The possibility excites me. I wonder what the sociological consequences will be if we can conclude that we are not alone in the galaxy.

Interesting...This possibility fills me with profound dread. People meeting other unknown alien people has happened in this planet in the near history _so_ many times. And not in a single one of those meetings was there anything to feel mushy about. It was blood all the way. Pizarro and Atahualpa didn't sit together and play chess over a hot cup of coffee and exchange notes on their childhood crushes.

Bonus question:

Let's say you run across an alien during a walk in the woods. How could you ever tell whether the alien was friendly or not? Aliens might act friendly, right up until the time they put you in the big alien stew pot. Likewise, friendly aliens might use deadly force and extreme caution to make sure you pose no threat. Would you want to be sending "Howdy There! We're new in the block! Drop by for some free pizza!" messages to a civilization 20 light years away?

Long answer to bonus question has already been written and published. "Speaker for the dead" by Orson Scott Card. I am restraining myself from giving a summary here. I don't want to spoil your couple of weekends spent well. Be sure to read the introduction as well.

Thanks. It's in my stack. I gave up sometime during the second Ender book, but I'll give this one a read.

Speaker for the dead is the second ender book. No?

Gee yep. Sure enough (sheepish grin)

I must have stopped reading it fairly early, because looking at the cover I don't remember any of it. I remember the first book, however -- that super guy they brought back for Ender's training and the planet and all. It's been a few years, though. Good thing I kept all the books.

Apologies for the poor memory.

I think Orson Scott Card wrote "Speaker for the Dead" first and decided he needed another book just to set up the backstory. That book became Ender's Game, and he found it a bit ironic that he's remembered more for the prequel than the book he really felt compelled to write.

That depends on how much we know about them and how much they know about us. They might not even know how to act friendly and we might not know whether our potential shock and awe attack would be either shocking or awe inspiring. Knowing nothing, I for one would simply walk away and buy a pregnancy test ;-)

It may be hard to even tell whether they're acting friendly or not..

There's a fairly easy example of how this can go bad here on earth. Cats and dogs don't innately hate each other, but everyone knows how they get on.

The problem is that cats and dogs have opposing body language; when a dog acts excited and happy, the cat interprets that language as aggression. For example, a cat with its ears down and tail wagging is a cat that's about to fight. A dog doing the same thing is being submissive.

Of course, this all assumes that any intelligent extra-terrestrial life even has any sort of body language or capability to communicate that we can even recognize.

I've thought of this a lot. What if the alien way to show the finger is to blink or something completely normal like that? They would get pissed up fairly quick.

We have been sending radio and TV signals for a very long time, maybe they have seen some Pizza Hut commercials ;)

Our civilization reaches a critical point as we reach Type 1 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale) and see if there is life that has already claimed the close parts of the galaxy. If there is nothing out there, we get to expand and grow. If space is already claimed, then we will probably get gamma ray bursted or something. Either way, it's something we have to and will try.

I think the greatest danger by far would be viruses. Culturally I'm not as pessimistic. Our perception of historical events is influenced by what historians find interesting. All the boring, more or less peaceful, mingling, cohabitation and assimilation going on for thousands of years is rarely mentioned.

Precisely why I hope it happens in my lifetime. I want to be part of something truly historic. Besides, I have to know!

You will soon be able to store the Library of Congress in a pocket-sized device. And yet you're holding out for something "truly historic"?

Wake up and smell the history! :)

How much data is the library of congress? I bet we could store all the text in a portable device right now.

The 20-terabyte size of the Library of Congress is widely quoted and as far as I know is derived by assuming that LC has 20 million books and each requires 1 MB. Of course, LC has much other stuff besides printed text, and this other stuff would take much more space. Thirteen million photographs, even if compressed to a 1 MB JPG each, would be 13 terabytes. The 4 million maps in the Geography Division might scan to 200 TB. LC has over five hundred thousand movies; at 1 GB each they would be 500 terabytes (most are not full-length color features). Bulkiest might be the 3.5 million sound recordings, which at one audio CD each, would be almost 2,000 TB.

This makes the total size of the Library perhaps about 3 petabytes (3,000 terabytes).

-Lesk.com

Not quite pocket-sized yet, but frighteningly close. If the LoC is 3 petabytes, we're at the point where I could mindlessly surf to Buy.com and get 3,000 1TB external drives for $200 each:

http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=205001869&Sear...

...and store my own personal LoC for $600k. That's cheaper than a lot of houses here in Boston. And that's just the stupidly inefficient way to store a personal LoC.

(With peer-to-peer, of course, the problem of giving me instant access to the LoC from my portable phone is essentially solved. The movies are still a bit slow.)

Isn't it odd how important this is to people? I don't mean this in a bad way - it's important to me as well, far out of proportion to how it would impact my life. I would be extremely pleased if we found overwhelming evidence of life on another planet, even if it's just single cell life 20 light years away.

Think of what it means to the answer of these questions:

Where did we come from? Why are we here?

where did we come from? The explanation I can piece together through memory is that we most likely come from organic matter that (though processes that are not yet well understood) formed the basis for cellular life. Random mutation and natural selection over hundreds of millions of years led to the speciation that includes homo sapiens.

I'm not sure that finding life on another planet would change the science much. Maybe there would be some connection, maybe not - they could be parallel processes, or maybe some kind of seeding function took place.

Either way, it would still be immensely satisfying discovery, one of the greatest ever.

"I'm not sure that finding life on another planet would change the science much. " -- Maybe not, but it would shut up the religios nutjobs, and the creationisms freaks...

If there is life in another planet (even a non-intelligent one) means life is a normal part of the universe, and it is another blow to their idiotic books that claim god created everything.

I think you are underestimating the impact. Think of what this would mean for philosophy and our understanding of the universe.

hopefully religious folks would loosen up a bit

Unless there's intelligent life, that seems out of the question (assuming no breakthroughs in lifespan extensions). 20 light years is a long way from home.

If you took a picture of the night sky with a 1 zettapixel camera (mega giga tera peta exa zetta) this planet would be about 1 pixel.

Guess I'll have to wait a long time to hear back from that YC-clone I applied to out there.

Second Earth is not a startup hub. The aliens should move to Silicon Valley.

This conference was organized to promote Second Earth as a new startup hub, so it's very rude of you to come here and say that.

But can that get working visas? I don't think a UFO-1 visa category exists yet.

Maybe he's hoping his life will be long.

There is probably a better chance if we can become cyborgs fast enough.

Another possibility is that everyone, or better everything that has ever been, can be ressurected providing Heisenberg was not completely right. It seems reasonable that sometime along our civilization we will find a way to trace back and reconstruct every part of history.

Most importantly, when we do eventually meet an alien, always remember to count in radians.

Orson Card's "Redemption of Columbus" is based on this idea. They figure out how to calculate a change in history that will create a better future. This leaves the possibility open that technology can reach a state where the meta-timeline can be retraced and everyone resurrected.

Whew. I guess the Wumps are safe for now.

I almost wet myself when I read that.

P.S This guy must have seen some really amazing stuff not to be amazed by aliens.