Extraterrestrial

I am never impressed by sci-fi cliches that defy physics such as faster than light travel, magical gravity, wormholes, teleportation, time travel, etc. The most important thing to understand is that faster than light travel or communication in the foreseeable future is very unlikely. It is far more physically possible, and thus far more likely to happen sooner than any kind of faster than light travel (FTL), for humanity to become ageless in order to traverse the stars. We could far more easily than FTL:

1. Find a cure for aging.
2. Find a way to immortalize our consciousness electronically.
3. Have genetically modified offspring that do not experience negative side effects from aging.
4. Invent a new intelligent organism that itself does not die from old age.
5. Invent artificial life that does not die from old age.

ANY of that is likely to happen LONG before we break the speed of light barrier, or figure out teleportation, or time travel, or any of that crap so popular with English majors in Hollywood. This means that human intelligence becomes ageless, if not immortal, long before humans learn to travel faster than the speed of light. This then is true for intelligent species from other worlds. If you are an interstellar traveler, human or not, your species has conquered ageing, and it takes you a very long time to get from one star system worth visiting to the next.

Why don't aliens want to correspond with us? Because they have things to do, and places to go, and next time they would be able to come to Earth, it would be thousands of years later. When we haven't conquered aging, thousands of years later who would be able to uphold any deal made with those aliens, when whomever they first made contact with would have been dead for generations? For aliens who don't age, there isn't any point in trying to establish any relationship with any human at all.

Humanity won't be worth the attention of interstellar civilizations until after we conquer aging. Once we do conquer aging, it will probably that thousands but not millions of years before we meet our first interstellar neighbors.

But this brings us to our next problem, safety. If YOU were granted the gift of agelessness, safety would become your number one concern. Things that are statistically unlikely to kill you in a hundred years, might be far more likely to kill you in 10,000 years. Suddenly things like getting in a car and driving for a few hours to visit a friend, or going for a hike in the woods become a HUGE statistical risk to your safety over the course of forever. People who are ageless would worry about potential environmental hazards that could happen 50,000 years from now. Those who can not die from age, but who can still die, don't do dangerous stuff like become astronauts. Interstellar space travelers are probably far more God-like with real immortality beyond simple agelessness. God-like real immortality: still more likely than FTL!

And here in lies the next problem: why would a God-like species even want to talk to humans? They are the guys who already have everything, they don't need deals with the likes of us, even if we have achieved agelessness. Therefore they would most likely be here to establish some kind of rules with us, so that we don't screw up the galaxy they are living in.

What would such a species even be like? God-like begs a look at the scripture and mythology of our civilizations now. If we take the New Testament, Jesus is beyond ageless - if you kill him he comes back. He apparently is capable of other miraculous abilities (all of which are far more likely and possible than FTL.) But notice his message isn't about science or history, but about good behavior and how to conduct ourselves - THAT is what an extraterrestrial encounter would likely be like!

But beyond that, how would such an incredibly powerful species reproduce? A bad seed could do untold damage. It's almost like you would want to give each and every possible member of that species a temporary test-run before you give them the full God-like immortality. Each member of that species would likely be required to live a mortal life first, and then taste death and judgement, before being granted real immortality. And again, that is starting to sound a like like what we find in the New Testament, though there are similar hypothesis presented in Buddhist, Hindu, Pagan and other scriptures.

Please do not bore me with any more naive tall tales of FTL. This completely ignores the brutal reality before us, which I have described above.