So I was watching the starshot program announcement and Stephen hawking was answering some questions about the new project and this happened :
Question : what's should we do if we find evidence of intelligent life?
Hawking's answer : we hope they don't find us.
Agree is disagree? Discuss
Watch live (http://livestream.com/breakthroughprize/starshot)
>>7999075
Agree **OR *** disagree
He's been saying that for a while now. Hawkings basically believes it's bad to specifically seek contact with alien races because we have no fucking idea how they might react, which is completely true.
>>7999083
What I never understand is if scientists don't believe in FTL then why are they simultaneously scared that aliens listening in on SETI might come and attack us?
>>7999098
The argument generally boils down to other intelligent species believing that we will go out of our way to kill them so they should go out of their way to kill us. Given that we seem to have come to this conclusion, we have some reason to think this is true, but this avoids the question of how/why we would go about interstellar war when there are no returns on the invested resources other than the other guy being dead. Its not like we can really go take their stuff and even if we could, there is a lot of other, nearby stuff that is less work to get.
>>7999098
?
Let's say there are intelligent lifeforms on Vega.
Let's say they hear us and decide to shoot some rocks at us at 0.25*c
No faster than light travel, but those rocks will still wreck us in a 100 years.
>>7999115
Massive energy investment for a plan that has so much that can go wrong and blatantly display your hostile intentions to any one looking.
>>7999130
Like anyone would look, ever.
>>7999139
If everyone is supposed to be paranoid fucks looking to obliterate anyone they find, then everyone is looking and rather carefully to find the other fuckers first.
>>7999115
I don't think even aliens can build a rocket to push a rock big enough to destroy Earth at 0.25c
>> yfw this turns out just to be a scheme for some russian supervillain to take over the world with huge space lasers.
>>7999075
>starshot program
Where do I even begin with this....
>$100 million interstellar programme when going to Mars costs 10x that
>Cameras, photon thrusters, power supply, navigation and communication equipment on a one gram wafer
>Aiming a laser at this from light-year away
>Keeping a laser running continuously for 50 years
>Slowing down from 0.2c when you packed no retro-rockets
>Announcing projects before the technology even exists
>No mention of what they are even looking for in Alpha Centauri
>Will their half-a-gram VGA camera even be able to image it?
So it's yet another "Here's this interstellar fantasy concept that I dreamed up while procrastinating, let's give it an official name and announce it to make us look like visionary explorers when this is really impractical bullshit that any kid in their basement could have thought up"
This entire project seems like way too much of an energy investment than what its worth.
>>7999183
>any kid in their basement could have thought up
but nobody actually did it till now.
>>7999212
These ideas have been floating the web for years.
>>7999183
Throw enough money into anything and it can be done.
>>7999219
No. X-33 failed, that had a shitload of government funding.
>>7999183
Why would we have to slow down once we got to Alpha Centauri?
At that speed, the wafer would be there for multiple days. It could take however many images it's supposed to, send them back, we can analyze the differences and figure out what are and aren't planetary bodies, supposing the cameras work on the correct wavelengths, we can do spectral analysis, all that shit senpai
and hell, sending a bunch of tiny cheap probes with slightly different equipment and a lot of redundant ones, that's still way more cheap and practical than a singular larger vessel.
If one of the tiny shits fails, who cares, we'll have three others that can do its job instead.
If a big thing like Vger breaks down and fails badly enough, then the whole project is bunk
>>7999244
I don't remember typing senpai
>>7999109
>The argument generally boils down to other intelligent species believing that we will go out of our way to kill them so they should go out of their way to kill us.
No it doesn't.
>>7999075
Several other scientists of note have said the same thing, when confronted in a more serious manner. The basic premise is incredibly simple:
Assuming there's even something like a 5% chance that the aliens are a least bit hostile, it would already be a bad idea. Right now, we are the ones running the show. And we have more reason than not to believe that we can continue to do so, and survive as a species ultimately beyond this solar system.
We have about 1.5 billion years before the earth will become permanently uninhabitable due to the proximity and heat of the sun. That's a lot of time, assuming we don't fuck it up.
So status quo being: We are in control for now, and can expect to become much more so within the relatively near future... why would you take even a fraction of a chance to upset that, and risk that an alien power we would have no chance at all against, would have other plans for us instead?
The point is, it's not about whether it's likely that aliens would be hostile to us or not. It's about the fact that even if the chances for that were near non-existent, we're still better off not risking it at all. For now.
>>7999229
Milner has 3 billions of dollars and he is ready to invest in that.
If we are REALLY scared of aliens then we should be strapping rockets to rocks and shooting them at every possible life supporting planet in nearby systems. Now.
>>7999183
>Keeping a laser running continuously for 50 years
If you look again this isn't what they're doing at all. The laser would only have to run for a few minutes to get the microcraft accelerated to 20% of the speed of light, after which the lasers will shut off and the primary energy expenditure will be over.
>>7999229
>government funding
Key words here. If the government decides to build an outhouse it costs $3 billion and takes 20 years to complete through a chain of subcontractors 50 deep.
It's not hard at all to get more bang for your buck in science than the government does.
>>7999285
the problem isnt a factor of 1.5 billion years before the sun explodes, the problem is that humanity itself is tearing the earth the fuck apart and we need to find something else to tear apart before we have mass extinctions due to the nature of what we've done to the planet. Humanity wont die out entirely, but before the sun explodes we will definitely have several catastrophic events that will reduce our population to something more manageable for the earth's carrying capacity. The risk being taken now is an effort to increase our carrying capacity through stuff that wouldn't be related to earth, or 90% of our immediate future generations are fucked (not that that matters for the whole of the species, but since we are selfish as a species no one gives a fuck about that and just wants to see a future for their kids). Using the technology we have at our disposal now to find some sort of permanent solution doesn't seem so bad since when populations go back down to the thousands we wont have that opportunity.
Basically, while there is a minute chance of some alien species fucking our asses, we are fucking our own asses right now so might as well pull out and jizz everywhere.
>>7999467
The sun isn't about to explode, and while I get that you were referring to the red giant phase, that's another 5 billion years off. The planet will be uninhabitable way before then though.
While it's true that mankind has started to fuck things up quite gloriously, 1,5 billion years is likely to be around a million times more than what we'll need to start colonizing other planets in our solar system.
And popschi BS aside, it'll be quite fucking hard and unlikely that we would manage to wipe ourselves from the face of this planet. Even if something like 90% of the people eventually died, humanity as a whole would still only be set back a very short while, comparatively speaking.
No, chances are good that whatever happens, humanity isn't about to kick it for a long fucking time. Unless some cataclysmic event really manages to wipe out everything save for microbial life.
>>7999420
>muh useless government
Then why have all the greatest engineering projects been the work of the Government? Panama Canal, ISS, Hoover Dam, private industry has no mega projects.
>>7999285
That's dumb the aliens could be friendly and give us super advanced technology. I'd take a big green alien cock up my ass in exchange for immortality
>>7999516
Because those all took place before sweeping cronyism, rampant subcontracting, and general milking of the government for all it's worth. It happened before governmental contracting got rigged.
In order for it to be effective today, there's going to have to a total reset where none of the previous government contractors get new contracts. The contracts need to go to new companies that aren't so steeped in corruption and are happy to even be able to survive, let alone get multi-million or multi-billion dollar contracts. They need to go to companies that won't squander the money.
>>7999522
My point isn't "look at what the gov has done" but rather "look at what the private sector has not done" What was stopping them? Big bad government? Take off your tinfoil hat boy.
>>7999529
I'm not saying that the private sector is the answer. I'm saying in order for government funded projects to be an answer, things are going to need dramatic cleanup. This is unlikely to happen, so what are we left with? Private industry. The private has no record of megaprojects, but private industry is also constantly evolving; change is the norm there, not the exception. I find it FAR more likely for private industry to grow to be able to accommodate megaprojects than it is for the government contracting to clean up its act, given how the government and those connected to it grow ever more stubborn and resistant to reform.
>>7999519
>That's dumb the aliens could be friendly and give us super advanced technology.
Would you give a random bloke the keys to your house, car, work, bank account and wife? I mean, sure, if you got SUPER lucky, he could make you rich, buy you a better house, add a million bucks to your account, and save your marriage. But would you really bet on that? Especially since most of everything he could give you is something you could do yourself, given enough time?
Isn't it realistic to assume, that you're far more likely to lose than to win in that deal? So if you're not so desperate that you're about to lose everything anyway, wouldn't it be better to just NOT invite that random bloke in?
>>7999183
>a few minutes to get the microcraft accelerated to 20% of the speed of light
did you even do the math?
>>7999515
I agree that the planet will be inhospitable way before that red giant phase, in fact thats what i was trying to say in my original post (I'm saying that humanity will be a much sooner threat to humanity than the sun). And I also agreed that humanity wont get wiped off the planet because its really fucking hard to have that happen so idk what you're saying with your post?
I'm basically saying it would be more likely that humanity will destroy itself than it is likely that an alien race would destroy humanity. So using the resources we have now (basically everything on the planet and 7 billion people) would be better to use now than hold off out of fears of alien invasion, since it is more likely that humanity screws itself than it is that aliens screw us
Obviously anything is possible, but if the evolution of life is anything like what took place on earth, the chance that we're anywhere near another intelligent species capable of spaceflight is abysmally low. I'm sure there's stuff out there, but chances are that anything relatively "near" us is at or below our current level of technology. It would be an incredibly bad stroke of luck to end up living a few lightyears away from a species capable of obliterating us.
Of course that goes out the window if there IS some ultra-advanced intelligent species that has space-bending capabilities and can go anywhere as they like as they please, but even then they have to know we're here and decide that we're worth their time in order to seek us out.
>>7999115
Aliens from Vega would likely by 100 million apart fro us in time if not more and know about existence since millenia thanks to telescopes. Hence the argument is absurd
>>7999244
>taking pics at 0.2c
good luck with that
(especially with the fact that your "spacecraft" will have to weigh 1 gram)
>>7999868
?
Vega is 25 light years away you fucking retard (if that's what you're getting at, I'm having a hard time deciphering your post).
>>7999183
They aren't slowing down, the laser isn't running all that time, and the probes themselves aren't processing anything, they're just relaying information. All the heavy data processing will be done back here on Earth. The cost would also be lower than any Mars mission because there's exponentially less mass to move, there are no humans to keep alive, and there's no return mission.
>>7999075
completly agree I mean see what happened to the native american people
>>7999075
>>8000236
>>8000168
Keep justifying your fantasies, I'll laugh when you die never having seen a single pixel of the surface of any planet orbiting Alpha Centauri.
>>8000280
Never said it's guaranteed, I'm pointing out why the reasons you were saying it's impossible are retarded and just show you literally didn't even read the news articles talking about it.
>>8000284
well it's never gonna happen in your lifetime so who cares really?
>>7999150
Use the Super Fun Russian Gun
>>8000239
This one is good. Any species will most likely be programmed to propagate it's own basic system, so other species will be viewed as threats to its own propagation by mere fact that they might compete with them on resources.
Hadn't really fully thought about that.
Of course, this is based on the assumption that aliens would actually need the same resources that we do.
Aliens with exotic chemistries might target completely different planets.
>>8000555
Which goes back to alien encounters being dangerous only because they're just that- alien and difficult to impossible to predict. Do you really think you can know the thought processes behind an entirely alien, probably post-singularity and ancient, interstellar mind?
They might kill us to strip our planet of iron and make more berserker drones. They might like us and want to help us out, which to them will involve forcefully assimilating our biomass into theirs ala The Thing. Maybe they'll kill us because we aren't Ajikihh, with Ajikihh being a concept that only they understand. Or it's possible they're not even self-aware, and our constant broadcast of media might appear to be some sort of attack to waste their computing power to decipher, so they're naturally attacking us back.
>>8000565
>Or it's possible they're not even self-aware, and our constant broadcast of media might appear to be some sort of attack to waste their computing power to decipher, so they're naturally attacking us back
Fellow Blindsight fan?
>>8000568
Of course.
Watts did a great job to show just how unimaginably alien life might be, and not just alien but immensely ancient and powerful and impossible for us to hope to put up any resistance.
The truth is, though, actually aliens might even be more bizarre and more difficult to understand. They'll arrive seemingly out of nowhere and destroy us, and we'll never know, or even be able to know, why they're doing what they're doing.
Or maybe they'll accept us into a peaceful galactic federation.
Hey guys.
How the fuck could we receive pictures from Alpha Centauri?
Like what do they use to transmit the photos?
>>8000577
>Watts did a great job to show just how unimaginably alien life might be
I agree, although there were a couple of things that didn't really make sense, such as the aliens using ATP which is a molecule that first of all is (most likely) specific for nucleic acid using lifeforms, and it's hard to see why organisms that need intense magnetic fields to live and have plastic skins would somehow have the same water based phosphate hydrolysis reactions.
I also don't think a big supply of ATP would actually last very long if you have to do vigorous physical activities like running around, cloaking, processing information etc.
Did some quick googling and calculations: If a human burns 1620 calories per day and the hydrolysis of ATP has a deltaG of -50kJ/mol then you would consume about 68 grams of ATP per day.
Anyway, the rest of the book was awesome (as was the sequel), so I can forgive this minor flaw.
>They'll arrive seemingly out of nowhere and destroy us
Hopefully not... We'll have to fund SETI harder to ensure we see them first!
These images of the planets we'll see in 20 years, how good will they be? Will we be able to discern light patterns as we would in orbit of our own planet's cities?
>>8000606
Note: I might've been confused about the calories. Apparently, calories can mean both normal calories and kilocalories depending on who you're talking to, so the amount of ATP used might actually be 68 kg.
>>8000606
>such as the aliens using ATP which is a molecule that first of all is (most likely) specific for nucleic acid using lifeforms,
I think he was just trying to work with what he was familiar with, since he's a biologist.
>Hopefully not... We'll have to fund SETI harder to ensure we see them first!
Even if we found them now we wouldn't be able to do much, but it would at least be nice. It's possible we've already spotted bits and pieces of alien life like the WOW! Signal and whatever's happening with Tabby's Star, but we're still just barely figuring out how to piece that information together. Even if we figured out any of those things were intelligent, and that whatever made them is on their way to pay us a visit, I don't think there's much we could do to prepare. We're extremely vulnerable as a species right now, so it makes sense to keep vigilant but try not to bring too much attention to ourselves while we're still so vulnerable.
>>8000609
>we'll see in 20 years
44 years at best, considering a decade to develop it, another 20 years travel time, and then 4 years for the signals to reach back to us.
Probably add on several more years for the time it'll take projects to go over schedule and for people back on Earth to parse through and decipher the data before making it public. If this goes through at all.
>>7999522
>before sweeping cronyism, rampant subcontracting, and general milking of the government
so the ISS was constructed and launched over 10,000 years ago?
people this idiotic shouldn't post on /sci/
>>8000643
>he thinks the ISS program was anything near as lean and efficient and well planned as it could have been
the effects of everything listed are readily apparent
As a side effect Starshot would provide us with an powerful energy beam. Something which could be used to attack an approaching alien spaceship. Sounds pretty cool for me.
>>7999098
Because you don't need FTL to go near light speed. Basically, they will send an unmanned space ship straight at us to allahu ackbar us at relativistic speeds.
>>7999150
At those speeds, it doesn't need to be big.
And in space, you don't need conventional rockets. Stick a high efficiently propulsion method on it.
>>8000886
tl ;dr what is he saying ?
I always feel kinda sad talking about interstellar missions. It's a reminder I'll never see the planets of another star system.
>>8000890
Basically aliens far far away spot humans as we are now, a constantly bickering species that spreads like wildfire and rapes everything for rescourses.
Aliens go fuck that shit, and send a doomsday weapon at earth at light speed.
But it takes like hundreds of years to reach earth, and in those hundreds of years the aliens have seen us change and become pretty peaceful throughout our entire solarsystem.
They realize their mistake, but hey, cant stop a lighstspeed bomb. Earths destroyed, humanity is enraged by this alien attack and billions of deaths. Humanity traces back where it came from and sends a signal out basically saying, "we're coming for you."
There's just as many downsides to attacking another civilization as there are upsides. You're sending out a message to everyone else that you're prepared to annihilate them, so they have free reign to blow you up as well since you've revealed your position.
>>8000907
> Make a weapon that reaches lightspeed that you can fire from lightyears away
> Be so good at calculation to know the earths trajectory after the exact time to the second so it doesn't miss, which also doesn't get effected by gravitational pull from the objects around.
> Can't figure out that humans will eventually advance and find peace.
Damn /x/ is dumb
>>8000917
Who said it had to be a flashy attack?
Send the victim species a diplomatic gift, and have it release a genophage when they open it that spreads like wildfire and either kills them all or leaves them infertile, probably a combination of both.
>>8000920
Would any sane species crack open a canister from deep space without checking it first?
>>8000921
No one said it had to be an obvious canister, and you're missing the point. It could be anything that isn't as flashy as a relativistic bomb. Poison the whole atmosphere. Engineer super-plagues. Hell literally just take a bunch of asteroids and crash them all into the planet until there's nothing left standing, make it look like a freak accident if anyone else comes along later.
>>8000927
You'd need to send some sort of automated AI probe to assemble all those weapons within spitting distance of the planet, though, which makes it vulnerable to interception and increases the likelihood of retaliation. The reason a relativistic bomb is used in these scenarios is because it's impossible to see coming and nearly impossible to defend against.
>implying they arent already here, and getting wasted and crashing into shit in the asteroid belt
Why would they be hostile at all ? What would they gain out of it ?
>>8000951
Because they are scared shitless of what we might do.
>>7999553
>his face when I give him the keys to my wife
>>8000927
Michael Crichton mentioned something along these lines in Sphere. What if the first alien to land here exhales a poison that destroys all chlorophyll on the planet?
MANIFEST DESTINY
GAS THE AYYLMAOS
SPECIES WAR NOW
>>7999075
agree
just look at african colonialism; when people come into your existence with vastly better technology, even if they are peaceful, they are going to fuck up your world beyond comphrehensibility. Just imagine human nations, in the hostile state they are in now, getting war technology 3000+ years ahead of now. And that's assuming the aliens are a peaceful trading species.
>>8002623
Say that to my many faces, carbon life form. I fucking dare you.
>>8000933
Looks like the klingons have been hitting the ale a little too hard
Did they actually specifically say 1 gram? I read grams in one article so I thought anywhere from 1g to a 1000g.
>>7999075
I feel like this thread needs some of /tg/'s "HFY"
Aliens should be afraid of us. Very afraid.
>>8004236
This is so fucking retarded.
>>7999115
Moreover an ancient civilization can be based many places and even have weapons in place on every nearby planet, sop wrecking can be substantially faster.
>>7999130
>Massive energy investment
A bit up the Kardashiev scale and this would be peanuts
> for a plan that has so much that can go wrong and blatantly display your hostile intentions to any one looking.
The idea is to wipe out anyone who ever looked.
>>7999144
>paranoid
Scientists have seriously discussed how to mask the presence of Earth to any other society looking for us. Hawkins is not alone in being concerned.
>>8000844
>attack an approaching alien spaceship
Unlikely. Much in the same way the reflective solar sail of the probes stand up to the lasers, an incoming alien can also shield itself with plain reflective surfaces.
>>8004783
One explanation of the Fermi paradox is simply that other aliens only want to live on their home worlds, smelling the flowers and reading poetry. If humans are the only species with a compulsion to exploration, domination, colonisation etc. we would be the number one bad news in the entire galaxy. Because we WOULD get there, everywhere, eventuelly.
>>8001420
Yo guys, you are scaring the shit out of me. Are we really so screwed?? TELL ME EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OK
>>7999098
>if scientists don't believe in FTL then why are they simultaneously scared that aliens listening in on SETI might come and attack us?
You don't need FTL to wipe out the human race.
A sublight kinetic energy weapon should do the trick, it would just take a long time to get here.
For all we know, our Chicxulub is already on the way.
>>7999144
>paranoid
I do not know which is worse: being paranoid or knowing you should be.
>>8001420
Chimps form coalitions that battle against other chimps. And humans are far from peaceful. So if an alien species were to evolve intelligence, would aggression be an inevitable part of the package?
Perhaps. The evolution of aggression is a question unto itself. Fights to the death occur only in species where the options are mate or die, Carrier said. [Fight, Fight, Fight: The History of Human Aggression]
"If you can walk away from a fight and reproduce another day, you do that," he said. "But if circumstances are such that your ability to reproduce is threatened by a competitor, in that situation it makes sense to fight."
Environmental factors may determine whether a mate-or-die system emerges. For example, chimpanzees are a particularly homicidal (chimpacidal?) species, Carrier said. Work by primatologist Richard Wrangham at Harvard University and colleagues finds that chimp "wars" arise from a chimpanzee's territorialism. Small groups of foraging chimps may come into contact with other chimpanzees; killing these competitors (particularly when the foragers have numbers on their side) can be beneficial by opening up access to more resources.
Deadly male-male competition is less of a way of life for bonobos, humankind's other closest primate ancestor. Male bonobos stick by their mothers and the species is less territorial than chimpanzees. Bonobo foraging groups are also larger, perhaps because their food sources are more abundant, studies have found. Would aliens act more like bonobos or chimps? Hard to say. Researchers are even split on whether humans are more inherently aggressive or inherently peaceful.
>>8008469
If intelligence evolves in the context of social competition, and aggression is the natural outcome of competition, it's hard to imagine that clever aliens could also be kind. Is this the end for hopes of sweet little E.T.?
Maybe not. The social competition model doesn't work without cooperation, after all. Humans fight, wage war and sometimes murder each other. But humans also form coalitions, care for each other and even build coalitions of coalitions, such as nation-states.
"There are two sides to our nature," Carrier said. "It's not that one is any more real than the other. It's just who we are."
Humans are unique among Earth life in forming long-lasting alliances between groups, not just individuals, Flinn said. Chimpanzees can't pull that off, he said, so it's not clear that aliens could, either.
"On Planet X, it may not be inevitable that social competition results in a morality and a creativity of the sort that allows these intelligent life-forms to negotiate with us for a mutually beneficial outcome," Flinn said.
On the other hand, chimpanzees don't explore space. Perhaps a civilization that can band together to reach for the stars has to be cooperative by definition. If that's the case, humanity might be a greater threat to aliens than aliens are to humanity. Luckily, evolution has given humans the tools for peace.
"We can, in effect, rise above the design, potentially," Flinn said. "If we understand what our brains are designed to do, we are going to be way more capable of rising above those tendencies that we have."
>>7999075
Stephen is not immune to dementia just because he's smart, he has been saying some really stupid shit lately.
OP and others ITT
read this book
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Forest
pdfs are available
tldr though, when you are in an us vs them existential crisis level situation, you dont ask questions, you shoot first or die
eventually those who do this will eliminate all those who hesitate, resulting in a galaxy filled with shoot-first-asknoquestions civilizations. If we're ever discovered, if earth is ever located, id imagine we'd be immediately on a countdown to destruction because of this. If there are a fraction as many alien races as there are habitable planets in the galaxy, its gonna be full of ruthless takenoprisoners aluims who've been in interspecies war before, and know a bit or two about the risks of keeping competitor species alive
>>8008511
Or you know, they actually benefited from an interspecies alliance. I understand being afraid of something you don't know but this thread is ridiculous. We only have or own humanity to compare something to. Obviously we shouldn't advertise our location but the chance of aliens being actually hostile is 50/50. I actually believe that any sort of space faring civilization had to develop a kind of empathic intelligence to even get to that point so I wouldn't be inclined to believe aliens are dangerous. We should be prepared for the worst but we also shouldn't be completely paranoid cause that leads us nowhere.
