The aliens are coming!

Iain said:

In some ways it is like asking what is north of the North Pole

I'd be tempted to look up. Maybe that would be the equivalent of the imaginary dimension in an Argand diagram.

Thanks for that, you are right it really does mess with your head. It’ll never cease to cause me curiosity and amazement, these types of infinite questions are like a real itch for me that I can never scratch and move on from, always wanting to try work out how and why. 

Autismman said:

How did this pinhead come into existence if nothing existed before it?

At the point of the big bang there was no time, so there was no "before".  It is a hard concept to grasp as we tend to think or time as a constant but in reality it is a consequence of the big bang itself.

In some ways it is like asking what is north of the North Pole - it actually has no tangible meaning.

It can really mess with your head until you start to realise that dimensions (of which time is but one or potentially 3 temporal dimensions) exist to us as we experience them - there are more beyond out perception. There are up to 11 dimensions that we are aware of and all existed for a fraction of a second at the point of the big bang before collapsing in on themselves, leaving 4 that we can perceive.

It can be like we are a character on a page (knowing 2 physical dimensions of up/down and left/right and someone trying to tell you there is a 3rd physical dimension - we are not equipped to sense it.

I would recommend having a read at the following article if you are dubious:

https://www.sciencenewstoday.org/what-was-before-the-beginning-of-the-universe

The Idea that the universe was birthed from matter the size of a pinhead is mind blowing. Time and space didn’t exist till The Big Bang, how can anyone begin to imagine….nothing. How did this pinhead come into existence if nothing existed before it? It’s always been there? Maybe The Big Bang wasn’t the first or the last and the universe forever expands and shrinks creating a new universe every time with an infinite amount of possibilities. 

Autismman said:

The idea that everything came from nothing doesn’t make sense

The idea that something can come from nothing is well-established. The idea that everything came from nothing just takes a bit more imagination.

I think this is most likely but we can’t know for sure unless earth somehow manages to map the universe but that’s highly unlikely. The idea that everything came from nothing doesn’t make sense, there is usually a cause and effect but that must begin somewhere? Why were these particular events made in such a way to give birth to an entire existence? Unless of course we are just a naturally occurring phenomenon who is never meant to question such things. 

It also is thought to come from another star system which makes it quite unusual in cosmic terms.

Damojo said:

Closest approach to Earth will be on December 19th, but even then it will be nearly 270 million km away

I'll be more interested if it has an unexpected change in trajectory. It's a long shot.

Iain said:

...

There was a lot in that "..." bit that was more mundane. This thing is old though, perhaps 7 billion years.

Closest approach to Earth will be on December 19th, but even then it will be nearly 270 million km away away, so no need to update your house insurance.

Lol, only alien life will likely be microorganisms or plant life.

NASA has set the James Webb Telescope on the object with some interesting findings:

https://www.space.com/astronomy/james-webb-space-telescope-takes-1st-look-at-interstellar-comet-3i-atlas-with-unexpected-results

What wasn't expected, however, was the highest ratio of carbon dioxide to water ever observed in a comet.

...

the low abundance of water vapor in the coma of 3I/ATLAS could indicate that there is something within the comet that is inhibiting heat from penetrating the icy core of the comet.

I'm keeping an eye on this one - the anomolies are very interesting.

The human race has a lot of space noise we just have to hope the sci fi trope of aliens are warmongers is false 

hopefully if aliens are more advanced then us they will be just looking for a holiday and not a new home 

If it starts raining penicillin we’ll know why 

What it they either don't recognise us as life or they don't see us as important.

Say they thought life could only exist in water, or underground, we might not be recognised.

Same as if they lived slowly, e.g a second to them is like an hour to us. A week to them would be like 70 years to us. We would be transient. There is no point engaging.

They might think of us like we do of bacteria. An irritation to be removed.

I've heard it said that Donald Trumps hair is an alien controlling him telepathically, but I discounted that as it requires a brain to communicate with... 

Lotus said:

I believe that planets capable of sustaining life that may be intelligent are too far away for aliens to travel here unless they have technology far in advance of ours.

There is a pretty narrow definition of "life" used in most human conversations about aliens.

In truth the specific conditions that allowed a carbon based life form to evolve (or if you are religious, spontaneously come into being in a 7 day IKEA self-assembly universe) are only one of may possible ways that life could exist.

We do not know if silicone based life forms can form but the chemistry is not so far from carbon. Metals exist in many forms liquid and solid so a metal based life form is also viable as is gaseous and energy based versions.

Even planets are complex enough to be considered life forms if you squint and look at it over your shoulder.

With the discovery of potential 2 additional dimensions to time then there is scope for transdimensional life forms.

The truth is we probably don't know how to spot life forms whose existance may be radically different to ours.

Series like Star Trek have done a good job at considering stories with these over the years - some with varying levels of cheese but all posing interesting questions nonetheless.

There is a film called The Darkest Hour about a possible unfolding invasion of energy based life forms and it makes quite a few valid points about how helpless we would be against them.

It is a scary Pandoras Box to open to start looking into this field and one that will probably bring nightmares.

On the one hand life even existing on this planet earth is considered next to impossible but it does. Given the vast expanse of….space surely there are other life forms no matter how we may classify them. Plants may not be considered alive or conscious but they do live and die, jelly fish have nerves that respond to stimuli but no awareness of their own existence.

If aliens were smart; they would take one brief look at our World, chalk it up to "nasty human infestation" and move on to the next more promising planet - without delay.

Warning - don't read this if you have a fear of sci -fi horror stories/movies!

I don't understand much science, but I believe that planets capable of sustaining life that may be intelligent are too far away for aliens to travel here unless they have technology far in advance of ours. I think they would need a way to travel light years in a very short time without harming the crew, or be able to put them into suspended animation without any risks to their health.

And why would they come here? To visit a planet where there is always a war somewhere between groups of the supposedly most intelligent species on the planet?

If they were aggressive and territorial they might want to take over our planet, in which case we wouldn't have much chance - their superior technology would probably be able to stop bombs being dropped on them.

If they were just explorers and scientists looking to study the planet, they might see us as either like children or intelligent animals, although they would understand that we can be dangerous and would take steps to either stay hidden or circumvent our means to destroy them. They might think there are too many of us  and could put a process in place to stop so many children being born, to reduce our population and reduce the dangers to other species and the natural world that over population by humans causes. Maybe they'd put us in an enormous theme park and invite others of their species to visit and view us!

They might think purely logically, like Vulcans in Star Trek, and if so they might wish to change things. They could think it is illogical for some people to be mega wealthy while others starve, and might wish to govern our planet and redistribute the wealth and resources. 

They could have much longer life spans than we do, and they might just leave cloaked observational devices to send information to them about us, and wait for us to destroy ourselves before visiting.

We can't really guess whether aliens would want to visit and their reasons why, but I think that whatever their reasons were it would lead to some sort of takeover by them due to their advanced knowledge and technology. Whether that takeover would lead to a.positive or negative result for humans is of course impossible to guess.

Any mention of Fox News deserves a “LOL”

Stuart333 said:

Why would they want to be friendly and give us loads of tech? What's in it for them?

The same thing settlers want when they brought tech to natives in remote cultures - either to trade for resources or as a mission to covert them to their religion.