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[MetalSlimeHunt]

Alright, ancient human history buffs, how many species of humans were there?

About 14, though the legitimacy of some of these have been doubted.

Also, how far is andromedra?

2.5 million lightyears from Earth.

[kaijyuu]

And what are the thoughts on developed terrestrial contact between our species and another intelligent one. Say we got to the point where you could have a conversation with an orangutan.

We can have some basic conversations via sign language with some species of ape. Monkeys aren't as smart as they are in the movies, really... From what I've seen it's somewhat like talking to a 2 year old. They can learn basic stuff, but higher concepts elude them.

[RedKing]

Relevant SMBC

[Scoops Novel]

Nice find :L. On the other hand, there would probably be the recognition of how pointless cleaning up our act specifically so we wouldn't die would be, since they would know that. Of course, that's if it seemed like they were aggressive. What if they seemed to be friendly?

[darkrider2]

Their biology would be so vastly different that it would take hundreds of thousands of years for a cross species bacteria/virus to evolve, not that it would ever need to.

And on the sex with aliens gag that runs around these threads... what if they get here and find something like squid to be way more attractive than humans? We'd all be out of luck I guess?

[RedKing]

And then Earth's economy becomes based around being interstellar pimps for squids.

[Loud Whispers]

aliens are into hentai, then?

Money bling bling

[RedKing]

Let me be the first to invite our interstellar cephalopoid neighbors to the opening of "Calamari Cabaret". Come cuddle with a cuttlefish cutie!

[Levi]

Hmm.  In the comic book Transmetropolitan the "Greys" made contact with earth mostly to trade, but they didn't have much we wanted (I guess the aliens were poor) so they mostly just exported their culture.  Humanity used up the aliens "culture" in about five years and they ended up having to sell us their own DNA as it was the only thing of value they had left.   


I actually sort of think that culture would be the main reason aliens would make first contact.  A whole planet with different art, music, philosophy and stories could potentially be a treasure trove to an alien species.  I figure if you've mastered faster than light space travel, you've probably achieved immortality and extracting resources from astroids/stars, so the only resource left that is worth finding is culture.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

If aliens get here, we're dead or assimilated. No spare-faring civilization should give a damn about sentient life blocking their expansion, especially since if there were such a civilization they've probably already found much more tolerant and advanced societies than humanity.

I figure there's going to be two types of ET space-faring civilization. There's one that takes every single bit of matter from everything to fuel it's ever-increasing expansion [think a hyper-extended Empire of Man, but not evil, just doing what they can to keep their livelihood from collapsing].

Then there's the extremely smug/super neutral space-empire that doesn't want to communicate with other things and/or doesn't wish to risk the effects of slingshotting the others to their level of dominance. Think Star Trek's Prime Directive, but more sinister. This would be worse, since we'd never be able to find/contact them if they didn't want us to.

Atleast the assimilators would show themselves before scooping up Earth. But either way, any type of ET would be mind-blowing for a human to see. We probably won't even recognize alien life once we do see it, to be honest, considering the massive amount of diversity found in the universe [including all those planets we know nothing about].

Unless the aliens are us, from the future. Then we're just fucked.

[Edit: Assmilated? Sounds sexy, totally not what I meant to type though]

[Loud Whispers]

Unless the aliens are us, from the future. Then we're just fucked.

Quite literally.

[Scoops Novel]

Imagine how horrible we'd seem to a planet where everything subsisted on photosynthesis or the like. Aish.

[RedKing]

I dunno...because carnivorous life would be such an alien concept to them, there might not even be a moral tag attached to it one way or the other.

Whereas they might be relieved that we don't care that they redshift ambient light to get more nutrients.

[10ebbor10]

Well, you know using  mathematical algorithsm you can decode how much information a language can carry, and therefore how intelligent that language is. So, if aliens ever come to Earth, and use a variety of said method, there's a small chance that they decide to talk to whales instead of us.

Also, if aliens arrive, there's a very small chance they will be coming down into the athmosphere, which contains quite a few hazardous elements (oxygen, for one). They'll probably stay in orbit, or near some other object in space. Then, because people can't see it with their own eyes, a large part of the populace is going to cry fake, and ignore mankinds greatest discovery...

As for what the aliens will do with us, it all depends. Killing us seems unlikely, as they have no reasons other than, because we can.
     -Using us as food or slaves is extremely improbable. They have the tech to move through space, so it will be more profitable to make sort of robots rather than maintaining an expensive lifesupport system,
     -Stealing our mineral resources is equally unlikely. There are more on the other planets in the solar system
     -Colonizing our planet is unlikely, because they are most likely extremely different than us, meaning that Earth is a wasteland to them.

[Jopax]

I'm thinking that before anything we have a chance of meeting a probe of some sort, like out Voyagers, before they develop FTL or anything remotly as advanced as that they'll probably send out thousands of different probes to probe the space around them. We might meet one of those, and if we do it with one of our own probes (we really should be sending out more probes) it could even go unnoticed if they don't have the necessary tools or programming, heck, even then, it might take a long time to recieve a signal that anything happened.

But there's always the chance that the probe will be heavily armed, and that it will interpret our curiosity/fear/shock/random reaction as hostile intent and proceed to wreck shit, not for long hopefully.