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.

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.