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[SolarShado]

Oh, and the proton may be unstable.

Eh? As in "prone to spontaneous breakdown not entirely unlike radioactive decay" unstable? Source?

[Beeskee]

Oh, and the proton may be unstable.

Eh? As in "prone to spontaneous breakdown not entirely unlike radioactive decay" unstable? Source?

Possibly, but if so, the half-life is greater than the age of the universe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_decay

Aha. 6.6x10^33 years.

Aka 6,600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.
We're at 13,750,000,000 years currently.

So I wouldn't recommend holding your breath or anything.

[Acanthus117]

Wow, it's amazing how freaking mind boggling everything really is.

Seriously, 6,600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years?! for a proton?! Wow.

[JoshuaFH]

Alright, haven't read the whole topic but I'm obligated to join in.

Now, I don't think there'd be any sort of 'space nomads' or 'ruthless conquering space aliens' simply because it doesn't sound like a practical thing for any space-faring civilization to actually set their minds to doing.

Now, I'm not a person that thinks that life isn't out there. I think that life has already sprung up a hundred billion times in every corner of the universe, although it might not be 'intelligent' life. Now, assuming that one of those lifeforms civilized millions of years before us, and created space travel to accommodate the expanding populace. Now, even if I assumed that the psychologies of these aliens and us are vastly different, I feel they'd still be forced to comform to predictable practicality, and what I see as practical is that space travel wouldn't be very profitable.

By that, I mean there'd be no reason for a potential alien race to trawl the inconcievably vast expanses of the universe just to 'maybe' find other intelligent life. Instead, if there were squads exploring the universe, they'd do it in the easiest, most unscrupulous way possible: by becoming sentient robots that can remain in space for the hundreds of thousands of years it'd take to explore the vastness of the universe and using self-maintenance devices in-hand with reusable energy collection systems to remain operating indefinitely rather than having to jump through all the hoops necessary to maintain life in outerspace. The robot alien race could relentlessly search the universe for anything of real value, coldly devoting everything to memory for later use. Through these travels, the explorer bots would undoubtably come across millions of planets with life on them, and might even create a simple scale to give a rough approximation of how advanced the life on any given planet they scan is at. These robots looking at Earth might scan it, take notes on it's atmosphere, geological make-up, and it's relative stage of life, file it away with the millions of other planets of similar make-up, and then quickly move to the next solar system.

I'm thinking that if we're to ever meet these aliens, then we'd have to be just as unscrupulous and become robots ourselves, and trawl the universe looking for them...

[Vester]

Aww, no more spider?

Anyway, on the extremely slim off-chance that these aliens are similar to us in goals, biology, and needs, then we should probably wipe them out. You know, preserve tradition and all that.

[Neruz]

It seems likely that any alien race that has the technology to reliably cross the space between stars (and face it, you pretty much need FTL of some sort to pull that off) would have little or no interest in mankind.

If you have FTL; there are most likely billions of other earthlike planets with plenty of resources on them that are not inhabited by intelligent and warlike beings. It would be far more resource efficient to note the planet has established intelligent life, and then go somewhere else. Maybe stop by for a chat in a few thousand years if the life is still around.


Mind you, if you have reliable FTL, there's no reason why you don't have solar stations orbiting handy-dandy stars, providing you with all the energy you could ever need.

[Beeskee]

Yeah, any species that could cross interstellar distances, FTL or no, isn't going to do it just to come here and take our stuff. (Edit: It would be like spending a trillion dollars to rob a convenience store's "free penny" dish.)


On the other side, I consider it perfectly possible that they may come visit so they can get an updated version of Dwarf Fortress.

[Eagleon]

I'm thinking that if we're to ever meet these aliens, then we'd have to be just as unscrupulous and become robots ourselves, and trawl the universe looking for them...

Unscrupulous? Sounds like my retirement plan ;3

It seems likely that any alien race that has the technology to reliably cross the space between stars (and face it, you pretty much need FTL of some sort to pull that off) would have little or no interest in mankind.

If you have FTL; there are most likely billions of other earthlike planets with plenty of resources on them that are not inhabited by intelligent and warlike beings. It would be far more resource efficient to note the planet has established intelligent life, and then go somewhere else. Maybe stop by for a chat in a few thousand years if the life is still around.


Mind you, if you have reliable FTL, there's no reason why you don't have solar stations orbiting handy-dandy stars, providing you with all the energy you could ever need.

This is assuming they do have FTL. That their technology isn't more like how science will realistically go without it - higher and higher speed computation, towards digitization of intelligence, or at least very powerful research and engineering tools. Realistically, interstellar distances are the exact opposite of what you need to build better computers. That means they might not have bothered to establish a foothold on other planets, and even if they have, they might be more vulnerable than we are to sudden attack, or at least more cautious with better tools to exercise that caution.

We aren't afraid of swords and plate-mail anymore. We have guns. Does that mean we'll let someone walk around in the city threatening people at sword-point? No. We detain them, kill them if we have good reason to believe they are about to kill someone else. Same, I think, with us. Our best bet is to step carefully. Unfortunately that will never happen.

[Neruz]

This is assuming they do have FTL. That their technology isn't more like how science will realistically go without it - higher and higher speed computation, towards digitization of intelligence, or at least very powerful research and engineering tools. Realistically, interstellar distances are the exact opposite of what you need to build better computers. That means they might not have bothered to establish a foothold on other planets, and even if they have, they might be more vulnerable than we are to sudden attack, or at least more cautious with better tools to exercise that caution.

We aren't afraid of swords and plate-mail anymore. We have guns. Does that mean we'll let someone walk around in the city threatening people at sword-point? No. We detain them, kill them if we have good reason to believe they are about to kill someone else. Same, I think, with us. Our best bet is to step carefully. Unfortunately that will never happen.

If they don't have FTL, the chances of them finding us are pretty much nonexistant.

Seriously, space is just that big. Without FTL it's just flat out not feasible to travel beyond your star system and any immediate neighbours.

[Eagleon]

This is assuming they do have FTL. That their technology isn't more like how science will realistically go without it - higher and higher speed computation, towards digitization of intelligence, or at least very powerful research and engineering tools. Realistically, interstellar distances are the exact opposite of what you need to build better computers. That means they might not have bothered to establish a foothold on other planets, and even if they have, they might be more vulnerable than we are to sudden attack, or at least more cautious with better tools to exercise that caution.

We aren't afraid of swords and plate-mail anymore. We have guns. Does that mean we'll let someone walk around in the city threatening people at sword-point? No. We detain them, kill them if we have good reason to believe they are about to kill someone else. Same, I think, with us. Our best bet is to step carefully. Unfortunately that will never happen.

If they don't have FTL, the chances of them finding us are pretty much nonexistant.

Seriously, space is just that big. Without FTL it's just flat out not feasible to travel beyond your star system and any immediate neighbours.

It's a tossup. They might be quite close, depending on how common life is. http://www.solstation.com/stars3/100-ks.htm and http://www.solstation.com/stars3/100-gs.htm is one reference, for G and K type stars. Obviously the number in range is going to increase non-linearly - you won't find 1500 more by going out 200 light years, rather quite a bit more. 200 LY is not an impossible distance at sub-light speeds, especially not relativistic speeds relatively easily achievable with an unmanned device. If they were at exactly 200 ly, and were actively looking for radio waves with large telescopes and without much interference from their own technology (something we can assume given they are at a stage that requires long-range communications, since we haven't heard anything out there yet), we'd still have well over 300 years to prepare for an automated attack. But the way things are going now I don't think we'd be prepared, even given that time span... Eh, who knows really?

[PTTG??]

All this proton decay and such reminds me that although we have theories that certainly work on a small scale, it is a practical certainty that within a hundred years most of modern physics will be proven fundamentally wrong. Your geeky grandkids will say "And they believed in string theory of all things." Or "And all the science fiction said they'd use binary computing forever!" Or "And they tried to ban Supercolliders because they'd make black holes"...
 
I'm just afraid they'll say "And they thought that silly Spaceflight fad would take off. Like there's anything worth caring about in space."

[JoshuaFH]

Of course humanity'll conquer outerspace. It's too cool and beautiful for humanity to NOT violate it in some way.

Today, there's articles about city's being full of trash. In a thousand years, there'll be articles about the asteroid belt being full of trash.

[DJ]

Rocky planets like Earth are the best source of heavy metals. Monkey slaves are cheaper than robotic miners or colonies on uninhabitable worlds (such as Earth, from alien viewpoint).

Look at it this way: if Bill Gates saw a 100$ bill on the street, would he pick it up? I think the answer is yes.

[JoshuaFH]

And then he gets hit by a truck due to his unrestrained avarice.

It'd be funny if we started exploring, and then find that aliens have already declared Manifest Destiny on everything in a 1,000,000 lightyear radius from the center of the universe.

[Eagleon]

Look at it this way: if Bill Gates saw a 100$ bill on the street, would he pick it up? I think the answer is yes.

A more apt comparison would be if Bill Gates saw a penny in the street guarded by vicious apes and requiring a steam-shovel to retrieve. It's much easier to mine asteroids and moons. Regardless of how cheap your propulsion is, it's still going to be cheaper and more profitable to scoop up all the relatively unweathered and metal-rich stuff in the asteroid belt. Now if they manage to do all that in a timeframe that I care about, -then- I'd be worried about them coming here and trying to get what we have too, just because it's there. Otherwise the argument from resources is plain silly.