__________________
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

Most combatants rationalize that the war was there opponents fault. I'm just defending my beliefs, culture, homeland and or trying to right wrongs perbatrated long ago. When and if alien interacts with human, some harm will come to both parties. Hostilities may follow. Neil

What harm, across a light-years wide void? Bad language?

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

The aliens could learn bad language from us, and we could receive technology that produced horrible side effects, perhaps as bad as television. That which we enjoy, often detracts from the best interests of society as a whole. Neil

So why would aliens be transmitting blueprints of their technology? I'd think if they liked us enough to share, and knew enough about us to guage our technologocal level, they'd send us something helpful. If they disliked us, they might send something harmful, but we'd have no motivation to use it to harm ourselves. Remember, whatever they sent is going to be scrutinized in great detail before we so much as put a nut and bolt together. Anything harmful just would not be built.

(Also, it's our application of television, not the technology itself, that has made it socially harmful. Can't blame it on the hardware.)

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Ok I have to come back in this conversation. I have read the last 3 pages so has anyone ever thought these (aliens) could be non physical beings like ghost or something along those lines. Keep in mind that aliens are most likely built much differently than us. So their weapons may not be able to hurt us and vice versa. I've made the mistake of trying to think about what they would do based on what I would do. This thread was a mistake we may never know if life is out there and talking about it gives more fear to many. This is a never ending conversation that will most likely never get answered in full. But its great to imagine and really fun.

__________________
perfect is an opinion word-3dknight

it doesn't matter if I get 3 hours of sleep or 6, I still wake up just as tired!-Neverfly

These are the questions that boggle my mind-3dknight

Well, if they exist, then technically they're physical. But yes, if you push the most extreme boundaries of what's hypothetically physically possible, there might be "life" based on clouds of dust, gasses, plasma or perhaps energy fields under certain conditions. Would their weapons hurt us? Unknown. Some things are dangerous to anything; they could chuck a black hole at us, for instance.
It's not a mistake, I think. The question was too broad, but I think there were some interesting conversations generated as a result.

And don't worry about "causing fear", those who fear something like an "enemy" who may or may not exist, may or may not be an enemy, and is unimaginably far away, will find something to fear no matter what anyone says.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Depends on how closely we resemble their usual diet.

They might look upon us the way we would look upon a newly discovered Thanksgiving buffet.

Oh, donuts.

__________________
Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

I think that if a generation ship were to pass by, the lack of plaetary scale resources would have them in a pretty weak state. They would have better equations perhaps--some better materials, but a landing craft--just designed to get down--would be highly vulnerable to combat jets.

Without knowing how their technology works, you can't assume that. They may have brought more than enough surpluss materials to compensate for any loss incurred during the trip, or to repair any landing craft of any level of advancement.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Well, if anyone visits us before we visit them, I think we are toast. They would likely view us as a primitive infection on an otherwise perfectly colonizable planet. The technology necessary to traverse the stars is probably thousands, if not millions of years beyond our grasp. I am, however, intrigued by the morality issues.

We don't know how they'd "likely" view us. We don't know if a species evolved in an alien ecology could colonize Earth. We don't know exactly what level of technology would be needed to allow viable interstallar travel.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I love comparisons. Think of a red ant hill crawling with red ants. Yes they are inferior on all levels. If you walked near one you wouldn't take the hill over would you? What would you do?

__________________
perfect is an opinion word-3dknight

it doesn't matter if I get 3 hours of sleep or 6, I still wake up just as tired!-Neverfly

These are the questions that boggle my mind-3dknight

They may think we're cute.

__________________
perfect is an opinion word-3dknight

it doesn't matter if I get 3 hours of sleep or 6, I still wake up just as tired!-Neverfly

These are the questions that boggle my mind-3dknight

Well, I don't find you guys ugly, but your tropical fish are the cutest Earth creatures I've yet seen.

__________________
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

Quick, everyone learn to swim!

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I think that aliens will be, unless we or they go out of their way to befriend us, will be foes. Now I don't think they will be the slavering psycho monsters out to kill us all type aliens. How could such a species build starships? However, I do think if you consider the energy requirements for a starship, that they would be more then likely a single planet could handle, I think the creatures, will be very resource hungry. And they aren't likely to stop because some puny little apes who aren't even out of there own solar system don't like it. Unless we try desperately to avoid it, I fear it will be war or rather, a slaughter. I do think that aliens will be people though. Not angels nor demons but people. Different people, both in psychology and physiology, but people. But what we must remember, is that we are people, and we have done horrible things to our fellow man.

__________________

1. What basis did you use for calculating the energy needs of an interstellar craft? What mass and speed? What method of propulsion and efficiency?

2. Any society that can build an inhabited starship will almost certainly have expanded beyond one planet, and will therefore have the greater part of the resources of an entire star system available, so they need not be greedy at all.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I'll credit him on this one. Physics. Plugging the numbers into the equations for advancing starships to near light speed quickly (this is assuming that they are not FTL ships- but the same principle would apply anyway) gives a very very large number in the "energy needed" field as well as major problems in trying to keep the starship cool.