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[Trekkin]

Or you go somewhere else. We have not been all that unique in any observable way for long enough for anything more than our immediate area to notice, and there doesn't appear to be anybody living next door. Even if we blithely ignore the laws of physics with "sufficiently advanced" handwavium and let the aliens travel faster than light, our regular old mundane radio waves and so on can only move so fast.

[Reelya]

It's hard to say actually.

e.g. we've only had planet scanners for a very short time. So we just don't know what's out there to see, yet. Also, we don't know what we would look like to people with sufficiently advanced space-scanners.  Maybe our entire planet sticks out light neon flashing dog's balls, and has for billions of years (which is why I said you could detect that a planet is "teeming with life").

We just don't actually know. e.g. Earth's atmosphere's chemical make-up has been completely altered by life being here for a long time. That is in fact the sort of thing that we can already detect with our shitty modern space scanners. So we cannot really say we don't look "all that unique" to someone sitting in another system running their own far more advanced space scanners over the heavens.

However, if aliens did come here to survey things they almost certainly came he millions of years before we existed, to check out Earth-life in general. If our civilization is putting out special new signals, and that's going to attract aliens attention, then that's probably way in the future.

[redwallzyl]

The alien stuff always seems to involve an absurd amount of contrived circumstances and assumptions. It's a feature of pseudo science to start with what the person wants the answer to be and work backwards to justify it. They must keep adding more absurdly complicated and unlikely aspects as time goes on and people point out holes in there assertions. Basically the opposite of the scientific method. If you find yourself adding assumptions to an argument stop and throw out your argument, it's pseudo science.

[Reelya]

I'm not arguing in favor of alien visitation. I was just pointing out that we can't say that our planet's not already very noticeable.

If there are many planets exactly like Earth, teeming with life to the point that they've reshaped the atmosphere, then Earth won't be relatively noticeable. But in that case we'd have to revise our estimate of the number of intelligent species upwards as well. e.g. => if there aren't many "Earths" we're more noticeable, but the estimate of the number of races who could notice would also be lower, whereas if "Earth" planets are common, then we're not that unique, but the estimate of the number of races who could notice would rise proportionately.

e.g. there's plenty about Earth that already sticks out like a giant space beacon, without even getting into human stuff. I mean, our planet-scanners are pretty new but they're rapidly getting much better, all the time. Any other race on another planet is almost certainly very far ahead of us in tech, or very far behind us. So if anyone else even has planet-scanners, they're most likely super-good ones we haven't invented yet. That's the thing most previous theories about aliens haven't really taken into account: nobody really predicted how good we'd get at surveying exo-planets, without needing "probes" or any bullshit.

[Trekkin]

Basically the opposite of the scientific method. If you find yourself adding assumptions to an argument stop and throw out your argument, it's pseudo science.

Or stop, identify which assumptions are falsifiable, test those, and carry on.

Scientific theories tend to react to contrary evidence by getting smaller in scope; conspiracy theories get bigger instead.

[redwallzyl]

Basically the opposite of the scientific method. If you find yourself adding assumptions to an argument stop and throw out your argument, it's pseudo science.

Or stop, identify which assumptions are falsifiable, test those, and carry on.

Scientific theories tend to react to contrary evidence by getting smaller in scope; conspiracy theories get bigger instead.

psuedo science does not revise the hypothesis, or attempt to disprove it. That's what makes it psuedo science. If it stopped doing that it would be regular science.

[bloop_bleep]

PTW

[Kagus]

I thought it was well-established that the pyramids were used for sharpening the aliens' razor-like spaceships so that they could slice through spacetime on to the next pit stop planet...

Which also explains why there are pyramids all around the world and how they point to where the next one is in case it's occupied.

[dragdeler]

-snip-

[Egan_BW]

If you're after pretty much any kind of matter, going to a planet with alien life on it would be entirely pointless. It would be much easier to find some nice rock that you can steal parts of without worrying about something trying to eat you.
Which isn't to say that you wouldn't want to go to the life-sustaining planet, it just means that you're there to gather data. If there are alien invaders most likely what they want is lots and lots of samples from every organism they can find, and possibly any interesting bits of culture or philosophy from us. (Who wouldn't want to read a book written by a different species?)

[Reelya]

The idea that they came here to mine ore amuses me so much, it's truly a human exploitation fantasy: as if you could not find all the elements in space. So I think that if they really needed something (...) it probably wasn't metal.

Nah, that's why I said a much more plausible theory is that they would come here to do a biological survey. Ore isn't what's special about Earth.

Where ore comes in, would be to assume they needed some resources when they came here. "why would they need resources"? you might ask. But ... resources have mass, and it takes energy to both speed up and slow down a ship. Even if you use an external launcher, you need to carry fuel to slow the ship down to enter the star-system you're going for. Also, assuming you want to go back, you need to refuel your ship: you have to launch the ship again, speed it up, then slow it down when you get back to where you came from. And assuming they did use an external launch system to reduce fuel needs of the original ship, then perhaps they'd also need to construct a new launch system at the destination end, to help them get back. These are just plausible engineering constraints that such a race would face.

Also, once you're in another star system, you can't just ring up and order spare parts, so you'd definitely carry fabrication gear with you, even if the above issues weren't important. So, you probably only want to carry just enough gear with you so that you can mine and fabricate a new launch system or other needed parts and refuel your spaceship from materials at the destination star system. the fact that ore can be found everywhere makes this more likely, not less likely.

[Kagus]

The idea that they came here to mine ore amuses me so much, it's truly a human exploitation fantasy: as if you could not find all the elements in space. So I think that if they really needed something (...) it probably wasn't metal.

Nah, that's why I said a much more plausible theory is that they would come here to do a biological survey. Ore isn't what's special about Earth. Where ore comes in, would be to assume they needed some resources when they came here.

e.g. it takes energy to speed up and slow down a ship. So carrying more mass than you need is not a good idea. So, you'd want to have some equipment on board for collecting whichever materials you need when you get there. "Ore" wouldn't be the reason they came here, but to reduce mass, you might collect ores for your needs rather than take stuff with you. e.g. you can't call up deliveries if you're in deep space: you'd need to be able to replicate anything that you run out of, or replace anything that's damaged from local raw materials, e.g. ore.

That's... Reelya, did you read his post beyond the first 13 words?

EDIT: Okay, your first hidden edit clears up the meaning of your point a bit. I thought you'd just gotten "mine ore" and then set about proving why that wouldn't be the case.

[Reelya]

EDIT: Okay, your first hidden edit clears up the meaning of your point a bit. I thought you'd just gotten "mine ore" and then set about proving why that wouldn't be the case.

EDIT: Ah, ok that also clear up your objection to my post. I was a bit confused as well as to how that all relates.

I responded to "The idea that they came here to mine ore amuses me so much" because it seemed like he was paraphrasing what I wrote in a previous post, as meaning they only came for the ore, so I was clarifying what I meant. e.g. Dragdeler didn't really make a distinction between "came here for the ore", and "came here, then mined ore". He was conflating those, as far as I could tell. Interstellar travel would be a long-term expedition, needing additional resources, which you almost certainly wouldn't "pack" in the space ship. e.g. if humans set up an expedition like this we'd definitely be mining ore when we get there, even though "ore" isn't what we came for.

[scourge728]

Now I'm imagining aliens landing on Earth, expecting to be able to refuel and repair, only to find out it's missing some critical material found quite commonly on their planet, and just going "Well darn"

[Kagus]

Now I'm imagining aliens landing on Earth, expecting to be able to refuel and repair, only to find out it's missing some critical material found quite commonly on their planet, and just going "Well darn"

What do you mean you don't have any gold?