First Contact
How will our first interactions with a visiting alien civilization take place?
Will it be covert and subtle involving shadowy figures lurking in the corridors of the Pentagon, or spectacular and out in the open like some sort of hippy free-for-all?
Well the answer is probably a bit of both, if our own plans are anything to go by.
In the 1950's the US Military developed the Seven Steps to Contact procedure, which detailed if, how and when we would interact with an extra-terrestrial race.
First we'd undertake surveillance and data gathering to gauge the aliens' abilities and technological level, but without making our presence known just yet, especially if they were less developed than us.
Now this may sound a little similar to Star Trek's Prime Directive, and you can bet your ass at least one guy's gonna pull a Kirk and try and sleep with an alien, but some scientists believe that this first step could be happening to the Earth right now.
The Zoo Hypothesis is the name given to this idea, and it claims we may be in the first observational stage of alien contact, with the aliens only letting us know of their presence once we've passed a certain technological or sociological threshold.
Astronaut John Grunsfeld was recently quoted in support of this theory, stating that if aliens are out there they already know we exist due to the observable changes we've made to Earth's environment.
So if this is true, and the aliens would follow a similar pattern to how we'd deal with meeting a new civilization, what happens next?
Covert Visitation
Observation would likely be followed by covert visitation by the aliens in order to judge our abilities and technological level even further.
They would use this research to gauge whether or not we are hostile, and if we're honest, I think they're gonna come back with a big fat yes.
But whatever their findings are, their next logical step would progress to the taking of samples, which would include live humans.
Now obviously we wouldn’t believe these people if they were returned to tell their stories, and it is worth noting that UFO abduction cases only became popular after the US Military released their Seven Steps to Contact guide which included this step.
However, if a civilization were watching us from afar, they would need to study us up close before coming for a face to face visit.
If they were to deem us psychologically capable of handling their presence, and right now that feels like a massive "if", then it's more likely that an alien civilization would then make its presence known to the highest number of people possible in a non-hostile manner.
Nobody's getting taken to our leader, there will be no shady contacts in the CIA keeping this info to themselves - the Seven Steps plan involves humans exposing themselves to an alien world out in public, so that's how we think they would handle it too.
But the question is, what happens when we meet?
People Go Nuts
If man were to meet an alien race tomorrow, could our existing infrastructure cope?
I'm not talking about how we'd house all these aliens or whether they'd qualify for Obamacare; I'm talking about electricity, the internet, and the huge surge in demand for both of these things when the news of alien contact spreads.
The number of power, cellphone and internet outages we have during World Cup finals, New Year's Eve and Game of Thrones finales are bad enough, but when E.T. swings by for a visit the worldwide desire to exchange information will be like nothing we've seen before.
This means it may take several days or weeks for many parts of the world to find out about our brand new house guests, and when they do, not everyone will react with an equal amount of enthusiasm.
The idealists among us might say that an alien visitation would put all of our wars into perspective.
Israel and Palestine, the West and Isis, people who like pineapple on pizza and those who aren't ****ing savages - perhaps we'll all just drop our weapons, look up to the sky, and come together to greet a magical new friend.
Or we'll try to blow them up.
Because let's face it, when humans get anxious, we get angry.
We might try to eliminate these extra-terrestrial invaders out of pure fear.
However benevolent the aliens may seem at first, there will be many of us who just don't believe that their visit is a friendly one.
The truth is, humanity will experience a whole range of emotions when meeting aliens for the first time, from nervous paranoia and panic attacks through to euphoric jubilation mimicking an almost religious experience.
For some people this event will be everything they've always hoped for, but for others, it's a situation which threatens their power, their beliefs, and their whole reason for being.
There's a chance we might freak out and kill each other before the aliens have even said how do you do, or, perhaps we won't.
Perhaps things will be completely normal.
As well as being rather erratic, humans do have an unnerving ability to snap back in to a routine after a devastating event.
Because let's face it, even if a giant ship appeared in the sky tomorrow, you'd still have to eat, drink, sleep and take a whiz in the coming days and weeks.
You'd still have to work a job to pay the rent, so it'd be important for humans to somehow detach themselves from such a monumental occasion in order to keep the essential cogs of the world turning.
But after contact is established and things are up and running, what will the aliens offer us?
Confusion
We have to assume that a sufficiently advanced civilisation is aware of the dangers of disease to both parties, so hopefully they'll have brought protection along for this intergalactic booty call.
But once we've decided it's safe to interact, how will we even achieve this?
A significantly developed alien race may use a universal translator to facilitate communication, but they could easily overestimate our abilities and leave us as confused as a cat chasing a laser pointer.
As great as it may sound for two races to share technology, culture, ideas and recipes for hot wings, the sad fact is that any life-forms smart enough to travel across the universe will probably outstrip us by hundreds, thousands or even millions of years of technological and societaldevelopment.
So what would they do in this situation?
Would they help us?
Might they pity us and spend time teaching us their ways?
Would this even be possible?
Just think of the limited intellectual capacity of our ancestors a million years ago, and now imagine trying to teach those guys how to fry an egg or do the truffle shuffle, let alone code a program or build an automobile.
The first attempts at exchanging languages between Europe and the Americas took time, patience, cultural immersion and a whole lot of pointing to establish.
But when we've no fixed point of reference, no common world to unite our tongues - if they even have tongues - how long might it take?
Will it be as hard as getting dogs and cats to understand us today?
Will humans have to roll over and do tricks for hyper-drive technology?
And will we even be able to comprehend who or what these alien beings are?
What if they come in the form of an artificial robot avatar or a sentient raspberry gas?
It's impossible to say, but if they do come, and they are intelligent, at least we're pretty sure of the next thing.
They'll come and go in peace
Whether or not an alien race shares our concepts of good and evil is hard to say, but that's probably how we'll judge them, so how can we be so sure they'll come to us with good intentions?
Stephen Hawking believes they won't, drawing parallels to the impact of European colonisation upon North and South America, which, as you may know, didn't end too well for the native people.
He believes that an armada of giant ships invading our planet is a distinct possibility, and that we'd have no way of defending ourselves from such an assault.
Wherever humans have gone we have also attempted to colonise and mine for resources, so why should aliens be any different?
Well, SETI Institute co-founder Jill Tarter believes that an alien invasion would almost certainly be relatively non-violent, as civilisations only tend to develop sophisticated technologies once they have learnt to cooperate with each other and behave peacefully.
This means that any civilisation that reaches us will probably have come to study or influence us in a positive way.
An advanced race would have no use for the resources on our planet or the extra leg-room it provides, since they can visit basically anywhere in the galaxy to find most of the junk we've got without having to deal with a group of angry natives.
Humans are also unlikely to end up as slaves, since we're pretty lazy, and the aliens would certainly have more superior technology to take care of their heavy lifting.
So in all likelihood, an alien race which one day visits Earth will do so to stare at us, study us, maybe cop a feel, and then....bonus entry, they'll get bored and stop calling.
Bonus: We Discover We Ain't All That
It's a depressing thought, but why would an alien race who can travel across the galaxy find us interesting for more than a few minutes?
The simple answer is...they wouldn't.
If these beings are a thousand or a million years more advanced than us, it'd be like humans discovering a new strain of bacteria.
Oh look, these fellas do things slightly differently to all those other guys we've found.
Great.
What next?
And if this happens we'll feel like the dunces of the universe, undergoing a collective existential crisis far beyond anything your Nietzsche-quoting college friends have experienced.
Any civilisation which has ability to visit us will be so far ahead in every way, that all of our technology, art and ideas will seem stupid by comparison.
Show them the Mona Lisa and they'll react like we do seeing a five year old kid's macaroni picture.
And sure, aliens might find us interesting at first, but this will wear off for all but the most dedicated life-form enthusiasts.
And eventually, after they've probed us, tried to bang us and stolen some of our most famous monuments to use as paperweights, our alien visitors will most likely depart to find another planet of underdeveloped brutes.
One that's more interesting, more cultured, and with a curvier hotter Sun that we just can't compete with, leaving us all alone in the universe, drifting through space with no purpose, with our super-smart space friends screening our calls for the rest of time.
Ouch.
That's gonna sting.
And if you're questioning your own existence right now, why not let us do the work for you courtesy of our recent post on that very topic.
The five mysteries of existence.
Because don't worry, all of this might not even be real.
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