If ET Calls, Who Speaks For Humanity? 371
EagleHasLanded writes "Who speaks for humankind if ET calls on us? Paul Davies, chairman of the SETI Post-Detection Taskgroup, is a likely ambassador. But Allen Tough founded the Invitation to ETI Web site, which encourages ET to make contact via email (and also strongly discourages humans from impersonating ET). But an individual in the UK got over some of the hurdles designed to weed out hoaxers, before finally throwing in the towel."
Re:what I'd like to know is... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:obviously (Score:1, Informative)
wouldn't you smile before a good firm handshake and slap on the back.
The creature bared its teeth at me, grabbed me, and then struck me. There can be no doubt: we are at war with them.
Re:I vote for.... (Score:4, Informative)
Morgan Freeman.
There are only two main reasons anyone would bother to contact us: curiosity, or as a prelude to invasion. Given the not inconsiderable chances of the second (if you can communicate FTL, you can probably travel that way too...) I think Gordon Freeman would be a better choice.
Re:Just in case... (Score:3, Informative)
It's a load of bunk. (Biggest bit: A knife fight today is the same as a knife fight 10,000 years ago. Technology advances, but only to physical limits. Oh, and not only does nobody remember the Indians that Columbus met, but most Native peoples don't date themselves as "Post-Columbian" and "Pre-Columbian.")
Um... No.
In fact if an Native American met a crusader knight wearing chainmail, he's have a hard time killing him with a knife.
Actually, during Columbus's time, they still wore plate armor much of the time so that might be more problematic for the native american wielding the knife.
Anways after the gun became more eligible due to advances in muzzle velocity in the 1700's, they dropped the body armor and used guns. By the 1860's the bayonet was rendered mostly useless by rifling and trenches except for the most suicidal charges and by 1914 the majority of casualties were done by machine gun and artillery fire.
Though the native american would have a hard time stabbing a US soldier these days unless he aimed for the face but chances are that he's going to be stabbed or shot first.
Which leads me to my next point... Which I whole heartily agree with... That anyone sufficient to travel more than a light year has quite a bit of technology behind them.
You might be able to stab the alien but chances are they will have nano-technology to instantly heal the wound, but chances are they are using a remote drone anyways so if you did happen to kill the alien it would not really be the alien.
And if the Aliens did exist and wanted to kill us, they could do lots of things that we could not stop:
1. Drop a rock from orbit
2. emp the entire planet burning off the ozone and let us fry to death
3. drop self replicating nano-technology that simply eats us
4. send in wave after way of robot drones just for the fun of it
Hopefully, if there are Aliens they won't simply view us as insects as something to burn off but rather treat us like sentient beings and share their technology with us or just leave us alone like a nature reserve.
Beyond that... There is nothing we can really do.
Otherwise...
Re:Just in case... (Score:3, Informative)
DNA forming by accident is already a longshot as it is
As far as I am aware, the formation of organic life has been generally considered extremely likely since, like, the fifties [wikipedia.org]. It's even been shown that organic molecules are relatively common in deep space [space.com].