http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7107207.ece From The Sunday Times April 25, 2010 Don’t talk to aliens, warns Stephen Hawking Stephen Hawking in front of sun with coronal mass ejections. Hawking has depicted what kinds of alien could be out there Jonathan Leake THE aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact. The suggestions come in a new documentary series in which Hawking, one of the world’s leading scientists, will set out his latest thinking on some of the universe’s greatest mysteries. Alien life, he will suggest, is almost certain to exist in many other parts of the universe: not just in planets, but perhaps in the centre of stars or even floating in interplanetary space. Hawking’s logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved. “To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational,” he said. “The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.” The answer, he suggests, is that most of it will be the equivalent of microbes or simple animals — the sort of life that has dominated Earth for most of its history. One scene in his documentary for the Discovery Channel shows herds of two-legged herbivores browsing on an alien cliff-face where they are picked off by flying, yellow lizard-like predators. Another shows glowing fluorescent aquatic animals forming vast shoals in the oceans thought to underlie the thick ice coating Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter. Such scenes are speculative, but Hawking uses them to lead on to a serious point: that a few life forms could be intelligent and pose a threat. Hawking believes that contact with such a species could be devastating for humanity. He suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.” He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.” The completion of the documentary marks a triumph for Hawking, now 68, who is paralysed by motor neurone disease and has very limited powers of communication. The project took him and his producers three years, during which he insisted on rewriting large chunks of the script and checking the filming. John Smithson, executive producer for Discovery, said: “He wanted to make a programme that was entertaining for a general audience as well as scientific and that’s a tough job, given the complexity of the ideas involved.” Hawking has suggested the possibility of alien life before but his views have been clarified by a series of scientific breakthroughs, such as the discovery, since 1995, of more than 450 planets orbiting distant stars, showing that planets are a common phenomenon. So far, all the new planets found have been far larger than Earth, but only because the telescopes used to detect them are not sensitive enough to detect Earth-sized bodies at such distances. Another breakthrough is the discovery that life on Earth has proven able to colonise its most extreme environments. If life can survive and evolve there, scientists reason, then perhaps nowhere is out of bounds. Hawking’s belief in aliens places him in good scientific company. In his recent Wonders of the Solar System BBC series, Professor Brian Cox backed the idea, too, suggesting Mars, Europa and Titan, a moon of Saturn, as likely places to look. Similarly, Lord Rees, the astronomer royal, warned in a lecture earlier this year that aliens might prove to be beyond human understanding. “I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms we can’t conceive,” he said. “Just as a chimpanzee can’t understand quantum theory, it could be there are aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains.” --------------- Haven't seen this posted. I kind of agree with this view, as we are not advanced enough to make contact.
I had an Astronomy Professor who claimed to be an Alien. He also told us that he would bet any amount of money that if they ever drilled a hole into Europa, they would find all kinds of underwater life.
I gotta say his theories here are not particularly mind-bending or even new, at least as disclosed by the article. Would this be worth anyone's time if it didn't have the name Hawking attached to it?
It sounds like Hawking has been watching "V". I don't know why it is more likely that advanced aliens are going to be marauders out looking for resources to pillage than just friendly explorers or even benevolent aliens like in '2001'. It seems to me given the amount of knowledge it will take to master insterstellar travel that an advanced species would figure out how to get resources through other means than having to rely upon pillaging a planet with a sentient species. Also given the unlikelyhood that our Earth biochemistry will be similar to theirs that our biosphere would be worth plundering. It seems to me that we might be mutually toxic to each other. Also before I forget. "That's no Moon.."
Moes- Was that professor serious? Thats pretty crazy. I would agree with him on Europa though. I feel like its only a matter of time until we find it. I also have hope that Titan has some life. Mars is interesting and the more we learn, the more likely it seems life could still be there. I think 50 years from now we will find that life is more common than we ever could have imagined. Will we find intelligent life by that point? I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me. Just think of the impact to the people here it would have if we found life somewhere other than Earth. It is an exciting time to be alive.
What exactly would aliens want from our planet anyways in terms of resources.. wood, oil, coal.. ??? We also have a defense against resource scavengers.. if it seems like they are going to wipe us out.. then we launch all our nuclear weapons and make the earth barren for a thousand years. if we can't have the earth, no one will..
I think he was more senile / past the point of caring than anything. He was an old guy teaching at a local CC, so I doubt he cared too much about getting fired, was probably just trying to amuse himself / stir up some interest in his field. He was cool though, the tests were easy, for the review he just read us the answers to the exam... ahhh Community College days, how I miss thee.
how many astrophysicists with phds are there? i thought i read once that it was only a couple of hundred total, or am i wrong?
It so sad that a great mind like Stephen Hawking is paralysed. I for one is partially with him believing there are hostile alien race(s) out there. You can laugh all you want about all the science fiction movies or novels you have read. But it could be a realm of possibility for us to run into an species that don't have a moral conscience. About them conquering us isn't my concern. I don't think they will have a mass space migration. My main concern would be a contact with an alien specie and a virus that cannot be contained.
