Canadian Ex-Minister Calls For Serious ET Study

Nom du Keyboard writes "A former Canadian Minister of Defense and Deputy Prime Minister wants Canada to hold public hearings on Exopolitics - relations with Extraterrestrials - to avoid the possibility of intergalactic war. Unfortunately he also proposes starting a 'Decade of Contact', which seems to mean spending a whole lot of public money on UFO education. Is he on the right track here, that we can't afford to ignore the rest of the Universe any longer?" From the article: "The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning ... The Bush administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide."

Comments

"Intergalactic war", huh?

[TripMaster Monkey]

Wow... a new low. The aliens must be laughing themselves sick at our hubris. The possibility that our weapons might prove a threat to a culture capable of mere interstellar travel (let alone "intergalactic") is about the same as an ant colony against the U.S. Army.

Re:"Intergalactic war", huh?

[fyngyrz]

And just because they have the technology to travel to Earth from some distant universe doesn't necessarilly mean they have any decent weapons or protections against types of weapons they've never seen before or developed.

If you are able to place yourself in space, at any relative velocity, at any location relative to another object (which is basically the definition of successful space travel, no matter what the means), then you should probably also be able to place an object, for instance a nice, dense lump of lead with a steel jacket, at any relative position and velocity to another object, in this case, let's say, Earth. Launch position may be arbitrarily distant, if you accept additional time-to-target.

So. Object (eventually, if you like) weighing, say, 1 kiloton (to give you some perspective, the USS Ronald Reagan, an aircraft carrier, is about 77 kilotons), comes into Earth's atmosphere at a relative velocity of, oh, say 1,000,000 K/sec, coming straight down (to minimize friction and time-in atmosphere.) Object impacts military target, for instance, the Pentagon. Washington, and large amount of the surrounding area, is now missing in action, and we have a large crater (probably a new opening on the sea, actually, thought I've not done the math) we should probably get around to dealing with. The radiation and blast effects may require a slight delay, perhaps, oh, I don't know, a few centuries.

Total cost to those accidental discovers of space travel? Some lead or other dense material, a steel or other relatively tough jacket, and whatever space drive resources it takes to get to where launching it delivers enough energy to target. But remember — if they can get here and arrange a relative stop, then they can just as easily get anywhere else in the solar system at any other relative velocity. If they decide we're toast... we're toast, and there isn't squat we can do about it.

Basically, the fact is if you assume interstellar space travel with any vehicle larger than a telephone booth, then you have to assume military superiority as well, and to a degree that is difficult to comprehend and requires no additional technology beyond moving inert materials around.

Sorry to burst your bubble. ;-)

Re:"Intergalactic war", huh?

[Guppy06]

You're assuming that maneuver technology will outstrip detection technology. Once you start talking about detection vs. interception, things can get easier or harder depending on the manuever and detection technologies in play. But assuming near-future technology, though you're playing with three-dimensional volumes, it is very, very hard to be undetected in space. Unlike the vagrancies of dealing with the atmosphere, you will stand out against a hard vacuum, something that's about as "black body" as you're going to get. You will reflect microwaves, you will give off heat, the only question is whether or not somebody is looking for you.

Once you're spotted, it's nothing but your delta-v against his, a classic battle of maneuver that even ancient, primitive humans like Sun-Tzu could tell you about.

Basically, the scenario you're talking about is similar to what happened in the US Civil War; with railroads, etc. allowing for rapid movement of forces, as fast or even faster than your scouts could report back enemy movements, battles tended to happen around fixed locations where the attacker wanted to go (otherwise something would have happened to the Army of Northern Virginia somewhere between Sharpsburg and Gettysburg). However, since then we've improved upon the hot air balloons used in the Civil War with radios, airplanes, and even satellites, all mitigating the advantages of hiding your movements behind terrain. Pearl Harbor happened only because nobody could see over the horizon at the time.

There is no terrain in space. You might gain some sort of surprise coming in with the sun at your back, but first you have to get to the sun undetected.

Men in black

[LeninZhiv]

"UFOs, are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head."

Mr. Hellyer went on to say, "I'm so concerned about what the
consequences might be of starting an intergalactic war, that I just
think I had to say something."

Let me get this straight:

Among the things this guy is persuaded of then is that aliens walk
among us already, that the US government knows about it and has
apparently enough alien technology in its possession to be able to
wage war between galaxies (a pretty amazing feat for one little
planet, wouldn't you say? Even with a base on our moon!), while still
being able to keep the general population persuaded that we have not
made contact.

Wasn't Will Smith in that movie? And here I was under the impression that
the US was no longer even capable of manned spaceflight (other than
hitch-hiking with the Russians).

All chuckling aside, even though according to his Wikipedia
biography the man has a long history of UFO advocacy, he's also 82
years old and I am inclined to think that despite a distinguished
career the question of senility has to be raised. Still, anyone
should count themselves lucky to be giving public speaches at 82 in
the first place.

Re:Men in black

[Ceriel Nosforit]

UFO means Unidentified Flying Object. We as geeks respect original definitions. Unidentified extraterrestrial spacecraft in flight are a subcategory of UFOs, if they exist.
The existense of UFOs is not doubted, but claiming a UFO is extraterrestrial is unfounded.

While at it, there's no reason to claim extraterrestrial life is intelligent either when we're yet to communicate with any.
We have no reason to say that something intelligent necessarily is alive either. Our own development of AI should at the very least indicate this.
We have no reason to beleive a hypothetic extraterrestrial intelligence has biological needs we can relate to, so we can't assume they would act like we do. For example, we have no reason to assume that if they had any interest in this planet we would be the center of their attention.

Being a skeptic is all fine and dandy, but jumping to unfounded conclusions isn't, even when the jump is miniscule. There are lots of things we simply don't know yet, and we should absolutely not prentend we do.

Re:So, they figured it out

[TripMaster Monkey]

So just because they might have "figured out simple fission/fusion weapons" doesn't mean they can deal with a few gazillion joules of energy suddenly appearing 50 meters off the port quarter of their space ship.

"Suddenly appearing", huh? Exactly when did we develop teleportation technology? Oh, that's right...we haven't.

Any culture capable of interstellar travel should be more than capable of detecting and either sidestepping or shooting down whatever we lob at them with our pathetic chemical rockets.

Speculation on ET is absurd.

[Vellmont]

You can't plan for something you know nothing about. Anyone speculating about whether ET will be war-like, peaceful, care about us, or not care about us is engaging in the art of "making shit up". Our basis for understanding intelligence is almost entirely based on ourselves and how we think, act, behave, and look at the world. Much of this is based on our underlying brain structure and not on culture. We all have emotions and much of our being is based on that.

But yet when we even look at a Jellyfish it's extremely different from us (and even so, very similar in terms of underlying biology). Will ET have better technology (tools) than us? Well, based on our own experience with technology you'd think that anyone capable of solving the problem of inter-stellar travel certainly would have a far better understanding of physics than us. But I fear when I even say that I'm also probbably practicing the art of "making shit up".

The point is that planning for any of this is just absurd, and that's ignoring the fact that we have no idea if there even IS intelligent life elsewhere, much less life that's interested in coming here. I don't believe this kind of question is one of science, but of philosophy. That doesn't mean it's not an interesting or important question, but just one we can't find an actual answer to. Devoting money to it makes about as much sense as to devoting money to trying to find god.

I think a more sane approach would be trying to find out if there IS intelligence life elsewhere. That means putting more money into SETI searches for instance. I personally doubt whether UFOs (the alien spacecraft type) exist, but you'll never find them if you don't look. Because of this I think it's important for such a survey to have a dual purpose. Put money into mapping asteroids (and as a side effect maybe you can look for UFOs, or maybe other purely astronomical phenomenon).