• Question: Could aliens travel to our planet?

    Asked by h6nn6h to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 15 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Leila Battison

      Leila Battison answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      Because the universe is nearly 14 billion years old, and our planet is only 4 billion years old, it is likely that any aliens out there will have been around for longer, so will probably have better technology than us, so might be able to travel between stars much faster than we can.

      But because space is absolutely huge, you’d need to travel faster than the speed of light to get anywhere in any decent amount of time, and as far as we know, that’s not possible. So maybe intelligent aliens are *trying* to reach us, but are stuck in the slow lane!

    • Photo: Catherine Rix

      Catherine Rix answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      It would depend on how far away they are and how fast their spaceships are. The universe is so huge that in reality we might never be able to meet aliens, even if they are out there somewhere

    • Photo: Adam Stevens

      Adam Stevens answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      Even if the aliens lived in the next nearest solar system to ours, the fastest ships they might have would take a long time to get here. If they had advanced, laws of physics bending engines then they might get here faster.

      Since, like Leila says, the Universe has been around for a long time, Aliens might already have left and be on their way to us. They might even arrive tomorrow!

      The probability of them travelling to our planet over the hundreds of billions of other planets in the universe would be very small though.

    • Photo: Karen Masters

      Karen Masters answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      I don’t think so no. Even the nearest stars are just too far away to make interstellar space travel possible. I’d like Star Trek/Star Wars to be true, but I don’t think it’s something we’ll see in our lifetime.

    • Photo: Nazim Bharmal

      Nazim Bharmal answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      I suppose so, but unless there is a “warp drive” or a “jump gate” or an “interstellar fold” or a “wormhole” or even a “singularity” (see Greg Bear’s ‘Eon’ novel), then it will take them a LONG time.

      I think it is most likely that they will send a space probe that will zip through our solar system and not stop, or just a signal. But any method would take at least hundreds to thousands of years. So the aliens would have to be very long lived if they came themselves, or in some form of suspended animation. Or, going back to the space probe idea, they might send an artificial intelligence in one of their computers. Sort of like an avatar from “Second Life”.

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