Quick, Camouflage the Quarry & Don Tinfoil Hats!

Emma Woollacott | Mon 26th Apr 2010, 03:05 am tg daily: science blog

They say strangers are just friends you haven't met yet—but it's not a view Stephen Hawking shares. In a new documentary series for the Discovery channel, he suggests that we should be avoiding making contact with aliens at all costs. Life, he suggests, is likely to be widespread in the universe, though the odds are that most of it will take the form of microbes or simple animals. But if there is more developed life, we should be careful. "One piece of advice that Professor Hawking doesn't mind sharing is the less-popular notion that it might be better if we kept our location a secret rather than being so anxious to make contact," says Discovery. "Reaching out to the stars with our messages of curiosity and peace may only make it easier for an advanced alien mining operation to stake a claim on Earth. First contact would be a much better proposition if we can wait until we are on more equal terms." Hawking compares making contact with alien species with Native Americans' first contact with Christopher Columbus - which didn't turn out brilliantly for the Native Americans. "I imagine they might exist in massive ships... having used up all the resources from the planet below," Professor Hawking says. "Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they could reach. If so, it makes sense for them to exploit each new planet for materials to build more spaceships so they could move on." Professor Hawking suggests that one massive source of energy available to advanced alien civilizations would be the ability to tap and concentrate the radiant energy of stars with an array of planet-size collectors. You can see a clip of some of the alien conceptions from Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking: http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/stephen-hawking-aliens/.

(forwarded by Mark Stechbart as a public service)

Comments

[Dan B. Underhill]

I must admit that I had to google Rachel, Nevada, but I am pleased enough to offer it no competition at all really. Despite all of our troubles (everybody has troubles) I am mostly quite pleased with our little town. If space aliens come and eat us all, I suppose I should have to give all of this some further thought.

[Steve Sinai]

The same candidate Bruce mentioned also wanted to build a statue of "The Big Kahuna" on the beach. Damn, if she'd have been elected, Pacifica might have been known for more than crumbly cliffs and a Taco Bell on the beach. We could have been as famous as Rachel, Nevada.

Well, we blew that opportunity!

[Bruce Hotchkiss]

I'd like to remind everyone that a few years ago we had a City Council candidate who proposed building a landing site for aliens near the Quarry. We were ahead of the curve.

[todd bray]

Unless the aliens have a flag they can plant to claim Earth, they might as well stay home.

[John Maybury]

Also, actor/comedian Darryl Henriques (San Francisco Mime Troupe, East Bay Sharks, The Right Stuff, Jumanji, etc.), who occasionally blogs on this site, has a great routine about space aliens using Oakland Coliseum to collect human flesh in one convenient, bite-size MRE.

[Peter Loeb]

A variation of this idea is familiar to readers of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, published 30 years ago, and also in the movie of the same name. In it, the aliens plan to destroy earth to make way for a bypass. The parallels to Pacifica's history are eerie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_%28novel%29