Alien Announcement Coming?

[bladeXcrasher]

That actually sounds very reasonable.

Vessels like this are not meant to be built on Earth and then be launched to orbit. They'd be built on orbit, with materials mined from asteroids or the Moon (easier and cheaper to get them from there instead of launching stuff up from Earth).

We can build football stadium on Earth, what stops us from building one in orbit given some technological advances?

Hey, given some technological advances, we can be star trek and then who needs to make a giant rotating cylinder.

[Osmeric]

Aliens also don't have to travel very far to colonize a galaxy, if they last a long time.

Stars are in motion relative to one another. Around our Sun, the relative speeds are around 30 km/s (more or less), about 1/10,000th the speed of light. Over extended periods of time (millions of years), any star will have unusually close approaches of other stars, perhaps as little as 0.1 light years. A civilization that sends out colonization missions to such rare nearby stars will slowly spread through the galaxy. Even if individual steps take millions of years, these colonized stars now drift away and can act as additional sources of colonization. Because the galaxy is ~10 billion years old, the slow exponential growth can fill it in time short compared to its age.

[Karamaru]

Or maybe the aliens have a system in place like what Star Trek had like the Prime Directive

[ParanoiD84]

Bring on the invasions, would be the only time in history mankind would be united without fighting eachother.

[Lahis]

Hey, given some technological advances, we can be star trek and then who needs to make a giant rotating cylinder.

Building giant ship on orbit is within reasonable range.

Warp/Hyperspace drive or anything faster than light breaks our current understanding of physics. It is most likely impossible to ever break the barrier if c.

Building huge live ship on orbit is reasonable with current technological advancement. Getting past lightspeed is impossible. Totally different things.

[Heathy]

getting up to light speed is possible if you can continually accelerate, but thats going to require a vast amount of fuel to burn constantly and the journey would take much much longer than starting off at C.

the main issues i see are that space is empty but not completely, even if you could move at light speed there isn't really anything stopping you being obliterated by a speck of dust in your path even photons of light could interfere with you moving at that speed. similarly how do you stop once you reach light speed? turn around and move at light speed in the opposite direction? there isn't really a way of safely moving at that speed without being killed in the process either by the inertia itself or by the fusion reactions building up on the hull that'll turn your ship into a mini star.

[Lahis]

getting up to light speed is possible if you can continually accelerate, but thats going to require a vast amount of fuel to burn constantly and the journey would take much much longer than starting off at C.

the main issues i see are that space is empty but not completely, even if you could move at light speed there isn't really anything stopping you being obliterated by a speck of dust in your path even photons of light could interfere with you moving at that speed. similarly how do you stop once you reach light speed? turn around and move at light speed in the opposite direction? there isn't really a way of safely moving at that speed without being killed in the process either by the inertia itself or by the fusion reactions that'll turn your ship into a mini star.

You can't get to light speed. When an object with mass neares lightspeed, its mass grows to infinity, as does the energy needed to keep accelerating.

And yeah, microcollisions hitting with the force of several megatons and the whole issue of slowing down are whole other messes.

[Deleted]

Not a chance.... it is unlikely we would even recognise any civilisation capable of travelling here as life.

a non FTL ship of a civilization that can only make a one way trip here would easily be detectable as its deceleration emissions/waste heat would reach us decades before they arrived.

it doesn't take much more technology then we have today to make such a ship if you have the motivation.

[bladeXcrasher]

Building giant ship on orbit is within reasonable range.

Warp/Hyperspace drive or anything faster than light breaks our current understanding of physics. It is most likely impossible to ever break the barrier if c.

Building huge live ship on orbit is reasonable with current technological advancement. Getting past lightspeed is impossible. Totally different things.

I made no references to speed. Current understanding means we don't do any of the space mining you propose. That means building modules on earth based on current lift capabilities and resource limitations. It's not practical, which is why they don't do it obviously.

[Osmeric]

I made no references to speed. Current understanding means we don't do any of the space mining you propose. That means building modules on earth based on current lift capabilities and resource limitations. It's not practical, which is why they don't do it obviously.

Why do you think current capabilities are a good way to imagine what a more advanced civilization can do? Apply your reasoning in, say, 1600 and you'd conclude many things we can currently do are impossible.

[Lahis]

I made no references to speed. Current understanding means we don't do any of the space mining you propose. That means building modules on earth based on current lift capabilities and resource limitations. It's not practical, which is why they don't do it obviously.

Space mining is still way more reasonable assumption about the future than FTL tech.

[Darkeon]

Weather balloons *shrugs*

[Low Hanging Fruit]

If they aren't here than truth be told nothing to talk about with the subject relating to the question. Just continue the look outward because that is worth the study.

If they are and have been here than the government(s) have been holding back information and honestly would not release that information until it was absolutely necessary because they have their reasons. I am sure it has a lot to do with social structures like religions folk that wouldn't be able to fathom "gods" people not being the all powerful force in the universe and see these visitors as "devil men". Then powerful governments and military's that promise to protect their people would be powerless and they don't like being powerless and hate admitting it to everyone even more.

Finally, if aliens do not exists at all than again nothing to talk about relating to the question. Odds are just like up top on this post we keep looking because its worth the study. But this answer seems like the most oddly ignorant one of them all.

If the answer is yes than you are playing the odds thats for sure. If they will come ONE day you are playing the odds again. The when and if is more the issue. Then the why would they is it again. Invasion doesn't have much of a point if you can cross the sea of stars you have nearly unlimited resources so taking these isn't really important. I doubt we would be of any really importance to people that could travel the stars and likely seen as savages.

[bladeXcrasher]

Why do you think current capabilities are a good way to imagine what a more advanced civilization can do? Apply your reasoning in, say, 1600 and you'd conclude many things we can currently do are impossible.

Because the person I'm responding to is shifting argument points between future tech and physics and current tech and physics?

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Space mining is still way more reasonable assumption about the future than FTL tech.

How do you know? See @Osmeric response above.

[Osmeric]

Because the person I'm responding to is shifting argument points between future tech and physics and current tech and physics?

When predicting what current society can do, you look at the state of technology. When limiting what future society can do, you look at the laws of physics.

You are trying to apply current technological limits to future societies, which is just plain stupid.

[Deleted]

I was really hoping this post was about the movie franchise.

[Lahis]

Because the person I'm responding to is shifting argument points between future tech and physics and current tech and physics?

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How do you know? See @Osmeric response above.

Travelling to asteroids is possible. We already have autonomous drones flying recon and sorting your orders at Amazon. (Semi)autonomous mining operations on asteroids is within reasonble logical progression from our current tech. Breaking physics to break past the lightspeed (your Star Trek analogy) is not.

[schwarzkopf]

a non FTL ship of a civilization that can only make a one way trip here would easily be detectable as its deceleration emissions/waste heat would reach us decades before they arrived.

Nope - if they are still using tech that generates that sort of waste, they won't be moving across the universe.

It would be like an ant trying to detect ant signals in a human.

[notraakaakaa]

All the "alien" movies for the last 50-60 years are to prepare us for when this does happen. Its just a matter of when...

[Independent voter]

Announcing that aliens have visited or are on earth would create mass panic, among specific types of people at least. Even if they are peaceful. Otherwise it would be like humans vs ants, where we are the ants.

I don't think it would, unless they were trying to harvest us for food or something.

The religious fundamentalists would try to convert them.