Baptising aliens

[Napoléon]

We know that the fastest you can travel is the speed of light, and if they are a million light years away, they will never make it here in our lifetime.

How do you reach that conclusion? What if they started travelling here a million years ago? Why do you also assume they would be at least a million light-years away? They could only be 50. 500. 5000.

Also, because of what would happen if you hit anything at that speed, traveling at the speed of light would be a stupid thing to do.

If they had the technology to travel at the speed of light I'm sure they could come up with some kind of kinetic shielding. That's more plausible than reaching the speed of light anyway.


Either way. It's all speculation.

[The Valkyrie]

How do you baptize those water-hating aliens in "Signs"?

Hmmmm?

I was thinking I'd like to see him baptise a full grown alien from the Alien franchise or a Predator.

[Anomalocaris]

I think this pope is just trying to drive up numbers with a policy of "inclusiveness."

He should have included geckos and squids, to say nothing of dolphins and giant pandas.

[Jackalope]

Why do you also assume they would be at least a million light-years away? They could only be 50. 500. 5000.

Indeed - any point a million light years away is far outside our own galaxy - in fact, it would probably be outside *any* galaxy, except for possibly a dwarf galaxy gravitationally bound to the milky way, possibly an unobserved one.

There are probably on the order of a million stars within a thousand light years of earth. Every point within the Milky Way and it's hundreds of billions of stars is within ~75 Kly.

As you said, once you've solved the problem of (faster than or near) light speed travel, solving the shielding issues ought to be easy by comparison.

[Anomalocaris]

For an advanced alien species to get to us it would require both capability and motive, and they may not have either one. We know that the fastest you can travel is the speed of light, and if they are a million light years away, they will never make it here in our lifetime. Also, because of what would happen if you hit anything at that speed, traveling at the speed of light would be a stupid thing to do.

If we take the amount of time that elasped on earth between the first single cell Prokaryotes and the first creature that can use fire and work metal to be roughly typical of how long this sort of things generally take in the universe, then we can expect a large number of earth like planets able to bear life would have evolved technological civilizations when the planet reaches 4-5 billion years old.

Based on our current understanding of cosmology, the Universe is 13.7 billion years old, and conditions would have existed to form earth like planets for at least 10 billion years in a typical galaxy like the Milky way.

This suggests the most advanced civilization would be roughly 5 billion years more advanced then we are. They would have been traveling in space when earth was still settling out of the dust of the primordial solar nebula.

Now ask yourself this, can you anticipate how a creature as much more advanced than us, as we are more advanced than the most primitive bacteria, would behave?

[LastPoet]

Aliens fail under the same cathegory as gods. Imaginary shit. Let me get some LSD coke and heroin, I would probably imagine a god so far of your heads that would blow your skulls off.

I would have to deny tough reality, and that, is much more interesting.

[Ksa]

We know that the fastest you can travel is the speed of light, and if they are a million light years away, they will never make it here in our lifetime.

How do you reach that conclusion? What if they started travelling here a million years ago? Why do you also assume they would be at least a million light-years away? They could only be 50. 500. 5000.

Also, because of what would happen if you hit anything at that speed, traveling at the speed of light would be a stupid thing to do.

If they had the technology to travel at the speed of light I'm sure they could come up with some kind of kinetic shielding. That's more plausible than reaching the speed of light anyway.


Either way. It's all speculation.

Then they must be lacking the motive to get here. If they have everything they need, why would they risk their life traveling so far? They don't exactly suffer from the lack of dopamine Christopher Columbus suffered to go out in the nothingness like a mad man to get a rush. They probably get 1,000 times that rush just standing still.

I don't understand this in people, bliss is closer to you than any other thing in the world, it's in your brain. Why would you need to travel like Christopher Columbus 50 light years away, it's madness. You get some dopamine and 6-MAM flowing through your brain and the madness goes away. You no longer need to travel anywhere.

I believe that if superior aliens exist, they are much more in control of their own body and awareness than we are.

[Anomalocaris]

How do you reach that conclusion? What if they started travelling here a million years ago? Why do you also assume they would be at least a million light-years away? They could only be 50. 500. 5000.


If they had the technology to travel at the speed of light I'm sure they could come up with some kind of kinetic shielding. That's more plausible than reaching the speed of light anyway.


Either way. It's all speculation.

Then they must be lacking the motive to get here. If they have everything they need, why would they risk their life traveling so far? They don't exactly suffer from the lack of dopamine Christopher Columbus suffered to go out in the nothingness like a mad man.

I don't understand this in people, bliss is closer to you than any other thing in the world, it's in your brain. Why would you need to travel like Christopher Columbus 50 light years away, it's madness. You get some dopamine and 6-MAM flowing through your brain and the madness goes away. You no longer need to travel anywhere.

I believe that if superior aliens exist, they are much more in control of their own body and awareness than we are.

How do you know they need to be here for any reason?

Perhaps they are so familiar with how the universe works that neither us nor our solar system retains the least interest for them. You don't go around overturning every stone and digging up every worm burrow just see how the particular critters under this stone behaves or in that hole, do you?

Perhaps their we retain interests for them but their remote sensing is so sophisticated and powerful that from 50 million light years away they can tell every last detail about what you were fantasizing as you jerked off last night, withoug your ever knowing you were being scrutinized?

[Ksa]

Then they must be lacking the motive to get here. If they have everything they need, why would they risk their life traveling so far? They don't exactly suffer from the lack of dopamine Christopher Columbus suffered to go out in the nothingness like a mad man.

I don't understand this in people, bliss is closer to you than any other thing in the world, it's in your brain. Why would you need to travel like Christopher Columbus 50 light years away, it's madness. You get some dopamine and 6-MAM flowing through your brain and the madness goes away. You no longer need to travel anywhere.

I believe that if superior aliens exist, they are much more in control of their own body and awareness than we are.

How do you know they need to be here for any reason?

Perhaps they are so familiar with how the universe works that neither us nor our solar system retains the least interest for them. You don't go around overturning every stone and digging up every worm burrow just see how the particular critters under this stone behaves or in that hole, do you?

Perhaps their we retain interests for them but their remote sensing is so sophisticated and powerful that from 50 million light years away they can tell every last detail about what you were fantasizing as you jerked off last night, withoug your ever knowing you were being scrutinized?

Curiosity marks an absence of bliss. When you experience bliss, the "why?" and the "how?" no longer matter, and all that matters is the feeling.

If they do scrutinize me, they must be pretty lonely and unhappy creatures, with much to learn from me

But we do know that, if these aliens are smarter than us, bliss would be the first thing on their to do item list, so I cannot insult them saying they posses such curiosity.

[Napoléon]

Ksa, I don't think we can really guess the intentions of a being which may or may not exist, and whose structure and biology could be just about anything we can imagine.