[Crazy_Ivan80]

the only think I wouldn't have done i put our adress on it. You never know wheter or not our neighbours are hippies or die-hard EVE-griefers.

[Bob-san]

the only think I wouldn't have done i put our adress on it. You never know wheter or not our neighbours are hippies or die-hard EVE-griefers.

By the time they could get their grimy hands/tentacles/paws/whatever on it, I'm sure we'll either be long gone or long since detected.

[BengalTiger]

Two decades later, a Lucifer shows up

"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans,"
~Stephen Hawking

I seem to agree with that.

[Bobboau]

well, that depends on if we have something they want or not. there have been plenty of primitive cultures that have survived fairly well due to no one giving a **** about them.

[Flipside]

I doubt Earth has got anything in abundance that could not be gained in larger quantities elsewhere and without having to deal with any inhabitants. Chances are, unless there is a massive seperation in the War-making technologies involved, it'd be cheaper to go mine an uninhabited moon than overpower an indigenous population.

Edit: Oh, and there's any number of biological reasons why a nice, sterile moon would be prefereable, as War of the Worlds quite pointedly explained

[watsisname]

I do wonder about the possible desire/need for acquiring water, and the fact that earth has lots of it.

Then again, hmm, Europa.  *shrug*

[Bobboau]

there is probably a massive separation in the War-making technologies between us and anyone capable of crossing interstellar space to get to us. and why settle for Europa when you can have earth too with little effort. it all boils down to how valuable water is to them, hopefully for our sake it's worthless.

[Scotty]

If they want water Europa would be easier to get it from. 

Doesn't even matter if the difference in war-making technologies is astronomical, there's still nothing to be made war against on Europa.

[Bobboau]

ok, lets say you are walking along and you see a buck fifty laying on the ground, $1 bill and 50 cents, but the 50 is sitting halfway in a ant hill. if you grab the 50 cent the ants might be able to bite your finger for the few seconds they are touching their hill, causing some minor pain, maybe enough to notice that an ant is present on your finger, but it would likely not hurt enough for you to not grab the two quarters.

[Scotty]

Depends on what kind of ant it is.  Have you ever been bitten by a fire ant?  **** that, I'd leave the 50 cents in a heartbeat.

EDIT:  Fixed punctuation.

[General Battuta]

If what they want is to convert us to their bizarre space religion, they're going to head right for the population.

[watsisname]

Or they could just use a mask of religion to get us to willingly give them whatever resources they want.

[Flipside]

If, however, that 50cents was sticking out of a pile of Anthrax, which is pretty much what any ecosystem would effectively be to an outsider, would you be so inclined to go get it then? Also, I should state, it's not actually required that a space-borne technology has incredibly advanced weapons, certainly, our own Space program was created from our weapons programs, but it's possible to have faster than light travel and only, say hand-held projectile weapons not unlike guns.

The thing is about Space is that there is so much of it, theres even a planet that is rumoured to have a solid diamond core, the level of protection required against hard vacuum is the same wherever you are, but you'd have to adapt to the ecosystem of any inhabited planet you found, which would be a new challenge every time, on top of dealing with the costs of War making, it would simply be cheaper and safer to go to uninhabited planets. To be honest, resources like water are some of the most abundant in the Universe, as long as you know how to melt ice, so going to the trouble of an invasion is more the realm of 'V' than anything else

[newman]

The idea that an advanced alien civilization would invade us for resources is pretty ridiculous, and clearly the result of years of bad sci fi.
First of all, strictly speaking about raw elements here, we got nothing you can't find a lot more of elsewhere - and without having to resort to mass genocide of a sentient race to get it. All elements originate from star's fusion ovens - spread across the universe by them going nova. Doubt we got anything really special or unique to just this planet.
You lot were mentioning water - hell just in this system there's other places you can go where you can easily get as much as you like. Saturn's rings are largely composed of ice asteroids. We're talking metric tons per piece here. In addition, there's Europa, Mars, and who knows how many small planetoids/KBOs that might have it. Pretty sure you can get whatever you need, in large quantities, elsewhere. Invading a one in a million (billion?) small planet that happens to be home to a sentient race you need to wipe out first just to get small amounts of resources you can get elsewhere wouldn't be practical.
And the very idea such a race advanced enough to even reach us is short on water or has to resort to interstellar wars to get their resources is ridiculous, anyone seriously considering this is failing to grasp just how big our little corner of the galaxy is, let alone the whole galaxy/universe.
Besides, a race that advanced may just be able to reorganize matter into whatever forms they need. At any rate, take bad sci fi for what it is - good passing entertainment. It has no place in any serious discussion on what relations with a real alien race would be like.

[Bobboau]

hence me dobting they will want anything we have. I was just saying if we did we'd be ****ed, otherwise we won't be bothered.

[BengalTiger]

What if they're similar to us biologically, they need a colony here, and Earth is just perfect?

Or what if they're some interstellar rednecks and they just declared open season in Sol?

There's plenty of more or less absurd reason why to invade a planet, and due to the fact there will be more or less absurd species living out there, some might want to find an exotic vacation place in an unpolluted world, or perhaps have a far away base for doing some dangerous experiments, keeping prisoners, or having a continent as a trade hub or repair bay...

We definitely can't assume there's no reason for invading Earth.

[Mongoose]

Or what if they're some interstellar rednecks and they just declared open season in Sol?

We'd just sic our own rednecks on 'em.  Tell them the alien critters are the ones who abducted Elvis.

[newman]

We definitely can't assume there's no reason for invading Earth.

Yes, we can. Why? Because it makes absolutely no difference what we assume in the long run. If there is an alien race that a) knows about us, b) wants our planet, and c) has the tech to reach us, there's really not much we can do. See, the dumbest thing they could do is actually invade with ground troops because that does give us a fighting chance. You can kill a soldier armed with state of the art weapons with a bow and arrow, if you get a chance. Up there, in space, they have the advantage. As Mr. Plinkett would say, I very much doubt the ISS would put up much of a fight. They can control the orbit any time they choose to. And from there they can.. *drums, fanfares..* bomb us to oblivion, throw a big enough rock on us, release some sort of nano-engineered plague.. possibilities are endless.
In the end, discussing the hows and whys of an invasion on the part of some imaginary alien threat is pretty pointless.
I still stand by my earlier arguments that this would be pretty pointless on their part. So I'm going to keep assuming that even if they exist they got no reason to invade us if it's all the same to you - it really makes no difference to the security of this planet

[StarSlayer]

You folks are totally missing the real threat with Voyager.

[Bob-san]

We definitely can't assume there's no reason for invading Earth.

Yes, we can. Why? Because it makes absolutely no difference what we assume in the long run. If there is an alien race that a) knows about us, b) wants our planet, and c) has the tech to reach us, there's really not much we can do. See, the dumbest thing they could do is actually invade with ground troops because that does give us a fighting chance. You can kill a soldier armed with state of the art weapons with a bow and arrow, if you get a chance. Up there, in space, they have the advantage. As Mr. Plinkett would say, I very much doubt the ISS would put up much of a fight. They can control the orbit any time they choose to. And from there they can.. *drums, fanfares..* bomb us to oblivion, throw a big enough rock on us, release some sort of nano-engineered plague.. possibilities are endless.
In the end, discussing the hows and whys of an invasion on the part of some imaginary alien threat is pretty pointless.
I still stand by my earlier arguments that this would be pretty pointless on their part. So I'm going to keep assuming that even if they exist they got no reason to invade us if it's all the same to you - it really makes no difference to the security of this planet

Matter is abundant in the universe. If they have the resources to extract our water, they have the resources to find other, easier, and perhaps more abundant sources. The unique portion of this planet is life. So long as we don't inhabit 10ⁿ of planets and claim them as our exclusive domain, then we don't even begin to make an impact on the available resources. I'll say right now that we're probably the only intelligent & advanced life in at least 20 lightyears. Considering that the galaxy is 100,000 ly wide by 10,000 ly thick, our little 20ly bubble containing 133+ stars is nothing.