Neil deGrasse Tyson on whether alien lifeforms have found Earth

[Playinghardball]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/14/neil-degrasse-tyson-on-whether-alien-lifeforms-have-found-earth/

If aliens discovered Earth, would humanity know about it? Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson weighed in on the topic in video uploaded to YouTube on Saturday by Business Insider.

He joked that extraterrestrial life could have already shown up at New York City’s Times Square or San Diego’s Comic Con, but no one noticed them amid the crowd of strange creatures.

Pivoting to a more serious point, Tyson said humans wrongly assumed they were of high intelligence. Any species capable of interstellar travel would see human civilization as severely underdeveloped. Humans have escaped the Earth’s atmosphere, but just barely, Tyson explained. Aliens might have discovered Earth, but found it uninteresting and moved on.

“If an alien traversed that distance, and all we are doing is driving around the block, they’re more advanced than we are,” he remarked.

“And, by the way, [Stephen] Hawking is all worried that aliens might suck our brains out,” Tyson added. “That concern comes from the fact that when any of us explore the world and came upon a civilization less advanced, it was bad for the less advanced civilization… so I think his fear about aliens is a reflection of his actual knowledge of about how humans treat each other, not real knowledge about how actual aliens would treat us.”

Watch video, uploaded to YouTube, below:

[hlthe2b]

1. I have always loved that his intellect is marked by considerable "common sense"...

including in his explanations.

I tend to agree with him. If anything, we've probably been visited by those who deemed us not worthy of further attention.

[randome]

2. And maybe not even in a bad way. Just "Meh. Let's keep driving a while."

[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

[Egalitarian Thug]

3. We have to start looking up again.

This is one of his main points and it's a very important one.

I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey again last night and, since it's been probably 20 years since the last time, I was struck by how far we've fallen and how pathetic we've become as a people.

We no longer strive to achieve great things, we just grub around looking for fictitious symbols of debt as if they are of any substance. Sure, we got out of our gravity well for a minute and we littered the moon a little, but Clark wrote his book by looking at how far we advanced in the forty-some prior years and extrapolating that same pace forty-some years into the future.

My great grandmother (1881 - 1980) was born in a sod house with a hand-pumped well and an outhouse and saw the advent of electricity, flight, workers rights, women’s suffrage, space flight, the civil rights act, networks of paved roads, skyscrapers, cars, computers, the double helix, fatal diseases eradicated, the ability to produce enough food to end hunger, telephones, refrigeration, moving pictures, talkies, unions, radio, television, atomic power, sewing machines, vacuum cleaners, and a thousand other things we don't even imagine living without.

Do you think any of us will see anything that even approaches that kind of progress? I'm at least half done with my life and the greatest advances I've seen are computer networks and propaganda being elevated to a science.

[randome]

4. I hear you.

I am also sick and tired of sending yet more rovers to Mars to basically do the same thing every time -search for indications of previous life.

We've been doing that for more than 30 years! Enough! We need more courageous goals than sniffing at the edges of untapped pools of knowledge but always being afraid to wade in.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

[Egalitarian Thug]

7. It's been my experience that the more you understand, the more frustrating it is.

The things that we could be doing right now, let alone the things we haven't even imagined yet, are the stuff of science fiction. And why aren't we doing any of these things? Because we prefer to listen to ignorant psychopaths and let them stifle innovation.

How many breakthroughs have we lost because the mind that would invent it has wasted her life on Wall Street or working out a slightly more efficient way to kill people? How many advances in existing technology are unknown because implementing them would hurt some transnational corporation's stock price?

[markiv]

17. as i understood it, as a kid in the 1970s

that i had been born into the pinacle of human progress, that i would not see wonders advance at that pace, and that it was quite normal after such an explosive period of progress that things would consolidate for a while

i understood my generation's role as working to solve the problems that the period of progress had created, in a nutshell, making the new achievements sustainable to the environment. not as exciting, but every bit as important

the consolation for us? we got to enjoy all of those accomplishments that preceeded us, as a way of life - most people in history would have traded places with our seemingly 2nd place role

[Egalitarian Thug]

18. Exactly. I was born in the '60s and you in the '70s and what a difference. You were raised with an

imperative of lowered expectation, while I saw it change.

And BTW, that whole schtick is BS. The century preceding my great-grandmother was just as exciting/innovative as the one she lived through, and before that was The Enlightenment.

[chimpymustgo]

5. K &R! Can we get this out of "conspiracy theory"? People really need to broaden their minds!

Think, read, believe what you see...

[Shivering Jemmy]

6. It's possible that intelligence implies belligerence

Intelligence evolves such that it facilitates manipulation and control of the environment.

The question is, would we simply be part of the environment for an ET? Something to be manipulated or controlled?

This idea that somehow more advanced beings would be somehow more morally advanced than us is hard to understand. Morality is some kind of complex fiction, as far as I can tell. At best it appears to be some kind of species specific survival srategy. Why would intelligence evolve to generalize it to completely alien organisms? How much compassion do we have for viruses?

Frankly, it's not clear to me that intelligent aliens would even be conscious. Much less considerate. For more on this see Peter Watts' Blindsight.

http://www.amazon.com/Blindsight-Peter-Watts/dp/0765319640/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373912576&sr=8-1&keywords=Blindsight

I used to want aliens to make contact. After reading this...not so much.

[Quixote1818]

8. I would think they would at least be curious to explore the beauty of the planet

and look at us and how nature works on Earth. How is our planet different from theirs? How do eco systems work here compared to their planet. They would look at us the way a scientist would.

As for attacking us? It probably depends on the society, some might others would not depending on many factors from how they evolved to what their needs are. Also, if they wanted to stay here it would depend on them conditioning their immune systems and bodies to even survive here. They would be taking samples of all kinds of things to develop immunities etc. Why just attack if you can't stay or can only stay in protective uniforms?

I doubt it they would look at us like we look at a worm, probably more like us looking at an Ape or just someone who really sucks at school.


Also, if humans put everything we had into space travel we might get to that point rather quickly, if it's at all possible to begin with. Maybe a few hundred years.

[hunter]

9. If there are any interstellar civilizations...

... individual beings are reproducible and no larger than particles of dust.

If they even bother with ordinary matter and energy at all. Maybe all that "dark" matter and energy in the universe is intelligent life. We wouldn't know.

The inter-stellar civilizations are probably too busy creating new and innovative universes to pay any attention to our human so-called "intelligence."

Maybe we humans will get our act together, progress, and create a truly intelligent species that will join the teams creating these new universes...

...but probably not. We humans will live a short time and then become extinct like most other species of life on this earth. Best outcome we are happy Bonobos who created a form of life that is actually intelligent. We will be respected by our intellectual descendants. Worst outcome we are gone and forgotten forever, known only as yet another suicidal species that trashed their home planet and died.

[DefenseLawyer]

10. I'm sticking with this guy

[Buns_of_Fire]

14. Unfortunately, he might be top-o-the-list to have his brains sucked out.

Or maybe we'll all just all be swept up in a big net and put in a giant tank, so the patrons of the Human House Intergalactic Restaurant can pick which ones of us they want with drawn butter and two sides of their choice.

[DevonRex]

16. You and god knows who else in that hair.

Or what else, should I say? [URL=http://www.millan.net][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[Lizzie Poppet]

11. Or maybe they find us reasonably interesting, but have a "Prime Directive."

That is, they may have a policy similar to the Federation's in Star Trek: that all care must be taken not to mess with the development of comparatively primitive species and cultures. They may be simply observing us (it's not as if we'd be able to detect what can be reasonably assumed to be a stealth technology equivalent to interstellar travel technology).

Personally, I'm not really betting on there being any such contact/observation. For all that there are likely to be countless life forms in our galaxy alone, even that "local neighborhood" is an incredibly vast place. For a species to advance to the point of having advanced technology can be assumed to be comparatively rare. For one to break (or figure out a way around) the light barrier would be assumed to be even rarer (if it's even possible, which is by no means certain). Lacking FTL travel, I'd say the odds of a species being both close enough to reach us at all with sublight ships AND existing within the same timeframe as us (an eyeblink in the galaxy's version of "geological time&quot would be very long indeed. Even with FTL, it's a stretch. Are they out there? Almost certainly? Will we ever interact? Not remotely certain...

[Buns_of_Fire]

12. So... Humans:Space Aliens::Crawdads:Humans

A giant hand is going to pluck us out of the oxygen and dump us in a giant space-kettle of secret herbs and seasonings until we've absorbed all the juicy goodness, whereupon we'll unceremoniously be dumped on a newspaper-covered table just before the aliens suck our heads. ("You've got to suck the heads, first. That's the best part.&quot

With not even a "take us to your leader."

Dr. Hawking can sure be a killjoy sometimes.

[Chisox08]

13. They probably stopped by and saw the stupidity

coming from the Right Wingers and said that there isn't any intelligent life on the planet and they kept moving.

[DevonRex]

15. "ETs are here and the WH knows it, says actual former Senator" (Mike Gravel)

http://m.now.msn.com/mike-gravel-former-senator-says-ets-have-visited-and-the-white-house-is-covering-it-up

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/power-players-abc-news/former-sen-mike-gravel-says-white-house-suppressing-112957111.html?vp=1

Even as most Americans wonder what planet politicians are from, is it possible that the government is squelching evidence of extraterrestrials visiting Earth? One former presidential hopeful says yes – and that the conspiracy goes all the way to the top.

Former Sen. Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) says the White House has helped keep the truth about the “extraterrestrial influence that is investigating our planet” from the public.

“It goes right to the White House, and of course, once the White House takes a position, ‘well there's nothing going on’...it just goes down the chain of command, everyone stands toe,” Gravel tells Top Line."

http://exopolitics.blogs.com/exopolitics/2013/04/citizen-hearing-intentionally-misleads-former-sen-mike-gravel-on-nature-of-us-relations-with-extrate.html
Former U.S. Sen. Mike Gravel (Dem/Lib AK)

Citizen Hearing intentionally misleads Sen. Mike Gravel on nature of U.S. relations with extraterrestrials

by Alfred Lambremont Webre

VANCOUVER, B.C. - I was on an international panel several years ago with former Sen. Mike Gravel (Dem/Lib AK) on PressTV (presstv.ir). It is unfortunate that such a distinguished public servant will be denied the opportunity to hear first hand eye witness testimony from former U.S. chrononauts who have interacted with the Martian extraterrestrial civilization and are well versed in U.S.-Martian extraterrestrial relations, which remain highly classified. I have now interviewed five whistleblowers, each of whom has visited the U.S. secret facilities on Mars. The organizers of the Citizen Hearing have intentionally, in breach of public trust, acted to prevent any of the former U.S. chrononauts, servicemen, and scientists who served on Mars and have dealt with the Martian extraterrestrial civilization to appear at this hearing, despite our 10-year involvement in its planning.

Sen. Mike Gravel and others will be denied this first hand testimony solely because of the intentional gate-keeping and cover-up by organizers Steve Bassett and others. Instead these former members of Congress will be served up second-hand, old-news UFO/ET research that is over a decade old and that our cadre presented when I was a Disclosure Project witness in the Disclosure Project process in May, 2001.

For detailed information on the U.S.-Mars extraterrestrial relations coverup that is being intentionally committed by the "Citizen Hearing", please consult the following:

Is Upcoming ‘Citizen’s Hearing’ is an ET coverup and disclosure fraud?
by Alfred Lambremont Webre
http://exopolitics.blogs.com/exopolitics/2013/03/earth-and-mars-norwegian-space-centre-presidential-ufoet-expert-witness-omits-reference-to-obamas-mars-et-threat.html

[url=http://www.cosgan.de/smilie.php][img][/img][/url]