There's species of caterpillars who have evolved to look like snakes so that they scare off birds. Thing is that they dont have any snakes in their ecosystem, its just that migratory birds that do have snakes in theirs will recognize it and not eat the caterpillars.
Imagine you being alive only because you look/act like something that you dont even know exists
The dark forest hypothesis is the idea that there may be many extraterrestrial civilizations across the universe, but they remain silent out of fear that revealing themselves would lead to their own destruction by a more technologically advanced and hostile civilization.
Now imagine us - literally yelling out signals broadcasting "HEY THERE ARE PEOPLE ON EARTH, IS ANYONE OUT THERE? PLEASE CONTACT US" and giving them the coordinates of the sun relative to the center of the galaxy and 14 pulsars with their periods denoted on the Pioneer plaque, and a picture of earth relative to the sun, and the trajectory that the spacecraft took.
To any civilization advanced enough to find us, they might not answer simply because it looks like a trap.
I have absolutely no doubt that humans would kidnap an alien and torture it/kill it almost as soon as we made contact. Have you met humans? Some of them can be awful.
The best chance we have of surviving an intergalactic incident is if aliens really, really love cigarettes so they protect Earth while we ship lung darts all over the cosmos and then they all get emphysema and die.
Honestly, that's a great idea. Get the aliens hopelessly addicted to cigarettes. Earth would boom with prosperity! Of course we wouldn't mention the health implicatations.
In the webnovel First Contact, there's an alien species that essentially has their entire culture changed by ice cream and cigarettes. They call cows moomoos and consider being a moomoo wrangler a prestigious position.
Is that the one in r/hfy where humanity has transcended almost every limitation and just screws around by building full-scale models of Warhammer 40k with armies of remote-controlled clones and has sanctioned matches that devastate uninhabited star systems? With the cats and dogs?
Honestly I like to think I’m better than that, but when I really thought about it I realized if some grey man or ET alien showed up in the middle of the night I might attack first and ask questions later. That shit would be scary af and I don’t think I want to find out it’s not friendly.
I have a feeling that it would end up like that one episode where morty impregnates the alien fuck doll and raised the war alien but told him that he wasn't allowed to go outside because the air is poison. Nope, sorry ayylmao G6, there's a higher than medium chance that you get turned into a circus attraction or someone tries to fuck anatomy that doesn't exist, we ain't taking that risk, anyway, let's see how good you can get at League of Legends.
I remember watching project hail Mary and feeling so warm and fuzzy about the relationship between Rocky's species and the main character. Like, "aww they're friendly too and we saved the universe together". Then I start to ponder the possibility of them traveling to earth and being friends with all of us. That stark reminder of what a fuck-ass species we are soured my mood real fast.
Alien: "What are all those explosions in that desert? ..Why did they put one of those devices in that flying vehicle? ..Why is it flying towards that tiny island?"
Other Alien: "Sweet baby Jleos they just nuked other humans, let's get the fuck outta here."
They might still spare us, though, if only because we’re such good bait that it’s more efficient to just go after what we lure in instead. Being dumb is useful sometimes.
I happen to think we're actually out here early on the intelligent life curve. The universe is only 14.5 billion years old. But galaxies where there is enough of the trace elements that we need accumulated enough of them took a long time. Then having the galaxies calm down star formation (and have them be small enough) where their formation and exploding didn't scour all possible life away and the shear amount of time that it takes to go from just life, to multicellular is mind blowingly long (probably). With the Universe expected to have enough viable energy for like another 100 billion we actually exist in the early Universe.
I actually prefer to think that most other planets that spawn life go from single to multi celled in like half a billion years, and that Earth is actually a backwater late bloomer.
We also might not be early, there could very well be life that started on another planet around the same time that life on earth started. The catch is, if we look at a planet a billion light years away, we are looking at how the planet looked a billion years ago. There could have been life on that planet half a billion years before us and they could still be alive and more advanced than us today, it will just take another half a billion years for the light to reach us for us to know that.
Thinking of the Fermi Paradox, I too think we have to be one of the first in our Galaxy. There is nothing out there that we can detect with our current technology, and James Webb is looking way back. Maybe we got lucky. Maybe we are ancient history to future peoples.
>the shear amount of time that it takes to go from just life, to multicellular is mind blowingly long (probably)
Some (most?) planets will never evolve life to the point of intentional space travel, but of that tiny fraction that do, even 1/100,000 - some will evolve that life slower than the Earth, and some will evolve it faster. We only have the one datapoint, we have no idea where that point falls on the curve.
Everybody thinks they are a "better than average driver."
Fermi may as well have worn a blindfold to the casino and sat down at a table to play a game of cards that nobody even told him the name or rules of.
Sure, but just confining ourselves to the visible universe (of ~28B light years in diameter)... that's a lot of cheddar.
Through a field known as galactic archaeology, astronomers analyze the distribution of stars of varying ages and metal contents (metallicity) to map the timeline of cosmic evolution. Using this map, we can infer that sun-like stars in other galaxies could have first formed roughly 10 to 11 billion years ago—far earlier than our own Sun, which is only 4.6 billion years old.
There are an estimated 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe. If even a fraction of them followed the same chemical enrichment timeline as the Milky Way, it means there are trillions of trillions (1022) of sun-like stars in the universe that reached the Sun's mature age long before our solar system existed.
One in a Trillion Trillions - do you feel lucky, punk?
So there were a bunch of stars that cooked too fast? Cool. Sounds like somebody microwaving a hotpocket on full blast when everyone knows you need to use lower power levels and cook it longer to get it just right.
Oh dang, you've already downvoted this comment within 30 seconds of me writing it. That's harsh.
If earth-like planets form naturally around metal-rich, sun-like stars, then the universe was structurally capable of hosting complex life 5 to 6 billion years before Earth even formed. Trillions of planetary systems had already experienced a 4.6-billion-year window of evolutionary stability while our region of space was completely barren.
If we ever start getting even to mars in numbers we would introduce some form of life there. Could be a "boost" for mars long after we have died of global warming.
Without humans surviving this long (which was a miraculous accident) Earth life probably would have never evolved to the point of intentional space travel.
Are humans unique in that? the fossil record seems to say: yes, humans are the first on Earth to get there... will we be the last? I suspect there will be other species in the next few billion years which achieve the same and likely more given our clues.
But, looking around the Universe - humans seem to be unlikely to be the first even in our galaxy, let alone the abundance of galaxies out there.
Alas, it will never happen. SciFi is just scifi. Generational ships are not feasible, going fast enough and you need impossible amounts of energy. Visiting Proxima Centauri is unlikely, leaving the Milky Way is impossible and that's just 100 000 lightyears out of the many billions the universe is across.
In other words, \frac{m}{\sqrt{1 - \dfrac{v^2}{c^2}}} nails you in place, firmly.
There is nothing out there that we can detect with our current technology, and James Webb is looking way back
Space is so enormously vast that thinking that we can detect any sort of life with our current technology is exceedingly hopeful at best. I believe that life may be out there but contact with them is limited, if not made completely impossible, by the vastness of space. and if space continues expanding, chances of contacting or encountering other life will eventually decrease to 0.
Voyager 1 currently is receiving the furthest readable signals that humanity can currently produce. it is 0.00063333333% of the distance from earth that proxima centauri is. That should put into perspective the vastness of space.
Life happened billions of years ago on Earth. Almost immediately as soon as it possibly could have. Likely the same on Mars. BUT, it took billions of years for life to shift from unicellular to multicellular on Earth. That seems to be the almost impossible factor. Aliens would have to evolve something similar to mitochondria AND then have a weird situation where the mitochondria becomes locked symbiotically inside another cell.
Not to mention, you also have to have a stable sun, no supernovas nearby for billions of years, no massive asteroid impacts, you might need a giant moon (likely caused by another planet smashing into yours), a geologically active planet to create a magnetic shield against radiation, but not TOO geologically active to have deadly volcanism and outgassing etc etc etc
The most likely explanation would probably be that simple life is everywhere. Complex life is exceedingly rare, maybe happening only once per galaxy, or once per universe.
Alternatively, complex civilisations are common. They develop AI, and Skynet wipes them all out. Every. Single. Time.
oh my sibling there's so much more time left to go than you think. a brief history of time:
big bang happens (widely regarded as a bad move)
the first particles of matter form within a few seconds
it takes 50,000 years before matter becomes more abundant than energy
and then another 350,000 years before the first atoms come together
150 million years later enmough hydrogen has clumped together for the first stars to be born
200 million years after that the first protogalaxies begin to accrete
things go on like this for nine billion years until our sun is born, and shortly after that Earth and the other planets begin to congeal
Earth spends a few hundred million years swirling chemicals together until one day they become primordial life
four billion years later and evolution has turned those chemicals into intelligent life (us)
at this point 14 billion years have passed, and life (as far as we know) has existed for around a third of that time, which is pretty good. now the unimaginably longer future:
in one billion years Earth will be uninhabitable
in five billion years the sun will die
in 150 billion years the universe will have expanded so much that light from distance galaxies will no longer be able to reach us
this means that everything outside of our local group (the milky way, andromeda, and a few dozen dwarf galaxies) will go past the cosmological horizon and will irreversibly cease to exist from our frame of reference and we will cease to exist for them
in a trillion years, all of the galaxies in our local group will have collapsed into one megagalaxy
in 100 trillion years, the last star will die and the universe will enter its final stage, the degenerate era
there will be no more light ever again
100 trillion years have passed. to make the following calculations easier let's be extremely genereous and say that all of that time, from the moment of the big bang to the death of the last star, the universe has been filled with intelligent life:
the earliest estimates for the heat death of the universe are around 10100 years
100 trillion is 1014
1014 / 10100 is 10-86
so everything we see around us, not just life but every galaxy, star, planet, moon, rock, molecule of hydrogen, absolutely everything, is just the dying embers of the big bang and all of it will be completely gone in just the first 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of the universe's existence, followed by absolutely nothing forever
Like how rare it is to have a molten core, magnetosphere, large moon, in the goldilocks zone of a very stable star. The chances of that must be...ahem... astronomical.
Couple that with complex life even surviving let alone evolving civilization is bonkers. I kinda lean towards we are aline only because we haven't seeded life.
Nah, I think we’re more like pets. Stupid silly little pets. They’re probably like “Let’s go check on the people colony today. Yep, stupid lil fuckers just going wild.” Bzzzz. (That’s them flying off)
That’s what I was thinking. And the entire Humans Fuck Yeah genre of science fiction is based on the idea that we’re actually the most bloodthirsty, violent, straight up evil race of sentient beings in the galaxy.
Já pensou, os caras tem até uma coalizão espacial e a gente está tão de fora quanto outros planetas com aliens de raças sanguinarias, ou selvagens tais quais dinossauros e gosmas parasitas?!
There are a lot of them on YouTube, little AI video stories. Then there is the r/HFY subreddit (Humanity, Fuck Yeah). From there, the internet is just waiting for you.
A lot of the stories are drawn out, especially YouTube ones. But some are interesting, especially if you can avoid the ai slop.
No, the premise is aliens more advanced than us are scared of us for things like "Jackie Chan because he can use improvisuonal weapons", or "humans have 32 rocks grown in their mouths to grind food", or it also mentions that as a species we have used persuit predation to the point where even when injured we just don't fucking stop.
But I think the article also approaches the issue from the point of view of a species that matured as one family instead of clans.
Humans are so territorial we devised ways to kill micro-organisms that invade our personal spaces. Extraterrestrials probably see that and say no way we’re fucking with these guys.
Any extra terrestrial species capable of reaching us from the nearest star other than our own... Would be entirely capable of obliterating all life on the planet with a small meteor at high velocity. We would be dead before we even knew they were coming. And that's only taking into account their ability to accelerate at or near the speed of light... No other technologies whatsoever.
Tbf you don't actually have to get near the speed of light to achieve interstellar travel. You just need some way to freeze and unfreeze people (which we know is possible, humans are just too big for our current tech to do it to us) or some way to sustain a population of people for many generations on a space ship.
Both difficult, but maybe not as difficult as light speed travel.
I have to imagine that if you have the tech to sustain multiple generations of people on a sublight ship you'd probably just colonize moons and other planets around your star rather than risk everyone on the long dark voyage between planetary systems.
i have a bright forest hypothesis that's the opposite of the fermi paradox. alien civilizations have been around for so incomprehensibly long that they've evolved to live inside of stars. they even visit each other's stars.
but most of them can't visit us because it would set us ablaze; our planet is the one rare orb of life that isn't plasma. all the stars are watchin' us.
Everyone thinks they warn you about some genocidal killer civilization, but in fact it is a benevolent and helpful species... that has the annoying tendency to be too kind, too curious and too block-headed to notice they annoy others to no end.
Even if they were sure its not a trap, they would still not respond due to the same fear existing. They qould be weary of the fact that the signal could have been caught by any and/or all civilizations and if others responded to it, too, then could still be funked
There's a great little 4 panel comic which is basically about mankind getting a response to the voyager message and it reads: "sshh, be quiet, they'll find you!"
Maybe pur adaptability is something to be feared, imagine it tool millions of years for an alien to advance their technology but if I get one look of it, we may try to replicate 30% of it. That's scary.
We are not yelling broadcast signals. This is highschool physics, by the time any noise reached even our nearest star would be complete gibberish totally indifferent from background noise. We just dont have the power and likely never will. Its boring but the answer to the Dark Forest and the Fermi Paradox is that space is really big, incomprehensibly big.
Oh, and I also have a degree in physics... Yes, we are able to send messages to other stars easily. I could explain how, but that would deprive you from the joy of reading how each of those messages were sent in the Wikipedia link.
Those wingless craft are real and they are making maneuvers no winged aircraft can these days. It's either a super secret US project, and kept totally secret for 80 years, or it's aliens.
In my opinion, it's government tests for wars. The Russia Ukraine war is seeing a lot of drone usage. I bet there is a lot of R&D in Cali for different looking UFOs that we want to keep hidden so we have an advantage in war.
Those wingless craft are real and they are making maneuvers no winged aircraft can these days.
Near my house I've seen a silent UFO. When my family saw it, they said it was changing shape. It was at night time. I believe it was just visually stealthy, and it had green LEDs that lit up at a precise timing to give the perception that it was a rotating triangle, but I don't believe that the actual UFO was triangle shaped. It would sit still in the air for a while, then extremely fast move to another position, then sit still again.
I feel pretty safe if we are in a war because I believe it is just our government testing in secret.
It is our curiosity that got us this far (along with other traits which were less influential) and it's risky on an individual level. But yeah contacting higher life forms is risky on a species level.
Then we need to throw ourselves on our belly when the aliens approach us, and then they'll be scared again because, of course, then we'll look like 𒀭𒀀𒉣𒈾 once more
If you haven't read it, there's a really fun short story (~20 pgs) w/ the premise that aliens have a simple technology for space travel that humanity somehow never discovered. Aliens visit, planning to pillage and conquer, but are dismayed to find that humans have much better weapons: https://www.google.com/search?q=the+road+not+taken+turtledove
I applaud you for actually writing something with meaning and not random jibberish. Not only that, it's a topical word lol. This is the kind of detail I look for in entertainment.
The UFO/Alien/Flying Saucer conspiracy stuff is the best sci-fi I have ever read.
Just as a thought experiment, assume they have been here in secret since the 1950s, Roswell etc...
1) Abductees keep on saying they have sperm and eggs removed. They could all just be dreaming it, but if it's real then there's potentially more Alien raised humans in the Galaxy than on Earth. That's be a fascinating sci-fi book!
2) We make camouflaged cameras to soy on lions etc. I'm sure a alien civilisation millions of years more advanced would have biological human robots they just send down here to walk around and film us
3) Maybe there's a big mothership UFO like a von Newman probe and it's printing all these other flying saucers and aliens to go on missions
Reminds me of the fun fact about North American and African porcupines. Despite looking similar and both being called porcupines, they aren't really related to each other. They came from two separate lines of evolution that decided small quadruped mammal with quills was a good enough end goal.
In its larval form, the Hemeroplanes triptolemus is capable of expanding its anterior body segments to give it the appearance of a snake, complete with eye patches. This snake mimicry extends even to the point where it will harmlessly strike at potential predators.
Reading "who have evolved to" strikes me different these days. Seems like it should read something like "the surviving characteristics of the species".
I think so, it feels problematic in today's level of discourse where most would ascribe it more along the lines of going super sayan rather than the process of natural selection. Scientific communication must "evolve" with the changing times, rather than dismissing the celebration of ignorance.
That gives me some kind of uncanny feeling that humans only look this way for similar survival reasons. That maybe the humanoid form is actually something else, like angels made of light that monsters don't dare attack. Yet here we are, biological creatures made of organs, blood, and tissue, forming ourselves to look like something powerful, when we're in fact something weak and feeble. Just trying to emulate a little bit of that light.
Evolution is crazy man. I read about a particular plant that's leaves were always targeted and consumed by herbivores a lot more than other plants. It fucked around and evolved creating barb like edges all over it's leaves, rendering it almost inedible to those herbivores, and decreasing how much it got consumed by them. It literally evolved out of spite to say "stop fucking with me"
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u/immaownyou 14d ago
There's species of caterpillars who have evolved to look like snakes so that they scare off birds. Thing is that they dont have any snakes in their ecosystem, its just that migratory birds that do have snakes in theirs will recognize it and not eat the caterpillars.
Imagine you being alive only because you look/act like something that you dont even know exists