What Role will Extraterrestrials Play in Humanity's Future?

Whilst doing some research on SETI I came across a brilliant paper written by a Professor Allen Tough of The University of Toronto which then led me to his website containing dozens of papers he has written on the possibility of extraterrestrial life in the Universe and the consequences to the human race if indeed it was found .

Because their capacities are probably highly advanced, some extraterrestrial species may be using unobtrusive methods of observing humankind and other fledgling civilizations in this Galaxy. The amount of help they want to give to such civilizations is probably quite significant. Their help could be of three types: instant intervention to avoid a nuclear holocaust or other imminent catastrophe: long-term help in reducing grave dangers; and help in improving nondangerous spheres of life.

Sooner or later, unless we extinguish ourselves first, advanced extraterrestrials will have an enormous impact on humankind. Even during the next 30 years, the probability of contact of interaction may be one in four.

Source Paper

A Critical Examination of Factors that Might Encourage Secrecy (PDF)

Intelligent Life in the Universe: What Role Will It Play in Our Future?

Website

A lot of very thought provoking, intelligent reading here from a man who's name I searched for on ATS but produced no results so I hope his work is new to most of you and you will also find his theories as interesting as I did.

hehe i like the thought that aliens are just waiting on the dark side of the moon watching and the second we launch all our nukes they're going to blow them out the sky Alas i doubt it, for some serious reasons.

Yeah i'm sure aliens would love to watch nature documentrys about the developing world and its crazy little savages, however the model he is using suggests that there are a lot of life supporting planets and also that life frequently turns into an advanced society type one or two and sometimes type 3. Things brings with it the issue that we're not all that special.

To be honest as a race we humans could be fairly rubbish, our worthy literature and music might be worse than the universal average, our paintings bland and uninspired, our rituals and beliefs dull and obvious - plus we might be a universal standard, a billion planets might have weird little bipeds who spend all their time fighting before at some point destroying their planet or being destroyed by freak gamma rays, etc -nothing new or exciting, maybe all life which has reached type 2.5 is nothing like us? They've seen a million times this spread of rudamentary carbon based protean machines on worthless rock planets all over the universe, sure they've studied a few, watched as they flung their spore into space tying to infect another planet before the flash of fire or the entire infected area has been consumed and the people fade away.

It's very egotistical to think that aliens would care about us, even more so to think they would be like us. It is of course just as likely that alien cleaning ship 253 is due to pass through this sector any time now and disinfect any rocks which have developed people. Maybe they get really angry when we ruin their rock oil or maybe they're just going to shove a tube into the center of the earth an suck out our earths core with no regard to what happens to us.

I would guess that any aliens would focus their anthropologists in a more dense area of the universe, i doubt they would even bother coming to this backwarter solar system at all. heh maybe this is only used for mining, dangerous science or maybe a superweapon test area? They might want to destroy all the suns making a massive no gravity zone or any number of wildly unguessable things.

hehe maybe they're waiting until we've turned the natural resources into something else then they're going to move us closer to the sun to cook the earth before eating it with covered in crispy mars rocks? After all do you think the bacteria in a cheese would know, or accept it's whole existence is mearly to turn cows milk to cheese for us?

All in all i would say the chances of being consumed by a gigantic galatic jamie oliver could be as low as one in four even in the next ten years.

my point being, he doesn't have enough data to even guess at odds, yet he is happy to give them? hmmm...

Thanks for the post...


I think it comes down to Potential...

If they think we have it, then they will bail us out quicker than the U.S. gov't...

If we don't have it - they set their Tivo and move on to the next system...

I remember reading a story about 15 years ago where a contactee claimed that the UFO's seen coming out of the ocean have been down there cleaning up our pollution. So if this is the case, it is very plausible that some benevolent beings could be quietly working in the background helping us out. I suppose only time will tell.

Absolutely Fascinating Read!!!!!

Though the article is quite old, it still carries a lot of water.

Excellent Find

show us hardcore evidence of aliens then we can talk about the role they will play

reply to post by NatureBoy


Shot dude for that reply! I enjoyed your reply actually a bit more than the article.

I must say, I do agree with you 105%, we, us humans, do think we are so SPECIAL and the center of the universe, that is unfortunately a thing called "Human Nature"...

Human Nature is nasty, greedy, power hungry and last and least (to my and many others' regret) Loving. Until such, if we are observed, that we can have peace for more that a friggin month on this rock, someone might come along and see us.

Hopefully it happens in my lifetime

Originally posted by gate13
show us hardcore evidence of aliens then we can talk about the role they will play

Please try and act a bit more intelligent with your reply to this post. Have you even read the whole article?

My guess is you skipped this section

We cannot at present be certain about the particular capacities of highly advanced civilizations in our galaxy. We can, however, make some thoughtful guesses based on established human knowledge (such as history and futures studies) combined with intelligent speculation.

reply to post by gate13


I absolutely agree. There is no evidence whatsoever which I can see as being plausible. But in that vane I refuse to believe we're the only intelligent creatures in this vast universe of a billion, billion galaxies. Whether they visit or watch - well all we can do is speculate.
What the author of these papers indeed is doing is speculating.

Please don't stop at that paper though - he has some newer ones on his site but I found the one I linked on the first post 'A Critical Examination of Factors that Might Encourage Secrecy' most interesting.

At the end of the day it's someone else's viewpoint but in a manner I would consider well written and therefore worthy of being read by those interested.

edit for spelling!

[edit on 13/2/09 by vonspurter]

its obvious they will offer help or whatever, america will grovel to them for a bit then try to backstab em like they do to the rest of the world fire a single shot and end up destroying earth coz all americans unless you take a stand against your government like the rest of the world deserve to die.

reply to post by NatureBoy


i agree with a fair bit of that. and especially the backwater part because it's true we are on the very edge of the spirals in our Galaxy this solar system could be a research area where scouts ships keep an eye on developing areas or just dump all their junk here and destroy our advance probes also why would they wait for us to near destroy each other before they reveal themselves as "saviours" that smells fishy to me

the human race has so much potential but if we cannot get along with the colour of our skin or religions and sexual orientations how will we get along with brand new species..hell even the other species that are here we kill for sport or pleasure. If i were an alien fleet commander i'd steer clear of this rock and go somewhere worthwhile... although this is my opinion..not all aliens will be bad or selfish just like us humans it might be the opposite of what i just said.. so thats my 2 cents