Stephen Hawking Thinks Aliens Likely

OMNIpotusCOM writes "Noted astrophysicist Stephen Hawking thinks that alien life is likely, albeit primitive, according to a lecture delivered at George Washington University in honor of NASA's 50th anniversary. It begs the question of if we need to consider a Prime Directive before exploring or sending signals too far into the depths of space."

Comments

Hawking isn't an astrobiologist

[Five Bucks!]

However, because alien life might not have DNA like us, Hawking warned: "Watch out if you would meet an alien. You could be infected with a disease with which you have no resistance."

That is precisely why I wouldn't be worried. Any pathogenic symbiote would have evolved to take advantage of the host's physiology -- not ours.

Re:Why is this newsworthy?

[TheRaven64]

Well, most of us assign quite a low value to B_6 in the Drake Equation. That said, the likelihood of life existing and the likelihood of our encountering it are two very different things. If it is not possible to travel faster than light then the space and time between us and our nearest neighbouring civilisation is likely to be prohibitive.

because the aliens compress their data stream!

[anwyn]

Stephen Hawking asks this rhetorical question in dismissing the possibility of intelligent alien life:

If there is life elsewhere in the universe, Hawking asks why haven't we stumbled onto some alien broadcasts in space, maybe something like "alien quiz shows?"

There is an answer to this question that is so simple and elegant and decisive that it shocking that a great mind like Hawking has not already thought of it:

Because the aliens have learned to compress their data stream!

The better you compress a data stream the more it looks like random noise!

Plans to recognize alien signals are all based on finding redundancies in the transmission. But from the point of view of an alien signal engineer all redundancies are opportunities to save energy and transmission time by adding compression! The more compression you add, the more your signal looks like random noise. Also the aliens might be using spread spectrum techniques which make a signal even more difficult to detect.

Think of it, the FCC is already starting to require TV signals to move to digital in order to save bandwidth that can be resold to the cell phone companies. How long will it be till the FCC requires that these signals be compressed? Our signals are already becoming more difficult to detect.

Probably in the natural technical evolution of any species there is only a very small window where the species is smart enough to use radio energy for communication but not smart enough to use enough compression to make its signals look like random noise.

Thus our SETI efforts are looking for a needle in a heystack and failure only indicates that species in a transitional phase like us is very rare.

Stephen Hawking should have thought of this.

I don't care much for meeting advanced aliens

[WormholeFiend]

because chances are that if they are more advanced than us, they will exploit us in some way.

And if we are more advanced than them, we will exploit them.

I think it's more likely that, in an evolutionary time-frame, we'll colonize our solar system (and beyond), and extra-terrestrial humans will evolve in different directions and become the "aliens".

Just Because They Have FTL . . .

[Darth Eggbert]

I remember a story that I read long ago in a compilation of Sci-Fi short stories where we were visited by a group of aliens that thought they were going to subjucate us, believing that they were superior because they had FTL travel. They leave their spaceship to face the primitive earthmen... with their muskets. It seems theat to them and most other races that FTL travel was so easy that they never had to develop weapons of mass destruction, tanks, and other weapons of war. The story ended with the aliens lamenting that they had just give us, a warlike planet of much superior weapons, the keys to the galexy.

If something hard to us maybe easy to them, the oppisite may be true too.