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Stephen Hawking Wants To Find Aliens Before They Find Us (cnet.com)
Stephen Hawking is again reminding people that perhaps shouting about our existence to aliens is not the right way to go about it, especially if those aliens are more technologically advanced. In his new half-hour program dubbed, Stephen Hawking's Favorite Places, the theoretical physicist and cosmologist said (via CNET):"If intelligent life has evolved (on Gliese 832c), we should be able to hear it," he says while hovering over the exoplanet in the animated "U.S.S. Hawking." "One day we might receive a signal from a planet like this, but we should be wary of answering back. Meeting an advanced civilization could be like Native Americans encountering Columbus. That didn't turn out so well." Hawking manages to be both worried about exposing our civilization to aliens and excited about finding them. He supports not only Breakthrough: Listen, but also Breakthrough: Starshot, another initiative that aims to send tiny nanocraft to our closest neighboring star system, which was recently found to have an Earth-like planet.
would know that TV and radio -- except for AM -- transmitters are designed so as not to radiate energy where it's wasted (like, for example, towards the sky). Plus, of course, the transition to fiber optics reducing EM emissions even further.
If we figured that out pretty soon after inventing radio, it stands to reason that ETs would have also.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
There's no possibility that aliens capable of FTL would find us remotely interesting. Once you get to that technology, energy and resource problems either have been solved, or become very easily solvable. In addition, given that FTL is far more likely to be developed using AI rather than human intelligence, space faring races (if they bother to be space faring) are more likely to be 2nd order intelligences (i.e. artificial intelligences),rather than 1st order, genetically based naturally developing intelligences).
Bottom line? To space faring AIs, we're squirrels. Our nuts are safe. Really.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
No they won't. They'll remember him for being a cripple that speaks with a monotone robotic voice machine.
Hawking is on the lower rung of great scientists, a lot of this theories have been debunked. He just throws out so many that when a couple turn out right, we all give him a standing ovation. If he wasn't crippled, you wouldn't have any idea who he is.
I wasn't sure if you were joking or not, then I noticed you posted this garbage anonymously, so I must assume you were indeed joking. Hawking's greatest achievement may not be his scholarly work but instead the great success he has had in communicating arcane science to the masses and convincing them to think about matters like this in an intelligent, inquisitive way. Guys like Hawking, Tyson, Sagan, and even Bill Nye and Don Herbert have arguably had as big of an impact on society as have Einstein, Bohr, or Tesla. They make otherwise dense and dry topics exciting and interesting, and if there's one thing we need it's more people of all ages maintaining an interest in science, and being open to learning and continuing to investigate the workings of the universe.
You could have said your piece in a less offensive way, too.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
The likelihood that another life form traveled the 4.5 billion year path to intelligence, as we did, is close to zero. It assumes that there is a bias toward intelligence in evolution, of which there is no evidence whatsoever. The dinosaurs ruled the Earth for hundreds of millions of years and probably still would if the Chicxulub asteroid had not hit the Earth 65 million years ago, part of a very particular series of events over 4.5 billion years. Chimpanzees, who share 99.9 percent of our DNA are not us. They build no cities, write no great books, land on no moons. Hawking has a teenagers' science-fiction understanding it seems outside of Black Holes. And as far as the "Fermi Paradox" is concerned, it is not a paradox at all. We are not living on the Earth, we ARE the Earth. We are not going to settle the Galaxy, or even the Solar System. We can live nowhere else. We are not mere visitors to the surface of the Earth. We are an intrinsic part of the Earth. It would be the same for any "intelligent species." End of question.
E Proelio Veritas.