Aliens and their danger

So, aliens. What does alien mean? An alien is any organism foreign to Earth. there are theories that the original microbes that we evolved from were on a comet that crashed into earth in the early solar system. Aliens are complicated. We want them to exist; to not be alone in this dark empty universe, floating endlessly without purpose, destined to die when the sun swallows the inner solar system. That is depressing though, so we look outward for others like us.

 

What is the Great Filter? It is a theoretical idea of a roadblock that is ahead of us that might eliminate most species before they get an uncertain point in technology, so we might be ahead or behind, depending on what side of the filter we are on. This could be depressing or encouraging. There is also the mini-filter theory where there are small roadblocks that are easier to overcome and less likely to make our entire species extinct. Things like these are the initial development of life, evolving brains and not dying to our own hubris because of things like nuclear bombs or climate change.

 

What is the Kardashev Scale? The Kardashev scale is a way of measuring the technological level of civilizations which consists of Type 0 civilizations, Type 1, Type 2, Type 3, Type 4, and finally Type 5. To make it easier to categorize civilizations like humanity, we need subcategories to sort them into. Humanity is currently at type 0.75 on the Scale. All the civilizations on the KS use differing amounts of energy by orders of magnitude. It is like comparing a beehive with the human metropolitan area: to them we are interplanetary gods. Now onto the actual reason for this paragraph, The Kardashev Scale. Type 0 civilizations are small multicellular organisms and small creatures. Type 1 civilizations can use the available energy of their planet with things like solar energy, hydro-electric, wind, nuclear, and geothermal energy. Type 2 civilizations can use the available energy of their solar system and begin to make megastructures like Dyson Spheres and Stellar engines and are looking outward to turn into a Type 3 civilization. Type 3 civilizations can use the available energy of their entire galaxy. At this point it becomes hard to visualize what they look like or what their motives are due to how advanced they would be compared to us.

Now to the most complicated and disputed types: Type 4, Type 5, and the theoretical Type Ω*. These civilization types are incredibly difficult to visualize because of the incredible advancement of technology compared to us. Type 4 civilizations have expanded across galactic clusters, giant cubes millions of light years across with hundreds of galaxies inside. Type 5 civilizations have expanded across entire fibres of clusters of galaxies. Type Ω civilizations are weird. They are theorized to have expanded across Universes (PLURAL UNIVERSES) which does not fit with any current theoretical physics models, so they may have created our universe and they could destroy us in an instant. let us just hope they are nice gods. See the Sources for more information.

 

*Ω means Omega

 

The dark forest is a scientific/philosophical/moral theory about Aliens which states that we would not be able to know if the other civilizations are peaceful or militaristic. Because of this humanity has only two options to hide or to shoot first. There’s a couple of problems with discovering aliens and them discovering us, because of the light years between us, there will be years of communication delay. There’s a worse problem though, technological explosions and the first strike advantage, if we go to war with a civilization, the light years between the systems make it so if we send a fleet of ships to go fight in a place light years away, the other civilization might have exploded in technology by the time we get there, and we’ll be hopelessly disadvantaged compared to when we last talked to them. It also might be advantageous for highly advanced alien civilizations to wipe out all other species that are lower on the tech tree, all they would need to do is throw a small incredibly fast (about 95% of the speed of light) missile at them and it would impact with the energy of every single nuclear bomb on earth, or maybe being highly advanced makes them more peaceful rather than more militaristic, maybe there’s a galactic multi species civilization waiting for us to be advanced enough to talk to them, or there are only two types of aliens; the quiet ones and the dead ones. (More information in the bibliography)

 

What would happen if we found live aliens near our level of technology? It could mean three things, one: We are not alone, we have friends to share culture and technology with, two: we may be behind the great filter, three: the great filter is ahead, which is depressing because it means humanity might die in the near or far future. We also do not know what the limits of technology are, so we do not know if interstellar travel is possible or if we can even safely make travel between the planets affordable. Aliens

 

What would aliens look like? For us to understand what aliens would look like, we need a civilization sample size of more than one. Aliens could look like anything you can imagine; they could be purple 6-legged ants the size of trucks, tiny microorganisms that have just become multicellular or highly advanced aliens that have turned themselves into robots.

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