It will be centuries or millennia before that stuff gets anywhere near anywhere at all, so not particularly worried about it. If we haven’t figured our crap out by then we will deserve what we get.
If anyone finds it sooner then we don’t have time to do anything other than hope for the best anyhow.
I would not really be worried about alien diseases. The vast majority of the viruses, bacteria, fungi and so on that we encountered are absolutely slaughtered by our immune system. The reason a handful are dangerous is because they are adapted to us, or to animals very similar to us, and even they often get killed in time, unless they can spread first. And those are all our distant cousins, based on the same biochemistry so that we contain compounds they can actually process.
You might imagine an alien could bioengineer a disease to take us out, but the chance a random alien microbe would be prepared to thrive in our particular hostile internal environment is really low.
Cortez had allies who did, much to their eventual doom.
Finding aliens won’t be nearly as important as when we finally see far enough to identify the repeating star field patterns in the “sky.”
I’m not assuming anything. What I am asserting is until we find evidence to the contrary, the dark forest explanation for the fermi paradox is a real possibility. For that reason, building better telescopes is a good idea, broadcasting a yoo-hoo message might not be.
What you are assuming is that civilisations have finite lifespans, which is certainly true for our Earthbound experience but I wonder if such calculations apply equally to an interstellar society?
If you could explain how METI is science, that would be cool.
holds the current record: 466,592 km/h (289,927 mph).
and if higher speeds are relevant to the mission, we’ll find a way-- while respecting the laws of physics. Laser acceleration of a solar sail? Detonating nuclear bombs in quick succession? Ion engines?
Going fast just for the hell of it wastes engineers time and money.
I have an idea. We fill a spaceship with Trumpists. We all know that laws apply to everyone else but not to them. We load Donald, Mike, Ted, Lindsey, Tucker and their pals into a standard orbital vehicle. They ignore the laws of physics, reach the nearest civilization in a couple of days, and are promptly vaporized by the aliens.
So what. Let’s not rain on the parade. There’s ample scope for a new incarnation of the Great Moon Hoax, which after all was based on the idea of a revolutionary new telescope constructed by John Herschel. Let’s hear it for the Great Exoplanet Hoax of 2022!
It seems absurd in a universe with 100 billion galaxies, each with billions of stars and planets, that we are the only intelligent life. So where are all the others? This is the famous ‘Fermi Paradox,’ asked by Nobel Laureate Enrico Fermi. By any reasonable calculation, we should see evidence of other civilizations all over the universe, but we see nothing. ~ Lawrence Krauss
Your argument does not comfort me. Yes, our immune system is very effective against earthborn diseases, but just a couple of them took out the most of the biologically isolated residents of both American continents.
There are literally hundreds of thousands of earthborn virus species that affect mammals (that we’ve labelled - many of which are better at surviving hostile living conditions than we are), almost all of which our immune systems handle easily (after many centuries of adaptation) - which suggests that even an alien entirely unlike us would also carry hundreds of thousands of disease vectors, most of which wouldn’t survive our environment any more than we would survive theirs - but it only takes one survivor that our bodies are entirely unfamiliar with.
Ray guns. Starships. Aliens. Michio Kaku has been thinking about futuristic things since he was a child in northern California, watching Flash Gordon and trying to understand Einstein. He knew at an early age that he wanted to be a physicist because, as he puts it, they “invent the future” by developing new technologies.
What’s the point of ray guns if we never meet aliens?
My point isn’t that our immune system is effective against our diseases, rather that it’s extremely effective against things that aren’t our diseases. Some viruses and other pathogens that affect mammals jump to us and a few do tremendous damage. Pathogens that affect fish, insects, invertebrates, protozoans, plants…those are less prepared for us and our immune system shreds them.
Most other microbes likewise. Our body doesn’t even have to be familiar with the specific types, they just have to use the same kind of building materials, without which there isn’t much reason to try inhabiting humans in the first place – like you might choke on toxic spores from some alien mold, but that’s not the same thing as it finding a way to grow in you.
Not a single archaeon, for instance, seems to have figured out how to inhabit our bodies even though they are a nice stable temperature and nutrient-rich. That suggests that if you’re worried about microbes, the nightmare isn’t some reservoir on another planet or the deep ocean or so on that have never seen us before, it’s having a large population that has a chance to diversify right alongside mammals and especially humans. So what Trump and Bolsanaro have been setting up, basically. 
I mean, you’re for sure right that it only takes one…but then if you’re talking about space it also only takes dropping one rock that’s a little too big. It just seems to me that of all the things that could go wrong in contact, this would be one of the least important to worry about, on our side anyway. (Aliens who don’t have immune systems should be a bit more careful, as per H. G. Wells).
The Martians and the Moon-Men!
Isn’t going “Pew pew pew” enough ?
Same with the Inca.
Even in lands without local empires, the conquistadors made allegiances with the natives and exploited the rivalry amongst different tribes.
Probably an evil alien race would do it too.
To unite the people, we must give them an enemy.
The alien is right.
It is wrong.
I love and I will protect him.
DIE
I agree. The last thing aliens want is a bunch of spam from humans telling them about how great this Jebus guy is. And you just know that they’ll be getting that kind of spam within a year of first contact.
