11 New Multi-Planet Star Systems Discovered

If there IS intelligent life out there, I have serious doubts that they consider us being under the same umbrella as them

Actually, that's my least favorite Star Trek cliche - the benevolent, highly-evolved, omnipotent alien race that sees humans as mere children, either unworthy of their time, or in need of friendly guidance (and hectoring lectures about killing each other). I would say exactly the opposite is more likely to be true: any alien species aggressive and inventive enough to explore space is guaranteed to have endured warfare and ecological destruction in recent memory. Species that lose their aggression will stay at home smoking pot, eating takeout, and watching cartoons until they all die of boredom and/or congestive heart failure. That doesn't mean that they'll find our behavior at all intelligible; if a space-faring race was highly collectivist (either by evolution or by engineering), they might find our individuality and the violence that it often leads to incomprehensible. But I doubt they'll have managed to avoid strip mining, fossil fuels, or nuclear fission in the course of their technological development, and they'll probably engage in practices that we would find abhorrent, like compulsory euthanasia.

That doesn't necessarily mean that they'll advertise their presence to us - there are a number of good reasons to avoid doing so, which would apply even if we were a pacifistic agrarian species. But I absolutely think they would study us, because they won't even be exploring interstellar space unless they were either exceptionally curious, or exceptionally desperate. I personally find it more likely that intelligent life rarely makes it out of their home solar system in person - although I'd wager that there are a few scattered derelicts full of cryogenically frozen alien colonists drifting for centuries.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/pQHN_7wL1SY/11-new-multi-planet-star-systems-discovered

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