Alien invasion motives

[LN400]

3 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Can other come up with more who would work as well or better? 

33 minutes ago, LN400 said:

Since the existence of aliens is purely speculative, one can speculate that there are other possibilities that we just can't envision since our ability to envision is limited by our experiences here on earth.

Well, although it's pretty hard to imagine anything we are utterly unaware of, one can of course try (and fail abysmally):

I can't think of any evolutionary steps that would produce wheels for "legs" but then again, I can't rule out the possibility that an alien life form has just that. Or caterpillar tracks. Perhaps in a low gravity environment, they have "jet propulsion", like squids here on earth, with nozzles at the end of some appendix with "air" being thrown out. Or what if these life forms were aquatic, or what would pass as aquatic there? Silly as it may sound, who am I to rule out the possibility? Just as we would collapse on a high gravity surface, so would they perhaps collapse if stuck here on earth but for their home environment that brought on that solution, it would work.

And why this need for exactly 4 appendixes for moving around/manipulating stuff? The reason we and all those other animals have 4 appendixes for that is because of evolution as it happened on this one planet. Other planets would have their own evolution, blissfully unaware of any evolution on a random remote planet nobody there knows exists. These life forms could very well have a swizz army knife layout with all sorts of organs for manipulating, sensing, moving, allowing things we humans need machinery for.

[radonek]

You can have civilizations with different definition of war. See Enders Game for example of species having their idea of friendly game of interplanetary football without even realizing it is brutal war of extinction for the other side. Deployment of deadly weapons may actually be dump of technological waste (see Stalker) and unintentional destruction of ecosystems can be seen even in our history of sea exploration. And any kind of stellar engineering by Kardashev 2+ civilization is gonna be way less fun then Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy have it if you stand in their path. You can go as far as having species who are dangerous by mere act of presence. For instance cheela from Dragon's Egg novel are perfectly peaceful, but inhabit a neutron star, making even their idea of "life support system" kinda scary for anything made of ordinary matter.

OTOH if you want a real war with liquided of aliens, that is almost too easy. I'd rather not go into societal or religious reasons because our own history is so chock full of such wars its just not funny. So, lets have aliens feel threatened. They may think that that our (future)  vonneumanian mining technology is just barely controlled threat of life-exterminating robot uprising or that spewing barely sterilized probes around is a major ecological threat. They may not like us broadcasting our presence to more dangerous neighbors. They may want to use us as footsoldiers against some biologically compatible other race (see Bruce Sterlings The Swarm for example). They may think our experiments with particle accelerators are dangerous to universe's general well being.

Problem with this kind of real war is that its not gonna turn up into epic campaign of heroic space battles as movie makers would have it, but more likely into short series of  unmitigated extinction events.
 

[Wjolcz]

Ooh! I like these topics! There was a book by Stanislaw Lem I once read called "Fiasco". Spoilers ahead.

In the book humans look for another civilazation, which they find in a nearby solar system (less than 100ly IIRC). They see nukes going off on the polar caps and stuff like that, so they decide it's worth contacting before the so called "contact window" shuts (basically a civ level where the civ doesn't use radio waves and lasers as a form of communication anymore).

So they get there, see peculiar stuff going on that they don't understand motifs of and because of many misunderstandings and miscommunication between the crew and the planet inhabitants the ship captain decides to annihilate a major part of the planet, because they consider the species living there too agressive and they threaten their own existence.

So the message was something like "Get your **** together and unite as a species already".

It may seem a bit complicated, but I recommend reading the book anyway. I'm not a good story teller.

Edited September 14, 2016 by Veeltch

[magnemoe]

7 hours ago, LN400 said:

Well, although it's pretty hard to imagine anything we are utterly unaware of, one can of course try (and fail abysmally):

I can't think of any evolutionary steps that would produce wheels for "legs" but then again, I can't rule out the possibility that an alien life form has just that. Or caterpillar tracks. Perhaps in a low gravity environment, they have "jet propulsion", like squids here on earth, with nozzles at the end of some appendix with "air" being thrown out. Or what if these life forms were aquatic, or what would pass as aquatic there? Silly as it may sound, who am I to rule out the possibility? Just as we would collapse on a high gravity surface, so would they perhaps collapse if stuck here on earth but for their home environment that brought on that solution, it would work.

And why this need for exactly 4 appendixes for moving around/manipulating stuff? The reason we and all those other animals have 4 appendixes for that is because of evolution as it happened on this one planet. Other planets would have their own evolution, blissfully unaware of any evolution on a random remote planet nobody there knows exists. These life forms could very well have a swizz army knife layout with all sorts of organs for manipulating, sensing, moving, allowing things we humans need machinery for.

Wheels would be practical but hard to manage with biological means. 
On an planet with low gravity / thick atmosphere flying would be common, flying is also brain intensive however on earth its limit on how large an bird could grow. An earlier discussion here about using wings as legs on ground and the feets as hands at least then working.
Six or more limbs would also be better here. I also said that more limbs would be better, you can walk on four or having wings but also hands. 

[kerbiloid]

14 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Note that on earth small animals come in all sort of shapes, large ones come in fewer as its fewer good solutions who works with an one ton animal. 

The bigger the animal, the closer its shape to hydrostatic equilibrium due to self-gravity.
Small pieces can be of any shape, like asteroids and comets.

13 hours ago, LN400 said:

I can't think of any evolutionary steps that would produce wheels for "legs"

 

Spoiler

 

13 hours ago, LN400 said:

And why this need for exactly 4 appendixes for moving around/manipulating stuff?

This was the minimum. Others have been reduced.

Edited September 15, 2016 by kerbiloid

[KAL 9000]

They need a bypass for a new hyperspace express route!

[Tex_NL]

"We are the Borg. ....."
You know how the line goes. They might need additional bodies to expand their workforce.

Edited September 16, 2016 by Tex_NL

[Green Baron]

As noone else dares to mention:

Women, preferably screeching blondes.

:-)

(sorry dear ladies)

Edited September 16, 2016 by Green Baron

[ImmaStegosaurus!]

Even if we had only rocks to throw at attacking aliens it would be a great pain in rear to get the logistics sorted out and try to assault a planet when resistance can just spawn there. It's much easier to just settle on empty planet. Motive for attacking a civilization that has developed to at least some extend would need to be purely ideological or religious.

 

[kerbiloid]

On 16.09.2016 at 8:03 PM, Green Baron said:

As noone else dares to mention:

Women, preferably screeching blondes.

Unless they're themselves bloodthirsty amazons, wishing to enslave MCP mcp.

Edited September 18, 2016 by kerbiloid

[Spaceception]

The only motive I see for an Alien invasion, is a habitable planet, sure you could terraform, but than takes awhile, and why do that when there's a perfectly habitable world nearby? Sure, there's those pesky humans, but we can take care of them no prob.

[Bill Phil]

29 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

The only motive I see for an Alien invasion, is a habitable planet, sure you could terraform, but than takes awhile, and why do that when there's a perfectly habitable world nearby? Sure, there's those pesky humans, but we can take care of them no prob.

Yeah, but if you're capable of invading a planet and taking it over, coming from another star system, you can build orbital colonies (which are more sustainable).

Plus, you're assuming that habitable for us is habitable for them.

[Spaceception]

Just now, Bill Phil said:

Yeah, but if you're capable of invading a planet and taking it over, coming from another star system, you can build orbital colonies (which are more sustainable).

Plus, you're assuming that habitable for us is habitable for them.

True. But a planet has way more space, and plentiful resources.

Well, even if it's not 100 percent habitable, Terraforming this world for their needs would be way faster and easier than Terraforming say, Mars or Venus.

It's a big universe, there's probably two worlds out there, close to each other, and habitable for the Aliens that inhabit them.

[Bill Phil]

5 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

True. But a planet has way more space, and plentiful resources.

Well, even if it's not 100 percent habitable, Terraforming this world for their needs would be way faster and easier than Terraforming say, Mars or Venus.

It's a big universe, there's probably two worlds out there, close to each other, and habitable for the Aliens that inhabit them.

Total surface area of orbital colonies is dependent on the resources of the solar system. It outstrips planets to an enormous degree.

We don't know if it'd be faster, since we have no idea about their biology.

[radonek]

2 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

True. But a planet has way more space, and plentiful resources.

There is lot of space in, you know, the Space. And all the same resources you can find on planets, except they are not on bottom of deep gravity well. In fact, lots of very useful resources are deposited deep in planet core due to planet formation processes (hint: there is a lot more carbon and silicon on earth crust then, say, iron or uranium). Planets are only useful if you can't yet build orbital economy - but if that is the case, you can hardly dabble in interstellar travel, much less warfare. 
 

[magnemoe]

 

6 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

Total surface area of orbital colonies is dependent on the resources of the solar system. It outstrips planets to an enormous degree.

We don't know if it'd be faster, since we have no idea about their biology.

Building space habitats is easy if you can go interstellar if you build it in your solar system. Traveling to another star then building an habitat is harder as you don't have more infrastructure than the starship.
Also why should you go if it only was to set up another habitat. Science is one reason, also the prestige of going to another star.
Well an planet with life is way more interesting scientifically, it also bring more prestige to colonize an planet. 
We don't know the biochemistry of aliens however it would be strange if oxygen and carbon was the way most common so unless our biochemistry is very poisonous to them it would be an nice place to set up an base, you have air, water and decent temperature.


 

[Bill Phil]

10 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

 

Building space habitats is easy if you can go interstellar if you build it in your solar system. Traveling to another star then building an habitat is harder as you don't have more infrastructure than the starship.
Also why should you go if it only was to set up another habitat. Science is one reason, also the prestige of going to another star.
Well an planet with life is way more interesting scientifically, it also bring more prestige to colonize an planet. 
We don't know the biochemistry of aliens however it would be strange if oxygen and carbon was the way most common so unless our biochemistry is very poisonous to them it would be an nice place to set up an base, you have air, water and decent temperature.


 

I meant that it makes more sense to not invade at all, and just stay in your home solar system building space habitats until you get good von Neumann probes (which you can then send to other solar systems to set up infrastructure).

[Diche Bach]

On 9/13/2016 at 11:53 AM, Tex_NL said:

You're right about the resources. Pretty much everything is easier to find elsewhere. Living space is a very good reason to invade and occupy earth. Currently we have no idea of how common a liveable planet actually is. Actual earth like planets (water, oxygen, etc. everything that makes earth liveable) might be extremely rare. An orbital colony, however huge, still remains rather limited. Both physically and emotionally. Nothing beats real ground and real air.
It could be a pre-emptive strike. They might worry we someday could become a threat to them.
Or they might have simply developed a taste for man flesh. An interstellar species could harvest us as easy as we harvest cattle.

 

[radonek]

10 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Building space habitats is easy if you can go interstellar if you build it in your solar system. Traveling to another star then building an habitat is harder as you don't have more infrastructure than the starship.

If you can't establish interplanetary industrial base, you can't establish planetary one either. Going planetary is harder if anything, because much of specialized technology (read: dead weight) would have to be carried along. Spaceborne industry could be derived/repurposed from your basic transportation and maintenance technology, because they work in same environment. For example, asteroid miner would need custom mining and processing equipment, but you can make use of existing navigation, propulsion, avionics, communications, life support, your mother ship can provide maintenance and crew is familiar with technology. Planetary technology would have to be built "from ground up", and for what? You end in scenario with less and harder to get resources for the "privilege" of having to haul them back up the well to make them actually useful for rest of your economy (like building more spaceships). That just does not make any economical sense. It is much more likely that opposite will happen - your transportation technology will specialize in most economical way, and would be largely unable to negotiate larger gravity fields. Just look at today high seas - how many icebreakers or batyscaphes do you see?

Oh, and yes, if you happen to fall upon 100% biologically compatible planet, that would make a some things easier in theory, but again: if your technology is so bad that life support poses a significant challenge, interstellar travel is out of question. Also, I would like to think that spacefaring civilization would value and protect biospheres rather then damage them with industrial production.

 

[Sereneti]

There are soo many plantes, with "cheaper" recources than earth have.

Good reasons for a alien-race to conquer the earth are:

1) Religion.
2) Humans.
3) its a nice planet....
4) We have chocolate...
5) We have coffee....
6) We have research on AI/AGI .... (a hint to X...)
7) they want to save us from doing something stupid (like fire some nuklear-rockets; searching on AI/AGI)

Oil: there are so many ways to syntetice it from CO2 and water, so its energetic cheaper to syntetice it , then to fly trough the space.

[qeveren]

It likely depends on how much effort needs to be invested into finding and traveling to stars that show evidence of life.  If FTL is trivial to them then any small subset of their population, with whatever bonkers motivations, could traipse around the galaxy knocking off the new kids on the block.  The higher the required investment the less likely you're going to see that sort of messing about.

[kerbiloid]

(Inspired by Resident Evil).

Alien biolab on Pluto occasionally released a microbiological culture. Beneficent and compassionate aliens send a ship to sterilize the Solar System, especially potential carriers.