Stephen Hawking says hostile ETs will be invading Earth soon. Proof of upcoming alien attack.

Dei wrote:

to all the doubters:

if God created Earth, then it was he who created the other planets and systems, why did he create them if not to host life?

if the Big Bang caused the universe in its immensity why would anyone start from an assumption that the Earth is unique in its ability to foster and support life?

life exists outside of Earth but does it really matter?

Ummm... Ever heard of Neptune? Mercury?...?

Ummm... Man wrote:

Dei wrote:

to all the doubters:

if God created Earth, then it was he who created the other planets and systems, why did he create them if not to host life?

if the Big Bang caused the universe in its immensity why would anyone start from an assumption that the Earth is unique in its ability to foster and support life?

life exists outside of Earth but does it really matter?

Ummm... Ever heard of Neptune? Mercury?...?

kepler 452b

The air of Neptune is extremely cold, with temperatures of -270 degrees to -380 degrees. The air is made of complex molecules, the same sort of molecules that we see coming out of cars on earth in the form of smog. Energy in the atmosphere comes from lightning, ultraviolet light, and charged particles.

This kind of atmosphere is very similar to the kind of environment in which scientists believe life began. But from prehistoric times until today, life on Earth changed, and now these conditions are no longer friendly for life as we know it.

The inside of Neptune is very hot and liquid-like, but the temperature is as high as 10,000 degrees.

what is all this talk about fighting? If aliens come to our planet we shall greet them and cooperate with them. If their culture and technology is greater than ours, so be it, we will collaborate with them to survive

so the collective wisdom of Letsrun boils down to choosing between:

a) Hawkins concept of outrunning a superior technology alien species by leaving our planet (how well will this work if they are technologically better wouldn't it stand to reason that they are faster)

b) surrender, capitulate, and copulate with the aliens like a bunch of Frenchwomen (assuming the aliens find us attractive???)

c) go Red Dawn USA Wolverines on them a la Independence Day (putting all our hopes in the hands of Jeff Goldblum's virus, hmmmmm)

d) going to sleep each night safely assuming we are alone (hmmm) or that they are too far away to ever reach us (hmmmm)

I will go for option d, although option b is mildly intriguing.

Casio wrote:

http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/286707/hawking-nomadic-aliens-could-wipe-us-out

I would invoke the Bush Doctrine and attack them first.

Also known as the Aztec doctrine.

Pointing Out the Obvious wrote:

OLD SMTC SOB wrote:

The reality is that no ones knows whether life, much less intelligent life exists [...] Even if 1% of these in the habitable zone had the ability so support life, and another 1% of those did, the number would still be pretty huge.

1% (10^-2) is just a number pulled out of someone's ass. What if the probability is more like 10^(-200)? Then the numbers don't look so rosy. With our current state of knowledge we really have no idea what are reasonable assumptions.

I agree with both of you. There may be a lot of life out there, there may not be any. We don't have enough information to make strong conclusions one way or the other. At least not on the basis of chemistry and astrophysics alone. We may eventually understand abiogenesis well enough to come up with better grounded estimates, but that day is a ways off. For now, I personally think that the best we can do on this score before taking other forms of evidence into account is roughly 50-50. Anything much stronger either way seems like overconfidence.

Then let's add in the fact that we haven't seen any signs of aliens. This should certainly push us towards thinking that there aren't any aliens, the question is how far. To answer this, we need to decide what the probability is that we would have heard from aliens, assuming they exist. This is because:

P(aliens | no signs) = P(no signs | aliens)*P(aliens) / [P(no signs | aliens)*P(aliens) + P(no signs | no aliens)*P(no aliens)]

where P(aliens) is the prior probability we'd assign to the existence of aliens based on our knowledge of astrophysics and chemistry alone. (If you don't understand the rest, look up Bayes' Theorem.) Personally, I think that the probability that we would have heard from aliens, assuming they exist, is something like 90%. It seems reasonable that we would have heard from them, or that they would have taken over the whole universe already or something, but on the other hand maybe they are really far away, or they have better things to worry about, or whatever. Basically we have very little idea what their civilization could be like, so we don't have much basis for a high level of confidence that they would have contacted us.

Based on these estimates, the odds of aliens existing are approximately 1 in 10. I think that as you vary these estimates, you can quite reasonably defend odds of, like, 1 in 50 in either direction. If you are too much more confident than this in either direction, then I think you are making a mistake. We don't know enough to support high levels of confidence on this question.

Let me put this in perspective for you guys.If there is alien life (intelligent) it could be that it is so far advanced that we, despite how far we have come in the last ~1000 years, are no more exciting than pond scum. Think about how more advanced we *might* be if earth had experienced one less extinction event, then again, "we" probably wouldn't exist. Going to the moon, relatively speaking, is no better than Og floating on a log over to the next island.Broadcasting signals into outer space ... TV, radio, "Greetings Neighbor", etc. could be so simple that to a much more intelligent species, is relatively no different than a dog barking in the night or a monkey screeching in the jungle.

Thanks for the Fermi Paradox link.

Sums up my point about pond scum, dogs barking and monkeys howling.

"Possibility 9) Higher civilizations are here, all around us. But we’re too primitive to perceive them. Michio Kaku sums it up like this:

Lets say we have an ant hill in the middle of the forest. And right next to the ant hill, they’re building a ten-lane super-highway. And the question is “Would the ants be able to understand what a ten-lane super-highway is? Would the ants be able to understand the technology and the intentions of the beings building the highway next to them?"

mileage_man,Everything is 50/50 ... either there is or there isn't, yes or no, might or might not. ;-)

mileage_man wrote:

For now, I personally think that the best we can do on this score before taking other forms of evidence into account is roughly 50-50. Anything much stronger either way seems like overconfidence. .

exthrower wrote:

Hawking's mind is weaker than his legs...

In all likelihood, the IQ differential between you and Stephen Hawking is roughly equivalent to the IQ differential between you and a person with down syndrome. It never hurts to maintain bit of perspective on these matters.

I've already invaded and walk amongst you. So far I don't like what I see but your women are gorgeous.

IQ ain't be everything hoss

imfromouterspace wrote:

I've already invaded and walk amongst you. So far I don't like what I see but your women are gorgeous.

You find Caitlyn attractive huh?

It is ridiculous. If they were so advanced, wouldn't they have figured out how to get here already? And even if they could, MAYBE there are a million better places to go? The guy's smart, but his best talent is being controversial and getting PR.

only just begun wrote:

Ummm... Man wrote:

Ummm... Ever heard of Neptune? Mercury?...?

kepler 452b

The air of Neptune is extremely cold, with temperatures of -270 degrees to -380 degrees. The air is made of complex molecules, the same sort of molecules that we see coming out of cars on earth in the form of smog. Energy in the atmosphere comes from lightning, ultraviolet light, and charged particles.

This kind of atmosphere is very similar to the kind of environment in which scientists believe life began. But from prehistoric times until today, life on Earth changed, and now these conditions are no longer friendly for life as we know it.

The inside of Neptune is very hot and liquid-like, but the temperature is as high as 10,000 degrees.

Ummm... You forgot one thing - devoid of life.

absolute rubbish wrote:

It is ridiculous. If they were so advanced, wouldn't they have figured out how to get here already? And even if they could, MAYBE there are a million better places to go? The guy's smart, but his best talent is being controversial and getting PR.

Maybe, maybe not. Especially not if FTL travel is not possible.

There is an interesting argument that suggests that finding evidence of other life is very bad for our prospects as a species. The gist of it goes that we know that there are a tremendous number of planets out there with conditions relatively similar to Earth. We also know that many of these plants are far, far older.

So you start with millions, probably billions of potential points for life to start, and end up with zero observable civilizations. What this means from a probability standpoint is there must be some transition step that is incredibly improbable whose occurrence is necessary for an intelligent civilization detectable by us to arise. It must be so improbably that with millions or billions of dice rolls one ends up with nothing.

Now this "Filter" could be either before us or in the past. If in the past this would mean that there is some extremely improbable step in the sequence of events whereby an Earth‐like planet gives rise to an intelligent life form comparable in its technological sophistication to our own. If this is the case, there might not be any aliens in our galaxy, or even the observable universe.

The other possibility is that the Great Filter is after us, in our future.   This would mean that there is some great improbability that prevents almost all technological civilizations at our current human stage of development from progressing to the point where they engage in large‐scale space‐colonization and make their presence known to other technological civilizations.  For example, it might be that any sufficiently technologically

advanced civilization discovers some technology—perhaps some very powerful weapons technology—that causes its extinction.

Naturally, we must hope that this filter event is behind us. There is no reason to think we would be any luckier than the countless other civilizations that had failed.

What has all this got to do with finding life on Mars?  Consider the implications of discovering that life had evolved independently on Mars (or some other planet in our solar system).  That discovery would suggest that the emergence of life is not a very improbable event.  If it happened independently twice here in our own back yard, it must surely have happened millions times across the galaxy.  This would mean that the

Great Filter is less likely to occur in the early life of planets and is therefore more likely still to come. If we discovered some very simple life forms on Mars in its soil or under the ice at the polar caps, it would show that the Great Filter must exist somewhere after that period in evolution. This would be disturbing, but we might still hope that the Great Filter was located in our past. If we discovered a more advanced life‐form, such as some kind of

multi‐cellular organism, that would eliminate a much larger stretch of potential locations where the Great Filter could be. The effect would be to shift the probability more strongly to the hypothesis that the Great Filter is ahead of us, not behind us.  And if we discovered the fossils of some very complex life form, such as of some vertebrate‐like creature, we would have to conclude that the probability is very great that the bulk of the Great Filter is ahead of us.  Such a discovery would be a crushing blow.  It would be by

far the worst news ever printed on a newspaper cover.

Not really, man. What's so great about the human species anyway? Why the heck should I care if there are living humans a thousand years from now?

oh please wrote:

Casio wrote:http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/286707/hawking-nomadic-aliens-could-wipe-us-out

No, I think he is saying that by virtue of being advanced enough to reach Earth, that those aliens would be seeking new homes or resources.

I read recently that that there are an estimated 400,000,000,000 planets in the milky way, and approximately 40,000,000,000 "earth like planets in a habitable zone." And the Milky Way is only one of billions of galaxies. The chances that life is elsewhere is 100% certain. What form though?

You don't understand your statistics or probability then. The chances a ar approaching 10 ^40 power. It is more than all the stars, planets and galaxies combined. Highly unlikely for advanced life anywhere else in the universe. And besides, there is no proof...just some very poor evidence. You'd never let a religious person get away with this kind of claim, why do you do it??