What do we do if SETI is successful?

The moot question isn't what will happen after Earth receives and confirms an alien signal.

The question is moot, because any alien species advanced enough to send directed signals across solar systems, can and will reach, overwhelm and subsume Earth with ease, once we Earthlings manage to contact such aliens.

And if such events happened in the past, that might explain a few interesting notions we humans tend to have.

"Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God." ~Shermer's last law

But what if that was their intention from the very beginning? What if Earth itself is just yet another alien farm?

What if Earth's beautiful and bountiful life (flora and fauna) was the result of terraforming, by aliens, but indirectly using spores tacked onto cosmic flying objects (comets, meteors, asteroids) that they knew will cross such solar systems and crash into inhabitable planets on some not so random chance?

Abiogenesis is the emergence of life from nonliving organics. It is the leading theory regarding how life spawned on Earth, but it is being questioned due to recent evidence.

Conditions for Life: For life to exist, certain conditions must be met. These include:

* Presence of Water: Essential for biochemical reactions. * Organic Compounds: Building blocks like carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen are crucial. * Energy Source: Sunlight or geothermal energy can drive life processes.

Evidence and Research: While no definitive evidence of extraterrestrial life has been found, scientists continue to explore environments on other planets, such as Mars and Europa, which may harbor conditions suitable for life. The study of extremophiles on Earth—organisms that thrive in harsh conditions—provides insights into how life might exist elsewhere in the universe

One prominent theory regarding the extraterrestrial origin of life is Panspermia.

The Panspermia Hypothesis suggests that life, or the building blocks of life, may have been transported to Earth via comets, asteroids, or space dust.

There are several forms of panspermia:

* Naturalistic Panspermia: Life evolves on another planet and is ejected into space, eventually landing on Earth.

* Directed Panspermia: Intelligent beings from another planet intentionally send life to Earth.

* Intelligent Design Panspermia: Life is designed and seeded by extraterrestrial intelligences.

I believe Earth life is the result of Natural Panspermia. But if SETI or other observatories detect and confirm alien signal, then Directed Panspermia might be our origin.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a66036689/a-scientist...

I couldn't imagine worshipping aliens even if they were powerful enough to be indistinguishable from gods.

I also think that if such powerful aliens (or actual gods for that matter) were to exist, they wouldn't give a rat's ass about whether we worship them. Because we'd have nothing to offer them. It's like us stepping on ants without thinking about it. Their world is so limited it's meaningless to us. If any gods existed we'd be the same to them.

In any case my intuition will always be to fight hostile authorities, even if its futile. I would never be able to be in the military for example.

The aliens, if they exist, will certainly powerful enough to destroy humanity's paltry defenses (and our satellites will be first to fall during an alien invasion), but you are right, they won't bother negotiating or defeating us, they will simply annihilate humanity (via biological weaponry, perhaps), terraform this beautiful bountiful Earth to suit their needs, and use it as they deem fit.

For all of humanity's much vaunted intelligence, we really haven't bothered to unitedly plan for any threats from space, natural or otherwise.

If advanced alien beings did visit Earth in the past, they could be easily have become worshipped as Gods by the humans of that time.

Earth is such a tiny speck in the vast emptiness of space, that unless galaxy colonising aliens are capable of traveling in spaceships at FTL (faster than light) speeds, it may indeed take them hundreds or thousands or millions of years to pass by Earth again on their next sweep through the Goldilocks planets in their terraforming list in this corner of the Universe.

>I couldn't imagine worshipping aliens even if they were powerful enough to be indistinguishable from gods.

A lot of other people seem to be happy worshipping humans of rather limited intelligence right now.

> The question is moot, because any alien species advanced enough to send directed signals across solar systems, can and will reach, overwhelm and subsume Earth with ease, once we Earthlings manage to contact such aliens.

Not possible if our scientific understanding of c is accurate.

I don't care how many episodes of ST you've binged; warp speed is just fantasy.

They are too far away.

Now, if they left some time ago...

Are you religious?

If yes you are already worshipping and imaginary concept. At least with aliens you would have some kind of connection with reality.

If not the word god is not really a part of the vocabulary.

Is possible, and easy if one accelerates at 1 G for half the trip, then decelerates at 1 G for half the trip. Conventional nuclear fission AND fusion rocket engines, like NERVA, already exist and are flight-certified. 1 light year could be traveled in 2 pilot years.

What is SciFi today may become the reality in the future.

The iconic flip-type TriCorder telecommunicator of Star Trek, became the inspiration of the world's first portable cellular phone (first of which was the DynaTac, quickly followed by MicroTac and StarTac (world's first portable flip phone, and yup, that name is not a coincidence)) by Motorola (more famous iteration later as the iconic Moto Razr). Motorola engineer Martin Cooper said that watching Captain Kirk using his communicator on the television show Star Trek inspired him with a stunning idea -- to develop a handheld mobile phone.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/motorola-startac-rainbow-ce...

Star Trek's teleportation may have been SciFi, but Quantum teleportation has been proven to be doable in reality.

https://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-science/first-demonstrat...

https://www.aol.com/articles/oxford-physicists-achieve-telep...

Iron Man's Arc Reactor is a fusion reactor and pure sci-fi, but the Chinese and Americans are racing to build the first viable fusion reactors. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a64704814/ch...

Did you know that Radar was invented during experiments with radio waves for "Death Ray Gun" weaponry? A death ray is a theoretical particle beam or electromagnetic weapon that gained popularity in science fiction during the 1920s and 1930s after inventors like Nikola Tesla claimed to have developed one. British scientists, asked to evaluate the feasibility of a radio-wave "death ray gun" (supposedly being developed by the Nazis) finally concluded it was impossible, but realized the same principles could be used for aircraft detection.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-41188464

Galileo was jailed (put under house arrest, till he died of ill health) for his "blasphemous" statements concerning Heliocentricity, etc., but ancient Hindus have known and documented (in their Vedic texts) about Multiverse, Observer Effect, Illusory nature of Reality (e.g., modern science confirms that touch is an illusion of reality, we really cannot touch anything: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TDgey6g65X0) , and fundamentals of mathematics and science since thousands of years, many centuries or millennia before such concepts became understood and accepted by Western scientists or theorists.

Human flight was considered an impossible fantasy, until the Wright Brothers made it a reality.

Space flight was unproven until the Soviets made it a reality.

Did you know that scientists estimated the mass of all matter and all energy of this Universe, but they believe it accounts only for 5% of the content of the Universe? The remaining 95% of this Universe is unknown, but scientists believe it to be comprised of anti-matter and anti-energy, which are not yet understood properly by modern science. SciFi concept, this may seem, but that's the prevailing scientific theory.

Now think about this idea.. What if an advanced alien species, were made of anti-matter and using anti-energy? Would their technology obey the laws of physics as our modern science understands? Would they be able to travel across the galaxy faster than we humans deem possible with our limited understanding of how the Universe works?

'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic', according to Arthur C. Clarke's third law.

No I'm not religious at all. I do think it's likely there are powers far greater than us, it's statistically likely. If we're the top that life has to offer it's a pretty sad affair.

But I think it's extremely unlikely they would give a rat's ass about what we do or believe.

I know. I need more hands than I have for a facepalm that's big enough.

> Earth is such a tiny speck in the vast emptiness of space, that unless galaxy colonising aliens are capable of traveling in spaceships at FTL (faster than light) speeds, it may indeed take them hundreds or thousands or millions of years to pass by Earth again on their next sweep through the Goldilocks planets in their terraforming list in this corner of the Universe.

This is why it makes sense that we haven't planned for that too occur.

And really, if they do have FTL capability it's very unlikely we would have any tech that would be of any danger to them anyway.

It makes for nice SciFi B-movies but I don't think it's a realistic scenario.

If by "powers" you mean "civilizations" then yes, it is likely that there are many. Whether they share anything with us (not only technology) is a matter for debate.

If you mean "we are in a simulation" then maybe :) I like to think we are the end-of-semester program in a high school.

And for the last one I do not know, I would prefer everyone to leave us alone.

Just because something was unpredictable in the past does not in any way make it certain in the future.

The "invention of tricorders" is far, far, far less impressive than breaking the known laws of the universe, after more than a century of literally trying to prove them wrong with experiments.

That's near-c travel, not warp speed.

Very different.