It may seem as if the world is going to pieces, but here’s some heartening news from Parapolitical, explaining why it would make little sense for an advanced alien race (assuming one exists) to attack humanity:
“MAD with Aliens? Interstellar Deterrence and its Implications” by Janne Korhonen of Finland’s Aalto University, published in the current edition of Acta Astronautica – the journal of the International Academy of Astronautics – explores motivating and demotivating factors for an alien assault against the Earth (or anyplace) and concludes that the conditions of interstellar warfare make such an adventure “too hazardous for an attacker.”
Korhonen identifies key concerns that could preclude a potentially aggressive civilization from choosing to launch a genocidal attack on humanity. “If the light speed limit holds,” Korhonen posits, “all intelligence gathered before an attack is launched will be very much out-of-date by the time the attacking force arrives to the target system.”
Another issue is the inherent inefficiency of attacks with less than one-hundred-percent lethality: “An average growth rate of 1% could repopulate the Earth to seven billion people from only five thousand survivors in little more than 700 years.
