How would the world change if we found extraterrestrial life?

http://phys.org/news/2015-01-world-extraterrestrial-life.html

by lelf • 11 years ago

47 52 11 years ago

The world wouldn't change. The people might change their behaviors. It's a strange perspective that thinks the sociological sphere is the "world".

SerpentJoe• 11 years ago

What is the world?

NoMoreNicksLeft3• 11 years ago

In archaic usages, it's the universe itself.

In modern usage, the planet as a whole.

ctdonath2• 11 years ago

It's hard to have a conversation when common terms are deliberately misconstrued. Obviously & colloquially, when someone says "how would the world change if humans were given information X" we're discussing social human behavior, not (say) natural geologic change.

rbrogan• 11 years ago

That is not obvious (no offense). When I think of "the world", I also think about things beyond "social human behavior". For instance, you could ask how contact with alien life could affect how we use this planet Earth (e.g. usage of natural resources, pollution, etc.). Conceivably, it could also change how we think about (non-human) life on this planet. One can talk about "the world" and talk about humans without necessarily being anthropocentric.

mc32• 11 years ago

That might depend a lot on the kind of life found. Microorganisms vs intelligent beings capable of interstellar communication. On the other hand this would not change most people's religious perspectives where such have any opinion on life outside Earth this knowledge would simply be co-opted.

Science, on the other hand would receive a pretty good boost in funds I imagine.

uptown• 11 years ago

"Science, on the other hand would receive a pretty good boost in funds I imagine."

I bet science would find themselves in a struggle for dollars with defense spending, and would lose that fight.

scardine• 11 years ago

Defense funded a lot of science over history.

rokhayakebe2• 11 years ago

Microorganisms vs intelligent beings capable of interstellar communication

Is it improbable for microorganisms to have such ability?

Eleutheria• 11 years ago

On the other hand this would not change most people's religious perspectives

I wonder how martians would celebrate Christmas.

Grazester• 11 years ago

If they are anything like humans but more developed I dont see our world changing for the better. Conquistadors anyone?

ctdonath2• 11 years ago

If they are anything beyond basic microbes, we may very well find our notion of the nature of "life" challenged, especially if they're something construed as "intelligent". Imagine, say, discovering jellyfish for the first time...now consider finding intelligent jellyfish. Cognitive dissonance follows.

colanderman2• 11 years ago

Agreed. We barely know how to communicate with the intelligent species on our own planet except those most closely related to us (the great apes); let alone those more distantly related (dolphins, crows). Imagine the extraterrestrial intelligence were a colony of slime-mold like creatures with a far slower metabolism than ours. I don't think humanity could even begin to interface with them, despite sharing traits with beings that are known to us.

Agustus• 11 years ago

What kind of life is it:

1. Intelligent life that had simply sent out colonizing platforms with technology similar to ours would mean that we would integrate them (assuming they just cyrogenically froze individuals and sent out thousands of seed ships):

a. Are the seeders capable of transmitting back, if so, is the home planet alive, how long until transmission reaches them, how long until the home planet can send out another seeder ship/support ship? Can we stop them from overpopulating the Earth? Should we stop them? b. Are the seeders virus ridden? Are we dangerous to them, War of the Worlds style? c. Are the seeders the only ones in the galaxy? Or are there warring factions? Are we aligning ourselves to the correct side?

2. Intelligent life superior in technological capabilities would:

a. Star Trek: Benevolent overseer

b. Battleship Earth: Enslaver

c. Independence Day: Eradicator of humans

Would we be able to do anything about it, we may be in a situation that Carl Sagan foresaw that we may have the technology, but not the materials to reach a location should a signal reach us saying: "Hey, we can solve all of your problems if you can get a ship to alpha centauri within the next 8 years with two double a batteries. If you do not reach here in 8 years, we will be eradicated by Sunorian Plague."

civilian• 11 years ago

Blindsight by Peter Watts (http://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm) talks about the possible alien options, and I really enjoy it's answer.

---

Once there were three tribes. The Optimists, whose patron saints were Drake and Sagan, believed in a universe crawling with gentle intelligence—spiritual brethren vaster and more enlightened than we, a great galactic siblinghood into whose ranks we would someday ascend. Surely, said the Optimists, space travel implies enlightenment, for it requires the control of great destructive energies. Any race which can't rise above its own brutal instincts will wipe itself out long before it learns to bridge the interstellar gulf.

Across from the Optimists sat the Pessimists, who genuflected before graven images of Saint Fermi and a host of lesser lightweights. The Pessimists envisioned a lonely universe full of dead rocks and prokaryotic slime. The odds are just too low, they insisted. Too many rogues, too much radiation, too much eccentricity in too many orbits. It is a surpassing miracle that even one Earth exists; to hope for many is to abandon reason and embrace religious mania. After all, the universe is fourteen billion years old: if the galaxy were alive with intelligence, wouldn't it be here by now?

Equidistant to the other two tribes sat the Historians. They didn't have too many thoughts on the probable prevalence of intelligent, spacefaring extraterrestrials— but if there are any, they said, they're not just going to be smart. They're going to be mean.

It might seem almost too obvious a conclusion. What is Human history, if not an ongoing succession of greater technologies grinding lesser ones beneath their boots? But the subject wasn't merely Human history, or the unfair advantage that tools gave to any given side; the oppressed snatch up advanced weaponry as readily as the oppressor, given half a chance. No, the real issue was how those tools got there in the first place. The real issue was what tools are for.

To the Historians, tools existed for only one reason: to force the universe into unnatural shapes. They treated nature as an enemy, they were by definition a rebellion against the way things were. Technology is a stunted thing in benign environments, it never thrived in any culture gripped by belief in natural harmony. Why invent fusion reactors if your climate is comfortable, if your food is abundant? Why build fortresses if you have no enemies? Why force change upon a world which poses no threat?

Human civilization had a lot of branches, not so long ago. Even into the twenty-first century, a few isolated tribes had barely developed stone tools. Some settled down with agriculture. Others weren't content until they had ended nature itself, still others until they'd built cities in space.

We all rested eventually, though. Each new technology trampled lesser ones, climbed to some complacent asymptote, and stopped—until my own mother packed herself away like a larva in honeycomb, softened by machinery, robbed of incentive by her own contentment. But history never said that everyone had to stop where we did. It only suggested that those who had stopped no longer struggled for existence. There could be other, more hellish worlds where the best Human technology would crumble, where the environment was still the enemy, where the only survivors were those who fought back with sharper tools and stronger empires. The threats contained in those environments would not be simple ones. Harsh weather and natural disasters either kill you or they don't, and once conquered—or adapted to— they lose their relevance. No, the only environmental factors that continued to matter were those that fought back, that countered new strategies with newer ones, that forced their enemies to scale ever-greater heights just to stay alive. Ultimately, the only enemy that mattered was an intelligent one.

And if the best toys do end up in the hands of those who've never forgotten that life itself is an act of war against intelligent opponents, what does that say about a race whose machines travel between the stars?

The argument was straightforward enough. It might even have been enough to carry the Historians to victory—if such debates were ever settled on the basic of logic, and if a bored population hadn't already awarded the game to Fermi on points. But the Historian paradigm was just too ugly, too Darwinian, for most people, and besides, no one really cared any more. Not even the Cassidy Survey's late-breaking discoveries changed much. So what if some dirtball at Ursae Majoris Eridani had an oxygen atmosphere? It was forty-three lightyears away, and it wasn't talking; and if you wanted flying chandeliers and alien messiahs, you could build them to order in Heaven. If you wanted testosterone and target practice you could choose an afterlife chock-full of nasty alien monsters with really bad aim. If the mere thought of an alien intelligence threatened your worldview, you could explore a virtual galaxy of empty real estate, ripe and waiting for any God-fearing earthly pilgrims who chanced by.

MarkPNeyer• 11 years ago

the past isn't all meanness. you win more with friends you trust than with slaves fighting for you.

even the greediest king needs to feed his soldiers. doing that is a lot easier when your kingdom is prosperous because your people have property rights and solid contracts.

the allies won the second world war because the nazis and the japanese killed or ostracized all of their weirdos. we just kept ours busy cracking their codes.

military conflict is only one aspect of history - and i'd say the bonds formed between soldiers matter more than the violence they inflict on each other.

technology matters - sure. but you need to account for the technology of trust.

a society that is strongly trusting of its internal members because they all have historical records of statements they've made about each other and their relationships, with measured accuracy and self-contradiction frequency - that civilization will be more supportive of its members and quicker to defeat its enemies. see https://github.com/neyer/dewDrop for more on that one.

look at game of thrones, and how powerful the stark family remains, even after they are all killed. they are loved, and that's a power that the lannisters totally underestimate, to their failure. even after Ned stark is gone, the love his supporters bore him causes them to stick together, while the tyrells and the lannisters squabble like a bunch of children. Coordinating group effort is really fucking hard. Love, trust, and friendship are way more cost effective than greed and selfishness.

love doesn't always win. it doesn't have to. it can wait patiently for greed to chase its tail into a corner and starve itself to death. if love does that, someone who loves it will come by and put it right.

look at how many corporations push for diversity - not because they care, but because even a sociopath sees the value in _being seen as_ honest and caring and good. once that becomes extremely difficult to fake, i'm sure it'll affect the entire culture.

guard-of-terra• 11 years ago

Obviously it will be the most important scientific event to date.

binarymax• 11 years ago

"How will the world change when we find extraterrestrial life?"

Spooky232• 11 years ago

I think it would create a lot of chaos.

Fundamentalist religious types would have a problem with it. Many wouldn't believe it.

hyperbovine• 11 years ago

Not sure why the downvotes, this is spot in. If you thought global warming was easy to deny...

spacehome• 11 years ago

Please. Fundamentalists would adapt their interpretation of their scripture to it like they have to every discovery and move on without skipping a beat. Their doctrine is unfalsifiable.

dragonwriter• 11 years ago

Fundamentalists would adapt their interpretation of their scripture to it like they have to every discovery and move on without skipping a beat.

Many fundamentalists haven't adapted their interpretation of their scripture to account for the discovery that the Earth is over ~6,000 years old, or the discovery of biological evolution, so I'm not sure what "adapt their interpretation of their scripture to it like they have to every discovery" is supposed to mean.

Spooky232• 11 years ago

Yet in France a few weeks ago, some fanatics went on a killing spree over a slight to their beliefs in an editorial cartoon.

Or in Uganda a couple of years ago, an extremist Christian offshoot movement conducted all manner of atrocities in the name of their religion.

Middle class existence has moderated most mainstream religion. That doesn't mean that craziness is gone.

prawn• 11 years ago

So, status quo then?

ars3• 11 years ago

And what about the Alien Fundamentalists?

There is this assumption that Aliens would be atheist, but that's actually pretty unlikely considering religion is one of the human universals.

krapp2• 11 years ago

There's no reason to believe it likely that religion is a constant elsewhere, though, since humanity is the only data point we have. Both assumptions are just projections of human bias, without any basis in fact.

jkmcf• 11 years ago

Not sure about the rest of the world, but a third of America would argue against the science until it eradicated them.

puranjay• 11 years ago

If we found microbes and nothing more, the larger public would be underwhelmed. We've been trained to think 'alien = adorable/murderous creatures'.

The scientific establishment would be excited, of course, but I fail to see how that excitement would percolate down to the average Joe.

What's more interesting is the long-term impact on human society. We will see a gradual shift from human-centric narratives to more universal narratives

netik• 11 years ago

I think one of the best examples of this can be found in Sagan's book, Contact. The battle between the scientists, government, and religious fanatics is played out pretty well (even more exaggerated in the movie.)

But currently, It seems the current position on our finding prior evidence of microbial life has been met by much of the planet with a resounding "Meh."

TheOtherHobbes• 11 years ago

For some reason most of the newsies missed this story a few weeks ago - there's now good circumstantial evidence for ancient microbial life on Mars:

http://phys.org/news/2015-01-potential-ancient-life-mars-rov...

FLUX-YOU• 11 years ago

The news would go nuts. It'll be all anyone talks about on social media and internet forums. Every comedian will have an alien joke. Books, movies, and games will be written about them. Talking about the aliens will carry the same sophistication as talking about the weather. Conspiracy theorists and the paranoid-delusional will confirm their worst fears and blame the government. The government will roll out a Department of Extraterrestrial Security and enforce more airport screenings. A lot of people would buy telescopes. Benedict Cumberbatch will act as one. Potheads will make first contact according to themselves. The stock market will go up (but I can't tell you why -- that's insider trading). People will do cosplay of them. People will draw porn with them. Xkcd will do a What-if and a comic or three. Python will add 'import aliens'. Silicon Valley will spawn at least 4 new startups related to speculative data machine learning about their browsing habits once we show them our internet. Colbert will do a special about being abducted and he never really wanted to leave anyway. John Stewart will claim that Fox News were aliens all along and this is the second wave. Fox News will find a way to blame Obama and John Boehner will finally shed his ninth skin.

But that's just my take on it.

Fluid_Mechanics2• 11 years ago

ere

gyardley2• 11 years ago

That depends on the type of extraterrestrial life discovered.

There's a huge difference between us finding extraterrestrial life within our solar system (microbes on Mars, for example) and extraterrestrial life from outside the solar system finding us. The latter resolves the Fermi Paradox while the former heightens it.

Personally, I'd be really unsettled if scientists found evidence of microbial life on Mars. If life is so common that it can evolve independently twice in the same solar system, the 'Earth is a very rare and special thing' hypothesis is unlikely and there should have been many, many civilizations capable of interstellar travel - and the fact that we haven't encountered any would indicate something deeply weird is going on, most likely extinction events that keep societies like ours from ever reaching other stars.

Hell, it's already weird and disturbing that we're discovering so many exoplanets - including earth-sized exoplanets, including exoplanets in the liquid-water belt. Given the continued absence of alien life, that really shouldn't be happening.

pmahoney• 11 years ago

There was an article in American Scientist a few years back about just how big space is, and how even if there are many intelligent species, they'll just never communicate due to the distances involved (barring exotic new physics). It was a bit sobering.

I believe it was this article: http://www.americanscientist.org/my_amsci/restricted.aspx?ac...

gyardley2• 11 years ago

Hey, thanks for the pointer to the article. Unrestricted copy seems to be here:

http://physics.ucf.edu/~britt/AST2002/R12-Smith-Alone%20in%2...

TheCondor• 11 years ago

I think it's unlikely we will find any life on Mars, only the most optimistic folks hold any hope and there is nothing that even suggests it.

Whether or not interstellar travel is possible is an interesting question. We are talking about tremendous amounts of energy, time, and incredibly reliable devices. It may simply not be practical or possible. What seems must likely to me is we will sniff out pollution in an exoplanet atmosphere and then there will be lots of discussions and debates about whether or not it could naturally happen.

Lack of any radio communication sure is a puzzle though

skuhn• 11 years ago

The existence of extinction events seem pretty likely to me, but I also think bad timing can explain a lot.

Humanity has had an extremely small window of time in which it could observe non-visual signals from outer space. Radio waves were only discovered in the 1800's. Likewise, it's only after we started broadcasting ourselves that another civilization is likely to be able to detect our existence.

We can detect a broad range of signals (but maybe not everything), but the signal types we know about are still bound by the speed of light. Maybe there's a civilization broadcasting towards us right now today, but we won't find out for another 3,000 years. Maybe our signals will reach someone in 10,000 years, and humanity will be extinct.

gojomo• 11 years ago

Personally I think there are plenty of hints (going back to Viking lander experiments) that there is simple life on Mars. However, there's a cultural reluctance to consense on its existence, unless absolutely positively certain. Fears like yours, about what Martian life could imply about the uniqueness and longevity of our species, are part of the reason for the reluctance.

Note that if life is confirmed on Mars, it needn't have independently evolved. Simple life might be more common, even dormant in interplanetary space, than generally believed – seeding both Earth and Mars from earlier sources. (This is the theory of "panspermia".) Or, the same collision processes that brought the Martian-meteor with maybe-fossils to Earth, could have carried live spores between the planets – so a single microbial-evolution inside our solar system could reach multiple planets.

Of course then your Fermi fears still apply. ("If microbial life is so common, why are broadcasting/traveling civilizations rare?") But it would mean the 'great filter' applies after, not before, microbial life.

Fluid_Mechanics2• 11 years ago

Microscopic: Endless talk-show rhetoric about whether or not we introduced the life-form to the other planet.

Macroscopic - cannot communicate: NASA is perpetrating a silly hoax to appease the homosexual atheist liberals.

Macroscopic - can communicate, less advanced: Divine force seeded life among the stars. Proselytizing the aliens put on collective bucket-list.

Macroscopic - can communicate, more advanced: Prepare for an invasion, nuke all non-human scum, repent or die, etc.

Business as usual.

rokhayakebe2• 11 years ago

Question:

Is it probable that there may be beings terrestrial or extraterrestrial that we may simply not be able to perceive through our senses?

How would the world change if we found extraterrestrial life?

Related Stories