Well it seems that now Stephen Hawking is not up to meeting aliens if they did decide to come visit our little blue planet. In his new documentary series, "Into the universe with Stephen Hawking", the famed physicist portrays a fairly fearful picture of extraterrestrial life, personally I think it looks a little bit like something out of an H.G Wells novel.
The assumption that aliens would be consumers or resources is quite reasonable, if we were to compare ourselves to them -- You can't really get energy out of nowhere... But assuming that these aliens would come to our planet with the specific goal of consuming the resources we have might be a little far fetched. What is so special about our star system that would differentiate us from another. We have a sun? (apparently these aliens can suck up energy from a sun and create wormholes with it) Well I think there are a few more suns out there... We have metals? Well I think that these aliens have all the metal that they need and if need be they could probably just make whatever they need -- after all they do have stars at their disposal. Well considering it, the only thing that is truly different about our speck of dust is that we are here. If the aliens were creatures of consumption, that is to say unenlightened creatures of consumption, we would be a potential slave race for them -- I really do not think they will be up to having us pay tribute to them... really what would pay in? Metals?. Yet, I would say that prospects are not quite that grim (that is if there are aliens out there...probably...maybe a little far away though) considering we have been beaming our position out into the visible universe for the past 60 years. Now if these aliens do have faster than light travel and picked up our signal they would have been here already. Yet, if they have yet to hear our cacophony of noise, all we really have to do is lie back and wait for them to come and dominate us.
Now maybe we could make a few different assumptions about these aliens. Perhaps one could consider that if this race is advanced enough to travel through the stars they have managed to lick their global disputes and got passed the stage of blasting each other with missiles (They are probably not simulating the destruction of their global communication systems ). This race might just go for diplomatic talks before charging their phasers. It would be possible that they would want to explore and learn of us and our ways but what comes into question now is: How evolved are the aliens out there, and are we evolved enough?
If one considers the ET's to be of the advancement Hawking describes, then the moment they picked up our first radio signal (that is assuming that for some reason their have radio antennas attached to their spaceships -- a really rocking feature if you ask me) they should be able to respond. Sadly, we might not be able to listen to their form of transmission and if they replied via radio waves well we would have to wait a good 60 years to get that signal back. The latter scenario would also be true if the race was as advanced as ourselves. Finally, if they are at a stage of development that is before radio there would be no prospect of communication.
Now, the highly advanced and the radio lacking civilization situations have very distinct out comes. They respond/come here or they remain oblivious, respectively. The circumstance that is a little open ended is if the civilization is near our level of advancement. Communication with interval of 120 years (that is if they pick up the signal right now and respond) would allow room for 'dropping the call', one could say. Even now people are unsure of the immediate benefits of SETI let alone in 60 years. If we do not hear their signal they could continue to broadcast without knowing how far we are and will continue to wait for an answer. Another possibility is that we receive a signal that was sent from some planet, we would not know how far away the transmission source is, we would respond but by the time they get the response they could have advanced past radio, or simply managed to destroy themselves. Furthermore, say we do manage to establish stable communication. Our two people would advance side by side, and would eventually be able to meet. It seems that it all comes down to waiting.
Stephen Hawking's documentary has pretty neat computer graphics and is quite imaginative but really there is no real reason to fret, for if they were going to come they would have, and other than that we will have to wait and see. For all we know 'life here began out there'.
- Mr. V
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"Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere." ~Carl Sagan
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