Hawking's Invaders

Adding to a conversation I have always found fascinating, brilliant physicist Stephen Hawking of A Brief History of Time fame (great book), in his new television program Stephen Hawking's Universe, has chimed in on intelligent life on other planets. What Hawking had to say is interesting - that contacting aliens would be dangerous, using the analogy of Christopher Columbus and the Native Americans.

His remarks initially had me scratching my head because if we indeed have the planned (by them) Independence Day style "hard encounter," we're had. Apparently Hawking is suggesting that the best preparation for this is to get ourselves out there and diversify our locations, which he is known to support. Still, I think he's up to something else.

The inevitable first encounter between civilizations almost certainly occurs when the more advanced finds the less advanced. In this circumstance, the find will occur without the latter's awareness, and if the more advanced choose to make contact, as in Contact, it will likely occur in accordance with an established protocol, which will be a very "soft encounter" unlikely to make headlines for quite some time. One would like to think that a civilization lasting long enough to develop the means for interstellar or intergalactic travel would have its act together and the means to obtain the resources it requires from far closer planets that aren't covered with soft warm bipeds and kitty cats. There's a lot of planets between us and them.

This entire conversation stays inside a certain paradigm which may or may not apply. The best break outside this box that I've encountered in film is Andrei Tarkovski's extraordinary Solyaris, slower but superior to the (also pretty good) Soderburgh Solaris.

I wonder if this segment of Hawking's program is saying more about humanity and its treatment of Earth than the aliens who may want it (and so shortly after James Cameron's Avatar). Perhaps Hawking is showing us his version of Cameron's film by suggesting that perhaps to someone out there in the deep black ocean, someone nasty like Columbus, we're the blue people.

New Planets Spur Questions

With the latest in space technology, human beings are now in momentum discovering planets outside of their own solar system. Just recently the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher found 32 more planets bringing the total number to over 400 found so far. "We are on the road," said Stephen Udry of the Geneva Institute, "The end of the road is finding life and other planets like our own, but we have to go step by step."

It is only a matter time, for while human scientists don't know it yet, two of the planets they have found do in fact contain sentient life, the Behoovians and the Meldikons. When fully discovered, the existence of other civilizations on other planets will present the humans with all sorts of intriguing questions regarding their world views. While the implications may be minimal to the consciousness focused cosmologies of the Dharmic religions, it presents more perplexing questions for the more concrete assertions of the Abrahamic religions.

For example, the notion of the son of God dying for sins committed does not apply to the Behoovians, who stopped sinning after economists proved that it was too expensive. Meldikon sin mostly occurs as cheating in games, traffic violations, and romantic infidelity (Meldikons have romance in threes (fqt, qtf, and tfq) the latter being notoriously promiscuous with other fqt/qtf pairs). It is believed that the Meldikon God, Nazzerath, does not find Meldikon sin particularly disconcerting. While Nazzerath fathered several children, the divine offspring remained in the godspace and did not take physical form.

Though reluctant to appear critical of the God of another system, a Meldikon spokesman would acknowledge that the crucifixion was confusing, "We cannot see any changes in human sin, and if we did, we remain confused that other methods were not available to produce the desired results."

In addition to the killing of divine offspring, beliefs differ considerably regarding an impending Armageddon. While it may be an entirely appropriate outcome for humanity, in terms of themselves, Meldikons question the objectives of such an event and the benefits available from a post-apocalypse reality.

Behoovians reject an Armageddon outright, "We’re not interested."

Meldikons feel that eternal suffering vs. eternal paradise is an excessive bifurcation given the complexities of consciousness and conscience. Behoovian economists note that the maintenance of such extreme conditions for the quantities of human souls involved would exhaust the resources of even the most robust Overlords, "Since consciousness continually reacts and adapts, to maintain such suffering or bliss would require ongoing modification and enhancement to sustain the psychological states. When you consider that over time, you might have to change the way you change, and then change the way you change the way you change, the math is ridiculous."

Regarding the age of the universe, no sentient beings other than some humans accept the view that it is only a few thousand years old. A Behoovian stated, “We have a well documented history with literature, art, photographs, other media, and archeological evidence that dates back 480,000 years. Clearly we find the idea of a cosmos younger than that problematic."

Both readily acknowledge that the religions of earth may be symbolic and written metaphorically, such as the creation of the world in seven days, "Perhaps heaven and hell are spiritual states one enters in the course of life depending on one's actions, perspectives, and beliefs. If that's the case, though, their God could improve the ability of some humans to figure that out."