If we had the technology and power, would we conquer other planets with intelligent life?

No, we would never be able to reach them in the first place. Since technology can't escape physical laws.

And even if we did. A large scale invasion would probably simply be impractical. Why invade aliens? Resources? Gold, Iron, Aluminum and water can already be mined in space. Besides given the tech level, if they have access to nuclear technology, a potential invasion would risk a mass nukage rendering the invasion for naught. Those asteroids we could mine in space also dont come with graviational fields that have large energy costs to escape form.

Probably exploit resources for everything it's worth and have them sell out for short gain. And if they weren't compliant, just make up a reason.

Well, there are no physical laws keeping us from reaching other inhabited planets. It's just wildly impractical and outside of our current technological abilities.

It will always be wildly impractical period. To feasibly visit other planets in a way that is practical outside our own solar system. FTL travel is pretty much a must. And the speed of light is a physical limitation. You might argue there are ways around it, but those proposed soloutions have immense problems on their own. The Alcubierre drive would require pretty much as much energy as the sun produces in its entire lifetime to produce a field (not to mention the additional energy costs of making the field move).

It is mathematically possible to reach other planets with intelligent life. But to do so is about as likely as a spearman defeating a tank.

Well I guess we would have a "4th world" then, a place with beings we treat worse than out 3rd world countries.

Can human civilisation voluntarily sacrifice Donald Trump to them?

An alien civilization would look like us or atleast humanoid with adaptions to their environment. I doubt we would war with them, trade, study and learn about them is more likely we humans are a curious bunch. Eventually intergration and if they're not to freaky looking possible human/alien baby making. That said if they are hostile then kill it with fire.

You do realize that the easy way "around" this problem is to just go slower than light, right?

I mean, it might take hundreds/thousands of years to get there and then many years on top of that before we get back any data, but there's absolutely nothing stopping us from sending some robots to a relatively nearby extra-solar planet and then just waiting a long time to hear from them.

When you're dealing with space, you've gotta stop expecting instant results. Multi-generational projects are gonna have to become a thing.

It's sort of hard to imagine mankind lasting another 1000 years on earth, let alone a small group on a ship in space.

Humans have been around for more than 200,000 years, you really think we're not going to be around 1000 years from now?

Just compare the past 1000 years to the 199,000 years that came before that. I think the next 1000 years hold a great degree of uncertainty.

We didn't have advanced science 199,000 years ago. There was no modern medicine, it was a lot harder to keep people fed, and the worldwide population was a LOT smaller (meaning that a major global disaster could have more easily wiped everyone out). If we survived that long without advanced science, we'll probably be okay for the next 1000 years.

Regardless, the whole not-being-here-tomorrow attitude is defeatist and self-fulfilling. We want to get to other planets? Well, that'll require a long-term multi-generational effort. The problem is that people act as if a multi-generational effort is pointless since they'll never live to see the results, therefore there's no way to get funding approved for such a program.

Or you tell me that I should stop doing drugs or else I'm gonna f*** up my life as an old man. To which I reply, "hell, I doubt I even live to see 40, so I'd might as well live it up as if the world's ending." I then end up dying before I even reach 40.

Or you tell me that I should study hard in school, to which I reply, "what's the point: I'll never get a good job anyway." I then never get a good job because I was always screwing around instead of focusing on my education.

Of course you'll never get anything done tomorrow if you keep going around acting like there's not going to be a tomorrow. In any case, like I was saying before, that's just a matter of how practical this kind of space travel is. We might not ever get around to visiting any extra-solar planets but it's not as if the laws of physics are the barrier here. TIME is the barrier here. We could absolutely conceivably do this eventually but it's just something that's going to have to take a LONG time. But we're certainly never gonna do it if we just assume that no one's gonna be around in 1000 years. Why start a project if you're already telling yourself that it'll never get finished?

The human population was more sustainable without advanced science. We didn't have the capability of creating a major global disaster ourselves. Now we do.

Sending a group of humans who are separated from terrestrial life by 10 generations or so to a new planet to interact with an alien race just doesn't seem worthwhile to me. At best, they would know as much about earth as your typical American would know about the Holy Roman Empire. They would be 1000 years removed from any form of hunting and gathering, with no real understanding of how a day and night cycle works. Even if humans on earth still exist when this group arrives, they would not be representative at all of the people of earth. Do you think they would then decide to get back on that ship and send another 10 generations of their ancestors back through space to get back to earth? It's probably easy to find a group of volunteers out of a much larger group of humans to send out into space, but I think it would be very difficult to fill a ship for a return trip.

Unfortuantely such long distance communications or invasions will be extremely impractical. Do you see the problem yet?

The problem is the investment needed would never be enough to justify the costs. Especially consideirng that depopulation may very much be an issue in the near future. We are talking about the energy costs needed to even reach them, not the time, the energy costs. It is a reason why these alien visitation theories are also absolute nonsense.

Alien spaceships are powered by human stupidity. It's an endless source of power. That's why they only abduct idiots, to suck some stupid out of their ass.

That sound all nice and great but the real problem is justifying such an endeavour to investors, the general populace etc etc and convincing them that its justifiable to spend limited and expensive resources on something even their grandchildren most likely wouldn't know the result of. Especially in the face of more feasible ideas and concepts such as asteroid mining, mastering the journey to mars (for resources) etc all which can then help humanity build things like sustainable habitats in space perhaps? Or allow humans to further utilise the Solar System. Even those are a hardsell so let alone sending robots on a thousand year journey. You might as well let the humans a thousand years from now worry about that because most likely by then, it can be argued they have the tech and knowhow that far surpasses our current knowledge.

The nearest star is 2,224 lightyears away. That's 24 937 129 545 975 miles. How fast can we go ? 20 000 miles an hour, even if we manage to do 100 000 miles an hour on average, it will still take us 30 000 years. But let's be optimistic and say we can get to 300 000 miles / hour on average, and that's very optimistic. Well that's still 10000 years, good luck with keeping people happy in the darkness of space. Or keeping robots functioning.

Then there's even the 99 percent possiblity that the planets orbiting the nearest star are lifeless rocks, what you going to do , travel another 20 000 years to another star. Good luck with that.

First we need to achieve immortality, have much faster ships and even then interstellar star travel seems like an endavour that's as useless as a vacuum cleaner in a sand castle. The distance is just too far, even for an immortal being.

Of course if there's a way to cross those distances much faster, that's a whole other matter. But to answer the question if that's possible is like answering the question why we are here. The answer is just as insurmountable and way above our head, literally speaking.

I think the movie Arrival was a pretty good guess as to how humanity would react to alien life

Any way you cut it, it's a lot easier wiping out a few million people through disaster or plague than it is wiping out 8 billion people through disaster or plague. Can we create disasters now? Sure. But even if we're talking about a 99% death rate, that still leaves a LOT of people left. And the survivors have the benefit of all the advanced tech that we left behind. It's a LOT harder to eradicate the species now than it was back when we were foraging on nuts and grubs. If we didn't go extinct then (and apparently we came close a couple of times) then it's very unlikely that the next 1000 years are going to be the end of our species.

And again...SEND ROBOTS. There's zero need to have humans on board. Humans have to eat, humans go crazy in extreme conditions, and humans die pretty easily in these conditions. Send robots. We didn't send humans to Saturn or Jupiter or Mars. We sent robots. And yes, I realize that the distances involve mean that these robots would be completely cut off from us and would have to be 100% autonomous. And as far as I'm aware, we don't yet have any robots that are up to the task. So build better robots.

The only reason to send actual humans is if the goal is colonization. Because they aren't coming back. There is no return trip. And you don't do that without first thoroughly doing everything you can with robots.

The justification here is clearly survival of the species. There are no options within this solar system for a place for us to live if Earth goes to shit. If we limit ourselves to our solar system, then we are f***ed. No other planet or moon in our solar system can sustain long-term human life, colonization of our solar system is merely a stepping stone before we move beyond our solar system. People talk about colonies on Mars, but that's garbage in terms of a LONG TERM plan. Mars is completely inhospitable to human life, which means that life on Mars requires a lifeline to Earth. If Earth gets f***ed then Mars gets f***ed too.

"You might as well let the humans a thousand years from now worry about that."

That sounds suspiciously like the whole global warming thing and how people say "we'd might as well let our grandkids solve that, I'll be dead by then anyway".

The thing about stuff like colonizing Mars is that that isn't the end goal. The end goal is to be able to sever our ties with Earth. There's zero chance of a Mars colony meeting that goal. What a Mars colony does is give us experience running an off world colony so that when we actually do sever our ties with Earth we'll have some idea what the hell we're doing. And yeah, it may be a hard sell justifying to investors why we need to engage in space travel, but that's why we take baby steps. People absolutely complain about us spending millions of dollars to send robots to Mars or Saturn or Jupiter but we still do it. Our space programs are still active, we still "spend millions of dollars shooting robots into space while people here are dying on Earth". And every little baby step we make puts us in a better position to reach farther out.

Not worth it.

First off, the entire world would need to be united. That ain't going to happen unless we are threatened and in this scenario I don't think that has happened (right? We are the invaders, not the aliens).

Now, assuming we can just hop in a teleporter or spaceship and ignoring physics get there no problem, let's look at the logistics. We only have one planet full of one kind of sentient creature (humans), and we would basically be risking all of them (us!) against this alien foe. We are 7 billion now, right? What if the aliens were 70 billion? 700 billion? How do you fight that and win? What if their air was toxic, or their planet had no land or ground and it was a gas giant and they just sort of floated around? What if they ate food that was basically a plague to us?

Diplomacy just makes so much more sense, at least until we know what we are dealing with. If we find out they're just Ewoks, well, we can take 'em.

Well, here's the thing...diplomacy could potentially do just as much damage just by letting the aliens know that we're here. Ideally, I think that we'd try to learn as much about them before making a move.

That's why I think that the poll is flawed. It's presenting an either/or scenario when one of those things is something that we'd do along with other things.

The one thing we would DEFINITELY want to do is learn more about them.

We might try to learn about them so that we can better befriend them.

We might try to learn more about them so that we can better conquer them.

Or we might try to learn more about them so that we can better avoid disrupting their society.

But the one single thing that we would absolutely do in any scenario is "try to learn more about them".

send robots how, on a 10 000 year trip, If they actually still work, and if earth will still exists, will someone care about a journey to a lifeless rock. it's just too far. Most stars are million years away and more, you don't seem to understand how vast space really is and how far the other stars actually are. It's very likely that the nearest advanced civilization is not closer than a star that's 100 lightyears away at least and then I'm being incredibely optimistic.

Even in the best case scenario, where we can scan ahead for asteroids, have energy enough for shielding, consider gravitational pull , accelerating and decelerating we could achieve what? 1 million miles an hour. That's still a 75 000 year trip to a star only 100 lightyears away.

What you're talking about is just a waste of resources, if we ever achieved a perfect society and have all these resources to spare, sure why not, but when will that ever happen. I can only see it happen when the sun is going to die out but that still 5 billion years away. For all we know, this planet could be as dead as mars by then.

How will someone care about a journey to a lifeless rock? Well hell, how many millions of dollars have we been spending doing that exact same thing?

Secondly, you've got no idea how much it'll cost to build sufficiently intelligent robots in, say, 1000 years. Also, do you have any idea how SHORT of a span of time 75,000 years is? There's a very good chance that humans will be around for MILLIONS of years and that 75,000 years is a drop in the bucket. Freaking YES, wait a mere 75,000 years.

But you're making my point here. Your main issue is that no one will care by then, that we don't have enough INTEREST to do something like this. Which is a COMPLETELY different thing than it being physically impossible. The problem isn't the laws of physics. The problem is human shortsightedness, our inability to plan for more than a few years into the future.

If we did in fact locate a planet with life forms that are intelligent enough to form a society, I do think we would simply observe them in secret out of our own security. Maybe a long time afterwards we'd be more bold and drop hints that they aren't alone, or if we are discovered.

totally agree. Observe first and foremost.

I forgot what the whole "first encounter" rule is (I think Star Trek has it, might be a general scifi thing too) but it's like "don't make contact if you don't need to" or something like that. Or if the species is not prepared, or not in danger, or something like that.

But yeah, might be better to just watch them for a decade or two or maybe even a century or a few. I'm sure there are scientists that can predict where an alien society is progressing and it's like "Well, hold on, they just discovered the _________ in 200 years they're either going to wipe themselves out or discover spaceflight, so let's check on them every so often and explore some other areas"....idunno (I'm assuming if we are snooping on one planet, we can do it to others :D )

Anyone play Stellaris? It's a 4X game, you can build observation bases over planets with pre-space civilizations and do a few things with it. You can observe, secretly influence, overtly influence, and then uplift them or something and bring them into your society. It's pretty cool, I like the diplomacy in that game.

*oh and abduct them for science points :D

That's hardly the same thing and you know it, the moon is in our neighbourhood, other stars aren't.

Even if we're able to cut down costs to make such a trip with or without robots, the price will always be high.

The problem is not interest or impossiblity, the problem is that the project is too big for the returns that it will yield, the urge for knowlegde and exploration is big, but not that big. I can only see something like this happening if we actually find something to defy the laws of physics or if we are still around when the sun is starting to die out.

The first is most likely not going to happen, and the latter will actually be a major problem, because as far as we know, anything in a span of 10000 lightyears could be uninhabitable. The idea of possible habitable planets is all well and good through a telescope but if you never went there, there's no way of knowing what you will actually find there besides the astronomical objects.

One thing i'm sure, interstellar travel aint going to happen if it's not deemed necessary because the distances are way too far for anyone to care as long as we have a working star.

Hell, if you want to make it even more realistic, let's not forget space debris. There's really very little room for error when traveling at ideal speeds for interstellar star traveling and all it would probably take is for the ship to hit a rock the size of a fist while going the ideal speed of 100,000MPH or more for the entire trip to take a turn for the worse. We'd definitely need the assistance of some sort of super computer or "A.I." to maneuver pass all the space junk along the voyage to a different star system because there's no way with human reaction speed that they'd be able to maintain optimum speeds while making sure not to get smashed up by the first asteroid they come across....

You see the flaw here, right? If we wait until it's "necessary" then it'll be too late since we've never freaking done it before.

And you still have no idea how much it'll cost relative to what returns it will yield, since it'll surely be a while (probably centuries) before robots are even sufficiently advanced to perform the mission completely autonomously. That's like someone in the 15th century saying that flying to other planets will never happen because it's too expensive relative to what it'll yield.

The fact still remains, these are technological limitations NOT physical limitations. Robotics WILL improve substantially. A.I. WILL improve substantially.

You think they're not going to do any test runs, or go visit some planets before they make the jump to another solar system. It's not like the sun will die out over night, it will become brighter and hotter overtime and even in about 1 billion years it will already be 10 percent more brighter and also hotter. In about 3.5 billion years life on earth will not be possible anymore since the sun will be 40 percent more bright. Still , It's going to be about 5.4 billion years before the sun enters the red giant phase.

So what we first need to worry about is terraforming other planets and make life possible as long as it can in this solar system which will also give us the certainty of making habitable places when we enter a new solar system.

So what you're saying is eventually going to be a necessity but this is not going to happen just out of quest for knowledge, it will always be an expensive endavour, just because of the energy needed to get to other star systems. It's also going to be less expensive the later we do it, since the sun will lose mass over time and because of that, the suns gravitational pull will decrease.

Considering we have pretty impressive technology right now and instead of using it for good, major governments around the world use it to kill people in war. It is a definite probability that we would use even more advanced technology to bomb the shit out of aliens.

If you look at human history anytime a more advanced civilization encountered a less advanced the latter was destroyed. Completely.

This board always talks about really depressing ****.

@MrGeezer: well, for 199,950 years mankind didn't have nuclear nor chemical weapons that could kill us by the millions in moments.

We probably will operate these creatures and look for any scientific findings... Then eat them for breakfast hahahaha

See, there's this thing with space travel where once you get up to speed you keep on going. This actually drastically reduces the energy required to make long trips (provided you're willing to wait a long-ass time to get there) because you can get up to speed, turn your engines off, and then just coast along for most of the trip. It's not like driving a car, in which case you STOP if your engines cut out.

But you clearly missed my entire point. Since the speed of light IS a physical limitation, that means that WHENEVER we eventually try out interstellar travel it will STILL take a long ass time (like, thousands of years, potentially). Having to do test runs that each take thousands of years is sort of a bad proposition if you're doing this out of necessity. The earlier we do this, the more time we have to waste thousands of years collecting data during test runs. If we wait until we NEED to do it, then we're f***ed (since at that point, we probably can't afford to last all those thousands of years). If we wait until we need to do it, it'll be too late.

Regardless, you're not really countering my claim that the laws of physics aren't keeping us from doing interstellar travel. You're saying that it's not worth it doing interstellar travel NOW and that we should focus our efforts on this solar system so that we'll be in a better position to do interstellar travel a LONG time from now. That still means that it's a matter of technology and data and resources and how long we can afford to wait. Those are logistical barriers, not PHYSICAL barriers. If it were a matter of physics stopping us from doing it, then it wouldn't matter how many test runs we've done or how much data we've accumulated.

I'll go one step further and make another prediction. What we'd do to the aliens in this hypothetical scenario depends on who/what is on our ships.

If our ships are manned only by computer systems and artificial intelligence, then chances are that the purpose will be data gathering. By contrast, if this is some kind of colony ship carrying actual humans, then it's not likely to end peacefully.

The reason is that there would be zero reason to send actual humans unless colonization is the goal. If it comes to the point where we need to send living breathing humans on that kind of trip, then they're going to be there to take the planet. If taking the planet wasn't the goal, then we wouldn't be sending living breathing humans there. Instead, we'd be doing things on the cheap and sending robots.

If an unmanned alien probe ever arrives here on Earth, that doesn't necessarily mean anything. It might just be here to collect data. But if we ever see an alien colony ship arrive here, full of lots of actual living breathing aliens, THAT'S when we need to worry.

If their planet can support our planets species, then yes we will take it- the easy way or the hard way their choice. Step one: invade and enslave. Step two: when shuttling all of our planets awesome animals over to Earth2 offer our old sh*tty planet to the E.T.'s as consolation. Also, shotgun king of Earth2!

If we had the technology, there'd be no point in conquering other planets with intelligent life when the universe is plentiful with resources.

There 2 things on planet earth that can't be found anywhere else in the universe.

Protein and Chlorophyll (Plants and animals) Any planet Humanity discovers that can support life will most likely be exploited for food production. Especially if the local populace can't fight back.

Are you suggesting that we eat their livestock and gardens? Never thought of it that way. It's yet to be discovered, especially in the depths of oceans within moons and other planets. If we're definitely a starving planet, I'm sure I'd have nothing against it. Survival of the fittest.

Where's the option for 'we all kill each other before we get to that level'?

I kid. I really hope we go out into the galaxy with intentions of peace once we learn to co-exist as all members of the planet Earth.

Yet you won't keep on going at the same speed, since the sun has a gravitational pull. Not to mention you will have to decelerate as well when you get closer to the other system where the gravitational pull of that system will work against you as well.

But these are not even the biggest challenges, the biggest challenges are space debree of any sorts, micrometeorites and such. When you go at those speeds, they just go straight through your spaceship. If they're bigger, goodbye spaceship, you could use shielding, even by plasma or any sorts of energy, but again, that costs a lot of energy. You could scan but the scan won't be faster than the speed of light, so you won't be able to go faster than what is considerd a safe speed to be able to change direction in time and avoid collisions.

So either way, this will be a costly endavour, since the amount of energy needed to do this will always be costly and that just ain't going to happen if it isn't out of necessity.

The laws of physics aren't keeping us from doing interstellar travel but like I said, the distances are so far it will only be worthwhile if life in this solar system isn't possible anymore. It could very well be by the time the suns dies we have ships the size of the small moons that are self sufficient for a million years. With energy harvested from our own solar system, but it could very well be we need to harvest jupiter for it, or some part of the sun.

That is the point you're missing in this argument, the energy cost of interstellar travel is so big that it nearly makes it impossible, since we would have harvest a part of this solar system to pull it off. You could try much smaller scout ships or science vessels, but even those will be very costly because the security measures that are needed to make the ship survive. It will of course happen, because at a certain point in time the energy in this star system will be depleted and we will need to move. So test runs would be advisable.

@commander: Sure there's the issue of debris, but the same applies in our own solar system and we routinely send ships (including manned ones!) out into space. You're gambling on the fact that deep space is (mostly) empty. If the ship happens to run into some debris and get pulverized, well...tough luck. It's bound to happen.

But since we're talking about costs, how freaking cheap do you think it will be to make a million year self-sustaining spaceship that's the size of a freaking moon? That's got to be INSANELY more expensive than simply shooting a manned probe into deep space and hoping that it doesn't run into anything.

yeah but in our solar system the trip happens in our lifetime, you can even send dozens of probes in the same lifetime.

You can scan for debris up front as well, the speeds are not that big. Even if you take the chance and hope that the probe will not run into any debree in deep space, there's still the problem of energy, you could use cheaper alternatives but then the trip is going to take longer, which will make the challenge even bigger in terms of wear and tear. Of course nanotech could play a role in this regard, but there's still the problem of time.

The probe will yield no returns for anyone in the same lifetime, making it a lot less interesting for people with money. It's also going to be a hard sell for organizations of any sorts as long as we have problems that need to be solved over here, the greenhouse effect for instance, and this is only going to get worse over time, even if we manage co2 levels, the sun is getting brighter and hotter either way. There's also the problem of resource and people managment. Overpopulation is going to be one of the biggest challenges for mankind in the near future and this while 30000 year deep space mission will be much more interesting for people that live longer than that.

So It would be different if we are all immortal but immortality will mean an extensive change of human nature as well, or maybe if capitalism will no longer exist but capitalism is what pushes these things forward in the first place. That and war.

I'm just doing some rudimentary brainstorming over here, I cannot predict the future but one thing is for sure, deep space missions is such a challenge that I cannot see it happening out of anything other than necessity. In theory it's all wel and good, in that regard I agree with you, in theory it's not physically impossible, but the practical side of things is always another matter.

Let me bring up something else...it's probably never going to happen for US due to biology related reasons. As in, even if we successfully send an unmanned robot probe to another solar system and then thousands of years later find out that the planets in that system would be perfect for a permanent self-sustained human presence, we'll still probably never send HUMANS there. Because it's one thing to send a relatively inexpensive probe on a mission that has a high likelihood of catastrophic failure. It's another thing to send HUMANS. However expensive it is to send a robot probe, it's going to be WAYYYY more expensive to design the ship so that it can keep an actual human being alive (and sane) for the duration of the trip.

But here's the thing...the aliens may not have that problem. There are lots of organisms on earth that can go through suspended animation during long periods of harsh conditions (stuff like water bears, brine shrimp, etc). It's entirely possible that the aliens' physiology allows them to go into suspended animation for LONG periods of time without dying. Or that their offspring are relatively independent (compared to human offspring) and are capable of following say A TAKEOVER SEMINAR after they've been in space for thousands of years. Just put the alien eggs/spores in stasis during the trip, then set up the ship to initiate hatching upon arrival of a planet. Program a training seminar for how the newly hatched babies are supposed to take over the planet, and then sit back.

The number one reason why I think we're never leaving this solar system (I mean ACTUAL HUMANS, not robot probes) is because the biggest problem would be keeping us alive. But if we're talking about an intelligent species that is a lot eaasier to keep alive in space, or if we're talking about a species that doesn't place such a high value on life since they produce thousands of eggs/spores and consider most of them expendable, then it'd be a lot easier for THEM to just shoot their loads off into space.

Generational sub-FTL space ship can slowly fly through space, but there are issues with this level of technology.

Recent modifications to Alcubierre drive mathematical model has reduce the energy requirement to the total mass-energy of a planet the size of Jupiter.

Well we need jupiter, it's a magnet for asteroids.

I think we would absolutely get into a fight if we had the ability

If we were able to discover and unlock the technological capability to traverse vast distances and were able to come together as a species to further such an initiative, I would think (or would like to think) warfare would be a relic of antiquity long abandoned from our primitive origins. If we were capable of such a feat and still had such goals, I doubt we'd have much of an issue if that's where we decided to focus our attention on. It's not like we don't have weapons currently that can decimate all life on this planet many times over.

In all honesty, I'm skeptical we will survive for much longer here (meaning a few more millinea at best). Resources on Earth are finite, and that combined with our petty tribalisms will either lead to our demise given such destructive potential we've unlocked, or destruction to such a extent that we will be thrust back into a new Stone Age and space travel will be the least of our concerns.

Or a massive asteroid or extinction level event could strike....