I finally saw “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. Its yet another move about Aliens plundering mother earth and wiping out the natives in order to obtain (fill in the blank) _____________, written by some screenwriters with clearly a lot of dollar signs in mind and not a lot of fact.
Only this time, the screenwriters seem to have a recent prediction by the venerable physicist Stephen Hawking and noted astronomer Marek Kukula, around why these (presumably illegal) Aliens want to “conquer and colonize” everything in their path. In Earth Stood Still, it was because humans were ruining the place and there were very few habitable planets in the cosmos.
Balderash.
Perhaps, the problem is that we as a species like to project our experiences into what we believe is the next big thing. Because Columbus and his ilk plundered the big empty space between China and Europe, and wiped out the natives (as Dr. Hawking predicts will happen with Earth), perhaps the next guy is going to smear us out. Why else would they spend so much “money” to get here?
Dr. Hawking ignored some important facts. Just to get to Earth, from many light years away, you need mastery over time, space, energy and matter. More specifically the conversion of matter into energy and more critically, energy into matter.
There is no chemical formulation possible that allows propulsion and life sustenance for inter planetary travel, leave alone intergalactic travel. If aliens do exist, and its physically possible for them to get to Earth, they must have absolute engineering mastery over the mass/energy conversions – essentially nuclear reactions. Without it, it is entirely impossible to move across millions of light years.
Basically, the alien speicies must have the capability to take any object, convert it completely into (huge amounts!) energy without blowing up their spaceship, their planet or anything else. And then, they must be able to take that huge amount of energy and use it to create some other object or use it in a propulsion system of some sort to help you them millions of light years – quickly.
If you can generate infinite amounts of energy and convert it back to mass in an easy way, you can literally have anything you want. The concept of a rich/poor divide goes away, since anyone can make anything they want. This is what is absolutely needed for unlimited space travel and this is what any civilization must have BEFORE they can even get to Earth.
And if they have the technology to make anything they want, well why on earth would you need Earth? If you were an alien being in an infinite universe full of infinite planets that can be traversed in short time periods, what could you possibly want from the 3rd rock by some average star in mid-life.
Well, for one, you may want to check out the buzz in interplanetary circles about some kind of creepy crawly creatures with ancient transport and incessant quarrels. You may even want to write a research paper and collect a 3D scan of one for a catalog. Maybe even an actual sample.
What else? Coal? Oil? Unobtainium? Unpredictable weather by a supposedly sunny beach? The latest Xeon processor?
Ludicrous.
The universe if full of every kind of element on the periodic table. There is nothing an alien civilization needs from us. Definitely not oil, and most certainly nothing that Intel can even imagine leave alone produce. As for the sunny beach, I am willing to wager that a civilization that has engineered a matter energy conversion can create a pretty nice beach on a spaceship, without the weather headaches. Assuming, of course, that is their definition of “nice”.
If an alien civilization wanted this planet, they would have taken it a long time ago. And, no, our computer viruses do not work on their spaceships and our bacteria would not kill them and no, our pop guns and water pistols just won’t work.
So, why don’t they contact us? It’s the same reason why you don’t disturb the animals on a wilderness tour. You are there to observe, not alter their lifestyles. On Star Trek, it was known as the Prime Directive – “no Starfleet personnel may interfere with … alien life and culture” as long as they do not have the ability to travel at “warp” speeds. And that was interpreted as a “Do Not Contact” order.
So, quit worrying. You will not be assimilated.
No comments:
Post a Comment