A Warp Drive Is Within Our Reach, Apparently.

[RJ 17]

Here's the scoop:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49064028/ns/technology_and_science-space/

Now, aside from the fact that I had heard about this a few months ago on a National Geographic show, it's still pretty neat to think that we're actually experimenting with stuff like this.

This, however, did give me a rather interesting thought...lets assume that all the UFO stories are "fake". That is to say, they're not alien crafts, but rather just super-secret military test-flights of super-secret aircraft. Tying this back into the notion of developing a warp drive, suppose we do and go out to explore the galaxy. Now, pretty much all scenarios of a First Contact situation seem to be of the assumption that whatever we find out there will be much more advanced than us.

Well what if that's a load of bullshit? What if we go out there and find that there is other intelligent life out there, societies and races we can only imagine...yet WE'RE the ones who are technologically superior to them. In fact, it turns out that humanity is the top species in the galaxy. What do you think would happen to us as a people and society should we one day find out that we're the dominant species in the galaxy?

Personally, judging by the history of advanced cultures meeting more primative ones here on our planet, I honestly don't think we'd be very neighborly...

 

[krazykidd]

I don't believe in alien lifeformes . But if they did exist , they would probably be more intelligent than us or are the very least more united and structured . That being said , if hypothetically , we were the more intelligent of the two races , it would be most likely to be hostiles , if only because we would be unable to communicate with each other . Hell we can't even get along with orselves. Thus leading me to believe we would attack them , but be wiped out due to the lack of unity . Assuming we are on their home turf .

 

[yuval152]

Yeah, if we found out that another species exits and it's inferior to us it's highly likely that we will loot, burn , pillage and enslave them.

We can't even get along with ourselves.

 

[repeating integers]

That's a cool article. I hope we do manage FTL travel - I mean, it obviously wouldn't be for mass usage, but it would still be awesome.

Now, I wonder if we're gonna be able to get past the "artificial gravity" hurdle?

 

[Imthatguy]

Burn pillage enslave... the same old tricks that we love. I'm not sure if I'm 'un'ok with this however any other intelligent life probably evolved along totally different lines and their moral patterns if not their very physiology would be at best incomprehensible and at worst monstrous. So in other words conflict is inevitable. If humans could never get along with each other what makes you think that Aliens we probably could never hope to communicate with will be any different?

End of the day: Burn 'em this universe belongs to humans!

 

[Vanitas likes Bubbles]

We will probs enslave them. They will be our thralls. They will create machines that will eventually destroy them. We'll create an AI that will try and find a way to stop that from happening. It'll betray us.

Anyway, this article is interesting. I hope I live to see it in action. Very unlikely though.

 

[Thaluikhain]

"Bullshit."

Funny, I knew my response would be to say "Bullshit." as soon as I saw the title. "It may be theoretically possible to travel at 10 times c by 'only' using the mass energy equivalent of the Voyager probe" is not anywhere near the same as "A Warp Drive Is Within Our Reach".

Now, the actual true state of affairs might be interesting, but that's a seperate issue altogether.

...

The OP is about something else agian, though, and I think it's any interesting idea, or at least one not covered in as great detail as most. It'd be difficult to discover humanity as being the top species in the entire galaxy for many hundreds or thousands of years, though, society would have adjusted to the idea long before it had to deal with it.

Meeting at least some less developed aliens...yeah, it'd be the worse aspects of imperialism all over again.

This is assuming they are recognisably intelligent, you might otherwise compare it to the discovery of a remote island full of weird plants and animals that is totally uninhabited. Of course, even if they are intelligent, this fact will be dismissed and denied by various people with a vested interest in doing so.

 

[Frankster]

It's my opinion that humanity is gonna struggle to reach the stars as our society is just too myopic for the long term investment required, even if we do have the technology.
Political unity is necessary for our race to colonize space imo, and we ain't any closer to reaching that. Do you imagine how say..china or russia would react if usa (to give likeliest example, im from uk so not being nationalist) built first intergalactic spaceship and announced its intentions to explore the glaxy? How it would affect politics on earth?
Would be a great cause for ww3 if anything.

So yeh i dont see us making fancy space travels, let alone reaching other civlization and exterminating or enslaving them. Not to mention i expect alien races to be actually alien and have all sorts of tricks up their sleeve we wont see coming and new materials and ways of doing things that will prove super effective vs us (those same new materials would be a worthy prize if we win though). We are just fleshy meatbags with tons of vulnerabilities that excessively rely on our tools at the end of the day, and we still on our planet with tons of problems, lets not dream that we can take on the universe when we struggle to leave our own backyard.

 

[Waffle_Man]

I love the automatic jump from "fast the light tracel," to "first contact," to "imperialism," to "enslave" without even trying to come up with a single logical reason for doing so. What would we have them do? Ship back mass quantities of resources with our magic mining equipment that we've secretly developed? Sweep the floors of our fast food joints? Manufacture Apple products? Hell, it would be a PR nightmare for any reasonably civilized government to do anything remotely similar to being a dick in such a situation.

 

[Saregon]

Well, first off, I believe it would be a damn sight more likely that any such technology wouldn't see the light of day until we as a species are a lot more united than we currently are, as it would require the absolute best and brightest we have working together, and resources far beyond any single nation.

Also, I think an encounter with an advanced species that's still less advanced than we are would depend on a couple of things.

Is the primary focus of the mission science and research, or military reconnoissance?
If it's a scientific mission, it would likely be highly publicized and as such be subject to open criticism and commentary, making any unprovoked hostile action highly unwanted and unlikely. If it's a military mission, it's more likely to be kept a secret, and also for the ship to armed (humans are nothing if not fond of our weapons), making a defensive attack from the other species more likely, and also an unprovoked attack from the human ship more likely as well, for resources for example.

It would also depend on the situation on Earth at that time. Are we launching the mission out of a need for resources or land to which we can expand our ever growing population? If we are, that makes a conflict a lot more likely.

Also, I don't think we will ever accept that we have found all other sentient races in the universe, more or less advanced than us. It's simply too big for us to say "Well, we found 'em all. Let's go grab a coffee."

 

[squidface]

If it was Americans who went, I'm sure they'd like to butt their oar in wherever they went.
I kid, but I'd like to think that as humans, we're above "conquer and command". I'd like to think we'd be friendly and try to let these new friends live peacefully without trying to 'help' them to advance and just generally not sticking our head round the door every five minutes to check on them.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I love the automatic jump from "fast the light tracel," to "first contact," to "imperialism," to "enslave" without even trying to come up with a single logical reason for doing so. What would we have them do? Ship back mass quantities of resources with our magic mining equipment that we've secretly developed? Sweep the floors of our fast food joints? Manufacture Apple products? Hell, it would be a PR nightmare for any reasonably civilized government to do anything remotely similar to being a dick in such a situation.

That would make logical sense, yes, only things tend not to work like that.

How many people are in favour of going to war with fellow humans in some country they've never heard of that poses no risk to them?

Now, how many more if instead of fellow humans, you had funny looking non-humans that have been "proved" are less than us? People are still "proving" that foreign cultures or races are inherently lesser than their own, so much easier when you have actual aliens.

 

[Cabisco]

All I need to know is when should I begin buying a star trek uniform and wait around at nasa?

 

[Daystar Clarion]

I think I read somewhere that if the age of the universe was measured on a clock, we would currently be 2 minutes past midnight on the first day.

What that means, is that the universe is still very young, and that humanity may very well be the first advanced species.

You see all this sci-fi stuff, well it turns out that humanity may be the Vulcans, the Asari. We are the ancient race that discovers younger civilisations

 

[Daverson]

Within our reach doesn't necessarily mean "within our lifetimes". Making a ring large enough to encompass a reasonably sized spacecraft (say, about the size of the space shuttle) out of exotic matter would be a massive undertaking.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

I don't believe in alien lifeformes . But if they did exist , they would probably be more intelligent than us or are the very least more united and structured .

Why? There's nothing to suggest that any alien species would be more intelligent, that's just how they usually end up being depicted in shitey sci-fi.

-

I'm sceptical about this warp drive thing. The mass-energy of a voyager probe is still a huge amount of energy, for a start, so we wouldn't have that available anyway until we get the hang of fusion or some other potent power source. And even if we were able to travel at 10c, interstellar distances are so vast that we'd have to pray that local stars happen to be the ones with the useful resources and alien lifeforms, else we're all going on a several thousand year long road trip.

As for whether we might find aliens, and whether we're likely to be more or less 'advanced', whatever the hell that actually means:
Alien lifeforms are almost a mathematical certainty, because there's something like a 64 billion to 1 chance for any particular planet to be suited for life to appear, and there are significantly more than 64 billion planets. And that's without considering that non-carbon based lifeforms or extremophiles could appear on planets besides those ones.
Finding them is the only difficulty.

Also I'd be highly surprised if any particular planet happened to come up with an intelligent species. I'd expect most alien species to be on the level of animals, or insects. Intelligence is an extremely rare product of evolution; most of the time traits like strength or speed or toxicity are more useful. It's only when you begin getting social species, who require higher brainpower for complex interactions to survive, that you get intelligence.

 

[CommanderL]

Lets crush them aliens and show them our beliefs are better yeah

 

[SnowBurst]

warp (faster then light travel) PHYSICALLY impossible itll never happen unless einstein gets proven wrong which he wont. if wormholes get proven to existance then maybe that way but ftl travel is impossible even to put in perspective it would take like 100 thousand years at light speed to get from one of the galaxy to the other let alone other galaxies it would take over a year at light speed to get to the nearest star aswell and about 20 years to the nearest possibly habitable planet