I also don’t see why any spacefaring civilization would have any interest in colonizing inhabited planets. It would just be more hassle for the same resources you could get on lots and lots of planets. If they have the technology for interstellar flight, they can probably extract whatever they want from wherever they want. Regarding living space, you wouldn’t even need planets, there are far more efficient structures you could devise when you don’t have to limit yourself to only what nature has provided.
It’s an interesting thought, but an alien race could be more like hive insects and are just sending out ark ships as part of an instinct to survive and thrive in as many places as possible. Like the aliens in the Ender’s game series.
Or like the race that created the Protomolecule in the expanse, they sent a probe into a system that looked promising possibly even before humans existed and had no way to know if it had intelligent life and their probe is basically going to autonomously consume organic material as part of building a highway off ramp.
Who’s to say that for a civilization that advanced wiping us out in the process would not be any more hassle than just resource Gathering normally on any other planet? Who’s to say we be more than gnats or any other pest we deal with during resource extraction?
Probably not.
I also don’t see why any spacefaring civilization would have any interest in colonizing inhabited planets. It would just be more hassle for the same resources you could get on lots and lots of planets. If they have the technology for interstellar flight, they can probably extract whatever they want from wherever they want. Regarding living space, you wouldn’t even need planets, there are far more efficient structures you could devise when you don’t have to limit yourself to only what nature has provided.
It’s an interesting thought, but an alien race could be more like hive insects and are just sending out ark ships as part of an instinct to survive and thrive in as many places as possible. Like the aliens in the Ender’s game series.
Or like the race that created the Protomolecule in the expanse, they sent a probe into a system that looked promising possibly even before humans existed and had no way to know if it had intelligent life and their probe is basically going to autonomously consume organic material as part of building a highway off ramp.
Sure. It’s certainly not impossible, just unlikely when we consider all the possibilities.
Unless they really really like gold and unbeknownst to us, gold is a scarce element in the universe and we happen to have a shit tonne of it.
Then we’re fucked.
Who’s to say that for a civilization that advanced wiping us out in the process would not be any more hassle than just resource Gathering normally on any other planet? Who’s to say we be more than gnats or any other pest we deal with during resource extraction?
Just adds an extra, unnecessary step. It’d be like if you had billions of grocery stores to choose from and went to the one crawling with ants.