Thursday, March 10, 2011

Visitors to Earth Will Likely Be Robots

"If an extraterrestrial spaceship ever lands on Earth, I bet you that it is 99.9999999 percent likely that what exits that ship will be synthetic in nature," said Michael Dyer, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles (appropriately enough). 

If Aliens Attack: Visitors to Earth Will Likely Be Robots (so says Space.com)

I've always thought any life that visits us would need to be synthetic as well, at least partially. As we've not yet encountered another civilization openly, there's no way to know for sure, but any other life form, whether they're carbon-based like us, or silicon, chlorine, arsenic, or boron, would most likely encounter the problems we have with longevity, mortality, illnesses and more. (Can't recall if phosphorous was ruled out or is still possible.)

It's just as possible certain aliens are naturally long-lived, strong or immune to illness. If not, it stands to reckon that if they were sufficiently more advanced than us they hopefully found ways to cure any ailments and possibly mortality. And unless they figured out how to manipulate "worm holes", even at the speed of light, travel between stars with habitable systems and galaxies themselves would still take thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years or more.

1 comment:

  1. it makes sense for them to be robots, because WE ALREADY have robots exploring the galaxy on our behalf!

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