Following On From Yesterday

[poliphilo]

Yes. I think it's very likely we have visitors. Planet Earth is at a crucial phase in its history: it's developing a global society, it has weapons of mass destruction, it has rudimentary space travel. We're no longer galactic peasants, we're becoming contenders. We're at an interesting age.  If I were an intelligent extraterrestrial I'd be motivated to drop by and take a peek- even perhaps violate the prime directive and give things a bit of a nudge.

We can no longer- plausibly- argue that we're alone in the universe. Our telescopes keep detecting planets in the orbit of neighbouring stars- and just the other day- for the first time-  we found one that replicates conditions on Earth. Actually there must be billions of them. 

Of course the visitors may not be coming from other planets. They may be sliding in from other dimensions. They may be hopping back from our own future. The old, mechanical universe our grandfathers had their heads in ruled such things out of court, but we're living in a quantum universe now. 

What would be really weird would be if everyone out there was ignoring us.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

If we could get to them, we would- because we're inquisitive so-and-sos. I don't suppose they're any different.

We're only just beginning to understand how the universe is put together. I suspect the speed of light isn't actually the barrier we currently think it is. Perhaps we'll get round it by folding space. Perhaps we'll use wormholes. After all, I remember a time (yes, I'm that old) when people thought we'd never get through the sound barrier.

[petercampbell.livejournal.com]

From what I understand (which is little, admittedly), the speed of light CAN be breached, in quantum conditions at least. The problem I have with the alien visitors people report seeing if that they look and behave much too similarly to humans for comfort.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

But maybe they adjust their appearance to make themselves more palatable to us.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

The issue, of course, is that FTL = time travel = breaking the idea of cause and effect the way that we normally think about it.

However, I've talked to a few scientists who think that, well, maybe that's what we're just going to go ahead and do.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Perhaps our problem is that we've got into the habit of thinking of Nature as having "Laws" when what it actually has is "conventions".