Stephen Hawking: Alien contact could be risky

Originally posted by Evil_Santa

Originally posted by Enlightenme1111

Originally posted by Evil_Santa
reply to post by Chai_An

 

He was making a statement on his observations of the universe, and it happened to be "this could be a problem for humanity". Not "Get ur gunz, the aliens are comin today!". Lighten up, this is no more a fearmongering statement than me saying that "you could be killed in a fatal car accident".

Would you publish an article saying that "you could be killed in a fatal car accident"? Of course not. That would be stating the obvious. That's why people are upset about this. Yeah, aliens may come to earth and eat us. Great, but why state the obvious unless the intention is fear? I think people are sick of the fear agenda from our government and the media. There is only so much people can digest. How about scaring us once a week instead of every day?

Ok i'll bite. "In the year 2010 there were numerous reports of Toyota cars having malfunctioning accelerator peddles. Toyota issued numerous recalls on mechanical parts surrounding this issue - including the floor mats. These recalls, while an excellent show of public relations on Toyota's part to rectify the problem, did nothing to fix the issue of cars accelerating on their own. The actual issue is caused by packets of radio frequency data being received by the car's Bluetooth receiver and caused a bug within the car's computer control system. Unfortunately this is a fundamental bug caused by the use of RF technology in our electronics and all new vehicles equipped with Bluetooth capabilities can be susceptible to these malfunctions. While the conditions of this bug is rare, the loss of control of any vehicle on the road poses a significant threat to operator of the vehicle, their passengers and all other drivers on the road."

Done. If you require sources for the info I can dig them up.

All that Hawking did was state the obvious from a statistical, quantum physics standpoint, for a documentary series that's showing on the Discovery channel - not an article. While doing PR for the series he provided some of the information contained in the documentary as well as gave us some of his insight. I hope you don't live near the ocean, because otherwise Shark Week might be too much for you.

i would hate to see sources which would mess up my cuddly 3d reality . that would be way too much for me
also , finding more public means of communication is the last thing i'd ever be looking forward to

reply to post by mossme89


naaaaaaaaaaaah stuff like that only happens on south park , this is the "real" world
one serious question though , are dreadlocks allowed ? i aint cuttin' mine xD
do you have smoking areas in your lounge bars ?
just kidding of course

A much-heard assumption is that aliens would come here to 'plunder' our resources. To me, that is just laughable. What reason do we have to think our own planet is so rich and abundantly stocked with precious resources when we know that all of the resources we find on this planet are richly available in huge quantities out there in space?

reply to post by chrismicha77


End of the day there is not goiong to be one race out there, rather billions of different races, some good no doubt, some bad. I dnt get ppl who can say that aliens dont exist, cos not being funny, surely our existence and the things we have acheived as a species shows that potentially, life can thrive, develop and reach fro the stars. if there was a race that was at our point of evolution, for example millions of years ago when earth still had dinosaurs roaming, think how advanced they would be now.

Infinite stars, planets and possibilities.

P.S steven hawking knows his stuff, seems to me he just accepts the fact that its possible, rather than saying SWAMP GAS!!!! to every sighting reported lmao

Originally posted by Hopeforeveryone
The way our world is and how we still have a load of wars going on about resources the real issue should be Aliens Could Be at Risk of an Invasion by Humans Living in Massive Ships, give it a few hundred years and you never know !

edit on 11-12-2011 by Hopeforeveryone because: (no reason given)

Ummm........Thats how you control the chaffing masses.........Load up a huge tin foil hat, with the unwashed every once in a protest.......fire them off into the great unknown, vacuume-packed freeze dried humanity...

The aliens don't really know...WHERE...these massive shipments of individually wrapped...SNACKUMS...come from but...what the hay...they sure are tasty and solved that old resource war over the hunger pang thang ................see ya...

YouSir

reply to post by flexy123


The huge ship could also be a type of Dyson sphere, in that a Type II species turned their homeworld or star into a stellar engine.

These stellar engines would require large amounts of mass for fuel and construction, e.g. consuming planets and stars, converting them into energy and programmable matter.

I would assume they would prefer to stay away from converting inhabited systems like ours and instead maybe "farm" stars for the purpose of harvesting them.

One other potential threat is a colony seeder ship, a virtual ark of self replicating machinery whose mission is to terraform, colonize and/or seed a planet, possibly even if other life already exists on it. They would seek out worlds in habitable zones, while equipped with technology to exterminate any native lifeforms.

There is really nothing we could do to hide from such threats, considering we can detect planets in habitable zones out to 600 light years.

The last major threats I would consider would be Berseker type probes, self replicating machines designed specifically by a xenophobic civilization or superintelligence to seek out and exterminate potential threats. A more benign civilization may instead of exterminating the species, may choose to quarantine it. This could have already happened on earth and has been advocated by some scientists as the " zoo hypothesis" to explain the Fermi paradox.

I wonder if Hawkings ever considered pirates?

reply to post by MikeboydUS


wow this really reminds me of the matrix movie trilogy .
creepy stuff , im scared 5hitless cant hardly move right now

reply to post by YouSir

pfft - what's the point.

I hate people who think we should bury our heads in the sand. What kind of life is that? When you choose to believe everyone else is nice or mean and live your life accordingly, essentially contained in a self created prison. It's people like Hawking that promotes this crap. Earth could also be at risk of just exploding out of thin air. So what? You're going to spend your entire lives running from inevitable death only to find one day that you're 80 and your entire life was wasted in fear?

Same holds true for the other side. Spend your lives just trusting everyone is foolish. Eventually it's going to get you robbed or beaten or killed if you trust every single human being out there. Roll up into the middle east. See how long your loving and kind attitude keeps you fine until some sad piece of crap decides he wants to kidnap and chop your head off for being anything but the same race and beliefs as him.

reply to post by Voldster


yes yes , hawking probably wishes he could be honest , loving and sincere all the time its just not quite safe right now

Sounds like someone has hacked into his speak and spell. (jk)

reply to post by sonicbaz


could be , but whom ? well let actions be the judge i say

reply to post by MikeboydUS


I thought Dyson made vacuums and such.
Hmmm...

Much Peace...

reply to post by BoB420


The Matrix is cliched garbage.

I take it you don't like hard science fiction, e.g. 2001, Star Maker?

Originally posted by MikeboydUS
reply to post by BoB420

 

The Matrix is cliched garbage.

I take it you don't like hard science fiction, e.g. 2001, Star Maker?

How very dare you!

reply to post by Amanda5


oh yes , im sure mr.hawking has to wash his nasty underwear pretty thoroughly after a day of hard work , all them brown stains and stuff , you know what we call them in germany ? skid marks
peace and love right back at everyone in here

reply to post by MikeboydUS


naaah that's absolutely not my kind of thing , i'd rather watch some queen and the king ...
feeling supervised ? supervise back lol
just because you're paranoid don't mean they're not after you ...
i do like "science-fiction" though , dont get me wrong im always open for new ideas

Wrong. Not everything is a "conspiracy". Hawkins is a brilliant man (to say it mildly), and what he said simply MAKES SENSE.

Are there extraterrestrials out there? Yes, likely.
The mathematical chances are incredible high that there are other races out there, but this doesn't mean they are anywhere close to us or aware of us. The universe is mind-boggling big and distances are mind boggling also.

Can we assume that "the aliens" are friendly?
Not in the slightest. There is no reason to assume that aliens are friendly. If a technology is so advanced to conduct interstellar space travel THERE IS A REASON why they do it! You don't travel in space "for fun".
One likely scenario is indeed that they are harvesting resources and there is no reason to assume they would respect other species, not if they are thousands of years more advanced.

So...what he said is rather obvious and has nothing to do with fear mongering.

Wrong.
How can you still be so blind?!
Almost everything has it's background.And when i say everything, i mean EVERYTHING!.
How don't you get that?

You said we can't assume that aliens are friendly?
Well, we are still here, aren't we?And how can you know what aliens are going to do?And how can you know which aliens will come on the Earth?It could be good aliens, bad aliens, or neutral aliens.What then?
You see,everything is not black and white.

And he's talking nonsense.He is just typical human scientist...unfortunately.I really thought he was different, but I guess I was wrong...

reply to post by Amanda5


Freeman Dyson, fellow of the royal society and legend, literally at 87 years old, in theoretical physics and nuclear engineering.

Could be related to Sir James Dyson, the vaccum guy/industrial engineer, though.

reply to post by Nikola014


SH is close to the truth and Im sure his comments will be proven correct!!

To speak ill of such a super brain in a wheel chair is reflective of the speaker!