26 April 2010
NewScientist.com

Should we try to make contact with ET? Certainly not, says Steven Hawking, citing concerns that our Earthly resources would be plundered. "If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," he said in a series broadcast on the Discovery Channel on Sunday. Researchers have been debating whether to call or not to call for some time, and have come up with a measure called the San Marino scale to gauge the risk of broadcasting messages to space.

Developed by Ivan Almar of the Konkoly Observatory in Budapest, Hungary, in 2005 and adopted by the International Academy of Astronautics in 2007, the index runs between 1 (insignificant risk) and 10 (extraordinary risk). The number is calculated by considering the intensity of the signal, its duration and information content. Almar, for one, disagrees with Hawking's concerns, and points out that the physicist is not a SETI specialist.

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LOL. I'm convinced Stevie has completely lost it. He's obvioulsy losing track of some very simple physical facts.... For one, any alien race that would be capable of reaching earth, would have mastered travel at or faster than the speed of light (an impossibility given out limited knowledge at the moment). In order to achieve this, they would have crossed the boundaries separating matter and energy. In other words, they would be able to convert matter to energy (and vise versa) with consistency and efficiently. In order to reach that level of intelliegence and understanding of the universe, it's highly unlikely that they would be suffering from the superficial philosophies of the Columbian era to conquer land and collect gold. Come on Stevie, you should know better...

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Not so fast my good man!! I have tried to follow “Stevie” and some of his ideals (at least the ones that I can understand) pretty closely over the years. He was in-fact named the “man of the millennium” in early 2000 (as I recall).

I think what he said makes perfect sense, humans should not be advertising where they are because what if some advanced civilization out there has depleted all their resources in their own planet and are looking for new real estate to colonize or just tap into its natural resources? Remember not all advanced civilizations (ET’s) will have a good intention to help earthlings.

I did actually watch the programs on discover channel, and one of the points IMO he was trying to make is this: theoretically there could be other ways, yet unknown to us, than getting from point a to point b, such as “wormhole”, sort of a shortcut if you will to travel from point a to point b, so a distance of say 10 light years for example can be traveled over fraction of that. I also tend to believe by advertising our where about, we could potentially be jeopardizing the life on earth as we know it.

p.s., only Big-E-Z should be capable of using the wormhole to emerge from center of the Earth….and we know what he is going to do to earthlings once he is out of the shithole. :Notooth2:

Wow you got the youtube video to work, how did you do that, like I said or with editor mode? Anyway its pretty funny/ironic for the first youtube vid working for anyone without my help has Commander Data in it :D

Not so fast my good man!! I have tried to follow “Stevie” and some of his ideals (at least the ones that I can understand) pretty closely over the years. He was in-fact named the “man of the millennium” in early 2000 (as I recall).

I think what he said makes perfect sense, humans should not be advertising where they are because what if some advanced civilization out there has depleted all their resources in their own planet and are looking for new real estate to colonize or just tap into its natural resources? Remember not all advanced civilizations (ET’s) will have a good intention to help earthlings.

I did actually watch the programs on discover channel, and one of the points IMO he was trying to make is this: theoretically there could be other ways, yet unknown to us, than getting from point a to point b, such as “wormhole”, sort of a shortcut if you will to travel from point a to point b, so a distance of say 10 light years for example can be traveled over fraction of that. I also tend to believe by advertising our where about, we could potentially be jeopardizing the life on earth as we know it.

p.s., only Big-E-Z should be capable of using the wormhole to emerge from center of the Earth….and we know what he is going to do to earthlings once he is out of the shithole. :Notooth2:

Well, that's just it Hamid jaan. Colonization is NOT a characteristic of an "advanced" civilization. Furthermore, "resources" as we think of them, would have little meaning to a specie capable of converting matter to energy and vice versa. You can literally build any molecule you want from other elements if you have the capability to convert matter to energy and then back to matter... so the resources on any planet, even the a baren one would be limitless to such speice and there's no need for them to travel thousands of light years just to assimilate terrestrial beings or do mining on earth. We can not judge such advanced civilizations based on our archaic needs and treatment of nations.

On the wormhole issue, creating a shortcut in space-time would require even more advanced knowledge of the universe than the "simple" conversion of energy into matter. With our limited knowledge we have been successfuyl to some degree in the conversion of matter into energy and the vice versa is not far behind. But to open a tunnel in the space-time continuum, we're still a long way from.

Wow you got the youtube video to work, how did you do that, like I said or with editor mode? Anyway its pretty funny/ironic for the first youtube vid working for anyone without my help has Commander Data in it :D

LOL. Since the original Commander Data was in this cplip, I put in the extra effort and figured out how to do it. Anything to make you proud the one and only "real" Commander Data. :)

I am not too much into guessing what an imaginary creature would do to us if they happen to find us here on earth. But without knowing their needs (no matter how advanced they are) and whether or not what they need could be found on earth, it is hard to predict what they would do to us.
Real estate is not that easily found, that is real estate with proper temperature and climate to make certain beings able to continue to live. Just having a very advanced technology may not mean they can modify the temperature as they wish or create water as they wish.
By the way, what is our purpose of finding others on other planets?

Real estate is not that easily found, that is real estate with proper temperature and climate to make certain beings able to continue to live. Just having a very advanced technology may not mean they can modify the temperature as they wish or create water as they wish.
By the way, what is our purpose of finding others on other planets?

Again, Mr. Ped, that would be analyzing the situation based on our limited terrestrial knowledge. There is no reason to "assume" that life on other planets would have evolved to have the same temperatur, pressure and gravitational requirements as our world, let alone be carbon based in the first place. Even if it is Hydrogen and Oxygen are two of the simplest molecules on the periodic table. Recreating them from other elements, given the matter-energy-matter conversion technology would be a complicated for such a specie (capable of light travel) as burning firewood is for us.

Having said that, there's absolutely no purpose to finding life on other planets with the exception of the philosophical nation that the grandure of the universe will humble mankind to put behind its archaic and petty endevours and concentrate on bigger and better things. At least that we Gene Roddenberry's philosophy and works pretty good for me.