Problems with sci-fi world exploration

[johnson1010]

There are a slew of things on this planet that we are just not equiped to eat. And that is with our co-evolution with those same things. We and our ancestors have lived in close proximity, have the same base genetics and plenty of time to find ways to exploit what's there.

We can't subsist on wood, shells, and there is plenty of organic material which is just poisonous.

Why is it we always assume that aliens, when they get here, will try to eat us?

They probably wouldn't even be able to metabolize our flesh, and the same is probably true in reverse.

Star trek episodes where people get to new planets populated by convenient bushes full of "roeddenberries" seem to miss the mark in my estimation.

Any lifeform that developes on a different planet with altogether different evolutionary history will probably diverge from our own systems to such a degree that their flesh, or "fruit" would be useless to us.

Don't you think?

We'll have to bring our fruits and veggies with us, because even on a planet burgeoning with life, i bet the pickings will be quite slim.

[maria22]

please post a new mess i have writed to you.johnson1010

[GreggMattson]

Much of the life on this planet is tasty and I suffer no ill effects.

[johnson1010]

please post a new mess i have writed to you.johnson1010

um...

can you rephrase the question?

[Dexter]

Interesting point. In fact, maybe aliens would simply have no interest in anything about our planet whatsoever.

I was thinking about the movie "Independence Day," for example. Not a very good movie, but somewhat entertaining. The aliens wanted to use our natural resources, and then move on. What the heck would they need any of our resources for?

[johnson1010]

There is nothing particularly interesting about our planet in this solar system, other than the existence of complex life.

Other planets have minerals of all types in abundance and any civilization which has mastered inter-stellar flight must have the competence to create whatever molecules they need from whatever material is at hand.

It should be no difficult task for such aliens to turn a lump of iron into hydrogen, then build oxygen with nuclear reactions and manipulations to create all the fresh water they could need (if they need water), and even if they didn't have that technology, they could certainly intercept any comet they want and harvest billions of tons of ice water from that without the inconvenience of having to "kill all humans" to get to it..

So there's no real compelling reason to pick earth as a source for elemental ingredients. We only see it as the best source of minerals because we can't effectively get anywhere else to find that material.

The first gold-strike on mars will revolutionize the space industry like nothing else ever has.

Yeah, i only see them wanting to come to earth if they are interested in the life here. And that should be in a purely scientific way.

I don't think we would be worth eating, because of what i wrote above. It would be easier to harvest minerals from a planet without entrenched interest. Even if it is as easy as swatting flies to them to kill us, wouldn't you rather pick berries in a fly-free zone?

So that seems to leave curiosity. Lets hope they would be empathetic, as well as curious.

[wokattack]

- "Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." - Calvin and Hobbes.

[DWill]

A relief to know that the old "Twilight Zone" episode shouldn't worry us. The aliens arrived with a book titled "How to Serve Man," which initially sounded great--but then it proved to be a cookbook.

[GreggMattson]

Quote from 3/5/2011 Journal of Cosmology in reference to discoveries by Richard Hoover, PHD
"According to Dr. Chandra Wickramasinghe Director of the Astrobiology Centre at Cardiff University, "We believe Dr. Hoover's evidence, coupled with other findings and recent genetic studies, indicates life has a genetic ancestry which leads over 10 billion years back in time. Some of these life forms were delivered to Earth, in comets."

Unless aliens get stuck here, all other things considered, Earthlings are hardly worth the visit, particularly to satisfy a compulsion for fine dining. However, consider the potential that all life in the Universe (or at least in this galaxy, which covers a substantial amount of territory for alien visitors) could be related. Should the announcement of cyanobacteria found in CI1 Carbonaceous meteorites prove true, we could all have common beginnings, assuring a better chance of our finding delectable feasting on other worlds during our own interstellar travels.

So let’s examine Sci-fi world exploration in that light. As we all know, the odds of finding a planet that provides Earth-like conditions are extremely remote. Judging by Non-Fiction efforts to find Earth-like planets, even with the Warp drives of our imagination, skipping from inhabitable world to inhabitable world would be a very long, tedious and boring effort.

That, more than the type of life that inhabits an Earth-like world, is a more serious limitation for aliens finding us, or us finding food on another planet.

[Randall R. Young]

The first gold-strike on mars will revolutionize the space industry like nothing else ever has.

Uhh...

Current estimates to return a payload from Mars are around $500,000 per pound. Being that gold only costs $24,000 a pound, I can't see much of a market for gold that costs 20 times as much in "shipping fees" alone! (Not to mention, first, you're going to have to set up shop there, and mine it under some pretty arduous circumstances. I imagine all that mining gear is going to represent a significant amortization problem.)