If two races (alien and human) met, what would be the outcome?

I think it may work the same way it has on earth. When a dominating culture meets a culture technologically inferior to itself, it tends to subjugate them. If contact with an alien race were to occur, what would happen depends very much on the culture of that race. Are they peaceful or are they on an imperialistic campaign? Are they as technologically advanced as us? Did we find them or did they find us? Would we even be able to communicate with them?

I ask this because of the earlier discussion on life existing elsewhere in the universe.

I think about this sometimes. It would certainly have huge effects on our society in areas ranging from science to religion to geo-political stability. My hope is that if it happens it will draw us together in our humanity and unite us behind our commonalities like in the movie Independence Day. Go America!

Well, according to Orson Scott Card first we will war with the aliens, ultimately obliterating them. Then we will realize how cruel that was, thanks to a general turned alien sympathist. Then we will stumble across another alien race, and study them with strict restrictions about how much information we give away about ourselves. They will have some crazy mating ritual and will kill one of the people who studies them. Thats about where i left off I'll get back to you when i finish the book.

Actually, I think in Star Trek they discovered that all the various sentient species (Human, Vulcan, Klingon, Cardassian, Ferengi and Romulan, if not more...) had all descended from a common ancestor species. It gave one pause to consider how all living things are really brothers or cousins in the grand scheme of things. We're really one big family.

Then they went back to fighting one another.

if there actually was an alian lifeform that would be able to find us, we would not stand a chance fighting them. think about it, we have been trying to get father and father into the universe, but we cant find any other lifeforms. if they found us, they would definitly have the technology to destroy us.

Posted By: cmseagle

Unless of course, we in a blaze of irrationality attacked them first.

So, we're screwed.

This is assuming that the alien race in question is more technologically advanced than us, but not so much as we mean absolutely nothing to them. Stephen Hawking theorizes in either A Brief history of Time or The Universe in a Nutshell (can't remember which) that if we encounter another alien race, the chances that they are at a similar point in development to us is tiny - more likely they will be hyper-developed or bacteria-like. In that case, it seems likely that one will wipe the other out easily. I mean, how many of us care about the millions of microscopic organisms that we kill every time we walk on the grass?

Posted By: silverdragonfire

I mean, how many of us care about the millions of microscopic organisms that we kill every time we walk on the grass?

Dear God, you're right! What have I done!

what have I done

They deserve death for what they have done to me, I only wish I could cry hydrochloric acid to kill them more.

Posted By: legatissimo

Go America!

A few countries in other parts of the world may agree with that statement.

Can we see NASA launching its intergalactic exploration mission in three hundred years...

"Hang on, we forgot the missiles".

Right... That is if that giant asteroid doesn't hit us first... it is called 2004 MN4 i believe... here is some info.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/asteroid_risk_041224.html

Edit: Sorry, I ment to quote the guy 2 posts ahead of me.

Posted By: silverdragonfire

Posted By: JoshuaU490

They deserve death for what they have done to me, I only wish I could cry hydrochloric acid to kill them more.

That's harsh. Without bacteria you'd have no vitamin K and therefore die, and no wine/champagne, yoghurt or bread. And besides, most microorganisms are harmless.

I don't mean all the bacteria, just the ones on my face.

Has anyone here read The Forever War by Joe Haldeman? It shares many of my views on what would happen.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
In the 1970s Joe Haldeman approached more than a dozen different publishers before he finally found one interested in The Forever War. The book went on to win both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, although a large chunk of the story had been cut out before it saw publication. Now Haldeman and Avon Books have released the definitive version of The Forever War, published for the first time as Haldeman originally intended. The book tells the timeless story of war, in this case a conflict between humanity and the alien Taurans. Humans first bumped heads with the Taurans when we began using collapsars to travel the stars. Although the collapsars provide nearly instantaneous travel across vast distances, the relativistic speeds associated with the process means that time passes slower for those aboard ship. For William Mandella, a physics student drafted as a soldier, that means more than 27 years will have passed between his first encounter with the Taurans and his homecoming, though he himself will have aged only a year. When Mandella finds that he can't adjust to Earth after being gone so long from home, he reenlists, only to find himself shuttled endlessly from battle to battle as the centuries pass. --Craig E. Engler

Book Description

Private William Mandella is a hero in spite of himself -- a reluctant conscript drafted into an elite military unit, and propelled through space and time to fight in a distant thousand-year conflict. He never wanted to go to war, but the leaders on Earth have drawn a line in the interstellar sand -- despite the fact that their fierce alien enemy is unknowable, unconquerable, and very far away. So Mandella will perform his duties without rancor and even rise up through the military's ranks . . . if he survives. But the true test of his mettle will come when he returns to Earth. Because of the time dilation caused by space travel the loyal soldier is aging months, while his home planet is aging centuries -- and the difference will prove the saying: you never can go home. . .

Posted By: JoshuaU490

I don't mean all the bacteria, just the ones on my face.

Ohh...sorry I get you now.

I think the aliens are already here. I don't think they look like humans or anything, but I think they can hide amongst us without our knowledge. They can live in alleyways or out in forests, under the oceans or at the polar ice caps and we'd never know it. They're here. And they're watching us.

Another angle....The bacteria it-self could be what obliterates us. No lasers or AA batteries needed. A mini-kamakazi race. And they thought they were just trying to get to know us. Be "closer" to us. Just a BIG misunderstanding.
ie, Think of the "Creep Show" scene in which Stephen king appears, and then disappears into a mossy new skin.