If aliens out there are more peaceful than us humans, then I'd recommend to them that they not try to reveal their existence to us.
Think about it-if your an alien, would you want people from Earth to become aware of your existence considering how many wars us humans have waged against each other both past and present?
If we meet aliens one day, there's always that chance that some folks from our population would attempt to ruthlessly take them over if we were the ones who were more technologically advanced. So aliens should play it smart and avoid us.
If aliens were technologically less advanced than us, they wouldn't be able to get here in the first place.
Yesterday, scientists found a new planet in optimal orbit to support liquid water, 600 light years away, that's ca. 3,527,099,890,000,000 miles. With conventional means, it would take forever to get there.
I don't think alien civilizations would have to fear humans, not unless FTL travel is discovered one way or the other, through wormholes, by folding space, or by using near light speeds.
The movie Avatar shows what would happen if humans would encounter an unsuspecting species akin to native people living traditional lives found in rain forests on Earth.
But there's no way of knowing what kind of alien species or civilizations are out there -- I'd say there are all kinds, given that there's a virtually unlimited number of stars.
Sure if aliens were less advanced technologically than we are then they'd never be able to come to Earth. However, someday us humans may be advanced enough to alert aliens that we exist.
I think it's a bad idea for us to try to discover alien life. If they're much more advanced, we'd be in a serious pickle if they turn out to be not-so-nice.
Right, if there was a malicious species and we'd stumble over them, then we'd be in for a treat.
There was a number of sci-fi stories about more realistic encounters of such species. I wish I could remember the name of the story, but there was one in which aliens found out about Earth, came here, and simply took what they wanted, without humans being able to do anything about it.
With advanced technology, they could probably wipe out our entire political and military infrastructures within milliseconds. We wouldn't even notice at first that those were gone.
Even the likes of Stephen Hawking warned emphatically about announcing our existence to foreign species. But if there was a malicious encounter, we'd probably be unable to do anything about it anyway.
On the other hand, it is fair to assume that an alien civilization has gone through the same trials as us, and probably had to develop a better form of society to survive. I think that a truly malicious species or society would be unable to sustain itself for long enough to develop space travel.
Just think about mankind: If we had not changed our ways after WWII, we'd probably have wiped out ourselves by now.
Many experts say the aliens you see on movies probably look like nothing like real aliens do, assuming that aliens do exist. Typically, aliens in the movies have two arms and two legs. But experts say that's too Earth-like. The planet(s) aliens are from are probably a lot different than our Earth. Therefore, they'll likely look much different.
