• Question: If aliens arrived on earth, would you want to talk to them, maybe get them to help you with your work, or would you scream and run like everybody else? Also, along the lines of aliens on earth, for example if there was an alien invasion, would you help humans fight back, possibly harming the intergalactic creatures, or would you defend them in the name of the work you have been doing?

    Asked by rachael1507 to Amy, Grant, Martin, Shawn, Usman on 9 Mar 2013. This question was also asked by queen1201, waffles.
    • Photo: Grant Kennedy

      Grant Kennedy answered on 9 Mar 2013:

      It would depend a lot on the aliens! If they were smart enough to travel from star to star they probably know the answers to all my research questions, so I’d definitely ask for some help!

      If it was all out war I don’t think it would be like the movies, any civilisation that has mastered space travel would wipe us out like squashing a bug! They’d probably just drop an asteroid on us or something…

      Of course there could be misunderstandings, so I wouldn’t go for wiping them out (even if we could). Talking is always the best way to solve your problems…

      g

    • Photo: Martin Archer

      Martin Archer answered on 9 Mar 2013:

      Talking to them might be very difficult though, they certainly wouldn’t speak English! They might not even communicate with each other in a way that we could comprehend. So it might be very difficult. Then again, as Grant says, they could be so clever that they could work out a way to talk to us. I would definitely like to know more about them if they came in peace.

    • Photo: Amy Tyndall

      Amy Tyndall answered on 10 Mar 2013:

      It would definitely be awesome to meet aliens from another planet! They would be so much more evolved and advanced than us, that it would be incredible to see the technology they used to get here, It would be really interesting to see the similarities and differences between us from a biological point of view, too… Who knows, maybe they have the answer on how to cure all sorts of diseases!

      I think if it was an actual invasion, that’s the point I’d scream and run like everybody else… Have you watched ‘War of the Worlds’?!

    • Photo: Shawn Domagal-Goldman

      Shawn Domagal-Goldman answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      Oh, I’d DEFINITELY want to talk to them!! Any aliens that come here would have traveled much, much, much farther than we can travel. That means that they are probably super-powerful. So the first thing I think we would want to do is try to figure out what they want! If they came to do science, then Iā€™d probably start by showing them one of your textbooks! Then I’d ask to see theirs!!! šŸ˜€

      If they came here to invade, I think we’d have to defend ourselves. But before that happened I’d see if we could work out some agreement where invasion wouldn’t be necessary. After all, invasion would be VERY expensive for them, because they’d have to spend lots of energy and lots of whatever they use for money getting all their stuff here!

      For the same reason, I don’t think any of this is very likely. I think if we meet another alien species it’ll likely be over some sort of interstellar telephone. Even that would be difficult – we’d send them a message, and it would take years to get there! And when they finally get our message and send the reply it would take years for us to get it back!

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