I'm currently writing a short story about how an alien spaceship suddenly arrives in orbit, takes a few scans, then jets off without a word to humanity. I was wondering, how would you react if something like this happened? What if they actually came down and offered fantastic technology to humans? Conversely, what if they decided to colonize some part of the planet and simply cut themselves off from the rest of the world, like we do with nature?

It's interesting to think that even the smallest bit of evidence that could prove the existance of E.T. would fundamentally transform the world.

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"Critical thinking and skepticism form the cornerstone of intelligence."
-me

Humanity is too stupid to bear the knowledge that there are other species out there. Especially with the current governments of the world, our first question would probably be "How can we bomb the hell out of these dudes?"

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The visions we present to our children shape the future. It matters what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. - Carl Sagan, 1992

I hope and believe you're selling us short. I believe there are enough cool heads around to handle the situation in a professional manner. We may not be too happy about them living in a colony isolated from the rest of the planet if we were not privy to what they were up to...at least I wouldn't.

If they left without contacting us, it would make me very curious.

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For those inclined to oppose human meddling with the structure of the universe or the composition and configuration of objects and groups of objects within the universe, consider:
Whether there is a limit to the magnitude of a modulation of chaos below which order remains invariant? Or, is order but a fiction invented by perspectives applied over finite, however large, time intervals?

I have to agree with devilmech, I'm afraid. I think the human race is generally far too paranoid to handle a visit from aliens.

Let's say they arrived in orbit, stayed for a day to study us from afar and then left. We'd spend the next X years wondering why they didn't want to talk to us.

If they landed and / or contacted us, we'd be wondering what their motives were and trying to work out if they were lying to us.

If they landed and we were gracious to let them have their own little colony... unless they held regular press conferences, built a visitor centre and their own Disney Alien World resort, we'd be suspicious of what they were up to. Hell, even if they *did* do all that, we'd still be suspicious. Sooner or later you'd have some idiot circulating conspiracy theories about the alarming number of people who never return from visiting...

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"The stars are my home"
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I've watched c-beams glitter in the dark, near the Tanhauser Gate... all those moments will be lost, in time... like tears in the rain..."

Those are all great toughts about what if such thing happened, but what we are not looking into is the complicated side of this, meaning andother what if. One thing we know is that they might not even exist, they do exist and they are here but we can't see them, therefore, they might be controlling some things on Earth, or they even might be some of us. Because if we let ourselves believe that they would travel with speed of light or close to it to arrive here, why wouldn't it be possible that they can be us. Now what if they actually showed themselves, or arrived here for the first time. Well in my mind we are somehow all prepared because those movies about aliens etc might seem silly, and crazy to talk about but if you look deep enough you will see that they are preparing us for such a thing even if they are not ment to. Because after you watch a movie, in your mind you go through different scenes where the actor did something wrong and you imagine yourself doing the same thing, just better or with success....now those mental rehersals are what are preparing us for this event...if it even occurs. Another thing is that aliens are for some people just classified as one race "Aliens" and they are all together, those people must understand that aliens are numerous (if they exist) and that if one of them comes here, or already is here , that there is a possibility that others will come, therefore if one race of aliens find this planet interesting, and another race comes by woith same toughts, there is a chanse they might ally, but also a chanse they might fight. And fighting is sorta hard to conceal especially if you are above/on a planet . This is the confusing part, I said that they might ally or fight, now thats from my experience about what humans might do, but we are taking about a different race and they might not even make such decisions as to fight or not, they mgiht be just programmed to do what they were here to do, ignoring any obsticles until their 1st goal is complete. Now again I am not describin an alien, I'm describing soem sort of a robot, as it is "programmed" to achieve a goal. My point is we don't know what these things will do and if they will even do it but we rather create their personalities and toughts from our own experiences. I'm sure we aren't only people that are thinking baout this, there is 2 million years of human existance and they mgiht have tought of the same thing or even experienced it. Sorry about the length of te message and I hope you understand, all for now
Ratnik