Post
by Toontown » Sat Aug 07, 2010 11:21 pm
Well, I consider it almost necessary that intersteller travellers would be nomadic. Given the vast interstellar distances and the seemingly settled relativistic physics, it wouldn't be feasible for interstellar travellers to sally forth from a home planet and then return. They simply never would get anywhere that way. A couple of hundred years one way, maybe they get to check out one planetary system. Then it's a couple of hundred years back. Doesn't seem feasible, economical, or otherwise useful.
So I think interstellar travellers would be totally nomadic, almost of necessity, never returning to a home planet. Their home would be their armada of interstellar ships. Thus, they would necessarily be interstellar hunter-gatherers. I'm not saying they would necessarily covet the resources of a pretty blue planet covered with vulnerable monkeys. I'm just saying it's a probability. Not necessarily a high probability. But any non-zero probability happens, given enough time.
And that non-zero probability has probably been long since recognized by intelligent planetary-based races all over the multiverse, if not by us. Suffice it to say it might well be unwise to physically approach and attempt to make contact with a techologically advanced race. Why would they trust you? How would you communicate your harmless intentions to them, and even if you could communicate a rudimentary peaceful message, why should they take the risk of believing you, no matter how big and misty your eyes look?
I would estimate a seriously non-zero probability that the aliens' major concern would be how to most quickly vaporize you, not unlike our response to an untrustworthy bug that has invaded our home.
Or, if they felt like taking a chance, they might demand your unconditional surrender, pending determination of the threat you pose.
I'm thinking experienced nomadic spacefarers would tend strongly to avoid planetary systems occupied by detectably advanced creatures who might shoot horrific weapons first and ask questions later. Which would suggest, in turn, that the hypothetical visitations of our planet would, if verified, only prove the aliens utter contempt for our self-defense capabilities. Their armada could be cruising comforably at the edge of the asteroid belt, completely undetected, posing as a cluster of asteroids.
But I think it is far more likely that the UFO sightings are just a craze, not unlike the ubiquitous Elvis or poltergeist sightings. Not because I don't think they're out there somewhere, but because I find a UFO craze far more likely than our having actually been stumbled onto amid the unimaginable vastness, and found sufficiently inferior to move the aliens to cruise about our airspace ostentatiously in their big conveniently glowing or shining ships.
first time I've agreed with you TT.
