What would aliens gain by visiting earth?

We would bother for the sake of colonisation, and later for mineral extraction. It would likely be the same story for them.

If they had travel capabilities beyond what we can imagine, then they might survey star systems on a very small scale, almost as if going on a hike.

>>8229865
I would hope they would be intergalactic anthropologists, just coming by to observe us from orbit. Not the kind that want our natural resources.

>>8229875
Why not choose a planet without living species? We already depleted some parts of our planet. Sort of intergalactic ecosystem law. and we know that there are millions of Earth like planets so they could choose something different.

Faster than light travel is probably impossible, regardless of technological advancement, since it breaks causality, which is the foundation of reality. We may be dumb, but we know that.

Sublight travel over long distances essentially thrusts you way into the future relative to your civilization, so that is sort of impractical.

The best thing to do is make amazing telescopes that can see the surfaces of other planets.

There is the Fermi paradox explained.

>>8229850
The Universe depresses me unbearably. If we detected an alien signal, so much time would have passed by the time it reaches us that they would either be extinct or ascended to a better alternate universe entirely (i.e. why would they stay here if they've mastered this universe?).

Don't even get me started on >>8230222 because he hit the bull's eye on that one. Were going to be alone for a long ass time.

>>8230222
So the only chance is a hyper advanced race that perfects an Alcubierre drive, or some sort on wormhole device.

>>8229850
I'd definitely want to see thriving alien biospheres, who cares if the occupants are techologically retarded?
Besides, I doubt if we'd actually be all that dumb compared to a biological alien, tech level!==individual smarts

'For teh lulz' is a universal concept, I'm sure.

>>8230222
>Faster than light travel is probably impossible, regardless of technological advancement, since it breaks causality, which is the foundation of reality
complete pleb just passing by /sci/, but the idea that you cannot go faster than the speed of light just doesn't make any sense. like, why can't you just keep accelerating?

File: alien owl.png (696KB, 1713x667px) Image search: [Google]

696KB, 1713x667px

>>8229850
>What would aliens gain by visiting earth?
This video explains it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TG3sbKevVc

>>8231561
THE FASTER SOMETHING TRAVELS, THE MORE MASSIVE IT GETS, AND THE MORE TIME SLOWS – UNTIL YOU FINALLY REACH THE SPEED OF LIGHT, AT WHICH POINT TIME STOPS ALTOGETHER.

Through genetic code manipulation aliens could literally live on earth with us and we wouldnt even know it

>>8229850
>finally get tech capabale of exploring universe
>dont give a shit about meeting other planets

Wut

>>8231602
Tachyons

>>8231561
It's a meme. There are 12 recorded cases of stuff that's faster than light.

>>8231633
STOP

>>8231561
You can't keep accelerating because inertia and friction. When you drive a car, it takes very little time or energy to get to 20 miles an hour. Takes a little more to get to 40, takes a lot more to get to 60, and if you dont have your foot on the pedal, you'll drop back down pretty quickly. It takes more and more energy to reach higher levels of acceleration.

Another reason is e=mc^2. The faster you go, the more mass you gain. The more mass you have, the more energy it requires to accelerate. At the point at which you would hit the speed of light, you hit infinite mass and thus require infinite energy.

Another reason also goes back to Einstein and special relativity. The faster you go, the slower things around you appear. At the speed of light, time effectively stops.

Also, going faster than light is by definition impossible because light is the fastest thing. That ones harder to prove here but basically true.

tl;dr there are a fuckton of reasons practical FTL travel is impossible.

>>8231699
Basically, nothing that has mass can travel at the speed of light. Photons and a few other exotic particles have no mass so they can achieve light speed.

If all things revieve their mass from the Higgs Boson, could you create something to cancel the interaction with the Higgs field, thereby allowing light speed travel?

>>8231770
I don't think your body would like that, no.

>>8231633

What are the 12 cases?

>>8231796
if you had an anti-higgs gun and shot it at something, what would happen?

>>8229850
They could snap some 4d pics and put it on their intergalactic Instagram.

>>8231819
If you shot a book sitting on a table, does it stay where it is or fall through the table?

>>8231796
Definitely not, just trying to figure a way to get something moving light speed.

>>8229850
>In order for aliens to visit, they would have to perfect faster than light travel, or wormhole travel.

stopped reading right there

you can't into logic i guess

File: image.jpg (48KB, 479x720px) Image search: [Google]

48KB, 479x720px

>>8231850
BREAKING NEWS: Basement dwelling fedora tipper doesn't like hypothetical question.

>>8231699
the whole thing with gaining more mass as you accelerate. that's not something we could replicate here on a meaningful scale, right? because as far as i'm concerned, i've never experienced anything of the sort in my daily life.

>>8231850
Not necessarily. If they could get a spacecraft up to even .5 light speed and if this alien species is very long lived (like some turtles?) they could go a lot of interesting places.

>>8229850
>Why would they bother?
Because they think its funny seeing primotiive creatures like us squirm in fear.

>>8231960
This.

Why would you assume that aliens lack mirth and or curiosity just as we do?

>>8231962
I would hope they do! As I said earlier, I hope they would be like intergalactic anthropologists. They could see our architecture, paintings, listen to our music, different languages. Etc.

Although, I fear at some point they will stumble across the Kardashians on tv, and decide we all need to die before we infect the rest of the universe.