I’d be really surprised if friendly aliens could give us much useful help—maybe not any.
However, contacting aliens who aren’t actively unfriendly (especially if there’s some communication) could enable us to learn a lot about the range of what’s possible.
And likewise, aliens might be interested in us because we’re weird by their standards. Depending on their tech and ethics, the effect on us could be imperceptible, strange and/or dangerous for a few individuals, mere samples of earth life remaining on reservations, or nothing left.
Just for the hell of it—what if the reason we aren’t hearing radio is that there’s something better which we haven’t discovered yet?
Well, if we want to stick to things with a speed of c, that basically means we’re limited to light/radio, gravity (way too weak to be practical), and… some sort of communication based on the strong force? I don’t know enough to speak regarding the plausibility of that, but I imagine the fact that gluons can directly interact with other gluons would be a problem.
...barring, of course, some sort of radical new discovery, which I guess was more the point of the question.
I’d be really surprised if friendly aliens could give us much useful help—maybe not any.
However, contacting aliens who aren’t actively unfriendly (especially if there’s some communication) could enable us to learn a lot about the range of what’s possible.
And likewise, aliens might be interested in us because we’re weird by their standards. Depending on their tech and ethics, the effect on us could be imperceptible, strange and/or dangerous for a few individuals, mere samples of earth life remaining on reservations, or nothing left.
Just for the hell of it—what if the reason we aren’t hearing radio is that there’s something better which we haven’t discovered yet?
Well, if we want to stick to things with a speed of c, that basically means we’re limited to light/radio, gravity (way too weak to be practical), and… some sort of communication based on the strong force? I don’t know enough to speak regarding the plausibility of that, but I imagine the fact that gluons can directly interact with other gluons would be a problem.
...barring, of course, some sort of radical new discovery, which I guess was more the point of the question.