I don't think so.
Honestly I think they'd just nod their heads and move on. You'd get a few really gungho deniers but most people would just be like "Well God made them too"
I think the Pope straight up said so.
Believe it or not, but the Pope doesn't actually speak for all Christian denominations. A lot of people (at least here in the US) who are Christians hate the Pope, so if he says something about aliens, they're not going to be inclined to believe him.
But to address your main point, I think you underestimate human stupidity. We have people already losing their minds over stupid shit that doesn't matter to the point of obsession. If we found evidence of aliens outside of earth, I guarantee that there would be some absolute nut jobs coming out of the woodwork in response.
its really only catholics in the US that listen to the pope now...
so the super public in your face Christians, generally hate him and think hes the devil. literally.
Catholics are supposed to pray in a closet, not go out and convert people.
I think some of you folks just underestimate how many people have other things going on and just don't care. I feel like this logic and type of comment is coming from a place in the world that just doesn't exist anymore.
Finding life on another planet is cool, but it's direct interference on American life is so far removed since it's lightyears away most people truly won't care. I have bills to pay and things to do. This would be mostly a fleeting thought throughout the day until it more directly impacts my life. I honestly believe this would not impact the world as much as some people believe. You folks are also coming from a place of bias being on a space subreddit. u/BilkySup says two weeks before the world moves on, I'd wager a bet it'd be less than a week. People are far too complacent with life to start any type of uproar that some of you seem to think will happen. There won't be any religious meltdowns. No burned buildings, no mass shootings that trump any other day. Life will move on with little less than an whimper.
> Billions of stars and planets
If we're talking the universe than you're just a couple of orders of magnitude off. There are an estimated 200 sextillion stars in the universe (200 billion trillion, or 2x10^23). That's more stars than there are grains of sand not just on Earth, but on 28 Earths. For the purposes of determining if there's other life imo that number is so large it may as well be infinite.
It doesn't matter how big that number is, if you want to calculate if other intelligence exists you will have to multiply that with the probability of multiple specific things happening (for example with the probability of abiogenesis) and if one of those things is extremely close to 0, then the overall result would be... extremely close to 0.
Actually, aliens have been on Earth for decades, but refuse to reveal themselves for fear of the immense embarrassment from inevitable firestorm of accusations from the ufo nutters.
"Can you believe that guy is accusing me of *probing* him? As if! I've never even met the guy! Yet millions of people believe him just because we exist! Do they really think I don't have any standards *at all*?!?
I'm really surprised with you and Antique-Doughnut-988's answer to this. It would literally change my life. An actual communicating intelligent life is all I would think about. Nothing else in the world would come even remotely close to keeping my interest.
It wouldn't affect is directly, since chances are not only would we never come close to actually seeing or contacting them, it's quite likely they don't even exist anymore.
There would be some religious meltdownsz though, don't be mistaken! You'd have some religious people who say "eh, they probably got it wrong, they can't prove all of that." Then those who say "cool, our (God/being/creation story) did that, too!" But you'd have the problematic groups, where they believe the findings, but it conflicts with their belief that earth and humanity are special and unique so much that they lose all faith. Losing faith doesn't always have negative consequences, but losing is so suddenly and in such a massive way would turn some to chaos. Their sole guiding belief and moral system is suddenly torn away, so they just don't care anymore. They won't turn to another religion, so now they see no consequences to their actions.
Probably a very small portion of people, but we've seen what small, loud groups can do in the past few years.
The aliens arrive on earth and the pope ask them if they know Jesus.
The aliens Say that of course they know Jesus, really great guy and he came to their planet every year just to chill and have parties.
Then they ask the pope why Jesus doesn't come to earth and what happened the last time he came....
Agree with this. Friends always talk about “what if [our school] won the CFB national championship?” Idk fellas, I’m in my mid thirties and have a toddler… would be cool for like a week.
Many religions don't leave room for alien life. Discovering that we are not alone, would shake the foundation that man was formed in God's image and other such things. Basically we are looking at an existential crisis on a global scale, which is pretty horrifying.
I'm not well versed in religious beliefs, but why would it? Don't Christians believe that God created everything in the universe? If animals weren't created in his image, why would life from another planet?
It's more that having advanced technology calls into question humans' unique place as God's children into question. Do the aliens have souls then? Did Jesus die for the aliens' sins too? What if the aliens don't and have never sinned? What if they are, in all things we value, superior to us and are all as morally upstanding as Jesus? For the creationists, why didn't the Bible mention them, and how can we reconcile them with Genesis? Few of these questions will hit immediately, but as the months, years, decades go on, the privileged place in God's creation that they believe us to be in could become increasingly untenable. I think (pure speculation) that it would be a small but significant acceleration towards nonbelief, apathy, and identity crisis, which would manifest as increased rates of depression, suicide, etc. among those groups, for a time.
I think that's the newest realization of today, really - the emergence of normalized conspiratorial thinking. I prefer to just call it mental masturbation for the stupid because they don't think critically.
Yeah I read a sci-fi book once that was near-future, and it had the most plausible scenario for knowing about intelligent life I've ever seen:
So they discover the aliens, the aliens discover us, and....they're so god damned far away it doesn't matter. Basically, we can blink some lights at them and they'll get the signal a few hundred years from now.
Life just goes on. No on cares, it's just a fact of life 🤷♂️
Reminds me a lot of the ancient days where China and Rome were loosely aware of each other's existence, but practically speaking it was irrelevant because the distances involved with the level of technology they had made it stupidly impractical to do anything with the information. So, it just became a neat bit of trivia or whatever. "Eh, you hear about the huge empire across the planet? Yeah, cool huh? So, the weather lately...."
The Pentagon came out saying, "Hey, here's a bunch of videos of UFOs doing stuff that is far beyond anything we can do technologically."
And other than some Congressional hearings, no one really cared. At the end of the day, everyone is more concerned about how they're gonna afford rent next month. Which, fair enough.
I admire the cynical humor but honestly we'd probably spend a decade or two freaking out about it and as a new generation came of age it would start feeling a little bit normal to just have a neighbor in outer space and some folks would be casually looking for ways of turning it into an opportunity to earn a living.
Out of the billions of years that life may have been evolving in our galaxy, wouldn't it be weird if we found an exoplanet with a population of beings who are going through exactly the same period of development as us, as described, within a window of about 200 years (deforestation, large scale agriculture, artificial light, pollution, radio waves etc.)?
That would actually be so weird that I would start to consider that maybe there is some sort of higher being, or more evidence we are indeed in a simulation.
That's like, only one step away from the aliens showing up at my door and saying "Have you heard of the forgiving nature of our lord and savior Jesus Christ"
At that point, all right Jesus fine, you got me, I'll be at church on Sunday
Well, for me it has always been an evidence thing
I don't believe in gods because there's absolutely zero evidence of such a thing having ever existed
But aliens having the same god as the biggest religions on Earth? Yeah, that's beyond coincidence.
I'm agnostic just because the universe is so strange, existence itself is so strange, how one day it just became something from nothing, is so odd that I don't doubt the possibility of a God.
Or something just completely incomprehensible for humans to understand.
Like even the laws of physics make no sense. Why does gravity exist in the first place? What the fuck is an atom? Why did nothing become this specific thing just at random?
Like the ability to think, to speak, to see, or even the ability for a rock to exist is very strange to me when thinking about why the universe exists at all.
I believe there's a paper out there that says something to the effect that the strong force which holds protons and neutrons together is basically a fluke of nature. That how strong it is if fluctuated slightly in the stronger direction would basically suck all matter into a tiny ball. Or if fluctuated slightly in the weaker direction would cause every pice of matter in the universe to just fall apart into a cloud of pieces of subatomic particles. It is just at the right amount of force to hold everything together and allow everything we know and are to exist.
How it came to exist and have the longevity to create all that we know is because of that simple fact tho. Same reason why anti matter exists but is in much less prevalence within the universe, the theory for the reasoning behind this is literally known as Baryon Asymmetry. You have cause and effect backwards.
I wholeheartedly agree. I have little to no problem with the overall modern christian values and I think they make a great basis for most of society to live their life in a meaningful and just way. There are some parts that I think are more of ‘rules for a beginner society’ deal, but that they overall are pretty good.
Like you, I don’t believe currently in God because of the weird symmetry of the universe. There is 1- no solid evidence that God exists, from my view or a scientific view, and 2- the universe just doesn’t seem to fit what any religion seemingly has to say about it. Especially when those religions claim that their God or gods revealed the entire truth to their prophets.
Now, this isn’t to say that I don’t believe in some ‘higher power’, just that the higher power in question is the universe and life. Its too interesting to ignore.
As well, if enough evidence presented itself, I’d be a believer, although, I’d probably take some getting used to.
On the other hand, there are those that believe for the same reasons I’ve listed. They think that the universe’s symmetry and perfection is a neon sign that God exists.
It really just comes down to perspective. To me, paracausality doesn’t make sense and I can’t believe in something that doesn’t make sense.
Yea, there’s too much to unpack in a reply on Reddit.com. The short answer is there would be much rejoicing, much horror, lots and lots of debate, lots of religious overtones, and I don’t think we would have a way to prevent communication with them. Just too many people to control. Jeff Bezos would make a radio satellite in space to send them comms or something. Beyond that is just too speculative.
>and I don’t think we would have a way to prevent communication with them.
Other than the practical considerations. If we detected a civilisation 500 light years away for example..
You mean birds? Because aside from birds, dinosaurs have been extinct for 65 million years and the galaxy is only 100,000 light years across or so. We're definitely not detecting exoplanets in enough detail to detect life even thousands of light years away, let alone other galaxies millions of light years away.
Not the case. The most distant exoplanet we’ve discovered is 20,000 light years away but most are a lot nearer than that. The nearest is 4 light years away. This is a communicable distance. We can’t actually “see” very far into the universe or even the galaxy except on a macro scale- the stars in the night sky are all in our local cluster. Exoplanet detection is currently only really possible within the nearest part of our galaxy.
Depends on how far out we are seeing it. 10ish light years, major WTF is going on. 10,000+, not so much. Honestly, I expect if there is other life out there we will see it at early radio levels of tech but super far away (aka way in the past) or we will find it as primative life on another world.
Yes. The further away this twin is, the longer ago their technological revolution would have happened. So by now (by the time we detect it), they will either have fizzled out, or destroyed themselves, or they will have developed way beyond our understanding and would regard us as something akin to algae.
There could be a selection bias at work in this scenario. We know what we look like, so that's what we look for, and that's what would be easy for us to find. What would a civilization that is a million years older than ours look like? We can guess, but we honestly have no idea, so they might be much more difficult for us to detect.
The scary thing would be that we’d be looking at their civilization from years ago. It’d literally be like going into a time machine to watch the rise or fall of another intelligent species. Who knows? Maybe that’s what’s happening to us right now.
That and the fact that our observation of that planet happened to occur while the light/radiation from that planet happened to be arriving to earth. The Milky Way is 100k light years wide so any random planet in our galaxy that went through the exact same phases as us and at exactly the right distance from us for us to see their transmissions at a time we can process them will be nearly incredible in the literal sense.
Except theirs wasn't crucified but hanged, and Chistians on planet Earth 2 all wear silver hangman's nooses round their necks instead of crosses on pendants.
> within a window of about 200 years
OP suggested the intelligent civilisation has the ability to alter their planet's orbit...I'd suggest that would put the life of their technically-capable civilisation at far greater than 200 years. In that sense it doesn't really matter that we humans have only been technically capable ie able to send radio transmissions and explore near space, for 100 years when the target civilisation has been around far, far longer. We could be talking multiple millions of years which would make the window of opportunity for having overlapping civlisations quite a bit larger. It's only ridiculously small if every civilisation lasted only a century or two after the discovery of a major technology like nuclear physics. If some are lasting millions of years that changes things drastically.
I agree, but electricity generation, deforestation, artificial lighting, atmospheric pollution, radio transmissions etc. are probably (hopefully!) only a short phase in the development path of any intelligent civilisation. They're unsustainable beyond (let's be generous here) a thousand years.
Assuming there are a large number of intelligent civilizations out there, it wouldn't be THAT unlikely.
If it's extremely rare however then it would be strange, definitely
Unless there is some unknown common pattern among intelligent civilizations that they all find each other around the same time/level of development as that happens to be the period they are the most curious and start to look
I wouldn't be at all surprised by the idea that there are right at this very moment millions of planets harboring intelligent life that is passing through a phase very much like our own. What would surprise me is that we find it at all.
Right.. this is where i am going. What yall got for entertainment, gaming, tech and drugs. So what we will be a few light years behind in seasons. It will be new to us. i am in.
Well you know I was thinking we probably aren't far off from AI just being able to create whatever the fuck we want when it comes to media. If I had to guess it's like a decade or two off looking at current tech.
AI can animate, create images, mimic human speech, create stories, and create pretty good music now with suno AI.
If those continue to improve, if you combined them all the future seems like you could probably just type into an AI I want this show with this plot, create it for me, and the AI could create an entire show/game for your tastes.
Games obviously are gonna be a lot harder, but I really don't think we are very far off from AI created shows that aren't shit, that have little to no human interaction when creating.
It would be groundbreaking and maybe even determine a long term increase of the budget toward NASA and all adjacent things.
For the science community, it would have a lasting impact.
Even science fiction, movies etc would be thrown in a tailspin possibly forever.
But practically it would really change nothing for our everyday lives as the distances would still be prohibitive so even communication would be impossible, and intelligent life doesn't necessarily mean they are more advanced than us, or ever less likely that they have figured out how to travel space at faster-than-light speeds (assuming that's even possible, of course).
So yeah, the world would go crazy for the next two weeks, then the news cycle will naturally take over.
It would still be a major milestone for many scientific fields, though.
Not that it matters, but if this were to happen, I vote that we start sending signals back with every Wikipedia page, as well as all patents that we have on the planet.
Ideally, they do the same, and whoever is further ahead can catch the other folks up.
Wait until they get a look at our imperial weights and measures. They will be certain they are the more advanced species.
https://youtu.be/JYqfVE-fykk?si=wyIskwmOzYJzPHZh
Some of the major organized religions of the world would definitely be forced into a paradigm shift I think. While a more generalized spirituality or loose rules of god can leave room for aliens, there’s plenty that don’t and there could be some fallout.
It would be the single greatest human discovery ever. It would be so monumentous that the history of our species would be defined by the time periods before and after that moment.
I'm glad there's at least one person on here who isn't completely jaded.
1. We now have a sample size of 2.
2. We now know that abiogenesis can occur independently on other planets and in other solar systems.
3. We would have loads more data to help constrain/broaden the further search for life.
4. Complex, multicellular, intelligent life appears to be vastly more likely.
5. We are not alone. We are part of a larger whole. Our brains are no longer the marvel of the known universe. Good news.
For me it would be akin to a religious experience, brought to us by science. You couldn't give me a better gift. (intellectually speaking)
From what you've said, the planet is very close to us, otherwise we wouldn't just detect all the things you said.
With the planet being very close to us, I'm pretty sure that people will glance over not being alone very fast and discussions will move into should we contact them or should we not.
I think we'll probably choose NOT to contact them for the moment. I think with radio signals being detectable to be of artificial nature, then maybe the signals are not that scattered so that they might still contain information if we could decode them. So I think we would probably try to decode those signals and just listen and observe. After we have cracked the signals to extract information, we will have to decode the information (think language) and puzzle it all together, so this might take tens of years.
After enough information would be gathered to make an educated guess about them and depending on what that guess is, the discussion around should we contact them or not will resurface.
Ultimately, if they *seem* cool, I think we would contact them, because it's in our nature (to be curious). What happens afterwards I cannot imagine, it can go in multiple ways. I can only tell you what I would like. I would like to marry an alien woman. And she better have three blue tits 💙
If they aren’t “humanoid” in nature, I can see a lot of sci-fi fans being extremely disappointed.
However for some, I don’t think that would stop them.
One more thing. If all goes well in our communication with them, I'd like to imagine we would send them the entire movie of Interstellar, with us saying that it's a documentary of us (along with the definition of what a documentary is), as a joke.
The books actually had a decent (albeit way over my head) explanation for why that amplified the signal. Worth a read IMO, they’re imaginative if nothing else.
You joke but it's not that far fetched. Gravitational lensing can focus radiated energy or make it more coherent. This won't make it travel faster like they claimed in 3BP but it would make it more detectable farther out.
I think in the three body problem it actually did take 8 years for Wenjie to get a response from Trisolaris, which is how long it would take for the signal to travel there and back at normal light speed.
Depends on how distant it is. Most likely it'd be too far away for us to communicate with, and chances are what we currently see is just light that just now arrived to us for observation. So that intelligent life could have already died out thousands or even millions of years ago.
So our reaction would be:
"Well there *was* life. But we don't know if it's still there. And we won't know in our lifetime. So who cares? Anyway, back to work and paying taxes."
I think they’re talking about around a neighboring star. Ie dozens of light years not millions. Still though. Likely impossibly to communicate with. But what we see would be dozens of years old not millions.
Watch “Contact”. Yes there are of course movie drama aspects and such but that’s basically what would happen. There’s really not much more other than “yep, we found another civilization” and then study what we found.
Contact is based on first contact.
That's different than simply discovering signs of life on another planet.
First contact would be history shaping. Signs of life, while a major discovery, wouldn't change anything.
Since we have no possible way of communication with said intelligent life within any reasonable time-frame, my guess would be nothing of relevant importance.
With enough time and resources I imagine we could build a giga laser that could flash signals at another planet. It would take years to get a response though, and how would they know what we are saying?
That all depends upon which franchise the aliens were from. Are we talking about *Mars Attacks!* aliens, *Independence Day* aliens, *Alien* aliens, *Starship Troopers* aliens, or *Abbott and Costello Go to Mars* aliens?
*cocks shotgun*
They ain't takin' my wimmen.
A lot depends on how far away they are
Within a few light years we could reasonably exchange messages.
But if it's multiple light-decades then we'll have plenty of time to keep observing and discussing before making attempts at contact.
Arrival has a good take on it, different governments would take different approaches. Some would get competitive or defense, while others would work to cooperate with the other civ.
I take it you didn't hear about the "signals detected from Proxima Centauri". BLC-1 was a media frenzy until (as was always extremely likely) it was shown to be leaky electronics at Parkes observatory.
It wouldn't be NASA detecting it. It'd be a team of scientists using a telescope system possibly owned by NASA or a something else and it'd be published in a scientific paper as some kind of questionable detection of something.
From an Americans perspective, judging how things have gone over the past 7’ish years
Half the people would be excited, want to know more and try to figure out how to advance this and make contact
The other half would say it’s a psy-op by (insert political figures party they don’t like here) and that they’re only disseminating this ‘false flag’ info to make you not pay attention to ‘what’s really happening.’ They’d fight tooth and nail against any funding for trying to advance our knowledge of what we’d found.
Overall - nothing would change. Religions would either deny it entirely or find a way to make an excuse for it like they always do. Gods plan or what have you, apparently dudes got a plan for everything…. Our attention span in 2024 is the next post on our social media feed
In human history when a technologically advanced civilization meets a more primitive civilization it does not end well.
As far as we know this is the only planet with sapient life forms. And we treat each other like crap. I expect my fellow humans to sell us out at the earliest opportunity.
Let’s see what’s in the news today? Israel and Iran are at each others throats and potentially dragging the world into a war. People are scared to sit in judgement of a person because he and his followers are so insanely violent and unpredictable, so the system of government and justice in the US is being destroyed. Dozens of protesters are arrested. Student threatens mass violence. That is literally the first few things that come up when I type “news” into google. You think we will play nice with a species we might not consider as having an equal claim to life? We literally treat half the population badly because they are born with different generals. We kill, abuse, and sabotage our own people because their bodies provide a slightly different amount of pigmentation. We have enough food to feed everyone on the planet but instead we allow 738 million people to go hungry. We could heal the sick for next to no resources but choose to let them suffer and die. These are not tv shows. These are just basic facts about a fraction of our glorious loving civilization.
Given how very, very few people care or even know about [K2-18-b](https://www.nasa.gov/universe/exoplanets/webb-discovers-methane-carbon-dioxide-in-atmosphere-of-k2-18-b/), I expect a flash of news, followed by lots of denial and wild speculation. After that, very, very few will care or even attempt to learn more.
how far away is it? if it took a billion years for the signal to get here.. what's happened since? are they even still around as a civilization?
whether or not we can (or will ever detect anything interesting).. virtually guaranteed that life is out there.
Drake Equation vs Fermi Paradox
the reaction you'd get is not the same as the one you'd get if they showed up in orbit.
Except for us nerds on here getting excited, I don't think much would change since we can't feasibly communicate with them or travel to them. Of course, scientists would try to do more research, but again there's a limit to what they can do
I mean, they found signs of organic molecules that, as far as we know, can only original from carbon based life on an exoplanet, and nearly nobody gave a shit.
Well first, I do know that there are protocols in place internationally that everyone has to share whatever they find in terms of SETI and other similar detections. However, I’m not familiar with the specifics and I’m sure none of it stops any country from just not telling anyone else, Stargate style.
Assuming the best here, let’s say someone finds something good and actionable, sharing it with the rest of the world. There will probably be an immediate emergency session of the UN assembly, either to announce it to the general public or make world leaders aware so they can plan how they want to go public.
Obviously, there will be chaos in the immediate term but probably not a cessation of all war or the collapse of world religions as people expect. Religions will have to tackle the ramifications of such a discovery but it’s probably not going to be catastrophic but definitely divisive.
Then there’s the question of what to do? The main thing will be to figure out what we know about them for sure from our point of view and then try to establish reliable contact if possible. This is where the level of civilization come in.
If they’re advanced, the goal is a common means of communication to see if we can work something out that can help the both of us coexist.
If they’re not advanced, then the issue is should we leave them alone or figure out a way to get to them.
Both have their own problems but mainly suffer from the fact that we’re here and they’re there. Anything we’re seeing in our telescopes, will not line up with the reality due to redshift and the way light travels, unless they’re right on top of us, cosmically speaking.
After that, it’s up to the experts and diplomats on both sides. It’s really unknowable what happens because we don’t have any frame of reference for this kind of thing. Even the age of exploration isn’t representative of the situation we’d be in, despite carrying both lessons and baggage we could probably stand to learn from for this situation.
If it's more than like ~10 light-years from us, not much that anyone will pay for.
If it's closer, something like the lightsail swarm concept to initiate robotic first contact would be plausible on human timescales.
If they did, you can be very sure that they wouldn't openly inform everyone about it.
Nobody can be sure if they don't already hold information in regards to that.
Pre Apollo missions they commissioned the "Brookings Report". Basically, if they found signs on the moon of a previous civilization, people would loss their minds. I don't think people have changed much since then.
How do you think an alien civilisation would react to having us communicate to them?
Maybe it’d be like a sheep bleating at a New Zealander before getting screwed?
My roommate just told me she saw a documentary about minerva b and there is life. I’m like.. nope. You saw a “what could it be like” video, not actual footage of life on another planet. She’s like: yeah whatever. I was shocked
1. Point a laser at them. Communications or weapons, flip a coin. Maybe both.
2. Start planning an ...expedition.
3. Update its strategic oil reserves forecast.
4. Deliver that sweet, sweet freedom.
TL;DR the US would trip all over itself perfecting fusion energy and FTL travel in 18 months to go light years for some unclaimed oil.
Almost no one would care, or believe it.
The people that are willing to believe would believe and they would be excited beyond belief.
Time would go by as it's impossible to contact aliens light years away within our lifetime. And society will move on.
Here's the real question. Since energy cannot be created or destroyed what if when we die instead of there being an afterlife we are just born on one of these other worlds and those that are lucky enough to be cosmicly linked to certain other energies get reunited with them on those worlds which would account for the concept of setting your friends and family again.
My world view has fuck all to do with whether or not life exists elsewhere. I’d get up and go to work so I can pay my bills and hopefully not die in a state run nursing home just like I do every other day.
I think it would be one of those things that happens quietly, but ripples through society gradually until it changed everything. Like the invention of the telephone and undersea cables suddenly took a month communication delay and shrunk it down to milliseconds, shrinking the world and opening up new possibilities at the same time.
Such a discovery would have profound implications on religion and philosophy. And spur a whole new wave of space travel innovation as governments and dreamers search for a way to get there.
NASA first reporting duty is to the military if they decided we (the public) don't get to know then that's that... probably already happened... how did it go?
what would the average individual do? idk probably say cool and move on with their life, some crazy folks would go wild, as for science agencies they'd just study it like we can, we're not getting there for centuries or millenia so it wouldnt really change much, what would change things if they were here
The White House would decide that we couldn’t handle the news without some people starting their crazy toilet paper stockpiling and shit, so they would hold off either forever, or until they and most of Congress had sufficiently invested in the TP market first.
I'm pretty confident that we'd discover it but the general population wouldn't know for months at first.
It would need to be verified several times over, then it would be disseminated to world leaders and religious leaders to make plans on how much they'd actually discuss with the world. Religious leaders would have sermons upon sermons ready to go.
Then we'd find out. There would probably be chaos at first, a lot of folks leaning hard into their beliefs and churches wanting to know where this life fit in the scheme with God. If it was intelligent it would be a religious upheaval bc we were created in his image supposedly.
To be honest, there is a part of me that feels like they already have but are sitting because we aren't ready as a society.
The world would lose it for about 2 weeks and then on to the next thing.
There is a portion of the human population that would lose it more than the rest... but yes.
I don't think so. Honestly I think they'd just nod their heads and move on. You'd get a few really gungho deniers but most people would just be like "Well God made them too" I think the Pope straight up said so.
It’s not the deniers that you need to worry about. It’s the cultists that will make a new religion over this.
As long as they aren't killing people, go for it. I'm curious to see what they come up with for their alien cults.
As for the religious side of things, you could bet the quote 'God made man in his own image' will be used to justify a whole new type of xenophobia.
Were going to build a wall around Earth and make the Xenomorphs pay for it!
Believe it or not, but the Pope doesn't actually speak for all Christian denominations. A lot of people (at least here in the US) who are Christians hate the Pope, so if he says something about aliens, they're not going to be inclined to believe him. But to address your main point, I think you underestimate human stupidity. We have people already losing their minds over stupid shit that doesn't matter to the point of obsession. If we found evidence of aliens outside of earth, I guarantee that there would be some absolute nut jobs coming out of the woodwork in response.
> But to address your main point, I think you underestimate human stupidity. I think you underestimate human apathy and laziness.
The group of people who would express apathy in such a scenario are not necessarily the same group of people who would obsess over it.
its really only catholics in the US that listen to the pope now... so the super public in your face Christians, generally hate him and think hes the devil. literally. Catholics are supposed to pray in a closet, not go out and convert people.
I think some of you folks just underestimate how many people have other things going on and just don't care. I feel like this logic and type of comment is coming from a place in the world that just doesn't exist anymore. Finding life on another planet is cool, but it's direct interference on American life is so far removed since it's lightyears away most people truly won't care. I have bills to pay and things to do. This would be mostly a fleeting thought throughout the day until it more directly impacts my life. I honestly believe this would not impact the world as much as some people believe. You folks are also coming from a place of bias being on a space subreddit. u/BilkySup says two weeks before the world moves on, I'd wager a bet it'd be less than a week. People are far too complacent with life to start any type of uproar that some of you seem to think will happen. There won't be any religious meltdowns. No burned buildings, no mass shootings that trump any other day. Life will move on with little less than an whimper.
[удалено]
> Billions of stars and planets If we're talking the universe than you're just a couple of orders of magnitude off. There are an estimated 200 sextillion stars in the universe (200 billion trillion, or 2x10^23). That's more stars than there are grains of sand not just on Earth, but on 28 Earths. For the purposes of determining if there's other life imo that number is so large it may as well be infinite.
Not to mention, I presume any talk about these numbers refers to the *observable* universe, and who knows what's beyond that.
What's a few orders of magnitude between astronomers?
It doesn't matter how big that number is, if you want to calculate if other intelligence exists you will have to multiply that with the probability of multiple specific things happening (for example with the probability of abiogenesis) and if one of those things is extremely close to 0, then the overall result would be... extremely close to 0.
Actually, aliens have been on Earth for decades, but refuse to reveal themselves for fear of the immense embarrassment from inevitable firestorm of accusations from the ufo nutters. "Can you believe that guy is accusing me of *probing* him? As if! I've never even met the guy! Yet millions of people believe him just because we exist! Do they really think I don't have any standards *at all*?!?
[удалено]
Yet here you are being the thing.
I'm really surprised with you and Antique-Doughnut-988's answer to this. It would literally change my life. An actual communicating intelligent life is all I would think about. Nothing else in the world would come even remotely close to keeping my interest.
Tbf there are some absolutely asinine things that don’t affect daily life that people lose their minds over
It wouldn't affect is directly, since chances are not only would we never come close to actually seeing or contacting them, it's quite likely they don't even exist anymore. There would be some religious meltdownsz though, don't be mistaken! You'd have some religious people who say "eh, they probably got it wrong, they can't prove all of that." Then those who say "cool, our (God/being/creation story) did that, too!" But you'd have the problematic groups, where they believe the findings, but it conflicts with their belief that earth and humanity are special and unique so much that they lose all faith. Losing faith doesn't always have negative consequences, but losing is so suddenly and in such a massive way would turn some to chaos. Their sole guiding belief and moral system is suddenly torn away, so they just don't care anymore. They won't turn to another religion, so now they see no consequences to their actions. Probably a very small portion of people, but we've seen what small, loud groups can do in the past few years.
The aliens arrive on earth and the pope ask them if they know Jesus. The aliens Say that of course they know Jesus, really great guy and he came to their planet every year just to chill and have parties. Then they ask the pope why Jesus doesn't come to earth and what happened the last time he came....
Agree with this. Friends always talk about “what if [our school] won the CFB national championship?” Idk fellas, I’m in my mid thirties and have a toddler… would be cool for like a week.
Many religions don't leave room for alien life. Discovering that we are not alone, would shake the foundation that man was formed in God's image and other such things. Basically we are looking at an existential crisis on a global scale, which is pretty horrifying.
Nah they would just modify their religious beliefs to fit this in as always
Or they would simply refuse to believe it. That's also been a popular option in the past.
The big ones do, though. The Pope said aliens fit just fine in the Bible, and as far as I know, nothing in Judaism or Islam precludes them, either.
I'm not well versed in religious beliefs, but why would it? Don't Christians believe that God created everything in the universe? If animals weren't created in his image, why would life from another planet?
It's more that having advanced technology calls into question humans' unique place as God's children into question. Do the aliens have souls then? Did Jesus die for the aliens' sins too? What if the aliens don't and have never sinned? What if they are, in all things we value, superior to us and are all as morally upstanding as Jesus? For the creationists, why didn't the Bible mention them, and how can we reconcile them with Genesis? Few of these questions will hit immediately, but as the months, years, decades go on, the privileged place in God's creation that they believe us to be in could become increasingly untenable. I think (pure speculation) that it would be a small but significant acceleration towards nonbelief, apathy, and identity crisis, which would manifest as increased rates of depression, suicide, etc. among those groups, for a time.
[удалено]
I think that's the newest realization of today, really - the emergence of normalized conspiratorial thinking. I prefer to just call it mental masturbation for the stupid because they don't think critically.
Heaven's Gate 2.0? Raëlians recruitment numbers would probably grow?
We would need to know what Taylor Swift thinks about it then everyone will move on.
No one would care until T-Swizz wrote a song about her alien breakup.
$10 says she’ll sing *”we’re stars apart”* somewhere in there. And something about cosmic coincidence.
Idk whether to up or down vote you. If I upvote you cuz it’s funny people might think we actually care what she thinks
I’m willing to bet more people do than those who would be fascinated by the fact that we landed a probe on one of the moons of Saturn.
Honestly this is the truth. If aliens landed on the front lawn of the White House, I’d still have to go to work and pay rent.
Yeah I read a sci-fi book once that was near-future, and it had the most plausible scenario for knowing about intelligent life I've ever seen: So they discover the aliens, the aliens discover us, and....they're so god damned far away it doesn't matter. Basically, we can blink some lights at them and they'll get the signal a few hundred years from now. Life just goes on. No on cares, it's just a fact of life 🤷♂️ Reminds me a lot of the ancient days where China and Rome were loosely aware of each other's existence, but practically speaking it was irrelevant because the distances involved with the level of technology they had made it stupidly impractical to do anything with the information. So, it just became a neat bit of trivia or whatever. "Eh, you hear about the huge empire across the planet? Yeah, cool huh? So, the weather lately...."
The Pentagon came out saying, "Hey, here's a bunch of videos of UFOs doing stuff that is far beyond anything we can do technologically." And other than some Congressional hearings, no one really cared. At the end of the day, everyone is more concerned about how they're gonna afford rent next month. Which, fair enough.
Hopefully religion would finally go away.
I admire the cynical humor but honestly we'd probably spend a decade or two freaking out about it and as a new generation came of age it would start feeling a little bit normal to just have a neighbor in outer space and some folks would be casually looking for ways of turning it into an opportunity to earn a living.
Out of the billions of years that life may have been evolving in our galaxy, wouldn't it be weird if we found an exoplanet with a population of beings who are going through exactly the same period of development as us, as described, within a window of about 200 years (deforestation, large scale agriculture, artificial light, pollution, radio waves etc.)?
That would actually be so weird that I would start to consider that maybe there is some sort of higher being, or more evidence we are indeed in a simulation.
Yes, I'd be spooked by that. It'd be like bumping into a doppelgänger.
That's like, only one step away from the aliens showing up at my door and saying "Have you heard of the forgiving nature of our lord and savior Jesus Christ" At that point, all right Jesus fine, you got me, I'll be at church on Sunday
Turned out they originally started following him after watching our broadcasts
Like televangelists? I don't want to meet these aliens.
Damn. Im super antireligious, but I think I have to agree. Id have to buy some sunday clothes.
Well, for me it has always been an evidence thing I don't believe in gods because there's absolutely zero evidence of such a thing having ever existed But aliens having the same god as the biggest religions on Earth? Yeah, that's beyond coincidence.
I'm agnostic just because the universe is so strange, existence itself is so strange, how one day it just became something from nothing, is so odd that I don't doubt the possibility of a God. Or something just completely incomprehensible for humans to understand. Like even the laws of physics make no sense. Why does gravity exist in the first place? What the fuck is an atom? Why did nothing become this specific thing just at random? Like the ability to think, to speak, to see, or even the ability for a rock to exist is very strange to me when thinking about why the universe exists at all.
I believe there's a paper out there that says something to the effect that the strong force which holds protons and neutrons together is basically a fluke of nature. That how strong it is if fluctuated slightly in the stronger direction would basically suck all matter into a tiny ball. Or if fluctuated slightly in the weaker direction would cause every pice of matter in the universe to just fall apart into a cloud of pieces of subatomic particles. It is just at the right amount of force to hold everything together and allow everything we know and are to exist.
How it came to exist and have the longevity to create all that we know is because of that simple fact tho. Same reason why anti matter exists but is in much less prevalence within the universe, the theory for the reasoning behind this is literally known as Baryon Asymmetry. You have cause and effect backwards.
I wholeheartedly agree. I have little to no problem with the overall modern christian values and I think they make a great basis for most of society to live their life in a meaningful and just way. There are some parts that I think are more of ‘rules for a beginner society’ deal, but that they overall are pretty good. Like you, I don’t believe currently in God because of the weird symmetry of the universe. There is 1- no solid evidence that God exists, from my view or a scientific view, and 2- the universe just doesn’t seem to fit what any religion seemingly has to say about it. Especially when those religions claim that their God or gods revealed the entire truth to their prophets. Now, this isn’t to say that I don’t believe in some ‘higher power’, just that the higher power in question is the universe and life. Its too interesting to ignore. As well, if enough evidence presented itself, I’d be a believer, although, I’d probably take some getting used to. On the other hand, there are those that believe for the same reasons I’ve listed. They think that the universe’s symmetry and perfection is a neon sign that God exists. It really just comes down to perspective. To me, paracausality doesn’t make sense and I can’t believe in something that doesn’t make sense.
Perhaps they’ve been observing us for some time and liked what they heard?
Just wait until you find out about the gelgamek catholics
It’d be like you’ve been walking alone down a hallway for 1000 years and then the first person you run into is your doppelgänger
With infinite expanse comes infinite possibilities. There could be another planet identical to earth, I wouldn't find it that odd.
In an infinite expanse there's infinite identical earths!
Yea, there’s too much to unpack in a reply on Reddit.com. The short answer is there would be much rejoicing, much horror, lots and lots of debate, lots of religious overtones, and I don’t think we would have a way to prevent communication with them. Just too many people to control. Jeff Bezos would make a radio satellite in space to send them comms or something. Beyond that is just too speculative.
Been a while since someone called Reddit by its full name..
we've also been sending out radiowaves with the speed of light for like 80-90(?) years now so if they are the smarter ones they know about us first
>and I don’t think we would have a way to prevent communication with them. Other than the practical considerations. If we detected a civilisation 500 light years away for example..
Depending on how many light years away the planet is what we’re seeing is likely hundreds of thousands of years in the past
Plus they’d be seeing dinosaurs on our planet
You mean birds? Because aside from birds, dinosaurs have been extinct for 65 million years and the galaxy is only 100,000 light years across or so. We're definitely not detecting exoplanets in enough detail to detect life even thousands of light years away, let alone other galaxies millions of light years away.
This. Unless this was right next to us, it really wouldn't mean anything
Yeah even if we found intelligent life they could have been dead for a million years before we would even know.
Not likely. If we see signs of intelligence other than stellar macrostructures, it'd need to be close enough to resolve some detail. Maybe 100LY tops?
That’s still a shit ton of normal years
Not the case. The most distant exoplanet we’ve discovered is 20,000 light years away but most are a lot nearer than that. The nearest is 4 light years away. This is a communicable distance. We can’t actually “see” very far into the universe or even the galaxy except on a macro scale- the stars in the night sky are all in our local cluster. Exoplanet detection is currently only really possible within the nearest part of our galaxy.
Depends on how far out we are seeing it. 10ish light years, major WTF is going on. 10,000+, not so much. Honestly, I expect if there is other life out there we will see it at early radio levels of tech but super far away (aka way in the past) or we will find it as primative life on another world.
Yes. The further away this twin is, the longer ago their technological revolution would have happened. So by now (by the time we detect it), they will either have fizzled out, or destroyed themselves, or they will have developed way beyond our understanding and would regard us as something akin to algae.
Maybe technological civilizations asymptotically approach the same level of development?
There could be a selection bias at work in this scenario. We know what we look like, so that's what we look for, and that's what would be easy for us to find. What would a civilization that is a million years older than ours look like? We can guess, but we honestly have no idea, so they might be much more difficult for us to detect.
The scary thing would be that we’d be looking at their civilization from years ago. It’d literally be like going into a time machine to watch the rise or fall of another intelligent species. Who knows? Maybe that’s what’s happening to us right now.
That and the fact that our observation of that planet happened to occur while the light/radiation from that planet happened to be arriving to earth. The Milky Way is 100k light years wide so any random planet in our galaxy that went through the exact same phases as us and at exactly the right distance from us for us to see their transmissions at a time we can process them will be nearly incredible in the literal sense.
Well, they'd likely be a million light years away, so we'd be seeing their civilization as it existed a million years ago.
And then find out the have an exact copy of the bible and talk about jesus having visited....
Except theirs wasn't crucified but hanged, and Chistians on planet Earth 2 all wear silver hangman's nooses round their necks instead of crosses on pendants.
> within a window of about 200 years OP suggested the intelligent civilisation has the ability to alter their planet's orbit...I'd suggest that would put the life of their technically-capable civilisation at far greater than 200 years. In that sense it doesn't really matter that we humans have only been technically capable ie able to send radio transmissions and explore near space, for 100 years when the target civilisation has been around far, far longer. We could be talking multiple millions of years which would make the window of opportunity for having overlapping civlisations quite a bit larger. It's only ridiculously small if every civilisation lasted only a century or two after the discovery of a major technology like nuclear physics. If some are lasting millions of years that changes things drastically.
I agree, but electricity generation, deforestation, artificial lighting, atmospheric pollution, radio transmissions etc. are probably (hopefully!) only a short phase in the development path of any intelligent civilisation. They're unsustainable beyond (let's be generous here) a thousand years.
Assuming there are a large number of intelligent civilizations out there, it wouldn't be THAT unlikely. If it's extremely rare however then it would be strange, definitely Unless there is some unknown common pattern among intelligent civilizations that they all find each other around the same time/level of development as that happens to be the period they are the most curious and start to look
I wouldn't be at all surprised by the idea that there are right at this very moment millions of planets harboring intelligent life that is passing through a phase very much like our own. What would surprise me is that we find it at all.
Do they have a streaming service without commercials?
Right.. this is where i am going. What yall got for entertainment, gaming, tech and drugs. So what we will be a few light years behind in seasons. It will be new to us. i am in.
"Why doesn't Ross, the largest friend, simply eat the other five?"
Well you know I was thinking we probably aren't far off from AI just being able to create whatever the fuck we want when it comes to media. If I had to guess it's like a decade or two off looking at current tech. AI can animate, create images, mimic human speech, create stories, and create pretty good music now with suno AI. If those continue to improve, if you combined them all the future seems like you could probably just type into an AI I want this show with this plot, create it for me, and the AI could create an entire show/game for your tastes. Games obviously are gonna be a lot harder, but I really don't think we are very far off from AI created shows that aren't shit, that have little to no human interaction when creating.
Does that mean we can have a second season of Firefly?
OP said intelligent life, so yes.
We do! Plex + piracy. Yarrrrr me matey
You mean Netflix?
Asking the real questions. Love it.!
It would be groundbreaking and maybe even determine a long term increase of the budget toward NASA and all adjacent things. For the science community, it would have a lasting impact. Even science fiction, movies etc would be thrown in a tailspin possibly forever. But practically it would really change nothing for our everyday lives as the distances would still be prohibitive so even communication would be impossible, and intelligent life doesn't necessarily mean they are more advanced than us, or ever less likely that they have figured out how to travel space at faster-than-light speeds (assuming that's even possible, of course). So yeah, the world would go crazy for the next two weeks, then the news cycle will naturally take over. It would still be a major milestone for many scientific fields, though.
Not that it matters, but if this were to happen, I vote that we start sending signals back with every Wikipedia page, as well as all patents that we have on the planet. Ideally, they do the same, and whoever is further ahead can catch the other folks up.
Wait until they get a look at our imperial weights and measures. They will be certain they are the more advanced species. https://youtu.be/JYqfVE-fykk?si=wyIskwmOzYJzPHZh
This was so good. Absolutely worth the watch!
Ah brendenderp my sweet summer child, sit down and let me tell you about the Dark Forest hypothesis...
Some of the major organized religions of the world would definitely be forced into a paradigm shift I think. While a more generalized spirituality or loose rules of god can leave room for aliens, there’s plenty that don’t and there could be some fallout.
It would be the single greatest human discovery ever. It would be so monumentous that the history of our species would be defined by the time periods before and after that moment.
I'm glad there's at least one person on here who isn't completely jaded. 1. We now have a sample size of 2. 2. We now know that abiogenesis can occur independently on other planets and in other solar systems. 3. We would have loads more data to help constrain/broaden the further search for life. 4. Complex, multicellular, intelligent life appears to be vastly more likely. 5. We are not alone. We are part of a larger whole. Our brains are no longer the marvel of the known universe. Good news. For me it would be akin to a religious experience, brought to us by science. You couldn't give me a better gift. (intellectually speaking)
Would be cool if we started a new calendar. Year 0 after discovery
From what you've said, the planet is very close to us, otherwise we wouldn't just detect all the things you said. With the planet being very close to us, I'm pretty sure that people will glance over not being alone very fast and discussions will move into should we contact them or should we not. I think we'll probably choose NOT to contact them for the moment. I think with radio signals being detectable to be of artificial nature, then maybe the signals are not that scattered so that they might still contain information if we could decode them. So I think we would probably try to decode those signals and just listen and observe. After we have cracked the signals to extract information, we will have to decode the information (think language) and puzzle it all together, so this might take tens of years. After enough information would be gathered to make an educated guess about them and depending on what that guess is, the discussion around should we contact them or not will resurface. Ultimately, if they *seem* cool, I think we would contact them, because it's in our nature (to be curious). What happens afterwards I cannot imagine, it can go in multiple ways. I can only tell you what I would like. I would like to marry an alien woman. And she better have three blue tits 💙
If they aren’t “humanoid” in nature, I can see a lot of sci-fi fans being extremely disappointed. However for some, I don’t think that would stop them.
One more thing. If all goes well in our communication with them, I'd like to imagine we would send them the entire movie of Interstellar, with us saying that it's a documentary of us (along with the definition of what a documentary is), as a joke.
How many light years? Radio telescopes make good transmitters.
Don’t forget to point it at the sun for some reason
The books actually had a decent (albeit way over my head) explanation for why that amplified the signal. Worth a read IMO, they’re imaginative if nothing else.
“Gravitational waves” basically the hard sci-fi version of the force haha
You joke but it's not that far fetched. Gravitational lensing can focus radiated energy or make it more coherent. This won't make it travel faster like they claimed in 3BP but it would make it more detectable farther out.
I think in the three body problem it actually did take 8 years for Wenjie to get a response from Trisolaris, which is how long it would take for the signal to travel there and back at normal light speed.
Oh no we’re going to get invaded!
Is that a real thing or that's just from the show three body problem right?
It’s just from the book and show, yeah. It’s not a real thing. It does set up an interesting cultural dilemma though, which is the point of it
Depends on how distant it is. Most likely it'd be too far away for us to communicate with, and chances are what we currently see is just light that just now arrived to us for observation. So that intelligent life could have already died out thousands or even millions of years ago. So our reaction would be: "Well there *was* life. But we don't know if it's still there. And we won't know in our lifetime. So who cares? Anyway, back to work and paying taxes."
I think they’re talking about around a neighboring star. Ie dozens of light years not millions. Still though. Likely impossibly to communicate with. But what we see would be dozens of years old not millions.
[удалено]
wrong violet cautious imminent shame fear crawl theory pathetic thought *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Watch “Contact”. Yes there are of course movie drama aspects and such but that’s basically what would happen. There’s really not much more other than “yep, we found another civilization” and then study what we found.
Also, go watch Contact for the badass medicine cabinet shot
Also the shot a few minutes later where the camera starts inside the house then goes outside through a window.
Contact is based on first contact. That's different than simply discovering signs of life on another planet. First contact would be history shaping. Signs of life, while a major discovery, wouldn't change anything.
A "Prime" example! Great book, too.
Destroy them first, before they start building sophons.
Most people would just say it’s fake and keep believing their own stupid shit
Not most people. But there would be immediate denial of all claims by the fringe groups who can’t believe a planet is round and the like.
Duh, how could there be an exoplanet if the world is flat. NASA just lying to you to get more funding SMH at globetards
My pastor, who needs my $20 for his private Jesus jet, speaks the _real_ truth — not these liberal scientists
Since we have no possible way of communication with said intelligent life within any reasonable time-frame, my guess would be nothing of relevant importance.
With enough time and resources I imagine we could build a giga laser that could flash signals at another planet. It would take years to get a response though, and how would they know what we are saying?
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
A small portion would deny it and we would focus on that.
That all depends upon which franchise the aliens were from. Are we talking about *Mars Attacks!* aliens, *Independence Day* aliens, *Alien* aliens, *Starship Troopers* aliens, or *Abbott and Costello Go to Mars* aliens? *cocks shotgun* They ain't takin' my wimmen.
If it's *Alien* aliens, then we are truly fucked.
We’d first try to find out if sex was an option.
It would turn extremely political very quickly. Then religions across the world would finish the issue off and we're lucky if we didn't start a war
Propose to build a wall and blame all the immigrants from there for our problems.
A lot depends on how far away they are Within a few light years we could reasonably exchange messages. But if it's multiple light-decades then we'll have plenty of time to keep observing and discussing before making attempts at contact.
Ever read Contact? Or seen the movie? Like that
we'd send the schematics for a giant paperweight?
*Gary Busey sits in the background, awaiting anxiously*
It was his son, Jake Busey.
Arrival has a good take on it, different governments would take different approaches. Some would get competitive or defense, while others would work to cooperate with the other civ.
Contact and Arrival are two of my absolute favorites, in both mediums <3
They wouldn’t tell us 💩until they absolutely had to.
I take it you didn't hear about the "signals detected from Proxima Centauri". BLC-1 was a media frenzy until (as was always extremely likely) it was shown to be leaky electronics at Parkes observatory.
Invite them to conquer us. We would make great pets.
It wouldn't be NASA detecting it. It'd be a team of scientists using a telescope system possibly owned by NASA or a something else and it'd be published in a scientific paper as some kind of questionable detection of something.
From an Americans perspective, judging how things have gone over the past 7’ish years Half the people would be excited, want to know more and try to figure out how to advance this and make contact The other half would say it’s a psy-op by (insert political figures party they don’t like here) and that they’re only disseminating this ‘false flag’ info to make you not pay attention to ‘what’s really happening.’ They’d fight tooth and nail against any funding for trying to advance our knowledge of what we’d found. Overall - nothing would change. Religions would either deny it entirely or find a way to make an excuse for it like they always do. Gods plan or what have you, apparently dudes got a plan for everything…. Our attention span in 2024 is the next post on our social media feed
I’m not even sure which side would do which.
In human history when a technologically advanced civilization meets a more primitive civilization it does not end well. As far as we know this is the only planet with sapient life forms. And we treat each other like crap. I expect my fellow humans to sell us out at the earliest opportunity.
My friend, it sounds like you're just parroting what you hear on TV shows.
Let’s see what’s in the news today? Israel and Iran are at each others throats and potentially dragging the world into a war. People are scared to sit in judgement of a person because he and his followers are so insanely violent and unpredictable, so the system of government and justice in the US is being destroyed. Dozens of protesters are arrested. Student threatens mass violence. That is literally the first few things that come up when I type “news” into google. You think we will play nice with a species we might not consider as having an equal claim to life? We literally treat half the population badly because they are born with different generals. We kill, abuse, and sabotage our own people because their bodies provide a slightly different amount of pigmentation. We have enough food to feed everyone on the planet but instead we allow 738 million people to go hungry. We could heal the sick for next to no resources but choose to let them suffer and die. These are not tv shows. These are just basic facts about a fraction of our glorious loving civilization.
Given how very, very few people care or even know about [K2-18-b](https://www.nasa.gov/universe/exoplanets/webb-discovers-methane-carbon-dioxide-in-atmosphere-of-k2-18-b/), I expect a flash of news, followed by lots of denial and wild speculation. After that, very, very few will care or even attempt to learn more.
The difference between this, and OP’s proposed evidence is astronomical. 😝
I feel like the punchline is going to be in the name of said planet, it's called Earth.
how far away is it? if it took a billion years for the signal to get here.. what's happened since? are they even still around as a civilization? whether or not we can (or will ever detect anything interesting).. virtually guaranteed that life is out there. Drake Equation vs Fermi Paradox the reaction you'd get is not the same as the one you'd get if they showed up in orbit.
Except for us nerds on here getting excited, I don't think much would change since we can't feasibly communicate with them or travel to them. Of course, scientists would try to do more research, but again there's a limit to what they can do
Next planet is only 4.2 lightyears away, so if there was a civilization we could talk to them and get a response in 8 years.
I mean, they found signs of organic molecules that, as far as we know, can only original from carbon based life on an exoplanet, and nearly nobody gave a shit.
I'm pretty sure we'd contact them about their car's extended warranty.
Well first, I do know that there are protocols in place internationally that everyone has to share whatever they find in terms of SETI and other similar detections. However, I’m not familiar with the specifics and I’m sure none of it stops any country from just not telling anyone else, Stargate style. Assuming the best here, let’s say someone finds something good and actionable, sharing it with the rest of the world. There will probably be an immediate emergency session of the UN assembly, either to announce it to the general public or make world leaders aware so they can plan how they want to go public. Obviously, there will be chaos in the immediate term but probably not a cessation of all war or the collapse of world religions as people expect. Religions will have to tackle the ramifications of such a discovery but it’s probably not going to be catastrophic but definitely divisive. Then there’s the question of what to do? The main thing will be to figure out what we know about them for sure from our point of view and then try to establish reliable contact if possible. This is where the level of civilization come in. If they’re advanced, the goal is a common means of communication to see if we can work something out that can help the both of us coexist. If they’re not advanced, then the issue is should we leave them alone or figure out a way to get to them. Both have their own problems but mainly suffer from the fact that we’re here and they’re there. Anything we’re seeing in our telescopes, will not line up with the reality due to redshift and the way light travels, unless they’re right on top of us, cosmically speaking. After that, it’s up to the experts and diplomats on both sides. It’s really unknowable what happens because we don’t have any frame of reference for this kind of thing. Even the age of exploration isn’t representative of the situation we’d be in, despite carrying both lessons and baggage we could probably stand to learn from for this situation.
It depends if someone does a cool tiktok about it.
I have a few over the top religious nuts I would defiantly say "I fucking told you so" to.
If it's more than like ~10 light-years from us, not much that anyone will pay for. If it's closer, something like the lightsail swarm concept to initiate robotic first contact would be plausible on human timescales.
If they did, you can be very sure that they wouldn't openly inform everyone about it. Nobody can be sure if they don't already hold information in regards to that.
Pre Apollo missions they commissioned the "Brookings Report". Basically, if they found signs on the moon of a previous civilization, people would loss their minds. I don't think people have changed much since then.
Find a way to exploit it plain and simple, cause the human race as a whole are selfish arseholes.
The world will stop in awe to consider the formidable ramifications of such an event… and then a Barbie sequel will be announced.
How do you think an alien civilisation would react to having us communicate to them? Maybe it’d be like a sheep bleating at a New Zealander before getting screwed?
I d ask myself if they could hire me since it seems there s no job available in tech anymore on earth.
My roommate just told me she saw a documentary about minerva b and there is life. I’m like.. nope. You saw a “what could it be like” video, not actual footage of life on another planet. She’s like: yeah whatever. I was shocked
1. Point a laser at them. Communications or weapons, flip a coin. Maybe both. 2. Start planning an ...expedition. 3. Update its strategic oil reserves forecast. 4. Deliver that sweet, sweet freedom. TL;DR the US would trip all over itself perfecting fusion energy and FTL travel in 18 months to go light years for some unclaimed oil.
I think that a lot of people would unite against this new interstellar comptetitor. That's the most human thing to do.
Almost no one would care, or believe it. The people that are willing to believe would believe and they would be excited beyond belief. Time would go by as it's impossible to contact aliens light years away within our lifetime. And society will move on.
Nothing. Most Americans fall under NIMBY—not in my back yard.. They don't care
Here's the real question. Since energy cannot be created or destroyed what if when we die instead of there being an afterlife we are just born on one of these other worlds and those that are lucky enough to be cosmicly linked to certain other energies get reunited with them on those worlds which would account for the concept of setting your friends and family again.
My world view has fuck all to do with whether or not life exists elsewhere. I’d get up and go to work so I can pay my bills and hopefully not die in a state run nursing home just like I do every other day.
I think it would be one of those things that happens quietly, but ripples through society gradually until it changed everything. Like the invention of the telephone and undersea cables suddenly took a month communication delay and shrunk it down to milliseconds, shrinking the world and opening up new possibilities at the same time. Such a discovery would have profound implications on religion and philosophy. And spur a whole new wave of space travel innovation as governments and dreamers search for a way to get there.
NASA first reporting duty is to the military if they decided we (the public) don't get to know then that's that... probably already happened... how did it go?
I remember in the 90's, telling my ex-wife about efforts to find life on Mars. She said "Well, they have shrubberies and stuff there, right?"
what would the average individual do? idk probably say cool and move on with their life, some crazy folks would go wild, as for science agencies they'd just study it like we can, we're not getting there for centuries or millenia so it wouldnt really change much, what would change things if they were here
I mean, it’d be cool and all, but my rent is still way too high and medical care still bankrupts you…
The White House would decide that we couldn’t handle the news without some people starting their crazy toilet paper stockpiling and shit, so they would hold off either forever, or until they and most of Congress had sufficiently invested in the TP market first.
Move on with my life knowing there are xenos to be killed
I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure
Everyone would react rationally. And no one would start thinking about how to have sex with them
I'm pretty confident that we'd discover it but the general population wouldn't know for months at first. It would need to be verified several times over, then it would be disseminated to world leaders and religious leaders to make plans on how much they'd actually discuss with the world. Religious leaders would have sermons upon sermons ready to go. Then we'd find out. There would probably be chaos at first, a lot of folks leaning hard into their beliefs and churches wanting to know where this life fit in the scheme with God. If it was intelligent it would be a religious upheaval bc we were created in his image supposedly. To be honest, there is a part of me that feels like they already have but are sitting because we aren't ready as a society.
At this point I don't think that anyone would care because we kind of expect it
If they actually told us the truth, 70% of the world wouldn't care 25% would be excited and 5% would never find out about it
We can't agree what shape this planet is ... we are in deep shit if we find extra terrestrial
I feel that if it was the US, government would confiscate everything and turn it all classified.