Neil deGrasse Tyson on whether alien lifeforms have found Earth [View all]
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/14/neil-degrasse-tyson-on-whether-alien-lifeforms-have-found-earth/
If aliens discovered Earth, would humanity know about it? Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson weighed in on the topic in video uploaded to YouTube on Saturday by Business Insider.
He joked that extraterrestrial life could have already shown up at New York City’s Times Square or San Diego’s Comic Con, but no one noticed them amid the crowd of strange creatures.
Pivoting to a more serious point, Tyson said humans wrongly assumed they were of high intelligence. Any species capable of interstellar travel would see human civilization as severely underdeveloped. Humans have escaped the Earth’s atmosphere, but just barely, Tyson explained. Aliens might have discovered Earth, but found it uninteresting and moved on.
“If an alien traversed that distance, and all we are doing is driving around the block, they’re more advanced than we are,” he remarked.
“And, by the way, [Stephen] Hawking is all worried that aliens might suck our brains out,” Tyson added. “That concern comes from the fact that when any of us explore the world and came upon a civilization less advanced, it was bad for the less advanced civilization… so I think his fear about aliens is a reflection of his actual knowledge of about how humans treat each other, not real knowledge about how actual aliens would treat us.”
Watch video, uploaded to YouTube, below:
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