Would We See the Aliens Coming? | Tokyo
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UFOs! If the aliens were about to attack Earth, would we get any warning? Well, as long as the extraterrestrials obey the laws of physics, we should get a little advance notice... Support us at: http://www.patreon.com/universetoday More stories at: http://www.universetoday.com/ Follow us on Twitter: @universetoday Follow us on Tumblr: http://universetoday.tumblr.com/ Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/universetoday Google+ - https://plus.google.com/+universetoday/ Instagram - http://instagram.com/universetoday Team: Fraser Cain - @fcain Jason Harmer - @jasoncharmer Susie Murph - @susiemmurph Brian Koberlein - @briankoberlein Chad Weber - weber.chad@gmail.com Kevin Gill - @kevinmgill Created by: Fraser Cain and Jason Harmer Edited by: Chad Weber Music: Left Spine Down - “X-Ray” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tcoZNrSveE&feature=youtu.be Classic sci fi trope time. The air force detects a fleet of alien spacecraft out past Jupiter, leaving enough time to panic and demonstrate what awful monsters we truly are before they come ring our bell. Is that how this would work? Imagine a pivotal scene in your favorite alien mega disaster movie. Like the one where the gigantic alien ships appear over London, Washington, Tokyo, and Paris and shoots its light-explody ray, obliterating a montage of iconic buildings. Demonstrating how our landmark construction technology is nothing against their superior firepower. What could we do? We’re merely meat muppets with pitiful silicon based technology. How could we ever hope to detect these aliens with their stealth spacecraft and 3rd stage guild navigators? If we’re going to do this, I’m going to make up some rules. If you don’t like my rules, go get your own show and then you can have your own rules. Alternately, as some of you are clearly aware, you can rail against the Guide To Space in the comments below. Dune reference notwithstanding, I’m going to assume that aliens live in our Universe and obey the laws of physics as we understand them. And I know you’re going to say, what if they use physics we haven’t discovered yet? Then just pause this video and get that out of your system. You can make that your first decree against the state right in the comments below. As I was saying, physical aliens, physical universe. We’ll discuss the metaphysical aliens in a magic universe in a future video. The ones that have crystals and can heal your liver through the power of song. A basic rule of the Universe is that you can’t go faster than the speed of light. So I’m going to have any aliens trying to attack us traveling at sublight speeds. So, we’ll say they’ve got access to a giant mountain of power. They can afford to travel at 10% the speed of light, which means before they get to us, they have to slow down. At this speed, deceleration is expensive. We’d see the energy signature from their brakes long before they even reached Earth. Let’s say they’re passing the orbit of the dwarf planet Pluto, which is 4 light-hours away. Since they’re travelling at 10% the speed of light, we’d have about 40 hours to scramble jet fighters, get those tanks out onto the streets and round up Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum and Bruce Willis to hide behind. Would we even notice? Maybe, or maybe not. A growing trend in astronomy is scanning the sky on a regular basis, looking for changes. Changes like supernova explosions, asteroids and comets zipping past, and pulsating variable stars. One of the most exciting new observatories under construction is the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope in Chile. Once it begins regular operations in 2022, this array of telescopes will photograph the entire sky in fairly high resolution every few nights. Computers will process the torrent of data coming from the observatory and search for anything that changes. What if they engage their cloak? Actually (push glasses up your nose) the laws of physics say that the aliens can’t hide the waste heat from whatever space drive they’re using. We’re actually pretty good at detecting heat with our infrared telescopes. A space drive decelerating a city-sized alien spacecraft from a significant portion of the speed of light would shed a mountain of heat, and that’s all heat we might detect. Astronomers have been searching for alien civilizations by looking for waste heat generated by Dyson spheres encapsulating entire stars or even all the stars in a galaxy. Nothing’s turned up yet. Which I for one, find a little suspicious. If you’re from an alien race who’s planning to invade. Cover your ears. If aliens wanted to catch us off guard, they can use one of the oldest tricks in the aerial combat book, known as the Dicta Boelcke. They can fly at us using the Sun as camouflage. A rather large portion of the sky is completely obscured by that glowing ball of fiery plasma. It worked in WW1, and it’ll still work now.
Comments
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all good I have pepper spray!
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This is the reason why the US and Russia have so many nukes. The alien threat is well known to the governments of the world.
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Why should the aliens be interested in our planet? They do not need us. They do not need our knowledge. They do not need any raw materials either, if they have the technology to travel so far.
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I get the feeling when humans are advance enough, it's gonna be allot like the 40K Universe
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what about if they come through time traveling like instant portal opens
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best defence from aliens is to not advertise we are here but we have been doing so for the past 50 years or more, weapons wise though without weaponized space installations we would stand no chance takes to long get anything off the ground and into space they could intercept anything we launched from the surface but with the world and politics how they are nobody can trust anybody to build one for fear of them turning it on us all, can u imagine one country with 30+ 1 mile long rail guns in space or even some high powered lasers world war 3 would last 30 seconds and this planet would be left burning we are way too violent of a species for such power and trying to build them would prob make aliens attack us cuz last thing they would want is us as neighbours with weapons that could destroy planets and an itchy trigger finger only thing that's faster than the speed of light is how quick we turn to violence
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Smog, polution and antibiotics ...I guess China is safe from Aliens then...
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oh I'm sure the nukes can deter them, or nuke-launched metal sticks that launch from a silo-like structure into space at a ridiculous speed
we would be like a thorny plant for them to grab, sure they can do it, but probably not worth it -
Why should a sub-light speed ship slow down...i could fly past the Earth at any Speed skim the Atmosphere and drop a Singularity Bomb and be gone before we'd realised what had happened,No Need to slow down at all unless you wish to land
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So you think an alien species with our level of tech would bother coming all that way taking thousands of years. Why bother with this scenario seems pointless man.
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I still wait for the video about the magic aliens (you may have made it allready, but I can't find it for whatever reason)
When you said crystals and songs, I thought of the gems from Steven Univerce
Trey the Explainer has made and awesome video about them, so I thought maybe you could make one as well :-) -
If I was an invading alien, I wouldn't even bother with a fleet. I'd just adjust a number of asteroids and/or comets in the Kuiper belt and send them on an intercept path with Earth. One right after the other. No waste heat. No EM emissions. No warning beyond our already spotty ability to find them. No risk of getting shot down by Will Smith. No defense after the Social Justice fashion Nazi's have taken out Matt Taylor. No need to equip the alien vessel with weapons. And the planet is ready to be colonized by their settler fleet in ten years after the dust finally settles.
Hell, it worked when we took it from the Dinosaurs, didn't it? -
What if the ET ships are equipped with Alcubierre style drives? Wouldn't they be here before we even knew what hit us?
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No reason they'd be gigantic, city-sized craft. The aliens may be very small, perhaps much smaller than we are. How large a craft would a small ant colony require, and would that be detectable? Far too many assumptions. In any event aliens don't seem to be particularly interested in rock surveys, and I can't blame them. If I were a spacefaring race with highly advanced technology, I would get bored cataloguing rocks rather quickly and turn my attention and my technology to more rewarding, fundamental questions.
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Bit silly of us living at 'sector 001' if I as an alien I would head strait to 001 just to see what was there.
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Looking back and analyzing the history of the human race, I've come to the conclusion that humans are going to be the evil conquering aliens one day. We are a freakishly violent species. We can't even have a difference of opinion with other human beings without committing mass genocide. Could you imagine how we would treat beings who aren't even from this star system?
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I think the biggest problem concerning alien invasion is the motivation. War of the worlds gave the Martians a relatively good motivation. They weren't an interstellar civilisation and Mars' biosphere collapsed, so they evacuated their homeworld for earth. There are other Alien invasion movies, like Independence day, were the aliens attack Earth for natural resorces - that you could find anywhere in the solar system without Will Smith firing nukes at you. Given the possibilities of the aliens to get resources from anywhere this is pretty improbable, unless they just liked a good killin'.
Two reasonable scenarios for alien 'iinvasions' aren't actually alien invasions. In "Roadside Picnic" the aliens never disclose their reasons for visiting earth. A scientist reasons that we are mere ants trying to comprehend camping teenagers at the roadside. We are too insignificant for them to even consider us and their visit might have been pure happenstance.
The second scenario isn't an invasion. It's just the complete annihilation by relativistic kinetic bombardement. A neighboring species, that is a few centuries ahead of us scientifically, notices us gaining the abilities to accelerate large vessels to relativistic speeds. Next thing you know they launch a couple of relativistic bombs into all larger bodies of the solar system. Their reasoning is: All spaceships venturing near the speed of light are potential weapons of mass destruction. Since the change of us using those against them either on purpose or as an accident isn't zero and the risk is total annihilation of us, we decided to preempt you. Nothing personell, kid. -
Aliens would attack us for our resources, and why go through all that trouble? When they could get it from the asteroid belts or Mars no people there. Unless we are going to be their dinner. We will see them coming, they will want us to see them.
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So if the ways of stopping or at least prolonging the alien attack worked, then China would be all set, contaminated water sources; check! Livestock packed full of antibiotics; check! And cities full of toxic smog; triple check!
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i think we would get sick aye. microorganisms would prevent us from sharing an atmosphere. and I think animals are our best hope for practicing interacting with aliens. meet a new type of animal and see how ya get on. its great fun and challenging.