A star among the stars: Voyager I leaves the solar system

One chilling thought is civilizations figure out ways to destroy themselves before they figure out how to travel through space with any speed.

 

"Making love with a hot alien babe ... is that not what man has dreamt of since he first set out for the stars?"

 

Gregg Easterbrook had some fun theories on this sort of thing when he wrote the TMQB column for ESPN. One of them was that cosmic happenings that we detected, like gamma bursts, might actually be ginormous weapons of mass destruction set off by other civilizations.

 

http://xkcd.com/1189/

 

I am about as far from a mathematician as it gets, but based on the number of planets in the universe, it is a certainty that there is life out there somewhere.
I read somewhere once (most likely on here) where someone wrote that if some other race of beings was capable of getting here, it would probably mean bad things for us. Think "Independence Day."

Also, my brain can not compute the vastness of the universe and that it goes on "forever." What exactly is forever? And if it doesn't go on "forever," what is on the other side of the edge?

 

Actually when dealing with geological-scale time frames, it's probably more likely at some point the Voyagers/Pioneers will pass close to other stars, get drawn in by their gravitational pull, enter orbits close-in to the star where matter and debris density is higher, and in (relatively) shorter order get hit by something.

 

Stephen Hawking is a proponent of that opinion.

However, many others in his general intellectual neighborhood believe it is unlikely we will ever be attacked by a malevolent alien race on grounds of simple cost effectiveness -- there is nothing we have which would be worth the massive energy and material expenditures necessary to actually get here.

The reasoning goes any alien race which would advance to star travel would make its decisions mainly on the basis of efficient allocation of resources.

 

Aliens invading us for materials would be like breaking into a Yugo for the stereo system.

 

I, for one, will welcome our new insect overlords, should it come to that.

 

I fully expect Casper Van Dien and Michael Ironside to save us.

 

Yeah, or like chartering a 747 to fly from New York to Tokyo to buy a gumball from a candy machine.

 

That's what the aliens want you to believe.