Interestingly, the authenticity and legitimacy of UFO disclosures has been ramping up recently, right as we come closer to the cusp of fusion, AI and quantum computing breakthroughs. We’ve gone from stories in pulp magazines to reports in NYT and the Congress.

Interesting times ahead

These are the super-advanced aliens, that can travel all the way to Earth and secretly observe us, but accidentally come into the field of view of a random jet plane?

While I do not follow these discussions I'd argue that the advent of drones plays a major role in that. Additionally as long as our space tec remains as primitives we are quite boring as a civilisation

Aliens may exist, but the phenomena people are reporting as UAP are not from aliens. There is money to be made by selling the idea of aliens and alien visitors to the public and to government (who go along with the idea because it can lead to more funding).

Add self replicating nano material with competing biology to the mix! (Viruses). Self replicants for everyone&

They may not think of it as an invasion if they are exponentially more advanced than we are. Any more than I worry about bugs I might step on and kill walking across the lawn.

What would you do if you can across an array of ants that were spelling out simple mathematical formula on the ground?

I don't know that would be representative of the potential gap between us and them. We seem pretty far from faster-than-light travel or whatever other thing would allow them to visit.

It’s irrelevant what they think. We care about us and our well-being.

Invasion does not mean prejudiced extermination. If they ignored us as we might ignore insects when we discover new habitat then, yeah, I’d want to keep them from coming.

“Mostly harmless”

To clean the Petri dish? ;-)

This does make the assumption of aliens having similar lifespans. A life form that might live 500 or 10k years would view the personal cost of those distances much differently than humans, who view it as suicide.

It also assumes similar moral and cognitive processes of what to do when encountering another planet's life, neither of which must hold true for a society or species to become spacefaring. Likewise, an alien's AI probe could be effectively immortal and that would drastically shape its opinions on a return trip.

Or maybe they're intergalactic mayflies with innate knowledge for reaching orbit or relativistic speeds but they die each day and a new generation takes over tomorrow. All distances are suicide missions, even trips across their own planet. It would totally normalize multigenerational trips.

I think it's short sighted to make any assumptions of human similarities when it comes to first contact. Cephalopods have independently developed significant intelligence in parallel here on Earth and they might as well be aliens to us despite a common evolutionary ancestor way back. A completely independent evolutionary path leading to intelligence could be incredibly counter to our expectations.

We only know what we know. This is what we build off of. Also there are physics limits. We cannot go FTL and even getting to light speed would mean vast quantities of energy. Could there be new physics? We can’t make decisions on something so far seems quite unlikely.

Speaking of cephalopods, do they seem less aggressive than other species? Have they gone vegan?

Is it more or less likely the species that goes vegan wins the race? And even if they did it would mean that they had to subdue a more aggressive species. In other words, pacifists cannot unilaterally (en)force peace.

You don't need FTL or even near C speeds to traverse a galaxy. We only pursue those ideas because it's the only way for humans to send off a request for information and get something back before our great great great great grandchildren die of old age.

For the traveler's frame of reference interstellar travel with current technology is within reach of single human lifespans if you're fine with a one way trip (and extreme cost without an expected payoff). If a species lucked out with some right-sized planets and orbital arrangements they could end up with a great gravity slingshot by happenstance that drastically reduces their energy needs in space.

The awareness of the tyranny of the rocket equation again assumes human sized likeness of aliens. If human-like intelligence arises in ping-pong ball sized beings on a low gravity planet they could have a much easier time than we do escaping their planet and physics would be on their side for extreme-G launches that would otherwise be fatal to us.

So much discussion about aliens is hinged on them just being a copy of us but located somewhere else. It doesn't take a ton of imagination to envision plausible and entirely different starting scenarios that enable greater success in space travel without inventing new physics or exotic engineering.

> The cosmos is not startrek -one doesn’t travel vast multigenerational distances in space and time to “just observe”. If we could travel to an extra-solar habitable planet. Do you think we’d be like, huh, nice carbon based life, just like us. Awesome now let’s go back “home”.

This sounds awfully knowledgeable about travel over multi-generational distances when neither you, nor I, nor any other human has ever done it. Maybe you're right that it's not what we would do, but how can you, I, or any human possibly know whether it's what an alien species would do?

Neither people, nor animals, nor plants travelled long distances to habitable places to then be satisfied and turn back. It doesn't happen on a continental scale so it's even much less likely to happen on an interstellar scale. If it's half habitable, you're gonna make that place a "home".

It's a nice fantasy to think you can zip back to the home planet after prancing around the galaxy making discoveries and reporting consequential and timely information back home.

First - there’s plenty of evidence of intercontinental trade prior to colonization/ migration in Humanity’s past.

Second, you have a very anthropomorphic perspective built in to your thinking. What if they had lifespans measured in centuries or longer? What if they had radically different views of life and death and generational cooperation? Alien life is, by definition, alien. It’s hard to say what would/wouldn’t be true.

>there’s plenty of evidence of intercontinental trade prior to colonization/ migration in Humanity’s past.

What? How is it possible to trade intercontinentally without there being a colony to trade with first? that makes no sense. One does not go to a deserted island to do trade, with whom, the birds?

With the inhabitants who are already there, of course. Your contention is that intelligent life wouldn’t travel long distances without the intent of colonization. Human history sort of argues against that to a point. Europeans were trading broadly before developing colonial empires. Travel wasn’t the thing that ensured colonization.

I find it bizarre that you would jump in here to caution about the limitations of our knowledge, and not jump in in response to the previous commenter who proposed that visitors would just be observing.

If anything, this is the commenter that is being more careful not to entertain familiar science fiction presumptions and is exhibiting the discipline that you're asking for.

The previous commenter was being silly, in response to mc32 being silly, then mc32 switched to making a serious claim in response.

> If anything, this is the commenter that is being more careful not to entertain familiar science fiction presumptions and is exhibiting the discipline that you're asking for.

I really don't understand why you think this.

It's just a version of the Dark Forest problem. It is possibly much safer to drop an asteroid on any newfound civilization's head than to travel hundreds or thousands of years (at light speed) just to observe someone and try to figure out if they are going to drop an asteroid on your civilization's head first. IOW, the first-mover, the one who pulls the trigger first, the side that pushes the doomsday button first, etc ... the surprise attacker has a better chance of victory.

(Good thing ʻOumuamua missed. Better luck next time, chumps!)

What if the alien civilization is so advanced that a jump across the cosmos takes about as much effort as driving a couple of miles down to the mall for us?

The physics that would allow that does not exist.

The physics that we currently understand does not allow that.

Our current model of physics is barely a few hundred years old. We’re talking about a civilization that’s potentially hundreds of thousands of years ahead of us.

We're millions of years ahead of slugs never the less our advanced intelligence is incapable of changing physics. I doubt alien intelligence even if further advanced can change the nature of physics.

Yes, there is a possibility we will learn more and there are other pathways, but at the moment, that is fantasy, so it would all be speculative.

If thats the case they probably send drones every once in a while to see how things are progressing.

We may not actually be all that interesting.