Aliens? Here?

Original Post August 2008

A comment I had in reply to “wildminx’s” reply to one of Vikki’s vacation pictures, set my wheels in motion, and for those who know me, would understand that once my wheel starts rolling it’s like mass rolling downhill a ramp picking up speed.

So I thought to write it down and share it with you.

My response:

Hmmmm interesting Minxie - rubs chin and ponders for a moment. Have you seen War of the Worlds? This kind of reminds me of those tall Aliens walking with those looong steely legs, dressed in steely clothing. OK OK I got to stop watching *those* kind of movies, or have stronger coffee on Saturday mornings lol

I have to confess I’m not a sci-fi fan, but on occasion I do watch a sci-fi movie if it got a good review. Sadly in most cases I have a tendency to analyse it and find the faults of what would logically be incorrect as far as physics is concerned and before the movie has ended I’d fall asleep. But I have always trusted that the hero of our sci-fi movie saved the world because obviously we’re all still here.

The debate of whether Aliens had been visiting us or not is not a new one. From Roswell to Crop Circles to Cave drawings that resembled men in space suits, to the Mayan and Incas’ land drawings, to being abducted and UFO sightings.

Either Aliens exist or they don’t, either way it is frightening. For any UFO to get here it would have to travel across space from another part of the Universe light years away. Not so much where they would have come from but rather how did they get here? The universe is about 14billion years old, it holds billions and billions of stars, far more stars than grains of sand on all the beaches here on earth. These stars have planets orbiting around them, there are plenty of places from which E.T. could originate. Problem is that space is a vast area, so vast in fact that distances are measured in light years rather than miles. One light year is a distance of nearly 6 trillion miles, that’s the distance travelled in one year by a beam of light, moving slightly in excess something like 186,000 miles per second. Light from our sun reaches Earth in about 8 minutes and it takes about 10 ½ years to travel to the nearest known planet outside of our Solar System.

Any Alien planning to visit us from this planet faces a round trip of over one hundred and twenty trillion miles. The only way to shorten the duration of this journey is to go faster than the fastest thing we know in this Universe, “Light itself”. Ahhhh but there is a cop on the block that says, no you can’t do that!

In 1905 Einstein laid out the rules of General Relativity and in that theory you can’t go faster than the speed of light. However in 1916 Einstein created an even more powerful theory, the Special Theory of Relativity. It opens up the possibility instead of beating the law of physics the answer might be to get around them. Theoretical Physicists believe that this holds the key to light/speed barrier. Space/time is a fabric, a fabric that can be stretched and compressed and perhaps be ripped. That might give you the possibility to break the light barrier. If you have a sheet of paper then a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, however there is a loophole, if you were to fold the sheet of paper then you realize that the shortest distance between two points is actually a wormhole. It’s a shortcut first described more than 150 years ago. Problem is although scientists can create a wormhole in a laboratory, we haven’t been successful in creating an actual wormhole. Wormholes may be the ideal transportation network but manipulating the laws of physics could bring catastrophic consequences. You don’t know how stable they are, it may be quite radioactive, there may be quantum corrections and radiations as you enter the wormhole or perhaps it’ll close up before you even have the chance to enter. It may be possible to artificially create a wormhole but it would take enormous energy and advances in technology way beyond our imagination. Maybe there is an Alien nation so advanced that they can build these super galactic highways with ease. Or the intelligent Alien with millions of years of technological savvy ahead of us could possibly have another method of transport – what is called “the warp drive” no, not science fiction but actual physics.

Asking the logical questions.

Now, if Aliens could come here either by wormhole, warped speed or some other method we are yet not even aware of, the question would rise – “WHY”? Why would they want to come to this primitive planet?

How would we communicate? – We watch movies and “ass-ume” they speak English, or at least they grunt incoherently but understand everything we say. Well no! Would we be able to understand them? Absolutely not! We don’t even understand the varied species that evolved right here on Earth and in some cases we can’t seem to communicate even with our own species.

But, even if Aliens would want to come here and have devised a way to communicate with us, they would still be facing potential disaster to set foot on our Planet.

The oxygen in our atmosphere, the very thing that keeps us alive may prove to be deadly poisonous to our Alien visitors. We take for granted that life needs oxygen, we, all the animals and plants need oxygen, but we have developed very special machinery and enzymes, that detoxify oxygen. Oxygen is intricately poisonous. In an extreme case their chemistry might be completely different with different gases. Such as we have right here in our own Planet called extremophiles. Living happily in extreme conditions, either in sulphuric gases, sulphuric acid (as an example) or in places where there is no oxygen at all. Oxygen would surely kill them.

The strength of our sun could pose another problem to our visiting Aliens. The energy from its rays supports life on Earth but it can be dangerous. Too much sun can blind humans, burn us, or even cause cancer. For a creature from another planet, our sun’s rays could be deadly.

And then there is the Earth’s invisible hazard for the Aliens. Gravity! A visitor from another planet might find Earth’s gravity a challenge, we humans have grown up with it and it doesn’t bother us, the human body is designed for 1G. If we would subject our own body to extreme gravity the consequences could be disastrous. Fighter pilots making extreme turns can experience forces as high as 9G’s that means a 160 lb pilot feels as if he weighs over 1500 lbs. Anything above 9G’s the pressure becomes too great and the pilot blacks out. Aliens from another planet with less gravity would probably experience a similar effect.

Looking at bacteria (love those little creatures) There are over ten million kinds of bacteria using totally different principles to the vast majority of life on Earth. Once you look at bacteria you begin to understand just how strange chemistry can be. How these organisms can be really so “alien” – smiles.

A far less predictable danger facing a visiting Alien would be “Germs” Just like in the sci-fi movie of H.D. Well’s “War of the Worlds” simple bacteria might be deadly to visiting Aliens. A bacteria from one planet could have serious consequences for organisms on another planet. History has shown that there is a good reason for visitors from one planet to another to be cautious and for us to be cautious about them. When the Spanish invaded the Americas they brought a far more deadly weapon than their guns and swords, they brought smallpox, the flu and other illnesses. When those barriers were reduced and life spread between the new world and the old world there were a lot of deaths as a result of that.

If a super intelligent Alien Civilization has the capacity to come here, we could be nothing more than feed for their pets.

There is no law of physics preventing an Alien civilization, perhaps a million years more advanced than ours from reaching the planet Earth. Question however remains, why would they want to?

Puts out freshly brewed coffee for all.