Could an extraterrestial race ever assume control of life on Earth? I think that since man has been able to look up to the stars and wonder what is out there, we have had some theory about that very thing happening. If you look at the movies that have been made about aliens, the central theme is that they are evil, and that they want to take over, and enslave humanity. I don’t really know if aliens would ever want to take over the Earth, but for fun, lets take a look at the possibility.
Would an alien civilization even be able to find Earth, if it were looking for a planet to take over? We have been walking this planet for almost two million years, and we just now are capable of detecting any planets at all. Science has just detected the first atmospheres of exoplanets, or planets that don’t orbit the Sun. We still haven’t been able to detect planets smaller than roughly four times the size of our own planet.
So lets just say that any alien civiliaztion would probably have a hard time finding us, let alone trying to take over life on our planet. OK though, what if they did find us, and they see that we have life on our planet, and so they decide to pay us a visit. How long would it take them to get here? Just getting from Earth to Mars would take roughly two years, and to the nearest star would be 4.1 light years, or in other words, a very long time.
It would take the aliens thousands, if not millions of years to get here, even if they found us today. Even if they found us a few thousand years ago, they would probably only be halfway here at best. And if they had found us a few thousand years ago, they would have seen nothing more than nomadic tribes that were building mounds, and putting slabs of rocks into circles. If I was an alien, and that is what I saw, I would laugh, and keep going.
I don’t think that aliens would ever come here with the intent of taking over life on the planet. I think that it would be way too easy for them to do assuming they have the means to get here, which would mean they are so far advanced that we would be nothing to them. So why would they take us over? What is the point, it would be like all of North America ganging up on some island in the pacific, it wouldn’t make any sense, or prove any superiority.
So no, I don’t think we ever have to worry about any alien race taking over our planet, and doing anything without our permission. I think that either the aliens will skip over us, or by the time they get here we will be dead, and our descendants will be further evolved. Maybe by then we will be able to defend ourselves against attacks, or perhaps gain the respect of civilizations that may have had other plans when they first visited.
