This is to me as interesting a point as has been made.

If mankind did get a communication from a distant civilisation, who would speak for us?

What would they say?

The odds are pretty reasonable that the aliens might be the space equivalent of Attila the Hun, or Islamic fundamentalists, or Crusader-style nutjobs. They may be sailing the wastes of space to find new worlds to conquer, like the British, Spanish, Portuguese et al did centuries ago around the world's oceans.

We are beaming signals out there with no idea of the attitude of any intelligent life who might receive it, and if we did attract the attention of some not very nice aliens who had advanced enough technology to be able to answer back, the odds are very high that they would possess weapons against which we would have absolutely no defence.

Put it this way: if there are billions of civilisations out there, what are the odds that the lot of them are just benevolent alien philanthropists? Not great.

To look at it from the other side, let's say that in 2000 years time the human race is still here, and we've cracked the space travel thing, and there is a thriving used-spacecraft market, like there is now in aircraft.

If a planet were discovered that was filled with untold mineral wealth, who would guarantee (whatever the World Space Police did to discourage it) there wouldn't be a few craft from Holme Wood sneaking in there at night and filling their boots?

Well if anybody has seen Ancient Aliens on the History channel there's already some pretty interesting evidence that we've already been visited by ETs over 1000s of years.

You're asking the wrong people...The Doctor would know.

Evidence? Or unsubstantiated speculation?

Very negative, have you not seen Cocoon, the all look like Brian Denehey (or Tahnee Welsh if we are lucky

)

It was god

I too am of the opinion (what do I know though?) that it's a rather risky game to be trying to contact other (sophisticated?

) lifeforms. I suppose if they were at arms length and they just tried to just indicate their existence then that would be OK.
But if there was any chance they could reach here, we'd be toast.
Just lie low would be my advice.


By all means develop means of space travel if need be as well.

Imagine if, in time, we managed to send exploratory visits to each and every planet in the known universe, and turned up a complete blank for life.


The bloody god botherers would be insufferable.

If you follow their logic though, and their god did create just this earth and just us in his image then there is only the conclusion that if life does exist on another planet and it doesn't look like us then there must be another god, at least one more but maybe lots more gods, maybe every one of those trillion planets has its own god, protecting its own little planet like kids do marbles in a school playground.

On the other hand if its all true and there is but one god and he made all of this for us then let us nail his son to a tree just for effect, then why did he bother with such a complicated universe when clearly he has no more use for it than to provide us with something nice to look at on clear nights - he could just as easily have hung all of those twinkling lights in the sky and not bother with orbits and other solar systems, just hang fairy lights above the atmosphere like decorating a christmas tree.

God created everything in the Universe, there is only one God.
The reason you don't understand yet about other worlds is that God has not revealed it to you yet.
Have faith my son, all will be revealed in the fullness of time.
God is using 'scientists' as a vehicle for your enlightenment, but they don't realise (or at least some of them don't) they are being used by God for this purpose.
They somehow foolishly think they are acting independently, but they are not.
You see God has nothing to fear from Science. God made Science.

I have spoken.

Indeed although don't forget that the size of the planet isn't the only factor.
The planet also needs to be in the goldilocks band around that star as well.
Now that is a rather small band of space.

Those who are now wondering what the hell I am on about i'll explain.

Mercury and Venus are to near the sun and therefore to hot, Jupiter and the outer planets are to far away and are therefore to cold, Earth and Mars and in the Goldilocks portion which is just right.
Mars was/is too small and its core cooled at which time it lost its magnetic field and then solar winds just blew the atmoshere away.

So the planet needs to be a rocky world and big enough so that the liquid metalic core can't become solid(Or so is assumed), it needs to have water and it needs to be in the Goldilocks zone.

Deplicate post.