When it comes to sci-fi, we tend to accept why aliens would want to invade Earth, but
is it really worth their time?
An alien armada arriving at Earth and attempting to conquer it is a very common notion in science
fiction.
It’s usually justified because the aliens want Earth for themselves or the resources
here.
But why would a technologically advanced civilization go to all the effort just to invade Earth?
Given the resources, money and people needed to travel the huge distances involved why
bother?
Here are some reasons why aliens would choose to ignore us rather than invade.
First, there’s nothing useful here.
Almost everything you can find here on Earth you can find elsewhere in the galaxy, apart
from life that is, and there’s way more of it elsewhere anyways.
While liquid water is abundant here, there’s plenty more, both in liquid form and frozen,
even nearby in our own solar system.
If an alien civilization were to come to Earth to collect our water, water is pretty difficult
and inconvenient to carry through space and you need quite a lot of space on your spaceship
to carry an amount that was worth your time.
Even confining ourselves to the edge of the solar system, water appears to be abundant
everywhere we look.
Earth is not unique in its composition.
Great nebulas are rich in raw materials and far easier to collect than trying to get past
another civilization for their resources.
There are plenty of star systems and nebulas that have far more resources than Earth just
biding their time in the galaxy, and yet no one is collecting them, which suggests that
there are no other civilizations who could do the collecting.
Second, we may be too primitive to them.
Given how big and old the universe is, it seems that there should be another civilization,
one that is far more advanced and knowledgable than we are.
If they’re advanced, Earth isn’t worth their time because they’ve got nothing to
gain from us.
And we can assume they’re pretty advanced because they’re able to travel enormous
distances, hundreds perhaps thousands of light years to Earth.
There’s no knowledge to gain here.
Every fundamental thing we know about science, technology and so on they will most likely
have known for thousands of years.
The only knowledge we have to offer is knowledge about ourselves or knowledge unique to Earth.
And I don’t think knowing what McDonalds is will be very high on their wish list.
We would be like ants to them as ants are to Humans.
But that isn’t to say that they wouldn’t be interested in us.
We’re fairly sure that the galaxy isn’t teeming with life so finding a civilization
would attract their attention and would spark interest in them.
While we would attract their undivided attention, it would be short lived since, as mentioned,
we would be primitive to them and have nothing on offer worth investigating.
Unless of course they take action and do something to us, ranging from invasion to destroying
Earth.
That’s another reason a civilization wouldn’t invade Earth, they may be interested in us
and want to talk to us.
Learning about our language, psychology, anatomy, and so on would be interesting to them.
Although, because we’ve been broadcasting radio and TV signals for just under a century
now they could work out our language on their own and stay hidden in the shadows, rather
than presenting themselves.
Third, they don’t need the space.
The galaxy is packed with uninhabited planets, some suited for life, that a civilization
could colonize as well as the billions of uninhabited star systems that could be used
to construct megastructures, such as a Dyson sphere, rotating habitats and so on.
A civilization would have more space in just one solar system, given that they’re using
effective techniques, than if they were to colonize every planet in the galaxy.
As before, if they’re advanced enough to travel to Earth, they’ve got the technology
to employ techniques that use space more efficiently.
A civilization would only invade Earth for the space if they had used every other solar
system in the galaxy but we would have noticed them colonizing solar systems over the years.
We are yet to see a Type II civilization, never mind a Type III civilization.
However, colonizing the galaxy is not that difficult of a task, assuming that you’ve
figured out how to carry and sustain a colony on your spaceships.
As we discussed in the von Neumann probes episode, it would only take a few million
years to ten million at the most to colonize every one of the 100 billion planets in the
Milky Way, which may seem like a lot of time to us but in relation to the age of the universe
that’s a blink of an eye.
Four, our technology is not useful to them.
As mentioned, we know that an invading civilization would be more advanced than us so they would
already be fully aware of even our most advanced technology.
However, there are always exceptions.
While most of our technology would be useless to them, some tech wouldn’t because we would
have designed some that are beneficial to Earth and only Earth, not other planets that
have different conditions and necessities.
They wouldn’t have thought of some of our technology because they weren’t in need
of it or aren’t physically capable of constructing it based on their planet’s characteristics.
And it’s the same vice versa, there will be technology that they thought of that we
didn’t, both because they’re more advanced than us but also because, as mentioned, we
weren’t in need of it or aren’t physically capable of constructing it.
I’d say that they would be interested in how advanced we and our technology are, and,
if they’re benevolent, might share their knowledge and advanced technology with us.
Five, Humans are not good slaves.
Again, we can assume they’re advanced, and if they’re very advanced then they have
the ability to not need slaves.
The civilization would have the technological ability to construct robots so advanced that
they would not need anything else as slaves.
Robots are much better slaves than Humans because you can program your robots to be
mindless and not have free will so that they do everything without question.
But as Humans we like to ponder, so we wouldn’t follow orders quite as easily.
On top of that, you have to feed us to keep us going whereas with robots you don’t.
In the near future, Human labour will become obsolete and we’re seeing evidence of that
everyday, with machinery taking up more and more jobs.
Robots can be made to be better at almost anything we do, and therefore Humans would
be useless to the civilization.
Six, Humans are probably not good food.
It seems that Humans generally tend to be quite picky in what we eat.
Out of the millions of plants and animals, we only eat a small percentage of the total.
Mainly because many are unpleasant or poisonous to eat, causing symptoms ranging from mild
stomach pain to death.
A completely unrelated alien civilization would most likely find every species on Earth
unpalatable, perhaps even poisonous.
And who’s to say they eat the same way we do.
And if they’re advanced, they might not need to consume food.
Seven, we most likely can’t reproduce with them.
The vast majority of species here on Earth can’t reproduce with each other, despite
being pretty closely related.
Given how the civilization would have evolved from the other side of the galaxy and have
had a different home planet, it’s very unlikely that this completely unrelated species would
be able to reproduce with any species here on Earth.
Eight, it’s not worth the effort.
At least from our technological viewpoint right now, getting to space and traveling
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of light years to other solar systems is incredibly difficult.
In the future, that may well change.
Given the distances, resources and people needed, the result might not be sufficient.
The civilization would continue to observe through telescopes and possibly send out a
spacecraft to watch us from a distance as we’re a rarity in the galaxy but not put
forward a proper mission.
Nine, we may be too dangerous.
The civilization might find that they can’t survive in the presence of Humans or any species
present on Earth.
There could be viruses and bacteria that are lethal to the alien civilization.
That’s not an unlikely scenario.
Uncontacted tribes, who have been isolated and undiscovered for thousands of years perhaps
on an island, have been found to be vulnerable to viruses that we cannot live without and
often die because of it.
And ten, Earth itself could be dangerous.
Perhaps the alien civilization can’t breathe without the aid of a spacesuit on Earth, and
so there’s no reason why they would want Earth for themselves.
Characteristics, such as the temperature, on Earth could be harmful to them.
Earth is the only place in the solar system where we can stand on the surface without
a spacesuit.
Stand anywhere else without a spacesuit and depending on what celestial body you’re
on, you’ll be dead pretty quickly.
The civilization might consider our technological standpoint in weapons just a little too deadly,
so much so that they wouldn’t want to risk the death of both their people and their spaceships.
The most obvious weapon we could use to attack them is nuclear warfare.
For some time, we’ve had sufficient capability in nuclear weapons to render Earth uninhabitable.
It would only take a regional war to create enough soot, that would rise up into Earth’s
atmosphere, and block sunlight.
This would cause a global drop in sunlight and destroy Earth’s protective ozone layer
for the time being.
Considering this, we could probably do a decent amount of damage to their spaceships if they
posed as a threat.
If an advanced alien species used nuclear weapons to kill people here on Earth, it’s
not the most effective method to use as it’s a waste of such a perfect planet.
Bombard a planet with nuclear weapons and that planet will suddenly have a lot less
uses to the invaders.
For this reason, the alien civilization might stay away from Earth to avoid any conflict
such as that.
If the civilization wanted to wipe all life out on Earth, or just all the Humans, they
could use the much more effective method of genetically enhanced viruses.
This includes creating DNA from scratch, specifically aimed at the species you’re going to use
it for, however Humans aren’t currently capable of doing this.
If they wanted to use Earth for themselves, the alien species could create the virus so
that it only wipes out Humans, so that it would leave the rest of the animals on Earth
unaffected.
See the Destroying Earth episode, if you haven’t already, for a more detailed explanation and
discussion on ways in which Earth could be destroyed, both astrophysical and Human-made
disasters.
Comment down below your thoughts on aliens invading Earth.
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