Astronomers Detect First 'Clear Signs of Civilization' Beyond Earth - How will you react?

1ofthe9
Would a ground based telescope really be enough to get that level of imagery? I thought we'd need inferotometry or something for that.

I'd be excited - altoughI figure we'll find megascale engineering beore city lights.

Astronomers would need to launch a set of Hubble telescopes that orbit the Sun just inside of Earth's orbit. That would give an effective resolution of a telescope the size of the solar system. Spectral analysis would reveal composition of the atmosphere, land, night-time lighting.

Would we send out a radio signal to them? Would we have to wait 16-years for a reply or would they send a exploration ship immediately or would they already be here? What would happen if their religion was more conservative than current liberal cities?

It wouldn't "surprise" me in the slightest since I am 100% convinced that other civilizations are out there, it's just a matter of time and technology to find them.

But...I would not be euphoric since I also believe that nothing positive will arise from this discovery.
THIS planet is the living proof for it!

Our species is so primitive that anything "different" is automatically considered a threat. We kill in the name of religion, we kill because of different political views, we kill simply because someone is a different race, amongst OUR OWN species. We don't have respect for animals on our planet, we commercially "use" them and turn them into food in factories instead and sell them in supermarkets.

Nothing can be more "different" and "foreign" than another intelligent species on another planet. The LOGICAL conclusion for me is that it will cause an entire new dimension of war and that we ultimately (or at least TPTB) will NOT see them as the "friendly Aliens" but they will become our worst enemies and worst threat. Maybe you or me won't see it that way...but REST ASSURED that politicians and religious leaders will go nuts to declare the Aliens enemies.

The sad thing is...we can actually also not expect that "the Aliens" would be friendly towards us either. This would be a fatal, fatal mistake.

They would be as "friendly" as animals in a jungle, and no-one in their right mind would go into a jungle with not one way to defend themselves. This is simply the universal principle at work that everything different is the enemy...all animals even follow this principle...it's probably a survival instinct.

I also do not know whether an advanced civilization would automatically mean "less violent". It can well be that an "advanced" civilization capable of space travel would use their technological know-how NOT to spread "NewAge" happiness and peace...but doing exactly the opposite. That advanced societies/cultures develop into peace/happiness/enlightenment ultimately is only an assumption. And such an assumption may be fatal. Again..you do NOT go into a jungle and expect lions, snake, crocodiles etc. "welcome you" and cuddle with you, don't you?

reply to post by JadeStar


About 50% will ignore your *DISCLAIMER* and believe this story. Open the flood gates here it comes!

As I've said before, the reaction people would have to news of this sort would depend greatly on how far away the inhabited planet was. The OP chose to make our neighbors only 16 light years away. That's pretty close. I think having ET essentially camped out in our backyard would freak a lot of people out in a number of mostly negative ways.

On the other hand, if a radio signal was found originating 150,000 light years away, then people would be a lot less likely to riot in the streets. There would be a big initial flurry of concern and hoopla, then relatively soon studying the signals and learning about the aliens would turn into more of a sterile academic pursuit. We would mostly be able to carry on with business as usual. Human beings are pretty good at incorporating unusual things into our way of thinking.

As long as there's little or no chance of immediate physical threat.

w8tn4it
Can I buy some of that smoke off of you?

What's wrong with some of you lot?

OP clearly stated it was fictional...a 'what if scenario'...a 'what would you think IF ETI contact went something like this..' A hypothetical situation.

There's nothing remotely peculiar about this, at all.

OP...in answer to you question; It's about bloody time! Would be my reaction.

Closely followed by hoping someone would go and (metaphorically) kick a few of the more arrogant members on here right in the nutsack...several times actually, while chanting 'told ya so, you blinkered, unimaginative, establishment lacky, no-neck whelp'.

Then get on the information hungry band wagon of interest that will develop, especially around here.

Call me crazy but...isn't arguing or debating over a completely rhetorical/fictional scenario...pointless?

parad0x122
Call me crazy but...isn't arguing or debating over a completely rhetorical/fictional scenario...pointless?

Dont think debating over a hypothetical is pointless, arguing would be, although the only ones arguing are the ones who think the thread and discussion has no merit. Heck in highschool there where often debates that ran around the ridiculous it didnt make them pointless, in the 7th form (final year) year at the boys only highschool I went to we had a big debate afternoon with our girls only school counter part down the road. Im not the kind of person who finds such things all that entertaining but it gave us a chance to visit them and mingle and the subject was completely bonkers (cant remember what it was now) but it was unusually interesting... and us boys won, but thats irrelevant.

Given the caliber of what usually gets discussed about in this forum, from a technical point its all just as pointless, flimsy or unproven as a hypothetical event given none of it can be truly proven or stated as fact. As such I dont see the difference between those threads and a hypothetical one. Unlike the other stuff with this sort of thing we dont need 'proof' or to prove any of it first, we just have to react to what we might do should it ever become fact and as such the discussion is often a little better and no where near as divisive as the skeptic vs believers most threads devolve into near the end of the first page.

BigfootNZ

parad0x122
Call me crazy but...isn't arguing or debating over a completely rhetorical/fictional scenario...pointless?

Dont think debating over a hypothetical is pointless, arguing would be, although the only ones arguing are the ones who think the thread and discussion has no merit. Heck in highschool there where often debates that ran around the ridiculous it didnt make them pointless, in the 7th form (final year) year at the boys only highschool I went to we had a big debate afternoon with our girls only school counter part down the road. Im not the kind of person who finds such things all that entertaining but it gave us a chance to visit them and mingle and the subject was completely bonkers (cant remember what it was now) but it was unusually interesting... and us boys won, but thats irrelevant.

Given the caliber of what usually gets discussed about in this forum, from a technical point its all just as pointless, flimsy or unproven as a hypothetical event given none of it can be truly proven or stated as fact. As such I dont see the difference between those threads and a hypothetical one. Unlike the other stuff with this sort of thing we dont need 'proof' or to prove any of it first, we just have to react to what we might do should it ever become fact and as such the discussion is often a little better and no where near as divisive as the skeptic vs believers most threads devolve into near the end of the first page.

Stars for that, I can appreciate a blatant, "this is only a what-if" topic. I just didn't realize that was commonplace on here, I'm sure you can tell by my post count that I'm quite the newbie to the boards. :-) I've gotta say though, in the very least, this place never fails to generate some interesting topics!

reply to post by JadeStar


Awesome thread idea S&F! Did you create the whole thing yourself, or was this borrowed from somewhere?

Just bear in mind, given our own unique earth-moon-sun configuration responsible for life on earth as we know it, that even if many rocky planets reside in the "Goldilocks Zone", earth-LIKE worlds are not a dime a dozen, although we do know that there is at least one in this galaxy, which bodes well for other earth-like worlds, in the universe.

Also, if technologically advanced ET civilizations have visited earth, and there is rather compelling reason to believe they have, just check out this account of the Japanese Airlines encounter..



then the reason they would do so, or one reason they would come to visit would be the exceedingly rare occurrence of such a world, which leads me to suspect that any such visitors might just as easily be coming from another galaxy as from within our own galaxy, since either way, the distances involved in interstellar space travel are so vast that unless they are travelling through the intervening space over the course of 1000's of years, AT the speed of light, they are using some sort of instantaneous quantum jump directly from their local space, to our own.

So I don't think we'll be finding an ET civilization world within our own galactic neighborhood.

A water world, even a single one, other than our own, with an atmosphere showing the signature of life would be an astounding discovery in and of itself, however.

Too many questions to list really...

I would wonder if they pay taxes and have alarm clocks almost immediately.

And I would question their perception of "welfare" and "money" and what their society and it's institutions are like in comparison to ours.

Wayyy too many questions... but they would all relate to what their idea of civilization is, and how to prosper as a species, in relation to our own.

Pretty much just a compare and contrast list of question - I would find that the best read of my entire life.

I would be thrilled, and ebullient at this news, and avid for more information. I would continue in this positive attitude unless given a very good reason to change it.
Keid is an interesting star system. It contains three stars, the K1 primary, a distant DA4 white dwarf, and and equally distant M 4.5 red dwarf. These latter two, particularly the former, raise some questions about stellar and biological evolution in this system. The white dwarf was presumably a somewhat larger, shorter-lived star than the primary, that ran through its main sequence term rather quickly. I wonder what effect it's conversion to a white dwarf would have had on the planets of the K1 star, and how long ago this conversion would have occurred.
Having such nearby neighbors, cosmically speaking, would hint strongly at a richly populated galaxy. As the star is apparently a billion years older than our Sun, life and civilization could conceivably have had a very long 'head-start' on us. That such an advanced, nearby civilization had not destroyed us, taken over the planet, or robbed us of our resources in all that time seems a very hopeful sign, I feel.

reply to post by ShayneJUK

I bet they do try and contact them if there is money involved!! Fools!!!








hx

reply to post by Floydshayvious


Do you REALLY want to ask those questions - how embarrassing for us!

And Ronald Reagan was probably mistaken, about Socialism..

"Socialism only works in two places: Heaven where they don't need it, and hell, where they already have it."

~ Ronald Reagan (Raygun?)

parad0x122
Stars for that, I can appreciate a blatant, "this is only a what-if" topic. I just didn't realize that was commonplace on here, I'm sure you can tell by my post count that I'm quite the newbie to the boards. :-) I've gotta say though, in the very least, this place never fails to generate some interesting topics!

Oh it isnt all that common, not sure when the last 'what if' thread was, I just got a bit iffy about people complaining about this threads right to be in here, given alot of the stuff that gets posted in this forum should be in the Grey Area or Hoax forums it gets a bit hypocritical.

Its a better more deserving thread than say an 'I see things in Mars rocks' one.

Ross 54
As the star is apparently a billion years older than our Sun, life and civilization could conceivably have had a very long 'head-start' on us. That such an advanced, nearby civilization had not destroyed us, taken over the planet, or robbed us of our resources in all that time seems a very hopeful sign, I feel.

Who says they would be ahead of us?.. most of their early life on their planet might have been wiped out a billion years after ours started in our solar system (as life on earth has been nearly wiped out many times before), heck compared to long time Dinosaurs existed us modern mammals are just a blip really. Life doesnt have a set starting point in the growth of a star and its planets, heck life might have started on their world only a million years ago but due to the environment they had a fast tracked evolution compared to ours and they might be a global spanning Edwardian technology level civilization. Heck they might have bombed themselves back into the stone age a thousand years ago and had to start all over again or maybe they where a lost colony from an advanced species that devolved technology wise once cut off from their home worlds. We arent always going to be the cave man in these sorts of situations.

Gotta give humanity at least some form of credit. Heck for all we know if all the UFO subject is bunk and the odd real craft we see are in fact ours then for all we know we might be the most advanced species in our corner of the galaxy... which would throw an interesting spin on things.

happinness
reply to post by ShayneJUK

 

I bet they do try and contact them if there is money involved!! Fools!!!

You can also rest assured that a number of people will be very anxious for them to be saved by the word of Jesus Christ.

reply to post by JadeStar


I'll let you know how I feel when it happens,
This type of thread is a waste of time i think.

People can only guess wat it means to then
based on a supposition... so the thread servers
no value.. Sorry , but it's what i think.

Not having a personal go.

Learn to assemble communication array, issue general distress & warning signals, request immediate evac, coordinates and multiple time frames, enclose encrypted passkey, count on them being more advanced than they appear to rendezvous.

The actual course of action would certainly be more elaborate and impenetrable, but that's the idea.

Blue Shift

happinness
reply to post by ShayneJUK

 

I bet they do try and contact them if there is money involved!! Fools!!!

You can also rest assured that a number of people will be very anxious for them to be saved by the word of Jesus Christ.

The whole universe may already be "Christian" but in a way that earth-based atheists cannot even begin to fathom for the life of them.

I'm sure that "they" would understand the universal principals involved, and may already be aware of the concept of servant leadership from above or from an incorruptible center and source, to raise up what is lowly and corrupt to increasingly higher heights.

If it was explained to them in the right way, I would bet you dollars to donuts that they would "get it" right away and indicate that their beliefs are not so dissimilar, if they had not already heard about it when the bell rang out throughout all the spheres.

I vote to move this to a forum that indicates the obvious fictional (read: hoax) nature of this OP.

nice work ! enjoyed it. i would celebrate. with beer... hoping "they" like beer too !