"If We Found Aliens Already Mining Our Solar System?" Topic

Want a scary thought?

What if we are the first to have survived long enough to have progressed this far?

If there are aliens, there are likely lots of them. If there are lots of them, then likely some are very old. If they are very old, then they would have developed along the same lines we are (there are, after all, only so many ways to build a radio assuming the table of elements is constant).

We might be the first either in our neighborhood or at all to have made it this far without some unnatural (self-genocide) or natural event (comet) wiping us out.

There might be some that are super old. But they started on planet poor in resources – consider, they could be billions of years old, but the damn place just did not have any easily reached iron. That would suck for them.

Without radio, communications development would really suck. If there were aliens of advanced nature, we'd have heard a least something by now or they are so far away the light of their star is practically invisible.

Even more sobering? There is no way to go FTL.

Think about that very carefully.

FTL is only a problem if you think on a human centred timescale of a single lifespan.
With a machine based "lifeform" shutting down to conserve power for a few centuries to travel between star systems at sublight speeds would`nt be an insurmountable problem.
All a machine based culture needs to survive is a source of energy and a ready supply of raw materials, all of which are easily available in a typical star system.
"Habitable" planets are essentially irelevent except as possible origin points of new life forms.

"Scary enigmatic space gods", or in other words the Galactic Orginisational Database, the nearest access port being about 500 parsecs from Sol and are just now wondering how the seeding project that took place in this system about 7.33 Galactic rotations ago is doing.

I don't understand the facts behind "since they got here, they have a massive tech advantage".

Isn't that a "we have radio, therefore we have ftl" comparison?

Only if we can transport starships, etc., by radio waves is it high tech … Unless I misunderstood your comment ?

Because it you're coming all the way to Sol to mine it's asteroid belt for raw materials then you must have incredible interstellar travel capability (ie, FTL) in order to make the entire operation remotely cost-effective. Since FTL is effectively magic so far as our science understands it, then it follows that their scientific and technological knowledge far exceeds our own. Ergo, if some alien race dropped by to mine the belt, then it's safe to assume they are massively higher tech than we are. Conquistadors vs. Aztecs isn't even an extreme enough comparison.

Yes, I agree … as I saw Prof Kaku on the Science Channel [not en SyFy] say smething like, "The battle between Earth and Alien invaders would be like Kermit the Frog taking on Godzilla …"

Even more sobering? There is no way to go FTL.

Based on the level of tech we are operating at, yes. But a much high level of [alien] tech may have figured out how to work with or around that "limit" … Many believed the speed of sound wouldn't be broken. Or an Atomic blast would burn a hole in the atmosphere. Or even the world is flat. Man could never fly. Man oould never get to the moon, etc., etc. … In 1911 the Wright Brothers flew a 100 yds or so. By 1945 jets were being flown. Then less than 6 decades later after the Wright Bros flew, we landed on the moon. So I'm keeping an open mind …

There is a basic paradox a la Fermi here, if there is a civilization with the means to go to another solar system, would they really need to do something as pedestrian as mining for ore? Seems they would have unlimited power/matter replication already by that point. At the very least, they would be able to avoid detection from our primitive little anthill!

Indeed …

Well, yes, that's the real issue; if they could get here they probably don't need to mine our asteroid belt, and if they need to mine the asteroid belt they probably couldn't get here…. But for the sake of discussion 'they are here' seems be the better answer.

-Will

"our" Solar System?

What sort of a claim do we have on it?

We were here first?

Unless I misunderstood your comment ?

Yes, it seems several people did.

Who says their technology developed identical to ours? Just because they have interstellar transportation doesn't prove they have combat technology more advanced than say – gunpowder.

Why does their being here prove they have unstoppable military might?

Also, porn sites would get even weirder very quickly

Espcially Japanese anime stuff.

Probably the only real impact on Earth as we can't really get much out of our own atmosphere.

Who says their technology developed identical to ours? Just because they have interstellar transportation doesn't prove they have combat technology more advanced than say – gunpowder.

Why does their being here prove they have unstoppable military might?

Very true.

Superior tech certainly doesn't imply superior military/war fighting capability.

Well I will throw this out for a scenario idea. An alien colony ship with its crew / colonists in cryogenic sleep passing through the cosmos for millennia. It arrives in Sol system with next to nothing as far as raw resources. The aliens have the means to mine and reconstruct their technology but they literally need to build everything from scratch. The good news is they have decent data banks to tell them exactly what to do step by step…

Superior tech certainly doesn't imply superior military/war fighting capability.

On the other hand the whole concept of `war` might be very different.

There is the scenario where after first contact fighting breaks out and, after a massive global effort lasting decades the humans win and drive the invaders from Earth.
Then the Aliens send a message saying "Well that was fun, shall we play this game at level 2 now?"

Who says their technology developed identical to ours? Just because they have interstellar transportation doesn't prove they have combat technology more advanced than say – gunpowder.

Why does their being here prove they have unstoppable military might?

The real issue is that when you're taking about the sort of energy levels required for interstellar flight (slower or faster than light) the tech differential is such that there is no war. You don't go to 'war' with an ant nest, you spray it with Raid. It would be the same sort of situation here; they'd just accelerate one of those asteroids they are mining to the point where's it is going so fast we can't deflect it and bang, everything on Earth larger than a microbe is dead and gone. Or they would use some sort of similar high-energy solution that we would have no counter to. Once you're playing around with these sort of energy levels it makes a nuclear war look quaint. So it doesn't matter if they have lasers, or guns, or don't even know what a gun *is*; that's all irrelevant to the situation.

-Will

Many believed the speed of sound wouldn't be broken

Indeed, it was deemed impossible….

Then in 2002 the X43 passed Mach 10, and in 2010 the X-51A vehicle passed Mach 5 (hypersonic flight) for more than 200 seconds:

link

So limits are only limits until we find a way past them.

And of course, according to the 2002 Guinness World Records, Apollo 10 set the record for the highest speed attained by a manned vehicle at 39,897 km/h (11.08 km/s or 24,791 mph) during the return from the Moon on May 26, 1969.

Which is about Mach 37.5?

Well, the 'light speed barrier' is a little different than the sound barrier. It was well understood that certain objects DID travel faster than sound; the doubt was whether we could design a manned vehicle that could be successfully flown and controlled past it. Light Speed is a different animal all together; it's not just matter of building something that will go 'fast enough' to do the job, since nothing can go faster than a mass-less photon in a vacuum. If we discover a method to travel faster than light it will be by 'cheating' the limit (and the science behind it will possibly totally overturn physics as we know it), rather than simply smashing our way past it. :)

-Will

Yes, it seems several people did.

Who says their technology developed identical to ours? Just because they have interstellar transportation doesn't prove they have combat technology more advanced than say – gunpowder.

Why does their being here prove they have unstoppable military might?

Their mil tech probably wouldn't be similar to ours. But if they have FTL capabilities, Worm Hole/Stargate, etc. … I'd imagine they would be a force to be reckoned with. Plus if Prof Kaku thinks they would kick Terran butt, that's a pretty good/ reliable source for me. link

Superior tech certainly doesn't imply superior military/war fighting capability.

No it does not … however it would be a safe bet they have at the very least some mil-tech superiority. And of course, never underestimate your enemy …

We already found them. Why do you think we haven't gone back to the moon?

"We" have, plenty of times, it`s just proved to be more cost-effective to send robots on one-way missions than send humans and the complex life-support systems they need to keep them alive into deep space and bring them back afterwards.
That`s why I`m such a fan of the idea that most Interstellar civilisations are A.I./machine based.
They would just be better adapted to space travel than organic life forms which are adapted to the planets they evolved on.

Look at it this way,
Since Apollo we`ve had the Pioneers, Voyagers, Vikings, Ullyses, Giotto and dozens more missions to every major planet in the Solar System except for Pluto (If you still consider it a major planet and anyway the only reason it hasn`t been visited is that the probe hasn`t got there yet!).

Unmanned missions already are planned that take decades to complete and even with no major breakthroughs, just improvements in existing technology its likly that within a century or so Robot interstellar missions are probable.

It was well understood that certain objects DID travel faster than sound; the doubt was whether we could design a manned vehicle that could be successfully flown and controlled past it.

Go further back.

"Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia." Lardner (alleged)

We don't know what we don't know. We should not be limited by our current state of knowledge. Indeed our ability to think beyond and exceed that knowledge is probably Man's greatest ability.

"It was Einstein's dream to discover the grand design of the universe, a single theory that explains everything. However, physicists in Einstein's day hadn't made enough progress in understanding the forces of nature for that to be a realistic goal." Hawking. S

Mind you to come back to topic he also said:

"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans…"

We don't know what we don't know. We should not be limited by our current state of knowledge. Indeed our ability to think beyond and exceed that knowledge is probably Man's greatest ability.

Right, and I don't think it's 100% impossible we'll find a way to work around it. But I'm 100% confident it won't be a matter of just building ships that are faster and faster until someone hits 1.1 C and writes a book about it. We'll have to make a much bigger and greater (and weirder) technological leap to push past light speed.

-Will

Absolutely, perhaps if we are lucky those aliens will show us something we hadn't thought of…

There are work arounds and then there are work arounds, it helps if you can define the problem.

As I`ve been trying to point out, the weak link in interstellar travel isn`t that the speed of light might be some sort of ultimate speed limit its just that Humans just don`t live long enough on the whole to make such a voyage unless you can accellerate fast enough for relativistic effects to become noticable.
Eliminate the human factor then Interstellar travel becomes less of a problem, it takes a while but you get there eventually!
Communication between neibouring star systems is even easier if you know somebody is there, you just build very powerful transmitter/recievers about the size of a big radio telescope and start broadcasting. Since Information can be transmitted at lightspeed the time delay is only going to be a few years in a single direction so you just keep transmitting a live feed from both ends!

"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans…"

Yes, as a I said, The Conquistador Effect … History is a good teacher if you choose to learn from it. That being said, hopefully they "will come in peace" …

Absolutely, perhaps if we are lucky those aliens will show us something we hadn't thought of…

Like the Vulcans' First Contact with humans in the Star Trek movie/series … however … we will just have to wait and see …

As I`ve been trying to point out, the weak link in interstellar travel isn`t that the speed of light might be some sort of ultimate speed limit its just that Humans just don`t live long enough on the whole to make such a voyage unless you can accellerate fast enough for relativistic effects to become noticable.

Well, yes, a machine mission would probably be the only realistic slower-than-light interstellar mission. But that scenario precludes interstellar trade, and hence removes the need for mining the asteroid belt in the fashion that the original poster describes. If an unmanned alien expedition arrived in such a fashion it would be a de-facto colonization attempt, but they would be targeting the asteroid belt for colonization rather than Earth.

Of course, in such a case the Oort cloud makes a much more attractive target, since you wouldn't have to crawl as deep into the gravity well, there's an order of magnitude more raw material, and unlike the belt there's a decent chance we actually wouldn't notice any alien activity in the Oort cloud for a long time.

-Will

Augustus your scary thought only makes me realize it is far past the time for humans to venture out into space and establish colonies. Spread the population out so a cosmic, natural or man made disaster doesn't make all this for nothing.

Sadly humans are petty creatures.

Even more sobering? There is no way to go FTL.

Think about that very carefully.

Lifespan. That is the key. The measure of what space-time means to you. We see bugs live out their puny lifespans within hours or days. Some live months. Tarantulas can live a couple of years. "Dog years" means something to us but absolutely nothing to cats or dogs. We are around their entire lives, like gods (cats, however, do not view us as gods, but dogs probably do).

FTL is exerted every time we use our imaginations to seek beyond where our physical bodies are planted. It is a form of travel, especially when we are positing upon things we empirically know. When we are trying to imagine possibilities beyond our ken it is still traveling. The only limitation, and it is a big one, is that physical things don't "go" with us.

Fix that limitation, and you can travel as quickly as a thought to anywhere in Existence. We do this in our dreaming all the time. If you go "there" and never come back "here", all you've done is shuck one body for another.

I suspect, nay, I believe, that immortal minds do this all the time. There is absolutely no need for moving physical objects FTL. The mind moves outside of space-time considerations/limitations….

We do nothing. The Space Treaty says no one owns it, so we can't legally do anything.
We can't physically do anything either, except send a few guys in a ridiculous capsule, so we do nothing.

Best guess, they censor the people that saw it and just pretend they never knew.

The road not taken-harry turttledove.

he postulates an alien invasion by folks that early found an easy way tpo manipulate gravity that not only let them fly, but somehow to go FTL. But it didnt lead to other breakthorughs. So they travel the cosmos watching the canarys to find out when thier air is getting to bad and they need to invade somebody else. Sp when thye invade with thier matchlocks, it goes less well than they had planned.

We only have one example of technological progress. So we think we have a good grasp on what has to happen before something else. But with only the one example, it can probably work out in a very different manner. I imagine most here understand that, the real question is how MUCH diferent can things be? WWII aircraft armed with muzzleloading cannon? Or phasers? I definatly dont know, but put me down in the we dont know what we dont know crowd.

Owen

And dan, thanks for a great question, first thread I have read every post in for some time

Owen

Badger 22:

First, I'll second your statement about this being a good thread.

Second, not to be contrary but I'd suggest we've seen at least three "examples of technological progress." Europe-Asian-North African is one, The Americas is the second, and Australia is the third. While each is less distinct, sub-Saharan Africa and the Polynesians were also at least somewhat distinct in their development (or adaption of) technologies.

OK, and here's another angle, say the ETs decide that ours is a planet worth conquering, but we poor, benighted indigenous sophonts are also a useful commodity, especially given our penchant for organized violence, and therefore being clearly a "martial species," are the perfect raw recruits for their empire's infantry forces ala the British Empire's recruitment of native peoples into the Indian Army.

So step up lads and lasses, to serve your new benign and glorious Empress of the Known Universe and keep the peace on a hundred thousand worlds (and maybe help add a few new ones while yer at it)! Make yer mark, take Her Majesty's shilling, and see the Galaxy!

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

BlackWidow, Read Drakes "Ranks Of Bronze" …

Nine Princes in Amber, also comes to mind….

Guys,

Now, now. Don't get stuck on the FTL tech issue …

Perhaps they reached our solar system via a multigenerational vessel, that you just haven't seen yet?

And the ore, ice and other material being mined from "our" asteroids is meant to refuel the giant ship, or to build another one, or maybe to set up a colony in our system before the main ship takes off again?

Dan

I'm just hoping to find 6mm Jasmine Throne Aliens on the Khurasan site TMP link … Before I'm too blind to paint'm !

If we didn't notice the braking maneuver for that generation ship to slow down into solar orbit (which would have been the brightest object in the night sky ) then their stealth tech is so good we'll never notice them at all until all of the asteroids are missing and they are merrily on their way. ;)

-Will