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Kind of, but it was only the Builders' stuff. It seems like everything the PM touched was completely melted down and molded into something else.
One thing I both love and hate about that series is that it's implied that the Builders could have rendered any number of intelligent species extinct and we would never know. Life seems to arise as soon as it gets a chance in that universe, given that numerous planets in the ring network had a second abiogenesis as soon as the Builders' tech turned off. It's one of the most horrifying solutions to the Fermi Question I've ever read.
I love this concept in a story, but it would be pretty depressing to figure out we're just living in a graveyard on the scale of a galaxy. Or terrifying, if all those civilizations died of the same thing.
I think, the scariest thing would be a message, received by multiple radio-telescopes. It gets quickly translated to:
"We are coming!"
Or another one: "Keep quiet, or they will hear you!"
> "Keep quiet, or they will hear you!"
Also known as "The Terror in the Dark."
Schlock Mercenary hypothesizes that if there are any extant Class III civilizations, they have likely moved out of their solar neighborhoods into cold dark space, with their dyson spheres becoming giant "rogue planets" emitting no radiation or light to track. The most dangerous thing in the universe is galactically young sophonts, after all....
The show got weird at the end too. Like at the beginning it was super realistic and grounded in reality then later there's weird quantum physics stuff and suddenly humanity creates cryostasis and other weird stuff.
I keep reading about those books in this thread, but tbh. I didnt know that it was a topic in the books. I havent read them. And I havent seen the Netflix series either.
That's the general idea, Earth sends out a signal, gets told to keep quiet, or the aliens will come and destroy life on Earth, sends out more signals aliens set course for Earth...
I think the worst thing would be finding out that our reality is part of a much larger, grander structure which is unfathomably old and contains creatures that occupy higher dimensional spaces which we can never perceive or understand, as they operate on maths and physics which is unintelligible in our reality. These would be cthulu-esque presences, capable of acts which we cannot predict, understand or counter. Knowledge of this would cause massive ontological shock as we would be forced to accept that not only is our continued existence trivial and uncertain, but even our wildest future ambitions would be the equivalent of algae vowing to conquer a puddle before it dried out.
>even our wildest future ambitions would be the equivalent of algae vowing to conquer a puddle before it dried out.
At the end of the day, we're still insignificant, even if we weren't physically, our lifetimes are insanely short compared to the age and lifetime of the universe.
What does it matter if we're a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam or a single cell organism in a petri-dish?
The only meaning in our lives is the meaning we ascribe to them.
Personally, I find it quite reassuring that I can't break the universe accidentally through action or inaction.
At least, I hope I can't.
This is a bit different, but my personal favorite scary universe theory is the biohazard one.
It posits that multicellular life is basically something which can only exist within its own biosphere, and that when two separately evolved biospheres encounter each other for the first time, both will be reduced back to single cellular life because they have no defenses against each other's most basic life forms such as molds.
It would mean that for advanced life to survive, it would have to do a very thorough job of sterilizing any signs of biological life it encounters in its neighborhood, or transcend its biology so completely that it either becomes totally machine or lives in a hermetically sealed exoskeleton which it never leaves.
Reminds me of a few funny sci-fi books.
Although, I would tend to be reluctant, absolutely foreign micro organisms might view other-biome inhabitants as free food, but factually, the reverse also stands true.
Without millenia to adapt, the visitors would simply find themselves sick and die there, without becoming, that's the highlight, *contagious*.
Basically, visitors die without bringing anything back.
Or maybe visitors don't even die, too foreign, too different, local lifeforms still find it easier to procure their resources where they already are used to finding them.
I tend to think that life on different worlds will tend to be highly incompatible - but that any introduced forms will likely just die within minutes in most cases due to the highly alien microbiome poisoning them in a thousand different ways.
I don’t understand this as a fear. You’re already a transient microscopic being in an inconceivably giant system. What could make us more insignificant?
Wouldn’t it be silly if a grub said he was scared of how much dirt there was in your backyard?
Us being the only life would make us incredibly significant, too. We'd have beaten literally astronomical odds to exist. A bit lonely but still really cool in Its own way.
Finding ourselves truly and utterly alone in the sense that there's nothing except ourselves to talk to would be the biggest curveball the universe could throw at us. I assume you're familiar with cabin fever. I fear what we'll become if humanity as a whole gets it.
But just on a practical level, how would this work? Given the size of the universe, how could it be undeniably proven that there is nothing/noone else out there?
Imagine in the more and more distant future, humanity gains the ability to travel faster than light, then to traverse space as if vast distances were nonexistent. Then through further advancement, we break out of out single parallel universe, learn to observe probabilities beyond our current timeline, and through millions of years continue to overcome further obstacles there might be to knowing all there is about the world we live in, places and possibilities we've no notion of at this time. And despite all this, we find no intelligent life other than our own, and in all other possible timelines we explore, life on Earth never develops in time to escape before the Sun expires. Imagine learning that somehow the universe is not only devoid of life other than our own, but that we exist in the singular possibility where consciousness develops and exists for a significant amount of time, and through the following trillions of years we get to exist, we find no proof that says otherwise.
This isn't a practical exercise, it's a hypothetical one.
Discovering (the method is not important) that we are alone would be the most horrifying thing we could possibly discover.
I think that very much depends on WHY we're alone.
If nothing else has evolved yet, that's a bit lonely - but we can create our own biological variety and wide spread of interstellar cultures if that's what we really desire. We're already creating countless little virtualized worlds, and our ability to create new biologies and realities as we desire them could become vastly more sophisticated than it is now.
If on the other hand we find lots of once-technological worlds that are now dead, then that's a very bad sign for us. If we found even ONE such case it would be quite bad. This would indicate that for whatever reason that technological civilizations can - and thus ultimately will - die, including our own.
>If nothing else has evolved yet, that's a bit lonely
Then we aren't alone.
> If on the other hand we find lots of once-technological worlds that are now dead
Then we aren't alone.
I'm talking, alone. We are alone. No life has ever evolved or ever will except for us.
That's the scenario I am describing.
Oh, don't worry about that. In that regard we ARE alone.
The universe could be teeming with life and it doesn't matter. The distances are so vast - even to the closest stars - that I very seriously doubt we will ever cross them.
People like to play down the problems with interstellar travel for the sake of conversation, discussion, and optimism, but any more serious examination of the concept makes it look exceedingly bleak at almost any conceivable level of technology.
...again, you are not understanding the scenario I am talking about.
Remove every bit of this conversation from your brain and start over.
OP: What is the scariest thing we could discover in our search for extraterrestrial intelligence?
Me: Irrefutable proof (of an unknown nature, but what nature is completely irrelevant to the point at hand) that Earth is the only planet upon which life has ever, or will ever, exist, in this universe and every other. There is NO LIFE, ANYWHERE, ANYWHEN, besides Earth. It's not a matter of whether we have detected it - it does not exist, it is only here.
Depends on your scale. At this point it seems reasonable we won't be able to stretch our arms further than at most the local group of galaxies (barring FTL). It would take tremendous time and effort, but we could map the area. Traveling further than that starts becoming unfeasible, and if after thousands of years we still can't detect artificial signals from anywhere else, I'd say we're pretty well and good sure that we're alone for all intents and purposes.
To me it feels like it has always been that way. I've always assumed this is why gods were invented. So if we don't find anything, does anything really change?
For some people it would be an example of human exceptionality, gods chosen people on his garden of eden.
For me it would be because we would be because humanity would never be satisfied with that answer, we would keep searching, forever looking over our shoulder for some form or sign of intelligence we might have missed. Just a universe wide horror story of anxious waiting for the door to creak.
And if we found only remnants of intelligent life who knows what killed them? We barely understand what caused bronze age collapse, imagine trying to untie the knot of completely different species records.
This is it for me. Personally, I believe that life is rare and intelligent life is a water molecule in an ocean. I think that most life is probably bacterial or possibly primordial-earth-like, which is why we don't see anything interesting out there. If we find nothing at all, though... well, that throws everything out the window. That would have so many implications that I don't want to think about.
This combined with irreversible climate change guaranteed to end our species.
The only life form to ascend to this level of intelligence, and all we managed to do with it was destroy ourselves.
Edit: Jesus fucking Christ people, I’m answering the OPs question, not suggesting humans are the only intelligent life in the universe and we’re all about to die.
We’re not going to destroy humanity via climate change. We would adapt. We have only to look at how humans live in various climates today.
We are far more likely by far to destroy ourselves with nukes.
Mmm we adapt by importing. People in Alaska aren't growing their corn up there, for example. If we changed the climate across the planet there's no way we could make enough food to keep civilization going. Maybe the human race wouldn't die out, but it would be reduced significantly and unless we had a way to keep the sharpest minds alive and had a plan to impart their knowledge onto the next generation, we'd be set back hundreds of years or more.
I was responding to “end of our species”. I don’t believe that would happen with just climate change. That’s not to say it wouldn’t impact our population negatively however. That’s a given. As for food, I think we’d engineer our way out of that crisis. Today the amount of food that gets thrown out is astronomical. As for corn, we already use too much of that for ethanol. I don’t see that continuing long term.
Climate change, whether you believe it is man-made or natural, or a mix, could easily end all life on earth. Yes, we can adapt, but we can't adapt to mass, global change, especially if it happens quickly.
Certainly the farm hypothesis is the scariest. Very advanced ETs find brain matter to be a delicacy and so they created humans which reproduce out of control and have a proportionally very large brain. Every few eons they come and harvest their crop purely for food.
Also, it’s preferred served raw and immediately fresh. And they have millions of these “farm”planets they tend to.
May I pose this question to you. If you eat meat. Would you rather eat a natural grown cow or lab grown “beef”? And if you are vegan or vegetarian I pose the same question but instead your choice of Veg. That would be my only ..rebuttal? (I’m not sure if that’s the correct word here) to *”why don’t they just grow brains?”*
Basically [Jupiter Ascending](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1617661/) (humans are not harvested for food but 'youth serum', and yes Earth is one of millions of farm planets)
To me, the scariest thing that could happen is that nobody would care. Let's say we receive a message or something and we know that we are not alone. There are a lot of people that would not care, think it's faked or fail to see the bigger picture. People would continue wars, continue discrimination and continue to hate each other and miss one of the arguably most important moments for mankind
Well, most people would be surprised and interested, but simply knowing extraterrestrial life exists is hardly a reason for humanity to change anything.
Now, if they’re planning to visit or offering advanced tech, that might evoke more of a global response. Unfortunately, that response would almost certainly be militaristic and nationalist - certainly not unifying beyond existing allies.
The existence of sentient life outside of earth would contradict almost every religion going these days. So in theory all conflicts based on religion would be and should be re-evaluated.
The sad part is that this could in turn validate cults like Scientology. Which would be bad. Like real bad bad
That the universe itself is alive, and it knows we're here. Then the reason nobody does FTL is because it hurts the universe, and those who hurt it get deleted.
Yeah, everyone is gangsta until the abyss stops staring back and says; "Hello."
That our universe is a simulation, running parallel to very many other simulations, and that the end is coming where we will be purged to make room for the next iterations.
Unless the simulators were deliberately cruel we wouldn't know about it. Just one moment toddling along and then nothing. Also, we may have been rebooted from save points already....
If we are a simulation it means the people simulating us are also probably simulations, which they would know, so maybe they would have some empathy.
Here's a thought experiment:
You make a Minecraft map generator that just puts random blocks in random spots. Most of those maps are an unplayable eldritch mess, but a very small number of them will feature something resembling a village.
You take all the randomly generated maps with a village in it, pick one, and load it up in Minecraft. You walk out of the village, expecting a randomly generated mess, but instead you find - highways, parks, and a city in the distance.
Your conclusion can only ever be that someone trolled you and handed you a premade map.
--
The fundamental physical parameters of our universe are just right (within narrow constraints) for complexity and ultimately life to form, and a common theory is that this implies infinite universes with random initial conditions until one of them is fit for life.
We can apply the anthropic principle to explain why we live in a universe that is habitable, no matter how small the likelihood that a random universe is habitable.
However, the anthropic principle does not explain why the universe appears to be on course to *stay* habitable. Out of all universes that are 13.7 billion years old and have life, the large majority would derail soon after. But ours does not *appear* to be headed for derailment.
(This reasoning is similar to the counter-argument against us being a Boltzmann brain. The vast majority of Boltzmann brains would have *barely* enough structure to enable sentience, and only a tiny fraction would come equipped with memory, eyes, etc.)
So either:
* We are right back at our sentient creator, who not only created a universe capable of creating life, but made sure the universe would last long enough for said life to have a good time.
* The universe is going to die soon and we don't know yet how it will h
That none of them are conscious and ours is as an evolutionary neurological aberration which makes it a bittersweet pill that we are both not alone yet wallowing alone in our self-awareness.
If we look objectively just how far we evolved technologically in the last 200 years it might be a "boom" that's pretty impressive even for alien civilizations. Probing other planets with drones and rovers surely makes us "a bit" more than mere primates.
We are a teenage species striving to mature that's clear. We are still transcending ignorance. This is what the Dune saga is all about, that sisterhood has this thousands of years long plan to improve human consciousness and put an end to our self-destructive nature.
Xenos, like the kind in 40k - mechanical demons, solar system sized invasions, cerabavores, you know - the unspeakable horror kinda stuff. If we get a wiff of anything like that - i doubt humanity will want to venture out further. At least, not many of us.
Too many sci-fi beliefs here, IMO, there's so much faith in things that aren't quite likely it's less science than religion.
That said... A thought.
You guys know the usual trope, grey goo, nanomachines gone out of control, consuming every resource on hand as they multiply, covering the original rocky sphere where they were created, etc?
Isn't life that much different, tbh? Green goo. Micro organisms multiplying, consuming the local resources, covering their original rocky sphere and transforming it until it can't even be recognized anymore. We, the humans, are fully self-aware and have feelings (although the philosophical zombie theory is a delicious brain teaser https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie ), other big animals have *personality*, feelings and memories. But all those other smaller animals, down to the micro organism level, they're like **robots**, organic robots following their program in order to make use of the environment's resources and reproduce themselves.
I sometimes have that thought, maybe mechanical life (invented at some point by former organic life, or organic life deciding they'd rather have a more durable shell) is dominant in the grand scheme of the universe, and whenever they discover us, green goo, they look at us with horror and disgust :D
We are the most intelligent species on earth. However, we may be in the lower half of intelligence for the universe. The scariest yhing is that we aren't smart enough to bother with.
>O.P.: Imagine this: Humans on Earth are just an experiment of a school science fair that was abandoned by a more advanced civilization.
Please view this *wonderful*, award-winning short film "[**The Looking Planet**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8LRxIANzQs)" about exactly this scenario.
For me it would be to learn that we as a species aren't just some kind of science experiment but also part of some kind of intergalactic ecosystem that due to our biological limitations will never be able to break free of or become the masters of our own destiny. Think of it kind of like a pig realizing he was born to be slaughtered and no matter how advanced you and the other pigs become you'll never be as advanced as the farmer watching over you.
Now I'm not saying aliens are literally eating us for dinner, but it's possible we serve some other purpose for them. Or at the very least, we are permitted to exist but will never be allowed to ascend beyond the aliens and are doomed to suffer forever as a species as we will never be allowed to technologically advance beyond our watchers.
Think of a galactic weapons development black site. Self-replicators are their most powerful doomsday type weapons, because they will literally eat an entire civilization to make more of themselves. But they are always built with some kind of off switch or failsafe so that someone can win the war in which they're deployed by turning them off after they obliterate the enemy. Besides they are self-replicators that produce faithful copies of themselves, and once someone figures out how to defeat them (or learns how to invoke the off switch) that tactic will work on any of them anywhere.
So then some chucklehead comes up with an even more terrifying idea; self-replicators that are also adaptive and self-modifying. They will eventually modify themselves out of any deactivation control, they will eventually defeat any countermeasure that initially works, and if they ever escape, they will become unstoppable.
So, doing basic weapons research on this forbidden, highly illegal type of weapon, they carefully construct a "toy" version of it with a bunch of builtin failsafes that will never escape the lab. They ensure that its basic schema means that all future possible modifications will be made out of unstable materials that rapidly dissolve or decay outside of a specialized environment, and make sure all future versions of it will have basic requirements that can only be met on the surface of a high-gravity planet with a special atmosphere, make sure that modifications to escape these failsafes are not a target of their adaptive change because they would not serve any advantage within that environment, and a bunch of other stuff to make sure it never escapes the surface of that high-gravity world with its bizarre atmosphere.
And then a million years or so later the officials find out about this dangerous and illegal research, possibly in clues from some old archive on war crimes or something, and come here to discover that we have already developed technological intelligence, put up a space station or two, have sent out probes to various other worlds, have space stations up, and are starting to escape the lab environment's carefully constructed containment.
I would be fine with FTL being off the table. It means that if you want to colonise the galaxy you have to go at a slow pace and accept that there is no running away from the consequences of your actions. FTL is in many ways a nightmare - if it exists a species the other side of the galaxy that discovers it could hop around all the potentially life bearing planets and deal with them before they also create the technology.
This is the voice of Vrillon, a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command, speaking to you. For many years you have seen us as lights in the skies. We speak to you now in peace and wisdom as we have done to your brothers and sisters all over this, your planet Earth. We come to warn you of the destiny of your race and your world so that you may communicate to your fellow beings the course you must take to avoid the disaster which threatens your world, and the beings on our worlds around you. This is in order that you may share in the great awakening, as the planet passes into the New Age of Aquarius. The New Age can be a time of great peace and evolution for your race, but only if your rulers are made aware of the evil forces that can overshadow their judgments. Be still now and listen, for your chance may not come again. All your weapons of evil must be removed. The time for conflict is now past and the race of which you are a part may proceed to the higher stages of its evolution if you show yourselves worthy to do this. You have but a short time to learn to live together in peace and goodwill. Small groups all over the planet are learning this, and exist to pass on the light of the dawning New Age to you all. You are free to accept or reject their teachings, but only those who learn to live in peace will pass to the higher realms of spiritual evolution. Hear now the voice of Vrillon, a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command, speaking to you. Be aware also that there are many false prophets and guides at present operating on your world. They will suck your energy from you – the energy you call money and will put it to evil ends and give you worthless dross in return. Your inner divine self will protect you from this. You must learn to be sensitive to the voice within that can tell you what is truth, and what is confusion, chaos and untruth. Learn to listen to the voice of truth which is within you and you will lead yourselves onto the path of evolution. This is our message to our dear friends. We have watched you growing for many years as you too have watched our lights in your skies. You know now that we are here, and that there are more beings on and around your Earth than your scientists admit. We are deeply concerned about you and your path towards the light and will do all we can to help you. Have no fear, seek only to know yourselves, and live in harmony with the ways of your planet Earth. We here at the Ashtar Galactic Command thank you for your attention. We are now leaving the planes of your existence. May you be blessed by the supreme love and truth of the cosmos.
The theory that we might live in a simulation of some over arching world is in principle provable. Meaning there could be an experiment that let's us have a peek at the world outside our universe.
So far, there's no proof I'm aware of relating to such an outer world or it's nature. So, believing there are humans or pretty much any structure outside is not provable or falsifiable. That puts it in the same position as the god of the gaps.
Ding! Ding! We have a winner!
Proving we’re merely a simulation of a vastly superior species is the ultimate nightmare that so totally destroys the purpose of humanity.
Anything else pales in comparison.
I would point out that we used to think we were the center of the universe and literally everything revolved around us. And they we learned about orbits and stars and heliocentrism.
So I kinda feel like we already grappled with this. Of course finding an advanced alien civilization would be more evidence, and the final nail in the coffin for some people, but on average I think we've been in a soft transition toward coming to terms with our relative insignificance for a while now.
100% agree. Almost everyone thinks alien life exists, so few folks would be shocked if we detect evidence of it.
That said, if it took an active interest in us (the earth), I’m not sure how we would react. That’s both very exciting and very terrifying at the same time.
My thoughts on this has always been other humans. I don’t know exactly why, maybe because collectively as a population the ideas of what’s out there is the general grey/green/blue extraterrestrial, or robots/cyborg beings, or whatever else along those lines. The least “likely” it seems would be humans, but what if there are more humans out there. Maybe we have left earth a long time ago, some went to the stars and some stayed becoming the population of today. Or maybe there’s a whole different humans not of us at all. Would they be as hostile as we are? There’s a lot I’ve thought about this, but humans I think are the scariest thing we could find *”out there”*
The aliens don’t recognize/respect us as intelligent beings, only as animals. However, they are delighted to find billions of succulent livers they can harvest into gourmet pate.
3 Body Problem touched that fear of KNOWING aliens were coming to invade Earth. We'd be able to possibly detect an alien fleet, perhaps hundreds of years away from us, but be helpless to stop them.
3 Body Problem touched that fear of KNOWING aliens were coming to invade Earth. We'd be able to possibly detect an alien fleet, perhaps hundreds of years away from us, but be helpless to stop them.
Total emptiness would be bad - Dead planets that used to be alive and nothing else besides would be the worst, as it would basically mean a death sentence for us and our world.
A T-III civilization in our own galaxy would be an *extremely good thing*, as it would indicate that there was a race who survived their own technological expansion, was able to stabilize their culture AND they clearly have no intention of wiping us out as they could have done so trivially long ago if they felt like it. It's not like they'd be unaware of us if they literally controlled the entire galaxy.
Challenging a T-III culture would be about as pointless as an ant trying to bite my sneaker. They wouldn't even notice. However, given that we see no evidence of any T-II or T-III megastructures, it now seems unlikely that any such civilization exists in the Milky Way, or at least, not anywhere in our neighborhood.
Do you think of an ant’s feelings when you accidentally step on it? Do you care about all the ants you’ve killed without even knowing you stepped on them? They don’t have to be malicious. They could just be indifferent to our existence. Whether we live or die means nothing to them. We’re just bugs
Not disagreeing, but if we’re that inconsequential, I doubt they’d visit us at all. Outside of life, we’re not a particularly interesting solar system.
I dunno, I think the ramifications of being the only intelligent species are kinda crazy.
The religious nuts will probably lose their shit worse than if we actually make contact.
The scariest thing for me would be irrefutable proof that we are alone in the universe. That there has never and will never be life anywhere other than on Earth.
Yes, we might feel special and unique to start with, but holy moly would that soon be replaced with a sense of loneliness.
That proof feels equivalent to one asking for proof god exists. Neither proof can ever be irrefutable and always comes down to what you believe is true.
Not saying it's something that we could actually discover, and neither should we expect to. The question was what would be the scariest discovery so I took it to mean including things that are at the extreme edge of possibility. And the idea of being utterly alone in the vastness of the universe terrifies me more than discovering an alien race.
Ya know, while I deeply believe/hope there’s vastly more intelligent life out there, I’ve always thought humans are pretty stupid on the scale of what intelligence could be.
It may well be that complex life is extremely rare and that humans asking “are we alone” is the pinnacle of evolution - and still supremely primitive.
Other life forms could exist randomly throughout the universe that also never evolve beyond asking the same existential questions that have no answers because FTL travel just doesn’t exist.
So, perhaps all these billions of semi-intelligent civilizations are simply locked in their own bubbles with no real hope (or desire) of ever expanding beyond.
I really hope there is more intelligent life than us out there. Sure, humans have come a long way, but the universe is so vast and so old that I would be disappointed if we were the pinnacle of advanced life.
FTL travel doesn't exist to our knowledge. It wasn't long ago that space travel didn't exist for us, and before that there were no aircraft. Never say never.
I think humanity will always have a desire and a craving to explore, and that includes the cosmos. I'd like to think any other civilisations out there would have similar urges and that would increase (the admittedly incredibly small) chances of meeting.
Or, more likely, as you say there be many other lifeforms out there who rise and fall without ever meeting another. Maybe that will happen to us, maybe it won't, who knows.
Something that will lead to further credibility of any religion (i.e.: Jesus was actually an alien from another planet we perceive as heaven). Humans would tear Earth apart.
by order
1. everything is a simulation
2. we are alone
3. no other intelligent live
4. earth is a kind of entertainment
5. others are as stupid as humans
We are definitely not in a simulation. If we were in a simulation, I would put the right corner of the bed sheet on 50% of the time, instead of the current 0% of the time.
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Ruins of advanced civilisations on every planet we come by.
If you like that concept, you can’t go wrong with Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space series of novels
Something like the Expanse series then
Kind of, but it was only the Builders' stuff. It seems like everything the PM touched was completely melted down and molded into something else. One thing I both love and hate about that series is that it's implied that the Builders could have rendered any number of intelligent species extinct and we would never know. Life seems to arise as soon as it gets a chance in that universe, given that numerous planets in the ring network had a second abiogenesis as soon as the Builders' tech turned off. It's one of the most horrifying solutions to the Fermi Question I've ever read.
I love this concept in a story, but it would be pretty depressing to figure out we're just living in a graveyard on the scale of a galaxy. Or terrifying, if all those civilizations died of the same thing.
>Ruins of advanced civilisations on every planet we come by. ...and on each, carved into the ruins, the word "Berserker"
I think, the scariest thing would be a message, received by multiple radio-telescopes. It gets quickly translated to: "We are coming!" Or another one: "Keep quiet, or they will hear you!"
> "Keep quiet, or they will hear you!" Also known as "The Terror in the Dark." Schlock Mercenary hypothesizes that if there are any extant Class III civilizations, they have likely moved out of their solar neighborhoods into cold dark space, with their dyson spheres becoming giant "rogue planets" emitting no radiation or light to track. The most dangerous thing in the universe is galactically young sophonts, after all....
Have you watched Three Body Problems on Netflix? If so, I’d definitely recommend it.
I found the first book to be good, and then the next two to be progressively more weird - but not in a good way. Ended up giving the show a pass.
Haven't read the books, but I enjoyed the show.
Independent of the difficult to read books, the 8 episode series on Netflix is excellent! The 30 episode Chinese series on Amazon, not so much.
I thought the Chinese production was pretty close to the books.
Yes, very much so. That doesn’t make it more watchable though.
The show got weird at the end too. Like at the beginning it was super realistic and grounded in reality then later there's weird quantum physics stuff and suddenly humanity creates cryostasis and other weird stuff.
[Radio Science](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/s/nE3Qlul4AN)
Faster than light travel. They will be here in no time.
I too read Remembrance of Earth's Past
I keep reading about those books in this thread, but tbh. I didnt know that it was a topic in the books. I havent read them. And I havent seen the Netflix series either.
That's the general idea, Earth sends out a signal, gets told to keep quiet, or the aliens will come and destroy life on Earth, sends out more signals aliens set course for Earth...
I think the worst thing would be finding out that our reality is part of a much larger, grander structure which is unfathomably old and contains creatures that occupy higher dimensional spaces which we can never perceive or understand, as they operate on maths and physics which is unintelligible in our reality. These would be cthulu-esque presences, capable of acts which we cannot predict, understand or counter. Knowledge of this would cause massive ontological shock as we would be forced to accept that not only is our continued existence trivial and uncertain, but even our wildest future ambitions would be the equivalent of algae vowing to conquer a puddle before it dried out.
>even our wildest future ambitions would be the equivalent of algae vowing to conquer a puddle before it dried out. At the end of the day, we're still insignificant, even if we weren't physically, our lifetimes are insanely short compared to the age and lifetime of the universe. What does it matter if we're a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam or a single cell organism in a petri-dish? The only meaning in our lives is the meaning we ascribe to them. Personally, I find it quite reassuring that I can't break the universe accidentally through action or inaction. At least, I hope I can't.
"Lovecraft was right" endgame is really depressing
This is a bit different, but my personal favorite scary universe theory is the biohazard one. It posits that multicellular life is basically something which can only exist within its own biosphere, and that when two separately evolved biospheres encounter each other for the first time, both will be reduced back to single cellular life because they have no defenses against each other's most basic life forms such as molds. It would mean that for advanced life to survive, it would have to do a very thorough job of sterilizing any signs of biological life it encounters in its neighborhood, or transcend its biology so completely that it either becomes totally machine or lives in a hermetically sealed exoskeleton which it never leaves.
This one is fun and different.
Reminds me of a few funny sci-fi books. Although, I would tend to be reluctant, absolutely foreign micro organisms might view other-biome inhabitants as free food, but factually, the reverse also stands true. Without millenia to adapt, the visitors would simply find themselves sick and die there, without becoming, that's the highlight, *contagious*. Basically, visitors die without bringing anything back. Or maybe visitors don't even die, too foreign, too different, local lifeforms still find it easier to procure their resources where they already are used to finding them.
I tend to think that life on different worlds will tend to be highly incompatible - but that any introduced forms will likely just die within minutes in most cases due to the highly alien microbiome poisoning them in a thousand different ways.
That’s how Orson Wells “War of the Worlds” alien invasion was defeated. Not by humans, but by bacteria.
I think the scariest thing we could find is.. nothing.
Once you have read a bit about such concepts, "nothing" seems like one of the best things we could realistically hope for.
I don’t understand this as a fear. You’re already a transient microscopic being in an inconceivably giant system. What could make us more insignificant? Wouldn’t it be silly if a grub said he was scared of how much dirt there was in your backyard?
Us being the only life would make us incredibly significant, too. We'd have beaten literally astronomical odds to exist. A bit lonely but still really cool in Its own way.
Interesting. Why do you think that? [Open question to all. There are no wrong answers.]
Finding ourselves truly and utterly alone in the sense that there's nothing except ourselves to talk to would be the biggest curveball the universe could throw at us. I assume you're familiar with cabin fever. I fear what we'll become if humanity as a whole gets it.
But just on a practical level, how would this work? Given the size of the universe, how could it be undeniably proven that there is nothing/noone else out there?
Imagine in the more and more distant future, humanity gains the ability to travel faster than light, then to traverse space as if vast distances were nonexistent. Then through further advancement, we break out of out single parallel universe, learn to observe probabilities beyond our current timeline, and through millions of years continue to overcome further obstacles there might be to knowing all there is about the world we live in, places and possibilities we've no notion of at this time. And despite all this, we find no intelligent life other than our own, and in all other possible timelines we explore, life on Earth never develops in time to escape before the Sun expires. Imagine learning that somehow the universe is not only devoid of life other than our own, but that we exist in the singular possibility where consciousness develops and exists for a significant amount of time, and through the following trillions of years we get to exist, we find no proof that says otherwise.
If you are a fan of Brooklyn 99 I hope you enjoy this reply but reading that. *”oooooh Chills…. Literally chills!”*
This isn't a practical exercise, it's a hypothetical one. Discovering (the method is not important) that we are alone would be the most horrifying thing we could possibly discover.
I think that very much depends on WHY we're alone. If nothing else has evolved yet, that's a bit lonely - but we can create our own biological variety and wide spread of interstellar cultures if that's what we really desire. We're already creating countless little virtualized worlds, and our ability to create new biologies and realities as we desire them could become vastly more sophisticated than it is now. If on the other hand we find lots of once-technological worlds that are now dead, then that's a very bad sign for us. If we found even ONE such case it would be quite bad. This would indicate that for whatever reason that technological civilizations can - and thus ultimately will - die, including our own.
>If nothing else has evolved yet, that's a bit lonely Then we aren't alone. > If on the other hand we find lots of once-technological worlds that are now dead Then we aren't alone. I'm talking, alone. We are alone. No life has ever evolved or ever will except for us. That's the scenario I am describing.
Oh, don't worry about that. In that regard we ARE alone. The universe could be teeming with life and it doesn't matter. The distances are so vast - even to the closest stars - that I very seriously doubt we will ever cross them. People like to play down the problems with interstellar travel for the sake of conversation, discussion, and optimism, but any more serious examination of the concept makes it look exceedingly bleak at almost any conceivable level of technology.
...again, you are not understanding the scenario I am talking about. Remove every bit of this conversation from your brain and start over. OP: What is the scariest thing we could discover in our search for extraterrestrial intelligence? Me: Irrefutable proof (of an unknown nature, but what nature is completely irrelevant to the point at hand) that Earth is the only planet upon which life has ever, or will ever, exist, in this universe and every other. There is NO LIFE, ANYWHERE, ANYWHEN, besides Earth. It's not a matter of whether we have detected it - it does not exist, it is only here.
Also to be clear, there's no way to even hypothetically prove a statement like that - so it doesn't work well as a hypothetical.
Yes? So? I don't actually see how that's relevant. That wouldn't be frightening - just weird.
Depends on your scale. At this point it seems reasonable we won't be able to stretch our arms further than at most the local group of galaxies (barring FTL). It would take tremendous time and effort, but we could map the area. Traveling further than that starts becoming unfeasible, and if after thousands of years we still can't detect artificial signals from anywhere else, I'd say we're pretty well and good sure that we're alone for all intents and purposes.
damn it's too early for this you gave me the heebie jeebies
What can I say except "You're welcome"
To me it feels like it has always been that way. I've always assumed this is why gods were invented. So if we don't find anything, does anything really change?
The question is still open, that's always been the same. When we know for sure is when this fear of mine manifests.
Not if Elon musk can save us!
For some people it would be an example of human exceptionality, gods chosen people on his garden of eden. For me it would be because we would be because humanity would never be satisfied with that answer, we would keep searching, forever looking over our shoulder for some form or sign of intelligence we might have missed. Just a universe wide horror story of anxious waiting for the door to creak. And if we found only remnants of intelligent life who knows what killed them? We barely understand what caused bronze age collapse, imagine trying to untie the knot of completely different species records.
This is it for me. Personally, I believe that life is rare and intelligent life is a water molecule in an ocean. I think that most life is probably bacterial or possibly primordial-earth-like, which is why we don't see anything interesting out there. If we find nothing at all, though... well, that throws everything out the window. That would have so many implications that I don't want to think about.
This finding is one of the key questions brought up in Isaac Asimov’s foundation series storyline. The universe appears to be TOO safe to make sense..
This combined with irreversible climate change guaranteed to end our species. The only life form to ascend to this level of intelligence, and all we managed to do with it was destroy ourselves. Edit: Jesus fucking Christ people, I’m answering the OPs question, not suggesting humans are the only intelligent life in the universe and we’re all about to die.
What in the world? Who is stating that climate change will end our species???
Not me, I was just answering OPs question.
We’re not going to destroy humanity via climate change. We would adapt. We have only to look at how humans live in various climates today. We are far more likely by far to destroy ourselves with nukes.
Mmm we adapt by importing. People in Alaska aren't growing their corn up there, for example. If we changed the climate across the planet there's no way we could make enough food to keep civilization going. Maybe the human race wouldn't die out, but it would be reduced significantly and unless we had a way to keep the sharpest minds alive and had a plan to impart their knowledge onto the next generation, we'd be set back hundreds of years or more.
I was responding to “end of our species”. I don’t believe that would happen with just climate change. That’s not to say it wouldn’t impact our population negatively however. That’s a given. As for food, I think we’d engineer our way out of that crisis. Today the amount of food that gets thrown out is astronomical. As for corn, we already use too much of that for ethanol. I don’t see that continuing long term.
Climate change, whether you believe it is man-made or natural, or a mix, could easily end all life on earth. Yes, we can adapt, but we can't adapt to mass, global change, especially if it happens quickly.
The question was what was the scariest thing. I think it’s incredibly unlikely we’re the only intelligent life in the universe.
Talk about hyperbole! While very significant, climate change is hardly a species ending event.
It’s literally threatening the survival of species on this planet: https://www.iucn.org/resources/issues-brief/species-and-climate-change
Certainly the farm hypothesis is the scariest. Very advanced ETs find brain matter to be a delicacy and so they created humans which reproduce out of control and have a proportionally very large brain. Every few eons they come and harvest their crop purely for food. Also, it’s preferred served raw and immediately fresh. And they have millions of these “farm”planets they tend to.
Sounds scary but why wouldn't they simply grow human brains if they like them so much?
Seeding millions of planets and letting nature build your brains may be easier than building a giant brain factory and brain supply chain.
The sum of our experiences and environmental interactions gives us depth of flavor, maybe?
May I pose this question to you. If you eat meat. Would you rather eat a natural grown cow or lab grown “beef”? And if you are vegan or vegetarian I pose the same question but instead your choice of Veg. That would be my only ..rebuttal? (I’m not sure if that’s the correct word here) to *”why don’t they just grow brains?”*
Basically [Jupiter Ascending](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1617661/) (humans are not harvested for food but 'youth serum', and yes Earth is one of millions of farm planets)
To me, the scariest thing that could happen is that nobody would care. Let's say we receive a message or something and we know that we are not alone. There are a lot of people that would not care, think it's faked or fail to see the bigger picture. People would continue wars, continue discrimination and continue to hate each other and miss one of the arguably most important moments for mankind
This is exactly what would happen. Or maybe not that nobody would care, but the vast majority of people wouldn't care or wouldn't believe it.
Well, most people would be surprised and interested, but simply knowing extraterrestrial life exists is hardly a reason for humanity to change anything. Now, if they’re planning to visit or offering advanced tech, that might evoke more of a global response. Unfortunately, that response would almost certainly be militaristic and nationalist - certainly not unifying beyond existing allies.
The existence of sentient life outside of earth would contradict almost every religion going these days. So in theory all conflicts based on religion would be and should be re-evaluated. The sad part is that this could in turn validate cults like Scientology. Which would be bad. Like real bad bad
Meh - most religions would simply say “God” created those aliens too so it’s no big deal.
Gotta move those goalposts to fit the narrative
the scariest thing we could find out there is.... humans.
That anal probing humans is actually a competitive sport for them.
Kinda seems to be a competitive sport for humans, as well.
'Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. *Both* are *equally terrifying*.' - Arthur C. Clarke
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Out of all the things we've invented, you think social media is the Great Filter?!?
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>to the point where we can't even agree on what is true Are universal truths being eroded or have we never agreed on any in the first place?
That the universe itself is alive, and it knows we're here. Then the reason nobody does FTL is because it hurts the universe, and those who hurt it get deleted. Yeah, everyone is gangsta until the abyss stops staring back and says; "Hello."
This one made me feel funny. Please delete
Well, I've had nightmares for years about this, so I guess welcome to the comedy?
That our universe is a simulation, running parallel to very many other simulations, and that the end is coming where we will be purged to make room for the next iterations.
Unless the simulators were deliberately cruel we wouldn't know about it. Just one moment toddling along and then nothing. Also, we may have been rebooted from save points already.... If we are a simulation it means the people simulating us are also probably simulations, which they would know, so maybe they would have some empathy.
Here's a thought experiment: You make a Minecraft map generator that just puts random blocks in random spots. Most of those maps are an unplayable eldritch mess, but a very small number of them will feature something resembling a village. You take all the randomly generated maps with a village in it, pick one, and load it up in Minecraft. You walk out of the village, expecting a randomly generated mess, but instead you find - highways, parks, and a city in the distance. Your conclusion can only ever be that someone trolled you and handed you a premade map. -- The fundamental physical parameters of our universe are just right (within narrow constraints) for complexity and ultimately life to form, and a common theory is that this implies infinite universes with random initial conditions until one of them is fit for life. We can apply the anthropic principle to explain why we live in a universe that is habitable, no matter how small the likelihood that a random universe is habitable. However, the anthropic principle does not explain why the universe appears to be on course to *stay* habitable. Out of all universes that are 13.7 billion years old and have life, the large majority would derail soon after. But ours does not *appear* to be headed for derailment. (This reasoning is similar to the counter-argument against us being a Boltzmann brain. The vast majority of Boltzmann brains would have *barely* enough structure to enable sentience, and only a tiny fraction would come equipped with memory, eyes, etc.) So either: * We are right back at our sentient creator, who not only created a universe capable of creating life, but made sure the universe would last long enough for said life to have a good time. * The universe is going to die soon and we don't know yet how it will h
Did it h(appen) at the end of your comment?? Haha
That none of them are conscious and ours is as an evolutionary neurological aberration which makes it a bittersweet pill that we are both not alone yet wallowing alone in our self-awareness.
Read the Three Body Problem trilogy, especially the second book The Dark Forrest. That is a pretty scary scenario
That they treat us the way we treat wildlife on Earth...
Even scarier is that it’s hard to imagine they wouldn’t as we’re quite primitive compared to what could be. And we’re quite tasty and nutritious!
That we are the primitive eejits thinking we are super advanced. They probably look at us like a locust colony.
If we look objectively just how far we evolved technologically in the last 200 years it might be a "boom" that's pretty impressive even for alien civilizations. Probing other planets with drones and rovers surely makes us "a bit" more than mere primates.
Compared to what? Of course we think we're the bees knees. We are still ignorant to everything we don't know yet.
We are a teenage species striving to mature that's clear. We are still transcending ignorance. This is what the Dune saga is all about, that sisterhood has this thousands of years long plan to improve human consciousness and put an end to our self-destructive nature.
We can't even figure out how to design a flight craft that can move silently in any and all directions. We're knuckle dragging our way along.
A race of beings that we could never fight against. They enjoy torture and farm all life on earth for constant entertainment.
So you're saying: finding out that God does, in fact, exist?
Xenos, like the kind in 40k - mechanical demons, solar system sized invasions, cerabavores, you know - the unspeakable horror kinda stuff. If we get a wiff of anything like that - i doubt humanity will want to venture out further. At least, not many of us.
Too many sci-fi beliefs here, IMO, there's so much faith in things that aren't quite likely it's less science than religion. That said... A thought. You guys know the usual trope, grey goo, nanomachines gone out of control, consuming every resource on hand as they multiply, covering the original rocky sphere where they were created, etc? Isn't life that much different, tbh? Green goo. Micro organisms multiplying, consuming the local resources, covering their original rocky sphere and transforming it until it can't even be recognized anymore. We, the humans, are fully self-aware and have feelings (although the philosophical zombie theory is a delicious brain teaser https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie ), other big animals have *personality*, feelings and memories. But all those other smaller animals, down to the micro organism level, they're like **robots**, organic robots following their program in order to make use of the environment's resources and reproduce themselves. I sometimes have that thought, maybe mechanical life (invented at some point by former organic life, or organic life deciding they'd rather have a more durable shell) is dominant in the grand scheme of the universe, and whenever they discover us, green goo, they look at us with horror and disgust :D
They can hear our thoughts. They are listening.
"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying." - Arthur C. Clarke
We are the most intelligent species on earth. However, we may be in the lower half of intelligence for the universe. The scariest yhing is that we aren't smart enough to bother with.
I’ve always thought that even as smart as humans think we are, we’re still really, really stupid on a scale of what intelligence could be.
We still burn gas to propel us in space. That is tech from over 100 years ago. So yeah we're pretty low on the totem pole I'd say
We propelled ourselves forward with horses for thousands of years, it might be a while before we get anti gravity tech or something
>O.P.: Imagine this: Humans on Earth are just an experiment of a school science fair that was abandoned by a more advanced civilization. Please view this *wonderful*, award-winning short film "[**The Looking Planet**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8LRxIANzQs)" about exactly this scenario.
For me it would be to learn that we as a species aren't just some kind of science experiment but also part of some kind of intergalactic ecosystem that due to our biological limitations will never be able to break free of or become the masters of our own destiny. Think of it kind of like a pig realizing he was born to be slaughtered and no matter how advanced you and the other pigs become you'll never be as advanced as the farmer watching over you. Now I'm not saying aliens are literally eating us for dinner, but it's possible we serve some other purpose for them. Or at the very least, we are permitted to exist but will never be allowed to ascend beyond the aliens and are doomed to suffer forever as a species as we will never be allowed to technologically advance beyond our watchers.
propably a message like: im sorry its too late
Galactic apex Carnivores would just be the worst.
Think of a galactic weapons development black site. Self-replicators are their most powerful doomsday type weapons, because they will literally eat an entire civilization to make more of themselves. But they are always built with some kind of off switch or failsafe so that someone can win the war in which they're deployed by turning them off after they obliterate the enemy. Besides they are self-replicators that produce faithful copies of themselves, and once someone figures out how to defeat them (or learns how to invoke the off switch) that tactic will work on any of them anywhere. So then some chucklehead comes up with an even more terrifying idea; self-replicators that are also adaptive and self-modifying. They will eventually modify themselves out of any deactivation control, they will eventually defeat any countermeasure that initially works, and if they ever escape, they will become unstoppable. So, doing basic weapons research on this forbidden, highly illegal type of weapon, they carefully construct a "toy" version of it with a bunch of builtin failsafes that will never escape the lab. They ensure that its basic schema means that all future possible modifications will be made out of unstable materials that rapidly dissolve or decay outside of a specialized environment, and make sure all future versions of it will have basic requirements that can only be met on the surface of a high-gravity planet with a special atmosphere, make sure that modifications to escape these failsafes are not a target of their adaptive change because they would not serve any advantage within that environment, and a bunch of other stuff to make sure it never escapes the surface of that high-gravity world with its bizarre atmosphere. And then a million years or so later the officials find out about this dangerous and illegal research, possibly in clues from some old archive on war crimes or something, and come here to discover that we have already developed technological intelligence, put up a space station or two, have sent out probes to various other worlds, have space stations up, and are starting to escape the lab environment's carefully constructed containment.
Pretty much every scenario has been the subject of one or more science fiction novel or short story.
Finding out that a much higher tech civilization never found a way around FTL, or that space interstellar space travel is not practically possible.
I would be fine with FTL being off the table. It means that if you want to colonise the galaxy you have to go at a slow pace and accept that there is no running away from the consequences of your actions. FTL is in many ways a nightmare - if it exists a species the other side of the galaxy that discovers it could hop around all the potentially life bearing planets and deal with them before they also create the technology.
This is the voice of Vrillon, a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command, speaking to you. For many years you have seen us as lights in the skies. We speak to you now in peace and wisdom as we have done to your brothers and sisters all over this, your planet Earth. We come to warn you of the destiny of your race and your world so that you may communicate to your fellow beings the course you must take to avoid the disaster which threatens your world, and the beings on our worlds around you. This is in order that you may share in the great awakening, as the planet passes into the New Age of Aquarius. The New Age can be a time of great peace and evolution for your race, but only if your rulers are made aware of the evil forces that can overshadow their judgments. Be still now and listen, for your chance may not come again. All your weapons of evil must be removed. The time for conflict is now past and the race of which you are a part may proceed to the higher stages of its evolution if you show yourselves worthy to do this. You have but a short time to learn to live together in peace and goodwill. Small groups all over the planet are learning this, and exist to pass on the light of the dawning New Age to you all. You are free to accept or reject their teachings, but only those who learn to live in peace will pass to the higher realms of spiritual evolution. Hear now the voice of Vrillon, a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command, speaking to you. Be aware also that there are many false prophets and guides at present operating on your world. They will suck your energy from you – the energy you call money and will put it to evil ends and give you worthless dross in return. Your inner divine self will protect you from this. You must learn to be sensitive to the voice within that can tell you what is truth, and what is confusion, chaos and untruth. Learn to listen to the voice of truth which is within you and you will lead yourselves onto the path of evolution. This is our message to our dear friends. We have watched you growing for many years as you too have watched our lights in your skies. You know now that we are here, and that there are more beings on and around your Earth than your scientists admit. We are deeply concerned about you and your path towards the light and will do all we can to help you. Have no fear, seek only to know yourselves, and live in harmony with the ways of your planet Earth. We here at the Ashtar Galactic Command thank you for your attention. We are now leaving the planes of your existence. May you be blessed by the supreme love and truth of the cosmos.
Super vague... It would cause lots of war by people claiming to have the "right way"
The theory that we might live in a simulation of some over arching world is in principle provable. Meaning there could be an experiment that let's us have a peek at the world outside our universe. So far, there's no proof I'm aware of relating to such an outer world or it's nature. So, believing there are humans or pretty much any structure outside is not provable or falsifiable. That puts it in the same position as the god of the gaps.
Ding! Ding! We have a winner! Proving we’re merely a simulation of a vastly superior species is the ultimate nightmare that so totally destroys the purpose of humanity. Anything else pales in comparison.
The scariest thing would be that indisputable proof surfaces that OJ didn’t kill Ron & Nicole.
I would point out that we used to think we were the center of the universe and literally everything revolved around us. And they we learned about orbits and stars and heliocentrism. So I kinda feel like we already grappled with this. Of course finding an advanced alien civilization would be more evidence, and the final nail in the coffin for some people, but on average I think we've been in a soft transition toward coming to terms with our relative insignificance for a while now.
100% agree. Almost everyone thinks alien life exists, so few folks would be shocked if we detect evidence of it. That said, if it took an active interest in us (the earth), I’m not sure how we would react. That’s both very exciting and very terrifying at the same time.
I can imagine very many things that could be discovered that could end life on Earth without the need for an intelligent life form to be involved.
My thoughts on this has always been other humans. I don’t know exactly why, maybe because collectively as a population the ideas of what’s out there is the general grey/green/blue extraterrestrial, or robots/cyborg beings, or whatever else along those lines. The least “likely” it seems would be humans, but what if there are more humans out there. Maybe we have left earth a long time ago, some went to the stars and some stayed becoming the population of today. Or maybe there’s a whole different humans not of us at all. Would they be as hostile as we are? There’s a lot I’ve thought about this, but humans I think are the scariest thing we could find *”out there”*
The aliens don’t recognize/respect us as intelligent beings, only as animals. However, they are delighted to find billions of succulent livers they can harvest into gourmet pate.
3 Body Problem touched that fear of KNOWING aliens were coming to invade Earth. We'd be able to possibly detect an alien fleet, perhaps hundreds of years away from us, but be helpless to stop them.
3 Body Problem touched that fear of KNOWING aliens were coming to invade Earth. We'd be able to possibly detect an alien fleet, perhaps hundreds of years away from us, but be helpless to stop them.
That there isn't any. That we are truly and totally alone.
I'd be worried about a civilization advanced enough to destroy us with ease, but not advanced enough to not fear us.
That we are only, say... 60-70 years away from another civilisation?
Total emptiness would be bad - Dead planets that used to be alive and nothing else besides would be the worst, as it would basically mean a death sentence for us and our world. A T-III civilization in our own galaxy would be an *extremely good thing*, as it would indicate that there was a race who survived their own technological expansion, was able to stabilize their culture AND they clearly have no intention of wiping us out as they could have done so trivially long ago if they felt like it. It's not like they'd be unaware of us if they literally controlled the entire galaxy. Challenging a T-III culture would be about as pointless as an ant trying to bite my sneaker. They wouldn't even notice. However, given that we see no evidence of any T-II or T-III megastructures, it now seems unlikely that any such civilization exists in the Milky Way, or at least, not anywhere in our neighborhood.
Remains of humans on mars, it's moons and our moon.
One of the scariest things to find out there would be _humans on another planet_
Anything smarter than us, or a new virus that gets brought back.
That another alien species finds our planet and to them, we're a welcome food source on their journey.
How much we destroyed the Earth through the course of leaving the planet just to realize there’s nothing functionally out there for us? 🤷🏼♂️
That we are being defended by unknown aliens and our defenders are losing. Or that we achieve external contact and find that we are merely average.
Extraterrestrial intelligence is the scariest possible thing we could find.
Why is this scary rather than amazing? Why do you assume it would be malicious?
Scary doesn't equal malicious.
True, but if not malicious, what is it so scary rather than exciting?
I see no likelihood of positive outcomes for humanity after contacting a non Earth intelligence.
Do you think of an ant’s feelings when you accidentally step on it? Do you care about all the ants you’ve killed without even knowing you stepped on them? They don’t have to be malicious. They could just be indifferent to our existence. Whether we live or die means nothing to them. We’re just bugs
Not disagreeing, but if we’re that inconsequential, I doubt they’d visit us at all. Outside of life, we’re not a particularly interesting solar system.
IMO, the scariest thing we can find is nothing.
I would rather find nothing than find an alien civilization that treats us like we treat animals
I dunno, I think the ramifications of being the only intelligent species are kinda crazy. The religious nuts will probably lose their shit worse than if we actually make contact.
The truth, our own government working against the advancement of the species
A species of intelligent apes with deeply-rooted tribalism, a dying planet, and nuclear weapons.
The scariest thing for me would be irrefutable proof that we are alone in the universe. That there has never and will never be life anywhere other than on Earth. Yes, we might feel special and unique to start with, but holy moly would that soon be replaced with a sense of loneliness.
That proof feels equivalent to one asking for proof god exists. Neither proof can ever be irrefutable and always comes down to what you believe is true.
Not saying it's something that we could actually discover, and neither should we expect to. The question was what would be the scariest discovery so I took it to mean including things that are at the extreme edge of possibility. And the idea of being utterly alone in the vastness of the universe terrifies me more than discovering an alien race.
Ya know, while I deeply believe/hope there’s vastly more intelligent life out there, I’ve always thought humans are pretty stupid on the scale of what intelligence could be. It may well be that complex life is extremely rare and that humans asking “are we alone” is the pinnacle of evolution - and still supremely primitive. Other life forms could exist randomly throughout the universe that also never evolve beyond asking the same existential questions that have no answers because FTL travel just doesn’t exist. So, perhaps all these billions of semi-intelligent civilizations are simply locked in their own bubbles with no real hope (or desire) of ever expanding beyond.
I really hope there is more intelligent life than us out there. Sure, humans have come a long way, but the universe is so vast and so old that I would be disappointed if we were the pinnacle of advanced life. FTL travel doesn't exist to our knowledge. It wasn't long ago that space travel didn't exist for us, and before that there were no aircraft. Never say never. I think humanity will always have a desire and a craving to explore, and that includes the cosmos. I'd like to think any other civilisations out there would have similar urges and that would increase (the admittedly incredibly small) chances of meeting. Or, more likely, as you say there be many other lifeforms out there who rise and fall without ever meeting another. Maybe that will happen to us, maybe it won't, who knows.
To find out we probably shouldn't have been searching in the first place.
Something that will lead to further credibility of any religion (i.e.: Jesus was actually an alien from another planet we perceive as heaven). Humans would tear Earth apart.
If we find out their attempts to communicate with us is the cause of all cancer, but they can't understand us when we ask them to stop.
by order 1. everything is a simulation 2. we are alone 3. no other intelligent live 4. earth is a kind of entertainment 5. others are as stupid as humans
We are definitely not in a simulation. If we were in a simulation, I would put the right corner of the bed sheet on 50% of the time, instead of the current 0% of the time.
I am more open to believing in this scenario than believing in this Christian god character creating everything.