Will aliens destroy us?

In science fiction, aliens are usually either incredibly benevolent or incomprehensibly evil -- but how would real extraterrestrials behave? Learn more about aliens -- and why Stephen Hawking thinks they may destroy us -- in this podcast.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey, guys, welcome to the podcast. This
is Alice and I don't know if the science editor
how stuff works dot com. This is Robert Lamb, science
writer at how stuff works dot com. And today we're

(00:25):
tackling a pretty big question and one that, uh, at
the time of this recording, was still making the rounds
in the news media. Um, will aliens destroy us? And
I need a need of stress here that we're dealing
with a a big cosmological question here, one of the biggest.
There's a lot of speculation in this, like like very

(00:46):
high minded speculation, not like you know what if a
you know, just it's um, it's not based necessarily in
in strict scientific research. You know that. That's the whole
nature of some of these big cosmological questions. Yeah, said,
we're gonna be having more of a conversation than a
discussed and tearing apart some study today. So the reason
this was making the news is because I've been series

(01:08):
currently airing on Discovery. Yeah, Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking.
You wrote for this, right, Yeah, I wrote for the website. Um,
did some summaries a couple of really cool quizzes on
aliens and time traveling, a couple of really hard quizzes. Yeah,
I couldn't even get them right, they're that hard. And
I wrote the during things. Um but but yeah, so

(01:30):
that the first episode right out of the gate was
Aliens and uh and I'm just gonna go ahead and
read part of the script here. You know that of
what Hawking says, he says, we only have to look
at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into
something we wouldn't want to meet. We humans are already
capable of manipulating the course of our own evolution. Exactly

(01:51):
the same, presumably, would be true of advanced extraterrestrials. Ultimately,
they could halt aging and become virtually immortal. What's more,
they might have reached that point in many millions of
years ago. It might sound unlikely, but if you think
about it, logically, alien technology should be as extraordinary to
us as a rocket ship is to a caveman. I
imagine they might exist in massive ships like these. And

(02:11):
this is where in the show you get to see
like a big giant spaceship, you know, yeah, um, like
these having used up all the resources from from the
home planet below. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads
looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach.
If so, it makes sense for them to exploit each
new planet for materials to build more spaceships. Uh, so

(02:34):
they could move on and naturally with quotes like these
news stories were right on it, and it's pretty soon
they started producing headlines like don't talk to aliens, weren't
Stephen Hawking from Fox News or seen Stephen Hawking? Aliens
might hate us? I like that one. So yeah, I
think it was. It was kind of a slow newsweek
when all this hit, Like this was right before um,
you know, we had some environmental issues pop up and

(02:57):
some some other big stories hit, so and you got
to fill that science section of the website with something. Right.
But I don't think Hawking was engaged in fear mongering,
and I really wasn't his intent. It was speculation. Yes,
So we can't stress stress it enough that that Hawking
was not saying, you know, go, you know, buy a
shotgun and hiding your basement because the aliens are coming
to harvest the planet. The argument is simply, hey, if

(03:21):
life universally evolves from the chemistry on planets where the
you know, you have the correct minerals, the right temperature range,
and there's enough time for it to evolve. Then and
you know, if if that's true, and if they are
eventually evolved to the point where they have technology sufficient
enough to reach us, then what might they be like?
You know, it's kind of the same way that we

(03:42):
we figure out how solar systems work by looking at
our own solar system. It's the best model we have
in the closest likewise with life. So if we you know,
we we look at how life has evolved here on
Earth and we we use that as a model for
how it might have applied, how how it might have
evolved elsewhere. And so we sort of have to look
in the mirror and consider what that first contact would

(04:03):
be like. You know, so if you think about aliens
in fact reaching our planet, then you have to think that, uh,
such a scientific development would also be accompanied by an
ethical development, right, if they're going to reach our planet,
they probably value life. Well, that's that's yeah, that's a
counter argument, that's that's come out. You know, people say
they're probably not going to be like some sort of
evil like or grace intent on destruction. And you've read

(04:28):
something about the Canadian Defense Minister Paul Hillier making this claim.
I hadn't seen that. Well, yeah, this was making the
rounds and uh. And they're saying that he's he's claimed
that they've been visiting for a while and they haven't
done any harm yet. And I actually, you know, there're
probably a lot of people out there who would say, hey,
you know, I think aliens have come to this planet

(04:48):
and they haven't. You know, enslaved usn't taken all our
resources yet. I'm sorry, So you think that they No,
I don't think that at all. So the Canadian Defense
minister thinks that they're already here. That's what some news
sources are saying. The former this former Canadian defense minister.
I wonder why he's a former, because I don't know

(05:11):
the aliens benefits something to do with it. But yeah,
the the argument about the ethics is that like an
ethical stance would end up taking over um or you know,
augmenting what Darwinian evolution started, you know, because it's it's
easy to say it's like, all right, survival of the fittest,
you know, looking at an organism. You know, big organisms
either want to consume other organisms or compete with them

(05:32):
for the same resources. And if you just follow that structure,
then you know, even like if you had a starship,
you would still be an organism intent on getting more
resources unless you you develop these ethics along the way
where you have you know, high minded ideas about I
don't want to destroy another planet because that's an independent, um,
you know, evolution, and I don't want to interfere with it.

(05:52):
Maybe I just want to observe it, et cetera. Or
it could be maybe I just want to exploit the
resources and slave the people. It's kind of a whole
like our aliens gonna be touchy feely or are they
going to be jerks? You know, I personally would prefer
them to be touchy feely. Well, and basically Hawking was
I would prefer that too, and imagine Hawking would prefer

(06:14):
would prefer that. Yeah, but he's just saying it's like, well,
let's look at what we know. What we've seen. The
model that, you know, the best model we have shows
humans kind of being jerks. That's true. Nuclear weapons are
up there, um, yeah, the you know, exploiting less technologically
advanced people's, etcetera. Another reason put out there not to
fear an alien invasion is that they probably don't know

(06:36):
we're here. Um Like, even if you even a look
at the d take the Drake equation and you you know,
extrapolate it in a very um, you know liberal way.
Do we have a lot of different races out there
with with technology sufficient to either detect our signals or
you know, or even travel to us. Um. You have
to take take into account that these places are like

(06:59):
thousands of light years away, so they won't they won't
even know about us. They won't be able to detect
a signal until about three three thousand a d. I mean,
that's that's that's one of the big, one, big reasons
not to get all up in arms over this is
because the universe is so big, the distances are so vast. Uh.
You know, it takes that long for light to travel

(07:20):
so and and as far as we know, traveling faster
than light is impossible. That's the universal speed limit. So
even so, they're limited in their ability to even detect
that we're here and uh, and also in the in
their ability to travel to us in a reasonable amount
of time. You know, if they're if you're three thousand
light years away and you can travel the speed of light,

(07:41):
it's gonna take you three thousand years to reach us.
And what could you possibly want that bad that's worth
that kind of trip, you know, Well, yeah, but then
you could get that um by just communicating with us.
You know, we could just have a long term relationship
us in the aliens. There's no need to you know,
speed things up. You can't speed things up faster than
the speed of light. You know, we could just text message, yeah, exactly,

(08:03):
send a long email, heartfelt Yeah, why would they need
to show up? So that actually goes into one of
the reasons to be afraid is that if an alien
the distance is so great that an alien actually showed
up at our doorstep, he would have to be he she,
It would have to be here for something on the planet, like,
because everything else could be done via communication. You know.

(08:24):
It's like if you're you're having like an email exchange
with somebody online and it's like, oh, this, this relationship
is fine, this is exactly where it needs to be.
We're emailing back and forth, and then that person shows
up here your doorstep. Call the cops because there's something up,
And that's that's kind of the argument here, unless faster
than light travel is somehow possible for a ridiculously advanced

(08:45):
alien civilization, in which case it's, you know, no big
deal for him to show up at your doorstep. So
I don't know if the other thing is that time
isn't on our side. Given the age of the universe,
which we know to be thirteen point seven billion years
courtesy of w MAP, Thank you, w UP, it's more
probable that they're intelligent species that are ten thousand, a million,
even ten million years more advanced than us, which is

(09:07):
kind of a crazy thought. Yeah, the technology ten million
years ahead. Yeah, like they would just be so I
mean we can't even comprehend that. It's like an aunt
trying to figure out like how you know an iPhone
works or something, right, I mean, they would be gods
and we would be the m Yeah, we would be
just at the mercy of the the iPhone. Another cool point,

(09:30):
this goes back to the whole alien showing up at
your doorstep. After an email conversation, Ray Billard pointed this
out on just the Discovery Space blogs. Um, have you
seen the movie avatar. I haven't, okay, I badly want
to see it. All right, Well this this is not
a spoiler. But the whole reason that the evil humans
come to this alien world is to harvest a special

(09:51):
element do you know that called unobtanium which on the
far future period at the table. But but that the
thing is, the whole idea is, oh, it's unobtainium. It's
this magic element you can only get one place in
the universe, and that's why we're going to do everything
in our in our power, no matter how cruel, to
harvest it um. But in reality, there's no such things

(10:14):
as is unobtainium or anything like this. Like, there's nothing
on Earth that that aliens could want that bad, that
would merit that kind of a journey and that much
time and effort, unless they are just jerks and want
to kick us around. Well, what about something in the
Amazon rainforest, perhaps a very rare cure that's only found
deep in the reaches of the Amazon rainforest, and they
know they have very little time left because the rainforest

(10:36):
is being chopped down acres per day, And maybe it's that. Yeah,
but if you have that kind of technology, what could
possibly exist in the Amazon rainforest that you couldn't create
on your own, you know, you could a genetic code
for it. Maybe they're not that good at recreating the
natural world. But I guess if you're that far advance,
what do you need with the natural world? You can
create anything, unless what they want our art, you know,

(10:58):
or to communicate with our whales. Right. And the other
thing that's really key in our discussion is the is
our concept of aliens, what we imagine aliens to be.
Even if they are highly technologically advanced, maybe there are microorganisms.
Maybe they're alien micro organisms which pose the greatest danger
to us, to life on Earth. Yeah, like, even if

(11:19):
they were to you know, to again show up at
our doorstep and well, you know, whether they were ethical
or jerks, what if they had some sort of little
uh little illness, you know, hanging around in their bodies
that is nothing to them, but would just you know,
be chaos for us, Be like a war of the
world's except the reverse right in the Spanish conquister doors

(11:41):
exactly bring with them some sort of accidental bioweapon, which yeah,
I mean all the the Europeans coming to the New World.
I mean just you know, they've accidental bioweapons over the place,
you know, measles and small boy term. I mean it
kind of won the battle for the Conquista doors. So again,
if you look took to past model of what it's
like when an alien species such as the Spanish, you know,

(12:04):
arrives on an alien world such as that of you know,
South America, Um, what what can happen? People can be jerks,
people can carry um microbes that the their their hosts
aren't prepared for to turn to imperialism if you want
to know what's going to happen between aliens and us?

(12:25):
And that's that's Hawking's whole argument. Yeah, well, it's definitely
an excellent thought provoking question. Yeah, that's a great thing
about it. I mean it makes us think about the
far future, about our place in the cosmos, and look,
you know, at ourselves and just what we're capable of.
So what do you think? Are you afraid? Now? I'm not.
I'm curious, yea, infinitely curious. What about you? I used

(12:48):
to be afraid. I used to be afraid of UFOs
that I would mainly that I would be abductive, not
that I would be that our planet would be enslaved
and harvested for its resources. More that they would just
come get me. To me, that seems a little egosential
to think. I mean, why would they pick you? I
was like thirteen. I mean, everybody's at the center of
their own universe thirteen. But you know, it's like Unsolved
Mysteries had all these UFO abductions going on, you know,

(13:10):
like that was like half of the program. And so
the idea was, if you're looking up into into the
stars there, you're going to see a UFO, and they're
gonna know that you saw the UFO and then they
have no choice but to come and get you. It
does seem funny though some of the people who have
said that they're abducted by aliens. Why why would the
aliens pick you? If I were an alien, I would
pick some famous mind, maybe ahead of state something like that.

(13:33):
Really just a thirteen year old I don't know. Yeah,
I don't know. I'd probably pick up Brian Cox unless
it was Ender Wiggins. Can you tell I've been reading
my science fiction? Are you reading that one? Okay? So
if you guys have any thoughts on whether aliens are
going to destroy us, send us an email. At science
stuff at how stuff first dot com. Yeah, just dropped
by the website and search for SETI search for aliens.

(13:56):
We have a whole bunch of cool articles about those topics. Uh.
And we also have a Twitter account and uh and
do you think aliens have Twitter and Facebook? Yes? Yeah
they do. I just like friended one on Facebook the
other day, but but no Facebook. Twitter. You can find
us there where lab stuff or search for stuff from
the Science Lab lead you right to us. Um interact

(14:18):
with us there, ask us questions, see what we're up to. Yeah,
that's all we got. Thanks for listening, guys. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, is that how
stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check
out our blogs on the house stuff works dot com

(14:39):
home page.