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Presuming a highly Advanced Alien Civ exists. Why won't they come say Hi?

I'd like to assume and believe one and many exist anyway, it's an interesting thought rather than the depressing one that the Human race is the only sentient, highly intelligent and fairly advanced civilization in our galaxy and by extension (The universe)

So they exist. They've seen our radio signals, seen our little lumps of metal with outdated radio transmitters and equipment being sent out into space all over the solar system, Voyager 1 and 2 may have flown right by their giant (probably invisible) spaceships while they laughed at them

They've seen Earth and have mapped our planet, know of us as the Human race, a civilized (to most extents) and sufficiently advanced civilization (to be engaged in rudimentary space travel and exploration) - and know all about us

But they're refusing to make themselves known, start trade, communications or relations with us and our planet as a whole. Why?

Would it just end up being like 'V' in real life? (An alien race show up out of the blue, have 29 massive spaceships hover over our major cities under the pretense of peace and a relationship but are actually sinister and want to take over our world for resources or whatever, enslave the human race blah blah blah) or just refer to any alien invasion movie ever made

Would visiting aliens making themselves known simply always be hostile or oppressive to us eventually?

It begs the question, if they're so advanced and above us in every way, why even bother coming to our earth and having any relations with us as we wouldn't benefit or affect them in anyway - thus we would never know they exist as they wouldn't want us to know

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Reply 1

Fusilero

Perhaps we're not recognised as sentient life by the Aliens. Or they have a strict non-interference policy except for scientific research and therefore only target lonely spinsters and alcoholic rednecks so the truth never comes out.

Or maybe, like Vorlons, they're secretly controlling our civilizations until we're advanced enough to be of use rather than simple exploitation a la colonialism.

(edited 13 years ago)

Reply 2

Xhotas

Because their government spending cuts mean they can't provide aid to Earth. Even aliens have to make cuts, ye know.

Reply 3

Aphotic Cosmos

Aliens don't visit us because:

a) Although I think they exist, odds are that they evolved on a planet very far away and there may only be a handful of similarly intelligent beings in the galaxy
b) It takes a very long time to get anywhere without developing some kind of way to open wormholes in space-time, which seems a bit fanciful even though they do exist
c) Why would anyone come to check out this star above all others? It's a very ordinary, small star as far as the galaxy goes

Amongst other reasons

Reply 4

Wasted Wrath

Apparently they visited in 1997, you missed the boat:
http://www.heavensgate.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Gate_%28religious_group%29

Reply 5

PorridgeMonster

Because they still havnt figured out faster than light technology yet.

Reply 6

milkytea

The fact that they haven't "come to say hi" doesn't necessarily mean that they don't exist. They could simply be too far away or be extremely advanced but not have sufficient technology to travel light years.

I find it strange that people presume that alien civilisation is highly advanced. It's just as likely that they are less advanced than we are. There could even be a planet full of animals or bacteria that haven't developed any technology.

(edited 13 years ago)

Reply 7

SsEe

You can travel a billion light years in 3 seconds without faster than light travel as long as you accelerate enough.

Negged by someone who needs to lern to special relativity. Hmm.

(edited 13 years ago)

Reply 8

Aphotic Cosmos

Original post by SsEe

You can travel a billion light years in 3 seconds without faster than light travel as long as you accelerate enough.

No.

You can travel a billion light years in a billion years. Sorry brah.

Reply 9

lukejoshjedi

Original post by Xhotas

Because their government spending cuts mean they can't provide aid to Earth. Even aliens have to make cuts, ye know.

Indeed, the new coalition government of Omicron Persei 8 has completely cut their space program and all employment of space faring technology. shame :cool:

Reply 10

milkytea

Original post by SsEe

You can travel a billion light years in 3 seconds without faster than light travel as long as you accelerate enough.

lolwut. I'm no scientist but I'm fairly sure that's totally impossible.

Reply 11

lukejoshjedi

Original post by PorridgeMonster

Because they still havnt figured out faster than light technology yet.

I generally disagree with that, Humans have thought up that idea up to.... a hundred + years ago I imagine in Sci-Fi and novels

Reply 12

emi_sarb

Maybe we're not as interesting as we think we are.

Reply 13

SsEe

Original post by Aphotic Cosmos

No.

You can travel a billion light years in a billion years. Sorry brah.

Ah. But from whose perspective? On the spacecraft, it can be made to be as quick as you like (give or take expansion of the universe / gravity and total amount of energy available in the universe to go into the acceleration).

Reply 14

Fusilero

Original post by lukejoshjedi

I generally disagree with that, Humans have thought up that idea up to.... a hundred + years ago I imagine in Sci-Fi and novels

Yes... Sci-Fi. You are aware they don't actually go into the nitty gritty technical details, right? If they did they could probably just sell the plans for FTL and become millionaire. And most generally ignore the Light Speed Limit by using a way around it "Hyperspace" "THE WARP" "Subspace" etc.

Original post by SsEe

You can travel a billion light years in 3 seconds without faster than light travel as long as you accelerate enough.

You cannot, in traditional physics, travel faster than the speed of light. As you approach the speed of light the required energy to produce the velocity tends to infinity.

(edited 13 years ago)

Reply 15

Man-in-the-Moon

Original post by Aphotic Cosmos

No.

You can travel a billion light years in a billion years. Sorry brah.

A billion light years is the time it takes for light to reach us at it's speed of 300000000 metres per second. The problem is, as you get closer and closer to the speed of light, according to Einstein's E=mc^2 equation, you keep gaining mass, which means you need an absolutely colossal amount of power to be able to reach that speed. But if you could somehow overcome that problem and travel FTL then you could do it in less time.

Just another addition to the topic: I personally assume that there is life out there in our galaxy, and if you consider how many stars there are in the Milky Way, then there's going to be many many civilizations out there. Perhaps alien civilisations have advanced enough to overcome FTL travel and all that jazz, but who's to say that they'd come and visit earth first, or even at all. If there are other civilizations they may visit them first, but who knows. Like I said, it's just a personal opinion of mine, but I really can't believe that in a universe made up of all the same elements (Wonders of the Universe, wooo :tongue:

) that we could be the only life out there.

(edited 13 years ago)

Reply 16

Fat-Love

There's a theory that the alien civilisations would have to be peaceful because if they weren't they wouldn't really be able to make serious technological advancements without ending up killing each other first. I suppose this is reflected in our world. The more peaceful nations are generally the more technologically advanced.

I suppose to be at the point where you can travel distances faster than the speed of light the civillastion would have developed quite a bit.

Reply 17

lukejoshjedi

Original post by Fusilero

lol true. The point I'm trying to make is that if certain creative and enterprising humans could think up things like Hyperspace, warp Speed (In Star Trek, Star Wars etc) wormholes - then logically significantly advanced Aliens would have already thought of and are already using something, maybe something we haven't even thought of yet to travel around Galaxies, inter-stellar space etc etc and easily could have already visited us without us knowing