the extraterrestrial

[mute]

Now I bet you're all thinking to yourselves something along the lines of 'cheese'. But if you're going to make fun of it leave. And if you're going to deny the fact of the extraterrestrial, then I'd say you're too full of yourself.

I'm afraid to look in the night sky now. What if the day comes when we meet an extraterrestrial life. Will they contact us in peace, in good will of furthering the exploration and untying the knots of the Universe? Or, will they be hostile. Looking at us as a threat, and/or wanting our planet for resources?

Would you be able to handle such a thing? Either one. To be honest with ya, I'm scared of the extraterrestrial.

[SatansLeftHand]

you're a xenophobe?
umm....ok

as for them coming in peace, i cannot imagine that happening. the only reason to move out into the stars is to utilize what you find out there, or there's no point. if we happen to be among the things another race finds 'out there', they'd best bring overwhelming force and conquer us on the first pass, or they are FUCKED next time around.

just my 2 cents.

[Billyman]

The fact of the matter is NO one can actually prove or disprove the existance of extraterrestrials. When/if they come, I'll worry about it then. But they probably wont come to my house anywayz. I don't live in a trailer park. :p

[Cruise Director]

Anal probes. To me it all boils down to anal probes. My thought is that if the E.T's make it here, they are technologically sound enough to have other methods of scanning us. Hell, we're probably in the dark ages compared with them and WE have EKG, MRI and a host of other....."non-intrusive" ways to scan people.

Just a thought.

/me heads in to the desert with the lawn chair, beef jerky, binnoculars and "Welcome to Earth" sign.

[Koliedrus]

*Hat*

When I was growing up, my neighborhood was the entire world to me. What I didn't know about it, other kids in the neighborhood showed me. As I grew older and more kids were born, I showed them what we had all learned together.

I lived in a small town where change didn't happen quickly. Neighbors didn't move away often, hence people from other neighborhoods moving into ours was rare.

From time to time, my little troupe would venture out and explore beyond our boundaries. We met some odd characters with troupes like ours but with different customs. It took time but eventually different neighborhoods began to mesh into one huge group of familiar faces.

Previously evolved social patterns started to change so that we could play Kick The Can or Midnight Tag on a larger scale. The older kids of three neighborhoods would get together to schedule an event, parents would hear pleadings for yet another chance to stay up late to play during the summer nights and the game was on!

That ended when, during a frenzy, we destroyed a garden and tossed mailbox contents into the street like so much confetti.

There was one neighborhood that our parents told us we should never visit after dark. Our parent's warned us that the parents in that neighborhood were mean and that their children were probably mean as well.

During one summer night's game of Neighborhood Tag, a stranger from that neighborhood approached one of the older kids from ours. Behind the stranger stood a small group of kids that had heard about our games. They were nervous but wanted to play.

After some debate that never reached the ears of a youngling such as myself, they were told the rules (which weren't many) and joined in.

We had a blast!

Teams reformed to include our newest participants instead of the old regimes we had established. Smiles and laughter echoed through the trees and streets.

One person from the new neighborhood had an angry streak. While keeping his play-face on, he plotted to end our fun. He hooked up with the oldest, meanest kid from my neighborhood and proceeded to convince us that raiding mailboxes and destroying a garden in the dead of night was more fun than we'd ever experience.

In one night, we trashed two neighborhoods (kinda) and learned the next day that our games had come to an end.

How will we get along with an intelligent civilization?

The universe is much bigger than my childhood stomping ground.

Based solely on its perceived size (which is still only a guestimation but getting there), the variety of possible spacefaring species is innumerable. It may be that only one sentient species evolves per galaxy. We currently know of only one (disregarding dolphins and whales for now).

That said, I want you to look at a small patch of sky. You don't even have to get out of your seat to do so.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/eso_images_020813.html

Hundreds of thousands of galaxies in a moon-sized patch of sky.

We're one star out in the boondocks of the Milky Way. I'm betting we're unique but not the only kids running around.

How will the kids from other neighborhoods behave?

Will they want to kick our asses and take our toys or will they play by mutually agreed-upon rules?

One potato, two potato, three potato, four.

You can pick your nose, you can pick your friends. You can't pick ET's friend's nose.

*Hat*

[mute]

I love coming home at night, and looking above me. I look at each star and say to myself, "I wonder what's out there."

A question, are most of the stars we see in our night sky part of the Milky Way? What about those 100,000 other galaxies?

[Koliedrus]

Easy one.

Stars. And yes, they're inside the Milky Way.

What you see as points of light in the night sky are close by (relatively speaking). Aside from the "little" galaxies our own is currently munching up, the nearest one is a big, bright lady.

Andromeda, though, appears as only a patch of fuzzy light under clear skies. They only get farther, dimmer and smaller from there.

What you can see without the aid of a telescope is just a sample of our stellar neighborhood. A VERY SMALL sample.

Do this.

Take an ordinary sewing needle with you when you look into the night sky. Hold it at arm's length and look through the eye.

You've just gazed at 100,000+ galaxies.

I'm telling you, it's BIG!

[mute]

I don't know why, but I find it very odd when hearing/reading people say, "The fact of the matter is NO one can actually prove or disprove the existance of extraterrestrials."

I think that makes a person naive. No offense of course. But a person like me who thinks for a fact there is other forms of life out there might be naive too. Naive to reality?(reality being life on Earth)

[Venus]

Please allow me to pick and choose little tidbits of what other people have said to make my statement. Blatent plagurasim, ain't it grand.

I'm with Billyman on the "I'll worry about it when it gets here, cause chances are it's not hitting my town" look. I'll agree with...whoever it was (sorry, forgot who posted it), that said they're probably be hostile because there's no other reason for them to come out here.
And now a question...if we can't go to these other galixies due to the fact we don't have the technoligy to allow us to travel faster than light, how do we know they exist? What proof is there that over 100,000 galixies can fit into a small patch of sky?

[mute]

And now a question...if we can't go to these other galixies due to the fact we don't have the technoligy to allow us to travel faster than light, how do we know they exist? What proof is there that over 100,000 galixies can fit into a small patch of sky?

Astronomy? If we had the knowledge of other life out there, that means all science, and religion, would be changed. But, the thing is, don't we already know this?

[Koliedrus]

Those are good points, Venus. Once again I'll have to use analogy as my tool. From Earth orbit, I'll look down.

There are many parts of the world to which I've never been. I've seen maps, pictures and stories that seem to "prove" that they exist but I have to rely on a gigantic store of historical data as well as photographic confirmation to prove to myself that those places truly do exist.

Take Dresden, for example. I've never been there yet it has a has a history that is being added to even as I write. Over time, I've accepted its existence as fact. I'm also fairly sure that it's being affected by flooding although I cannot confirm that first-hand. In order to do so, I would need a cheap method of propulsion to reach Dresden so that I could see with my own eyes. In that case, the flooding will have been proven to me.

But what of you? Do you simply take my word as fact? Or do you accumulate data from non-related sources and arrive at a conclusion on your own?

The latter is the better.

Now, since different people have different interests, you may find yourself relying on information based on how much you trust the perception of a single individual or you might take the information given and add to or detract from what has been presented to you. The "proof" cannot adequatly be represented by a single observation.

I'm of the opinion that the field of astronomy harbours very few political agendae when it comes to sharing the wealth that comes with observation and theory. In fact, observation has a tendancy to place previously held theories in the cosmic Penalty Box.

In order to prove (or disprove) that a small patch of sky houses 100,000 galaxies, first one must be interested enough in the subject to research the basics so that widely held beliefs can either be confirmed or disputed.

Once the preliminary research has tranformed "concept" into "belief", only then can one build toward yet another concept to consider thwarting or supporting.

I've not seen those 100,000 galaxies with my own eyes. No human has. We've only seen pictures created by tools that we've built for that very purpose. I arrived at a conclusion based on the time I've spent pouring through documents, articles, photographs and statements made by people with a passion to define the fabric of reality beyond our tiny nesting ground. Their efforts appear to be genuine.

I cannot (for the life of me) prove to you that the universe is populated with an uncountable number of galaxies any more than I can prove that I'm not a figment of your imagination. You'll have to trust the Hyperjumpers and the photos.

How and why an ET will react to human civilization? Like you, I can only speculate.