Alien Civilizations and first encounters?

[John Jaksich]

I wasn't too sure if the post belonged anywhere else, so I will put it here. If and/or when we do make some type of contact with intelligent ET, how likely will it be that our encounter will prove to be so foreign to us that we will not possess the ability to utilize any type of technology that they could offer us? Or, in short, will our encounter will prove to be meaningless to the average human---who may want his/her day-to-day needs met---and not want to care that the event would prove to be momentous beyond anything history may have recorded?

I am still trying to form the right words but I am a little fuzzy ---sorry.

[primummobile]

I think it will be like what you read in Carl Sagan's Contact.

[John Jaksich]

If I remember what I read---I don't happen to believe that art will imitate life. The reason why asked the question---I was watching one the episodes Cosmos---and maybe my question has been answered over and over. But I really don't know what some people will say? And, yes question is very fuzzy? It is a generalization.

[Noclevername]

Depends on the type of contact. If it's a distant radio signal, I think the majority of people will say "Oh, cool" and then go back ot their day. If it's a ship entering our solar system, there will be trepidation, possibly some overrreaction and definitely military buildup. If they just appear hovering over our major cities, there will be panic and riots in the streets.

[primummobile]

I do think that life will imitate art. A lot of people are going to start questioning many things if we make contact with an alien race, and unfortunately many people are going to give in to fear or superstition. Others will try to push themselves to the forefront. Yet others will pretend to be experts.

I don't think that there would be any significant sharing of technology until we learned to communicate with one another. That may be a problem, but I doubt the aliens would make themselves known to us without studying us very thoroughly first.

[Noclevername]

I don't think that there would be any significant sharing of technology until we learned to communicate with one another. That may be a problem, but I doubt the aliens would make themselves known to us without studying us very thoroughly first.

That's assuming the contact is intentional. If we just detect signals leakage, or if they just send a probe or stop to examine this system because Saturn has pretty rings, then they won't know how to make heads or tails of us.

[John Jaksich]

I am sure there are many who would panic and not know what to do if intelligent ET were to show up on the Earth? Appeals to authority and a higher power would be as likely riots in the streets--IMO. May be my question has turned into an exercise of philosophy--more than anything else?

[John Jaksich]

I do think that life will imitate art. A lot of people are going to start questioning many things if we make contact with an alien race, and unfortunately many people are going to give in to fear or superstition. Others will try to push themselves to the forefront. Yet others will pretend to be experts.

I don't think that there would be any significant sharing of technology until we learned to communicate with one another. That may be a problem, but I doubt the aliens would make themselves known to us without studying us very thoroughly first.

If there is anything that I am certain of ---it is that we most probably would find it incredulous to understand anything beyond our own comprehension. It is as if we were all "flat-landers and someone from an alternate dimension introduced themselves to us" ---how would we know how to respond?

[Ara Pacis]

This thread probably belongs in the Life in Space subforum.

I wasn't too sure if the post belonged anywhere else, so I will put it here. If and/or when we do make some type of contact with intelligent ET, how likely will it be that our encounter will prove to be so foreign to us that we will not possess the ability to utilize any type of technology that they could offer us?

If they come from a planet with dramatically different chemical, magnetic and physical properties (different from STP) then we might not be able to use their tech on earth, though we might be able to recreate it in special labs if they send us details. If they arrive physically, then we know their tech will work in a space environment, at least, but I doubt it would be so far removed from what we know about physics that we won't be able to grasp it.

I don't think that there would be any significant sharing of technology until we learned to communicate with one another. That may be a problem, but I doubt the aliens would make themselves known to us without studying us very thoroughly first.

I doubt this, unless you're positing some vastly new physics. If they are using radio, we'll probably only hear them if they're trying to be heard, and they won't hear us unless we're trying to be heard, so there's very little they would actually know about is without contact. If they show up physically, most physical laws we currently understand would mean they would have had to be on their way for a long time now and wouldn't have known anything about us until they got really close, at which point it may be to late to prevent contact. A world ship on a ballistic trajectory through the galaxy with limited ability to stop would be hard set to establish a long term observation of us prior to commitment to contact or close approach. However, they might decide to not initiate contact and hope to slip by unnoticed.

[Noclevername]

The long timeframe needed for signal return means a long-lived species could have sent probes millenia ago, and arrive expecting to find us in bearskins weilding spears.

[eburacum45]

A civilisation that has been using advanced technology for thousands of years might be so used to it that they would find some difficulty explaining it to us. Especially if it is integrated partially, or totally, into their physical bodies (which might be very different to our own). Even though any technology they may possess will no doubt run on principles that we already know about or that we could, in time, appreciate, that doesn't mean we could easily grasp the way in which it works.

Advanced technology may be at least as complex (and as difficult to fully comprehend) as a biological organism; it may in fact be many times more complex than that. Complexity is likely to be a worse barrier to understanding alien technology than physical science.

[swampyankee]

Radio (or something similar)? Nobody outside of a few specialists care. Similarly, if they snag a few KBOs. Indeed, not much popular effect until their spaceships hover above Earth in exactly the way bricks don't.

[primummobile]

This thread probably belongs in the Life in Space subforum.

If they come from a planet with dramatically different chemical, magnetic and physical properties (different from STP) then we might not be able to use their tech on earth, though we might be able to recreate it in special labs if they send us details. If they arrive physically, then we know their tech will work in a space environment, at least, but I doubt it would be so far removed from what we know about physics that we won't be able to grasp it.



I doubt this, unless you're positing some vastly new physics. If they are using radio, we'll probably only hear them if they're trying to be heard, and they won't hear us unless we're trying to be heard, so there's very little they would actually know about is without contact. If they show up physically, most physical laws we currently understand would mean they would have had to be on their way for a long time now and wouldn't have known anything about us until they got really close, at which point it may be to late to prevent contact. A world ship on a ballistic trajectory through the galaxy with limited ability to stop would be hard set to establish a long term observation of us prior to commitment to contact or close approach. However, they might decide to not initiate contact and hope to slip by unnoticed.

I'm making the assumption that there would be an alien race who wants to and is able to direct communication to us. In that case, it's rather naive to think that they would not try to study us first, especially if they were arriving in person. I am making absolutely no statements on how they would get here because that's been talked to death on this forum, and it is completely off topic here.

I'm not positing any new physics. I'm saying what may happen if we were faced with advanced technology. If you took a microprocessor back to the nineteenth century they would have no idea what it was, though understanding it would not require any new physics. That's why you would need communication before any meaningful technology exchange.

[Noclevername]

In that case, it's rather naive to think that they would not try to study us first, especially if they were arriving in person.

The question is, how would they study us? If they are relying on visual images or radio signals (whether direct or from a probe), there's the light-lag to take into consideration, barring FTL communication. For them to know anything about how we are now, they would have to be hiding somewhere in our solar system observing us up close-- which would require new laws of thermodynamics for their vessel's heat signature to be undetectable.

[primummobile]

The question is, how would they study us? If they are relying on visual images or radio signals (whether direct or from a probe), there's the light-lag to take into consideration, barring FTL communication. For them to know anything about how we are now, they would have to be hiding somewhere in our solar system observing us up close-- which would require new laws of thermodynamics for their vessel's heat signature to be undetectable.

I wouldn't think it that difficult for them to hide from us. We're pretty good at hiding from ourselves. And they wouldn't need to park that far from us to be able to watch our 5:00 news every day but still be outside our detection range.

[Noclevername]

I wouldn't think it that difficult for them to hide from us. We're pretty good at hiding from ourselves. And they wouldn't need to park that far from us to be able to watch our 5:00 news every day but still be outside our detection range.

I'm not so sure. If we can detect heat from distant galaxies, a starship, say, at the heliopause would stand out like a florescent thumb.

[primummobile]

I'm not so sure. If we can detect heat from distant galaxies, a starship, say, at the heliopause would stand out like a florescent thumb.

But not if they had technology to conceal it from us. Look at the level of our stealth technology, and what we know about is over twenty years old. If they know how to fly here they can stay invisible to us until they decide to reveal themselves.

Frankly, I'm a little surprised at this line of questioning. Maybe I just don't see where you're coming from. You seem to be saying that they are limitex to technology little better than our own, but that they wouldn't try to learn about us before they landed on our yard. On Earth, we do very little without trying to find out something about what we are walking into. To do otherwise is foolish.

[Noclevername]

But not if they had technology to conceal it from us.

Not without changing the laws of physics. Heat output is heat output at any tech level.

Frankly, I'm a little surprised at this line of questioning. Maybe I just don't see where you're coming from. You seem to be saying that they are limitex to technology little better than our own, but that they wouldn't try to learn about us before they landed on our yard. On Earth, we do very little without trying to find out something about what we are walking into. To do otherwise is foolish.

I'm saying they'd have no physical means of doing so without being detected, except for distances so extreme they would learn only what we used to be like. I'm saying that, not technology, but the laws of physics limit the amount of "knowing" that they can do without coming here directly and meeting us.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_htm...modynamics.php
http://www.projectrho.com/public_htm....php#nostealth
http://www.projectrho.com/public_htm...ectscience.php
Links to a site that may explain it better than I can.

From Project Rho:

So you know, university Physics is essentially three years of this discussion among like-minded enthusiasts.

Done with supercomputers, access to the textbook collections of five continents and thirty languages.

On four hours sleep a night.

With no sex.

You're not going to find the loophole these guys missed.

[primummobile]

But that's not the point. I'm saying they could confuse our instruments. They may have probes inside asteroids. We have no way to know what they could do and even if they are only a hundred years ahead of us they could have things we can only dream about. Did you think you woukd have a computer in a phone twenty years ago? There is no way we have thought of everything because there are just too many questions about things we don't know. I'm sorry, I don't accept that a sufficiently advanced race couldn't hide from us. Space, even local space, is very big. They could be sitting in your own backyard and you may not know just because you aren't looking.

[Noclevername]

The point is that, if we're wrong about basic thermodynamics, we're wrong about everything and none of our technology should work. None of our observations should match our current theories of physics. We can't be that wrong and still have a functioning industrial society or any consistent science.

More pertinent quotes from Project Rho:

Heat, by definition, is energy that comes with associated entropy. It is a well verified physical law that entropy cannot be destroyed, it can be created but the only way to decrease your amount of entropy is to move it somewhere else. To avoid having entropy build up on your spacecraft until something breaks, you need to get rid of it by moving it off the craft.

On a spacecraft, the only way you can move energy and entropy off the spacecraft is by putting it in something else and ejecting that something else, or radiating it away as electromagnetic waves. Since trying to put all your entropy in matter and dumping it is wasteful for your mass budget, radiation is the usual trick. However, the required radiator area scales as 1/temperature to the fourth power. The colder you are storing your entropy, the larger the radiator you need to get rid of it, and the size increases very rapidly with decreasing temperature.

"Maybe A Future Scientific Breakthrough Will Let Me Have My Way"
First off, from the standpoint of probability, there is at least a 50% chance that any new scientific breakthrough will actually make it harder to do what you want.

The general rule is what physicists call the correspondence principle or the Classical limit. This states that any new theory must give the same answers as the old theory where the old theory has been confirmed by experiment. Which means if you just state that in the year 2525 Professor XYZ came up with the "Take THAT, Einstein!" theory of FTL travel, you still have a problem. You have to explain how the TTE theory allows FTL flight while still giving the same answers that relativity theory did for all those experiments it confirmed. Experiments that were accurate to quite a few decimal points.

"A scientific explanation is one that is vindicated by practice." Radio transmitters transmit, and radio receivers receive. Lasers lase. Nuclear reactors react. Semi-conductors occasionally conduct. Tunnel diodes, LED's, SQUIDS, and other electromagnetic devices based on quantum mechanics do their thing repeatedly and reliably. So we're obviously doing something right! And we don't dare throw away the theoretical base on which these gadgets do indeed work. We can and should modify the theoretical base as necessary, but we can't throw it away. Any new theories of the universe must be compatible with the old ones or at least permit logical and rational modifications in order to shoe-horn the old theories into the new ones.

There is no unexplained phenomenon that might result in violating thermodynamics - and if there WERE something that violated thermo, it would radically change the universe as we know it - for instance, stellar processes require thermodynamics, the entire model of cosmology is based off of known properties for thermodynamics. Your car runs on thermodynamic processes. And all of these things work out the same way, and derive from the same knowledge base.

[PlutonianEmpire]

"Maybe A Future Scientific Breakthrough Will Let Me Have My Way"
First off, from the standpoint of probability, there is at least a 50% chance that any new scientific breakthrough will actually make it harder to do what you want.

More like 100%.

/end rant.

[swampyankee]

I know a bit about stealth -- I worked on low-observables for a few years -- and, yes, there are ways to hide a warm object from IR observations. One way is simply to cool (or heat) the side facing the observers to match the background, and radiate any waste heat off the back side. This would require that the stealthed ET know the location of the observers, but, right now, it's quite safe to assume they're all on Earth.


What would be more difficult would be for the ET's ship to hide itself if it is in front of something that has a well-known spectrum, so ET will have to be carefully located in front of a particularly boring part of the sky.

[Ara Pacis]

A civilisation that has been using advanced technology for thousands of years might be so used to it that they would find some difficulty explaining it to us. Especially if it is integrated partially, or totally, into their physical bodies (which might be very different to our own). Even though any technology they may possess will no doubt run on principles that we already know about or that we could, in time, appreciate, that doesn't mean we could easily grasp the way in which it works.

Maybe, if they don't have kids or don't need to explain it to them.

Advanced technology may be at least as complex (and as difficult to fully comprehend) as a biological organism; it may in fact be many times more complex than that. Complexity is likely to be a worse barrier to understanding alien technology than physical science.

This may be the kicker.

[Ara Pacis]

I'm making the assumption that there would be an alien race who wants to and is able to direct communication to us. In that case, it's rather naive to think that they would not try to study us first, especially if they were arriving in person. I am making absolutely no statements on how they would get here because that's been talked to death on this forum, and it is completely off topic here.

I'm not talking about intent, but ability. It's likely that they won't be able to study us before deciding on a course of action that reveals themselves, or risks revealing or stranding themselves here. If they have a limited ability to stop and no ability to leave again, or a limited ability which requires advanced infrastructure and gathering of resources, then they may not even know the system is inhabited before they've begun their deceleration. Once they're here, they're stuck. They may try to hang out in the distance and try to hide from us while trying to gather resources for a re-launch, or a distant settlement that doesn't conflict with ours (or even preparations for invasion), while studying us. They may be here already and may have been here for a while if that is the case. However, I make a distinction between "Hello, we come from far away and wanted to meet you" and "Oh, um, you mean this seat is already taken?"

I'm not positing any new physics. I'm saying what may happen if we were faced with advanced technology. If you took a microprocessor back to the nineteenth century they would have no idea what it was, though understanding it would not require any new physics. That's why you would need communication before any meaningful technology exchange.

Depends on who you show it to. They had electricity then and gear-based computers so they might understand the concepts, if not the engineering and materials science due to a lack in precision equipment and a few theories and observations yet to occur. We feel the standard model is mostly complete and we have the precision to see things very well at small scales, so I suspect we would be able to figure out the alien tech eventually.

[primummobile]

The point is that, if we're wrong about basic thermodynamics, we're wrong about everything and none of our technology should work. None of our observations should match our current theories of physics. We can't be that wrong and still have a functioning industrial society or any consistent science.

More pertinent quotes from Project Rho:

Noclevername, you're not getting me, which is probably my fault. All I'm saying is that if they can travel here they can probably hide themselves. There are more ways to do that besides just not putting out any heat. They could actively block our detection of them. They could 'fool' our instruments into thinking they were something more benign. The US military invests a lot of money into doing those sorts of things. They're doing research now, all over the world, into how to make objects "invisible" not only to radar, but also to visible light. Every method involves actively projecting what you want others to see rather than just hunkering down and hoping you aren't noticed.

The ways and methods an advanced species may choose to do this are mostly unfathomable to us. But I don't think a sufficiently advanced race would have trouble hiding a probe the size of a satellite from our detection, especially if they wanted us to think it was something we would expect to find in space. Keep in mind, I don't think it likely this is happening, or will happen. I'm just not ruling out the possibility.

There are still some groups of people in this world, in South America and New Guinea, who are considered to be "uncontacted" by modern society. Any number of sufficiently advanced groups could spy on these people, from the air or the ground, and learn much about them without those people ever knowing they were being watched. Those groups of people, at most, are a few thousand years removed from us technologically. What could an alien civilization that was tens of thousands of years from us accomplish? The best place to hide is in plain sight. So they make us think we're looking at something else. That hummingbird you see outside your window may not be a hummingbird. The fly on the wall may not be a fly. Halley's Comet may not be a comet. Of course, I'm being absurd. But I'm being absurd to make a point. I'm not suggesting that they can change the laws of thermodynamics. I'm just suggesting that they can fool us.

[primummobile]

I'm not talking about intent, but ability. It's likely that they won't be able to study us before deciding on a course of action that reveals themselves, or risks revealing or stranding themselves here. If they have a limited ability to stop and no ability to leave again, or a limited ability which requires advanced infrastructure and gathering of resources, then they may not even know the system is inhabited before they've begun their deceleration. Once they're here, they're stuck. They may try to hang out in the distance and try to hide from us while trying to gather resources for a re-launch, or a distant settlement that doesn't conflict with ours (or even preparations for invasion), while studying us. They may be here already and may have been here for a while if that is the case. However, I make a distinction between "Hello, we come from far away and wanted to meet you" and "Oh, um, you mean this seat is already taken?"

I don't argue that. I, however; am talking about intent, and not ability. I don't know what kind of propulsion system they would have. Maybe they have found a way to manufacture antimatter and they have a large storage capacity. Ten grams of antimatter (yes, I know that is many orders of magnitude more than what we have ever produced on Earth) could take a manned spacecraft to Mars in one month. What if they have access to a thousand kg of antimatter? It may sound absurd, but if you had told a physicist 200 years ago that we could slam atomic particles together (after you explained what atomic particles are) at just under the speed of light they would have thought you were crazy. The point is that I'm not making any assumptions on what they can do. All I'm doing is asking what they would do if they could. And I believe that if they were able to study us before they made contact they would do that, and that it would be foolish to not do that if they had the capability.

Depends on who you show it to. They had electricity then and gear-based computers so they might understand the concepts, if not the engineering and materials science due to a lack in precision equipment and a few theories and observations yet to occur. We feel the standard model is mostly complete and we have the precision to see things very well at small scales, so I suspect we would be able to figure out the alien tech eventually.

Eventually, I don't argue that we would figure it out. But electricity isn't the only game in town. And even in our own electronics, the theory of how it all works isn't complete. We aren't able to manufacture a transistor with a specific gain. All we are able to do is manufacture it within a range of gain. There are still tremendous improvements we could make just in manufacturing of our existing technology that an experienced engineer would have a tough time understanding if it was just thrown in his lap from a hundred years in the future. So, could we figure it out? Yes, probably. But when you consider that it may be unrecognizable to us, it may take a very long time.

And it would be really irresponsible of the aliens to drop something in our laps that was designed to cure cancer, but could be turned into a bomb with greater ease, without explaining to us how it works and what it is used for. They would especially understand how foolish that would be if they watched our nightly news broadcasts for a few weeks first.

[Ara Pacis]

I don't argue that. I, however; am talking about intent, and not ability. I don't know what kind of propulsion system they would have. Maybe they have found a way to manufacture antimatter and they have a large storage capacity. Ten grams of antimatter (yes, I know that is many orders of magnitude more than what we have ever produced on Earth) could take a manned spacecraft to Mars in one month. What if they have access to a thousand kg of antimatter? It may sound absurd, but if you had told a physicist 200 years ago that we could slam atomic particles together (after you explained what atomic particles are) at just under the speed of light they would have thought you were crazy. The point is that I'm not making any assumptions on what they can do. All I'm doing is asking what they would do if they could. And I believe that if they were able to study us before they made contact they would do that, and that it would be foolish to not do that if they had the capability.

Won't antimatter still require propellant? Won't it put out heat? They're still bound by the rocket equation and may have to decide what to do before studying us.

Eventually, I don't argue that we would figure it out. But electricity isn't the only game in town. And even in our own electronics, the theory of how it all works isn't complete. We aren't able to manufacture a transistor with a specific gain. All we are able to do is manufacture it within a range of gain. There are still tremendous improvements we could make just in manufacturing of our existing technology that an experienced engineer would have a tough time understanding if it was just thrown in his lap from a hundred years in the future. So, could we figure it out? Yes, probably. But when you consider that it may be unrecognizable to us, it may take a very long time.

Are you talking about spintronics, quantum computing and stuff like that? It's being looked into. We may not have the abilities to replicate it due to not-yet developed manufacturing techniques, but that doesn't mean that the design concept is necessarily unknown, nor the basic physics. The problem may be due to a lack of destructive exploration of a device if they are in limited supply.

[primummobile]

Won't antimatter still require propellant? Won't it put out heat? They're still bound by the rocket equation and may have to decide what to do before studying us.

Propellant? It depends on what type of antimatter rocket you want to build. The easiest would be using the heat of a matter/antimatter reaction to raise the temperature of a propellant in a constant velocity chamber and allow that to escape through an engine nozzle at high velocity, just like our rockets do now. It is also a terrible waste of antimatter.

A more efficient antimatter engine would magnetically direct the highly charged particles travelling at around .5c from antimatter/matter annihilation out the engine nozzle to produce thrust. One gram of antimatter annihilating with one gram of matter produces about 180 terajoules and this type of antimatter rocket is thought to have a specific impulse as high as ten million seconds. For comparison, a solid rocket has a specific impulse of around 250 seconds and a liquid propellant rocket is about twice that. An ion thruster has a specific impulse of around 3,000 seconds. So, the "miles per gallon" of an antimatter rocket would be about 3300 times better than an ion thruster rocket. The point is that if the aliens have the know-how and can carry enough lightweight high-octane fuel to accelerate to a significant velocity, coast for a while, and then slow down at the other end they would do that.

I don't know what putting out heat has to do with that. If it's referring to Noclevername's argument it should be noted that I never said they would try to stay hidden before studying us. I said they would try to study us before offering us technology or attempting to make contact. Others assumed that they would need to be hidden to do that, and at that I argued that they could hide if they wanted to. In my discussion with you, the idea of needing to hide hasn't come up, to my knowledge, so I wasn't considering that. [I just checked my post on that, and I guess I did imply that they would hide. But when I said "make themselves known" I meant to communicate, and that's what I should have said. A big heat source in our solar system would definitely be an anomaly, but we wouldn't know it was aliens until they communicated with us. So, I apologize for that. I was wondering why I was getting questions about aliens trying to hide from us]

Are you talking about spintronics, quantum computing and stuff like that? It's being looked into. We may not have the abilities to replicate it due to not-yet developed manufacturing techniques, but that doesn't mean that the design concept is necessarily unknown, nor the basic physics. The problem may be due to a lack of destructive exploration of a device if they are in limited supply.

I don't argue that. My point is that the same thing from then may be radically different from how we would design it. If it uses a power source that is not electrons and holes moving in a conductive material we may be scratching our heads about it for quite a while. If applying an electrical current to it causes nothing to happen we wouldn't be able to do much to discern its purpose without quite a bit of thinking. We may think it is a weapon. They may give us a quantum computer and we may interpret it as them giving us a cup of water. The possibilities are endless. Giving any kind of technology to someone who doesn't understand how to use it is potentially very dangerous.

[Noclevername]

Noclevername, you're not getting me, which is probably my fault. All I'm saying is that if they can travel here they can probably hide themselves. There are more ways to do that besides just not putting out any heat. They could actively block our detection of them. They could 'fool' our instruments into thinking they were something more benign. The US military invests a lot of money into doing those sorts of things. They're doing research now, all over the world, into how to make objects "invisible" not only to radar, but also to visible light. Every method involves actively projecting what you want others to see rather than just hunkering down and hoping you aren't noticed.

But for the ETs to know that much about our technology and/or biology that they could spoof our optics and other sensors at will, they would have to have studies us and our gear in great detail... you see where I'm going with this?

[eburacum45]

An antimatter rocket would be phenomenally detectable; stealth would be impossible with that kind of drive. They would emit vast amounts of gamma rays and neutrinos, for a start, both of which are tricky to convert into thrust.