest" then who is to say what they are capable of. Station X at Bletchley Park has been unknown for over fifty years, except to the ten thousand who worked there, until the recent documentary on TV. So if ten thousand can keep a secret, so can a few hundred.

Let us suppose that our alien had the misfortune, like ET, to be left behind after an exploratory mission to earth and he is picked up by the military and he was sufficiently different to us in appearance to make it obvious that his origins are more than just suspect. Would the military announce to the rest of us that "they" have landed? Definitely no! This discovery would have a security clamp around it tighter than around Fort Knox.

For a start it would destroy religion at a stroke and show it up for what it is, a means of controlling the masses. No government would willingly give up a means of controlling its citizens.

The military would try and gain the visitor's technology secrets for themselves so that they would have a real advantage in their world's petty squabbles. I think that the military (for military read government) would kill to keep their secret, even from their own citizens because they would consider it to be that important. Would the military be able to back engineer the technology found on a "star ship"? Would someone like Alexander Graham Bell be able to back engineer a simple digital watch had one been presented to him?