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Subject: War vs ET-How & How Soon?
eon    4/14/2004 1:45:22 PM
I assume most of us have read a fair amount of MSF dealing with war vs. alien races/civilizations/etc. But how probable is it in reality, and how soon? Heinlein once commented (in "Expanded Universe") that "The greatest military problem of the next century (i.e., this one) will be that there is no defense against an attack from space", and specifically stated that he wasn't talking about ICBMs. IMPO,(and to get the ball- of whatever- rolling), my "worst case scenario" would be a colonization fleet inbound at sublight velocities (possibly fleeing a doomed star system, as in Duncan Lunan's "Epsilon Bootis' Probe" hypothesis), who determine that (A) Earth is survivable for them, (B) they have nowhere else to go (reached the end of their logistics, etc.), (C) can't share, or just don't want to, and (D) brought enough firepower along to make their claimjump stick JIC. (Yes, I've seen "Independence Day"- but I'm thinking more of Wells' "War of the Worlds".) Likely, unlikely- or is there an even nastier scenario out there? (Please keep the X-Files jokes to a low roar- thank you.) :-).
 
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eon    RE:Why are they coming?- eon to blacksmith   6/7/2004 2:12:59 PM
In the UFO literature (mostly crap, I admit, but there are a few people there with brains), the reasons usually given are taken from the work of Ivan T. Sanderson (a naturalist) in the 1960s. Sanderson's reasons for possible alien invasion (given in "Uninvited Visitors" and "In visible Residents") are; 1. They come from a dying world- ours is the closest habitable one. 2. They are a large, expansionist empire, and we're their newest discovery (ref. British Empire, 17th-18th Centuries). 3. They are a commercial empire looking for exploitable resources (raw materials, minerals, even slaves) (ref. Dutch trading empire, same period.). 4. They are loking for colonizable worlds to provide living space for their own expanding population (no exact historical parallel, but most of the European powers used colonies as a way of dealing with their "excess" mouths that needed feeding). 5. They consider themselves the one, perfect life form in existence, and view other life forms as unworthy to co-exist with them. 6. For reasons utterly beyond our ken (i.e., their thought processes are so alien we have no common frame of reference. I used to believe (6) very unlikely, on the grounds that a lif form capable of existing in our ecosystem could not be that different in mental/emotional makeup and thought processes. But after 9/11/2001, I'm not so sure anymore..
 
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blacksmith    RE:Why are they coming?- blacksmith to eon    6/7/2004 7:55:19 PM
Yes... Think in terms of evolved army ants. (The Starship Troopers scenario). They don't think about expanding. They just do, destroying anything in their path that doesn't kill them first. Note I said evovled not intelligent. Their mentality may not be able to pass anything we would recognize as an aptitude test, except of course for that little matter of developing space flight. People who assume that ET will be friendly commit they first sin of...xenoanthropology (?). They try to humanize something that is unlikely to be human.
 
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Strangelove    RE:Why are they coming?   6/8/2004 3:00:44 AM
#6 is a very plausible scenario. Look at how different human societies are, and we are all interfertile. A race / intelligence evolved on a different planet might very well be unrecognizable as life. Interestingly, since the same laws of physics would apply, their technology would likely be recognizable (they would likely solve problems the same way we have, do or would). If we were attacked, I think it is probable that the aliens won't 'fight fair'. Asteroids, killer microbes, emp blasts: the science fiction version of shock and awe. Sensors blinded by emp, satillites and computer systems crashing unexpectedly (sentient programs devouring the internet, launching our own weapons at ourselves), entire crops of (in some cases genetically identical) wheat, barley, rice and soy failing unexpectedly, massive plagues ravaging our populations, several large asteroids inbound, and then ten or 1000 years later they show up. Worst case scenario. Frankly, though, there are far more resources available in the asteroid belt which are relatively free for the taking. But, given, '6', they may not care.
 
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eon    RE:Why are they coming?-eon to Strangelove   6/8/2004 9:28:51 AM
You've pointed out another very nasty possibility; that the hypothetical ETs might not even want the Earth, or us. In his story "Things Pass By" (later revised as the novel "The Wailing Asteroid"), Murray Leinster postulated an alien race which wanted to exterminate all life like us, because they weren't. Their chosen method was to run a group of high-relativistic interstellar vessels through our Solar System at about .9C. They didn't need to have any other attack plan; the gravitational wavefront of an effective mass that great would, they determined, generate tidal forces more than adequate to reduce every planet in range, including Earth, to asteroid belts. At which point their second-line vessels would move in and begin mining same, to extract the raw materials necessary to sustain their interstellar "high crusade" (with apologies to Poul Anderson). In the story, the Earthmen managed to beat them; in reality, I doubt we today would have any effective response to such a basically mule-stupid but high-lethality tactic..
 
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ilpars    RE:Why are they coming?-eon to Strangelove   6/8/2004 10:55:36 AM
"Their chosen method was to run a group of high-relativistic interstellar vessels through our Solar System at about .9C. " Sorry, I do not understand this sentence. What did you mean?
 
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Warhammer    RE:Why are they coming?-eon to Strangelove   6/8/2004 1:56:51 PM
Running ships through our solar system at +90% the speed of light(.9c) which would have the effect of dragging and disturbing space time as it passed by. Passing close to earth could possibly cause it harm due to "turbulence" known as gravitational tidal forces. The act of acceleration transfers energy into the object. Energy has mass. Theoretically, an object moving close to the speed of light would have many many times the mass it might have if it were sitting still. Take a million ton interstellar freighter and zip it by the earth at 99% the speed of light, and it may well have the effect as if the moon had just zipped by. The same tidal forces that move liquid matter, as the moon does for our tides will also move solid matter with the same effect if the gravity is great enough. The extreme case of this being a black hole that is spinning so fast that it isn't a sphere, but is bowed at the side. When the bowed side swings close to, say a solar system, it causes a wave of tidal force. This wave from a black hole could cause waves on solid steel from millions of miles away. I am not sure what mass of a ship at what speed you would need, but it would be possible.
 
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Ehran    RE:Why are they coming?-eon to Strangelove   6/8/2004 8:52:00 PM
wouldn't that be a suicide run for the freighter(s) though. Roche's limit and all that would seem to bite the little bit a lot harder than a planet.
 
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blacksmith    RE:Why are they coming?-eon to Strangelove   6/9/2004 12:08:45 AM
Tidal forces are a function of differential radius. The freighter may be small enough to approximate a point mass versus a planet, and therefore not be unduly impacted by the tidal forces.
 
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Strangelove    RE:Why are they coming?-eon to Strangelove   6/9/2004 12:14:07 AM
Note that such a ship would not necessarily be crewed, nor would the attackers necessarily care. Further, such a ship could easily drop kinetic harpoons into earth's orbit, which would devastate our planet.
 
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blacksmith    RE:Why are they coming?-eon to Strangelove   6/9/2004 12:58:55 AM
1,000 kilogram kinetic torpedo @ .99 c = 75 Gigaton explosion. Ouch.
 
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