Meeting an Aliens?

this is a bit more further down the line for humanity ( or maybe sooner than we think) but it's still something fun and interesting to talk about. If intelligent alien life was discovered on some foreign planet what would be the best practical approach for humanity? And further if given the opportunity would you go and be a foreign ambassador to an alien world?

Even though I have no doubts about whether there is (intelligent) alien life, I can't imagine mankind making any contact with them. We can see exoplanets that are far beyond the range of anything we can build right now, and probably will be, and there are no signs of life to be found there.

Of course, according to History Channel shows, aliens have dictated the life on Earth for an eternity now, and the American government is trying to hide that from everyone...is it me, or are 90% of all "aliens" spotted above North America?

Well that makes so much sense, because everyone in the universe uses the same units and stuff!

Remember, in the 30's nobody believed that anything like the atomic bomb and going up into space was possible. Within 40 years, both oft hose things were accomplished, and the US alone can destroy the world a bunch of times over. So yes, if intelligent life has been on said planet longer than we have, then it is possible that they have, and possibly had for thousands and thousands of years the technology to extensively visit our planet like it is speculated. Also, I believe that the "gods" mentioned by ancient people's were actually aliens, but they believed they were gods.

In the 30's, no proper research (at least, as far as I know of) had been done on atom bombs or space travel. Now though, we know it's impossible to travel faster than the speed of light, and even reaching the speed of light would be pure suicide. There is no possible way (or we need to go down the science fiction road and thoroughly look on Mars...) to reach an exoplanet with possible life, or even intelligent life. The universe is so enormous, the distances between planets where life is possible to evolve are too great and the chances of life appearing are so small, I don't see any two planets with different intelligent life making any contact whatsoever.

While it's true that we can't accelerate to the speed of light by conventional means (because mass must be propelled by fuel, and fuel itself has mass, and you get caught in an infinite loop of requiring more fuel to power your increasingly massive object), there are plenty of ways to get around that—we think. I'm pretty confident that FTL travel is inevitable, but the means by which we achieve it (wormhole, tachyon manipulation, folding space...) remain shrouded in mystery. The mere fact that there exists a possible way to circumvent the speed of light restriction seems to guarantee that intelligent life is going to figure it out somewhere, especially given that even a million years difference in evolution would create a massive boost to accumulated knowledge.

Well, even if you could achieve light speed, you'd die by hitting virtually anything, so you'd have to teleport yourself to other planets somehow...

And I was just thinking...if mankind can't get people too much further than their own moon after say, 50,000 years and are out of natural resources in...50 years or so, other intelligent species should really evolve and research way faster then we did if they are to reach and colonise outer space to get the resources to keep the species alive.

maybe they are already here?

du du dududududu

Out of natural resources in 50 years? What world are you living in?

I was referring to metals that are still in the ground, at least. There are estimates that we're out of them pretty soon, though there is still a lot of it rusting around in waste deposits and such. Now, we aren't exactly swimming in fossil fuels anymore, but I think that's been clear for a while now.
Reading back what I said earlier, I have exaggerated it, as with recycling and more advanced manufacturing methods, we'll be fine for some time, but still, I see mankind running out of resources before colonizing any other planet other than Earth.

We haven't even begun to scratch the surface of metal extraction, and as you say, we still recycle most metals. Fossil fuels aren't "running out"—the debate today is over whether or not we have hit peak oil. You'll notice that most people have backed off of that claim since recent deposit discoveries in the Arctic and Afghanistan. Peak oil merely represents the 50% mark; so it's not like we're facing imminent doom. And we are, of course, moving onto alternatives and more energy efficient appliances. Investors aren't playing long oil anymore, that game was done back in '06.

Really? I read an article about metals, in which China was described as a black hole in which rare metals disappear rather rapidly. There was even a statement that newly opened mines gain less metal than recycling garbage dumps.

And speaking of oil...has there been any news about the oil under the North Pole? The last I heard of it was that Denmark and Russia were having arguments about whose oil it was or something...

China is actually a leading producer of rare earth metals, and they are one of its bigger exports. In fact, the whole South China Sea dispute between China and Japan recently endangered the Japanese economy simply because China stopped exporting rare earth metals to it. They have a pretty regular surplus of rare earth metals in China, so I don't know why the article would be describing it as a black hole.

Of course, it was also mentioned as the top producer and exporter of the rarer metals, but with the growing Chinese economy, the demand for the metals has exploded, which explains the comparison to the black hole.

Ah, they were referring to the celestial object. I was thinking more of a bottomless pit. Well that makes sense then, but there are plenty of rare earth metals around; the thing is that nobody is really bothering to extract them because at the moment it's cheaper to buy from China.

Ah yes, I remember that from the article as well, whenever there would be a new mine for rarer metals, China would just throw down their prices, forcing the new mine to close.

Once we are able to find an accessebl wormhole, or maybe even develop the technology to create one, all our thinking about space travel, and how far we can realistically go, would be rendered pointless. Wormholes could allow us to travel an immense distance in a relatively short span of of time. And you are right, if a species is a million years ahead of us in evolution, it would be absurd to believe they have not discovered and used wormholes to travel to our planet and other planets with lifeforms that are much less advanced than we are as well. Also, this brings up the question of time travel, and could we use wormholes to time travel....

It's pretty much a foregone conclusion that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe. The problem is if we could contact it (or it contact us) before we're extinct ourselves. The way things are going we should have permanent colonies on our moon and Mars within a couple of centuries, solving our resource issues. (Except oil, that's unique to Earth or other planets with organic life but we're already well on our way to having no more dependence on oil.) And it's certain that mankind won't stop there. But eventually the human race has to either get out of the Sol system or perish. The sun's energy is finite and it will eventually die. But we've got billions of years until that happens. And by then we will have moved on. The extinction I speak of is more likely to come about by our own designs.

So when we encounter our first intelligent aliens I hope we do so peacefully. There's really nothing to fight over, space is so vast that resources and places to potentially live are plentiful. I think the biggest obstacle will be communication. Depending on their level of technology and/or development it could be really difficult. And what if they don't "speak" but use some other form of communication? Any other biological life in the universe will be made of the same star-stuff that we are but there's no guarantee that it would have developed in the same way as life on Earth. And we can't even fully communicate with the other intelligent life on our own planet yet.

However, if we were able to communicate and I was given the opportunity to be an ambassador you couldn't hold me back. It would be the grandest adventure I could think of.

If you are really interested in this you should look at the Drake equation - can't remember the specifics but it states that there are about 10 extra-terrestrial civilizations in our galaxy. If one of these planets formed perhaps about 20 million years before us (miniscule in the grand scheme) then they will almost definately have the technology to reach us.

P.S. I don't know if this includes the chances that civilizations survived to a high level civilization.