If someone were to record a flawless, 4K video of an actual alien walking around or a spaceship flying overhead, people would just think it’s a deep fake.
If someone were to record a flawless, 4K video of an actual alien walking around or a spaceship flying overhead, people would just think it’s a deep fake.
I always giggle at the idea that aliens would come here in some super advanced spaceship.
Look at the spacecraft we’ve managed to land on other celestial bodies. They’re basically the lightest, sketchiest, life support boxes with a rocket motor that we can manage to get to the destination. It would be reasonable to assume that any alien out there reaching earth for the first time would either send a rover, or it would be the jankiest craft that could just barely get here.
A persistent assumption about advanced interstellar travel is that engine efficiency is monumentally better to the point that the “tyrrany of the rocket equation” is no longer a factor, and extra mass can be carried without absolutely exploding your fuel requirements into absurdity.
If adding 10kg of payload didn’t mean also potentially many times more mass of propellant we’d be sending up more robust spacecraft, no question.
That’s assuming they came here first :)
Also, assuming one of the 60 horrible things happening right now doesn’t prove the Fermi paradox.
We’ve been looking all over for signs of life. Earth screams “there is life here!”