We in the US can’t even get rights to protect ourselves. Good luck, aliens!
Srsly. Would the aliens get the right to control their bodies or would they get a lecture about what Texans think Jesus would’ve wanted.
Fucking aliens coming to earth to get an abortion
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The way I see it, to understand what would happen to us if aliens with more advanced technology came to Earth, we can simply read history books about the various waves of Europeans coming to the Americas a few centuries ago.
(Heads-up: we would be playing the parts of the various native societies)
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We can’t even agree on basic rights for the humans and animals we have on this planet right now. It’ll be a District 9 situation for sure.
As an interesting perspective on contact you should read The Three Body Problem series by Cixin Liu.
I’m on the third book rn and its an interesting thought experiment. Haven’t read much Eastern literature before so its cool to get a different perspective on society as well
Would there be? Certainly. As soon as intelligent life elsewhere was discovered, laywers/policy makers all over the world would scramble to make laws on how to treat them.
Now, how those laws will look is difficult to say. Different countries might treat it very differently.
Perhaps human rights would be extended as “intelligent” rights or something.
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They’d have to spend a good deal of that trip accelerating and decelerating. During the deceleration phase, giant engines are probably pointed at Earth, and those will throw off heat or mass or both. We should have a few months lead time.
That assumes they are using our current technology for space travel.
We can’t just imagine some additional physics into being. Newton’s laws and relativity were conceived as explanations for observed phenomena. We have no observed phenomena that allow us to create, for example, reactionless engines, or allow us to violate thermodynamics.
So my assumption is that our understanding of physics is relatively complete, and there are no hitherto unknown forces to exploit for travel purposes. Thus any interstellar approach must adhere to these basic principles.
Newton’s laws have withstood every attempt to be worked around. Relativity didn’t throw Newton’s laws out – it just special cases them (Newton’s laws are a subset of relativistic laws where speeds are low).
Basic principles:
(1) Thermodynamics: Engines require energy to produce inertia/momentum changes, and using that energy produces heat. (2) Newton: To change your velocity, you need to apply a force, and that requires something to push against. (3) Mechanics: To slow down requires time, even at the highest levels of deceleration (and faster deceleration makes the first two more visible).
There are potentially some stealth approaches: (1) Using a heat pump to create a cold shield on the front facing side, and radiating your heat behind it. (Circumvented if we have any sort of probes behind it looking back towards us.) (2) Using directed energy (photons or similar) as your reaction mass and pointing it at an off-axis angle (at a loss of efficiency, and circumvented by detecting secondary illumination or by probes that are in line with that light). (3) But these still require stopping time. And the total energy to stop is literally astronomical.
Perspective. To decelerate a single kg that is approaching earth at .99c, the amount energy needed is approximately equal to converting 6x that amount of mass to pure energy. Basically to decelerate 1kg, you’d need to bring 3kg of matter and 3kg of antimatter and have them perfectly annihilate in such a way that 100% of that energy were put into deceleration. This is roughly equal to 6x the size of the Tsar Bomba explosion (largest nuke ever detonated). If you have a spaceship of any realistic size approaching earth at .99c, it’s putting out a shittonne (technical term) of energy to stop.
Seriously, any alien looking to destroy us wouldn’t bother with slowing them down. They’d just ram those 1kg objects directly into earth at .99c and obliviate us without ever being detected.
I share your pessimism but 95% of the mass of the universe is still unaccounted for. GR and QM aren’t compatible. So there is still some wiggle room for the unknown.
Hossenfelder is a particulary pragmatic physicist and even she sees gaps that could make it possible.
Every time Webb takes a picture it contraddicts everything we now, so i kind of disagree
a few months
What with the 99%?
Currently, no.
Would there be? Quite probably.
In the near term, during the invasion, they would be protected by the usual articles of war I’d think.
I’d kill an alien if he stepped on my property
Look here little human, I’ll put my alien feet on your front yard and then leave on my flying saucer and there’s nothing you can do about it
I’ve seen enough movies to know that all I need is to sneeze, use a super soaker full of watered down Head and Shoulders, or punch them in the face and quip to beat almost any alien.
We’re talking about scifi right? Right??
As you reach for your weapon, the alien swipes a gesture with its “hand” and you disintegrate into one trillion pieces, along with every creature within three genetic generations of yourself. The alien doesn’t care or acknowledge the tremendous pain you feel as every part of your body separates into its base pieces, leaving the nerves intact until last, and continues to walk through your property completely invulnerable to any terrestrial weapon. The next human treats the alien with respect, as interpreted by ten layers of behavior/language/social analysis contraptions and the two of them have a pleasant chat around the fireplace, sharing eachothothers culture. Nice.
They need to get in line and do it the right way like my parents did.
If the aliens invade Earth they’ll likely succeed so the question should really be: would there be laws for protecting the rights and dignity of humans? Seems more likely we’ll be used as forced labour in their mines or unwilling conscripts in their Space War with the Space Nazis (or Space Communists if they’re the Space Nazis).
Their superior firepower, courtesy of the Björk and Slartibartfast weapons conglomerate.
As humans I think we would have a dog reaction, asking ourselves: Can we eat them ? Can we fuck then ?
Anything else doesn’t matter.
Either they are getting jerked, or I am.
This is explored somewhat in District 9, but also in the 1988 movie and TV show “Alien Nation.” IMO, the latter is overdue for a reboot.
At the time, as there is now, a concern within the US around illegal immigration. Alien Nation, with the one-the-nose wordplay in its title, sets out to explore this uncomfortable spot in the US psyche by replacing illegal aliens for space aliens. The writes pour gasoline on this fire by making the aliens superior to humans in nearly every way: reaching maturity faster, stronger, smarter, and with tougher stomachs because why not?
To answer your question, the show above does a good job setting up a plausible narrative around similar subject matter. I think it’s plausible that we would protect aliens were they weaker than us in some way. But in the case where they’re a threat to the status quo, we might do worse on the way to re-envisioning civil rights in light of multiple sapient lifeforms on this planet.
I think human rights would still apply.
Not until we commit atrocities on them
