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: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.