So what will happen when intelligent life is discovered?

Each year it seems there are new discoveries that are bringing us closer to identifying intelligent life forms on other planets. Today it was announced that a planet, Kepler-22b was determined to be able to sustain life, as we know it. Finding planets that have water and finding planets that might support life are a long way from finding one that actually has life, and intelligent life at that. So it may take decades before that happens. Or it happenbe next week. Or they could find us. But once confirmed, how do you think our planet will react?

This isn't the same era as when Orson Welles broadcast H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds and created near hysteria in some parts. We're much more sophisticated now. I think 99% of us expect it to happen. However I think there will be a fringe element of fundamentalists (name your religion, cult, and or nutcase) that will go off the deep end. Others will be certain it is a government plot for who knows what reasons.

I think life will be found some day. As special as we like to think we are as a species, we're maybe only an accident that happened in a swamp when lightning struck during some primordial storm. Or maybe we are actually a divine creation. Whatever you wish to believe, you will. But most likely we aren't alone. So how will you react?

Me? I just hope they have bacon and beer. Would be kind of fun to know there are others out there. Unless H. G. Wells was right.

 

Knowing humans at least marginally well, my bet is:

Question 1) Can we eat it?
Question 2) Can we patent/monetize it in some way?

My reaction would be one of, "Damn, that's cool!" and consider another undergrad/graduate degree in astrobiology.

 

I will welcome our new intergalactic overlords.
Provided, of course, that we can recognize them as extraterrestrial in origin. Hell, they could already be here hiding in plain sight.

 

Bacon and beer.... yumm... I'll prepare a welcome basket of food containing bacon and beer in hopes of them returning the favor with space bacon and space beer.

I think there is life out there... but having life that we can communicate with and interact with at the same level as we do with other humans will be a long shot. The first aliens are going to be bacteria globs.

 

leaving the origins of life to science and religion and focusing on the fact that there was life somewhere other than here we would have to quickly form a goverment for earth to deal with this new discovery (potentially intelligent life other than our own)

what if Kepler-22b turns out to be the 'suburbs' ?

 

I have zero doubt that there is life on other worlds (including those not like Earth-- no reason "life" couldn't include creatures that live in gas giants or in methane ice or have silicon-based physiologies, or whatnot), and close to zero doubt that sooner or later, we'll meet up. I'm at least somewhat inclined to believe Carl Sagan's hypothesis that any species which has survived long enough to achieve interstellar travel will be wise enough to be peaceful. As much I love "blast-the-aliens" sci-fi action flicks, I doubt the scenario ever to prove likely. Though his further presumption, that any species we are likely to encounter will likely be millions of years more advanced than we are seems like more of a stretch. I could believe that it is likely that any spacefaring species would be more advanced than us, but I don't see why that requires more than a few hundred, or a couple of thousand, years' worth of difference.

My guess is that either ETIs will think us fascinating and be interested in exchanging cultural information, or they will think us utterly unintersting, and be completely disinclined to socialize with us. We, hopefully, will know right off the bat that they are more advanced, and will not default to our apparent factory settings of "Aaaah! Something unfamiliar! Kill it!"

It would be very interesting to meet them, though. To know what their lifeform is based in, how their physiology works, and what things they value and find of interest.

 

The key word here is "intelligent life" - they would stand out too much despite their best efforts and definitely have to avoid Washington D.C.

 

Yeah, the chance of encountering a race at the same relative technological level as us is remote. We're more likely to find something primordial or be found by something insanely advanced.

I hope they extend the Kepler project beyond next year's scheduled end. It's discoveries keep fueling the imagination.

 

I wonder if we will even have the ability to comprehend how advance or lack of advanced the aliens are in comparison. Without alot of communication, we'll have no clue wtf they are about.

 

Stating the obvious, any aliens coming here have some kind of "wap drive" or equivalent thereof just to pass the distance that is incredibly vast for us right now. We are very much "pre-warp" to use the Star Trek term, and it takes us days just to reach the moon.

 

Given the diversity of cultures and societies around the world, I think there would surely be a wide range of reactions, ranging from those who will embrace such a discovery with open arms to those that would seek to destroy it out of fear.

But on a more philosophical level, I think it would have great potential to be a catalyst that starts a change in our perception of our own humanity. Our perception of ourselves as a species is largely relative to other species on the planet, so it's quite easy to think of humanity being an advanced species.

If a new species of intelligent life is found that proves this is not the case, suddenly we won't be the intelligent beings we tend to consider ourselves to be, and that can be very difficult for some to come to terms with.

 

What if they showed up and just made fun of us?

 

That's assuming they are carbon based and physically resemble life forms on this planet.
Then again, maybe DC is an outpost...

 

as soon as we colonize another planet that can sustain itself, planets will become countries, we'll still kill each other, we'll still try to profit from one another, and we'll still have lots and lots of porn.

my question is what will happen to the stock market when trades that are supposed to be made instantaneously take a good 3 minutes to reach the real world version of courescent.

 

That is why they got rid of money in Star Trek...

I don't think we will discover intelligent life. Unless the aliens on Kepler-22b were broadcasting a strong signal 600 years ago, we wouldn't know that anything is there. And they won't know that we are here for another 530 years.

 

right up until someone actually figures out how to safely travel faster than light. those neutrinos were ahead of their time!

 

I won't argue that it will happen in our lifetime, but it COULD happen. It being cultural and scientific exchange with a alien race.
Every scientific field has grown exxponentially over the decades. Someone right now is experimenting in faster than light travel, in teleporting, in faster communication. Who's to say that some of those guys won't have some huge eaath shattering breakthrough?
How long have WE been flying? And look at how much we didn't know we could do 50 years ago. Where are we gonna be in 20 years, 50?
And who's to say that there isn't some other world on a parallel course?
Some one explain to me why it HAS to be that when we make contact or have contact made with us that the other has to be hundreds or millions of years ahead of us

 

I look forward to our alien overlords taking over Earth and all of our materials.