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Identifying extraterrestrial invaders

C

chornedsnorkack

Location
Europe
"Alien" has a literal meaning of "stranger". It is used broadly.
It is used for clearly terrestrial humans, such as foreigners (legal or illegal).
But "alien" is also applied to hypothetical/fictional nonhumans.

"Extraterrestrial" specifies "from outside Earth". It therefore avoids the baggage of "alien".

Suppose that people from Earth were to encounter beings that are clearly anatomically modern humans long settled outside Earth, and if they have any origin story from Earth or vice versa, it is not immediately relevant.
Informed speculation does not regard the existence of such groups of anatomically modern humans as a priori more likely. They believe existence of completely alien beings more likely.
So suppose that Earth humans do encounter anatomically modern humans settled elsewhere and previously out of contact with Earth. What would be your preferred term for them?
If Earth suffers an invasion of extraterrestrials and the invasion is going well for the invaders - no captive extraterrestrials and no corpses are left in the hands of Earth people, if they retreat from missions accomplished, they extract all their men and arms, though not their trash - what would prove to the people outside the attack that against probability, the invaders are people?
What would prove it to people held captive by extraterrestrials?
 
Off the top of my head, this sounds like the situation in the Stargate franchise where humans were once taken from Earth long ago ago and kept as a servant race by aliens.

As for how to identify them, wouldn't these extraterrestrial humans try to establish communication by default? I mean, if they are interested in Earth at all and aren't arbitrarily a whole society of really shy people who can't talk to strangers, I imagine some stages of their investigating Earth would consist of talking with the locals.

Even they are really evil dudes who want to buy Earth born slaves in exchange for the spacefaring civilization equivalent of shiny beads, drugs, and weapons, they'd be better off finding local groups to deal with than to run around kidnapping people themselves while wearing Scooby-Doo villain costumes.

Then once they've made contact, identifying them should be about the same as any other human society, be they Christian missionaries spreading their religion, or Spanish conquistadors spreading their nation's dominance.

If they're from the Alpha Centauri fruit company and want to overthrow our governments to ensure a steady supply of delicious pineapples to export to the greater galactic market and make nonillions of space doubloons, we'd probably just call them Alpha Centaurians or Off-Worlders.
 
You can do genetic analysis to compare the extra-terrestrial humans to earth humans and find out when they split off from Earth humans. And even narrow it down to ethnic/geographic groups the ET humans founding population group came from. Isolated human groups tend to develop telltale haplogroups and if humans from a G'ould planet or SW galaxy visited Earth we would be able to identify their people from their DNA. It's something used a lot already in understanding of history, finding out about past migrations, how different nations formed, how old certain cultures are and so on.
 
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Rossum said:
As for how to identify them, wouldn't these extraterrestrial humans try to establish communication by default? I mean, if they are interested in Earth at all and aren't arbitrarily a whole society of really shy people who can't talk to strangers, I imagine some stages of their investigating Earth would consist of talking with the locals.

Even they are really evil dudes who want to buy Earth born slaves in exchange for the spacefaring civilization equivalent of shiny beads, drugs, and weapons, they'd be better off finding local groups to deal with than to run around kidnapping people themselves while wearing Scooby-Doo villain costumes.
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What wouldn´t be arbitrary is if they are monoglots who don´t have previous experience with beings who can only make noises "bar-bar".
Or if they have a little experience but have so far muddled through without building up the infrastructure of professional linguists and linguistic theory, and language analysis software - let alone "universal translator".

Adult humans taken into monoglot society whose language is completely unknown to them and unrelated to theirs usually can learn useful amounts of the second language, as the experience of explorers going to America or Australia with no interpreters demonstrates.
But it takes months.

How do you ask people with no common language permission to take them to your ship for months to learn your language? Not easily. Many explorers have preferred kidnapping to begin with. Talking to natives can come at a later stage, months later, when some of the kidnapped victims have learned enough to be useful interpreters.
galahad said:
You can do genetic analysis to compare the extra-terrestrial humans to earth humans and find out when they split off from Earth humans.
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Right. When a 2010s Earth state is attacked, and that´s why I specified the attackers do leave trash, they can analyze extraterrestrial artefacts for DNA. Mind you, there is no a priori grounds to assume aliens would have DNA - if they are really alien, they might have a different biochemistry. So if human DNA is found, it may be assumed to come from either the researchers analyzing the trash, or attack victims.
How easy would it be to spot DNA from a really extraterrestrial human group, and rule out terrestrial origin?
 
For the captives, while they won´t have access to DNA analysis technology or results, they have close contact. Look like people, act like people - are people.
It will take time for the captives to learn the language of captors, but most people on Earth have heard of the concept of a foreign language. Many have learnt one or several - though most with teachers/study aids.
 
Sometime in 1990, an alien landed on Earth - and infiltrated into society of Earth humans.
Despite various signs of maladaptation, and the fact of being an infiltrator in the first place, Ford Prefect - the name itself a mistake in the cover - stayed under cover for 15 years.
Another alien landed on Earth, infiltrated in society of Earth humans, and also stayed unexposed.
And left a party with a nubile astrophysicist - who was never again seen on Earth.

How much did the search for Missing White Woman Patricia Marie MacMillan reveal in the remaining 6 months Earth existed?

Anyway: Betelgeusians had Babel Fish. And people and Betelgeusians were close enough to find each other sexually attractive... but not close enough to produce offspring (fertile or otherwise).

Did Trillian and Zaphod know this up front, or did they find out the hard way?

In a society without advanced reproductive medicine (which a space opera society is), it would not be obvious whether apparently humanoid people actually are interfertile - and if interfertile then whether capable of producing grandchildren.
 
A captive carried into an alien society who learns an alien language could not easily return to Earth.
Arthur Dent could not return to Earth because Earth had been demolished.
But even with extant Earth... just because a society has interstellar travel does not mean starships are easy to hijack, steal or charter.
When a captive is newly taken, it may not need much effort to guard a captive on an alien planet whence no starship normally go to Earth.

But with a captive who has settled down and learned the alien language...
Arthur Dent, with help of Babelfish and Ford Prefect, was wandering the Galaxy.
Could a well-adapted alien abductee escape and hide in the alien society?
How would an alien abductee react to discover an alien society that has the capability to launch interstellar trip to Earth and abduct the terrestrial, but lacks the ability to mobilize their own society to recapture an abductee escaped and hiding in their society?
 
What´s weird here is that Arthur Dent did not integrate with Golgafrinchans better. He was stuck with them on Earth for 5 years, forever as far as he knew, they were his species and behaviourally, well, modern.
 
In "Pebble in the Sky", note that while Earth people objectively are human like the extraterrestrials, the extraterrestrials are inclined to believe otherwise. Despite having been in contact with Earth all their history.
 
If what looks like a teen human girl (she is) arrives in Regent Park in an obvious alien spaceship, speaks English and claims to be from Earth (actually she had never been on Earth, but both of her parents were from Earth), and stays for three and a half hours... who would be at the scene besides press? Specifically, who on behalf of government would confront an obvious alien spaceship landing in Regent Park and having a spokesgirl speaking English?

Would her claim to be from Earth be believed? While no alien abductions are confirmed, there are speculations. The possibility of an Earth human having been abducted some time ago without public notice, and returning in public, is not so implausible, and if that´s what she´s implying...

Over three and a half hours... how many clocksmiths from London would show up? She was saying she wanted a clock repaired.
 
Grebulons managed land and take off from Earth repeatedly, without getting detected, and established a post office box on Earth.

They then brought Patricia McMillan as a visitor to Rupert to advise them on astrology, and brought her back - again undetected save by her.

Patricia carried a video camera. Her problem was, between poor lighting, her shaky hand and generally nondistinctive features she filmed, she could have faked a better video. She had no evidence of Grebulons.

If the Grebulon ship had been undeniably detected returning Patricia, how much would she have been believed?
 
galahad said:
You can do genetic analysis to compare the extra-terrestrial humans to earth humans and find out when they split off from Earth humans. And even narrow it down to ethnic/geographic groups the ET humans founding population group came from. Isolated human groups tend to develop telltale haplogroups and if humans from a G'ould planet or SW galaxy visited Earth we would be able to identify their people from their DNA.
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Late to this channel. Just wanted to revisit the argument carried here, that haplo breadcrumbs can indicate which isolated community of ancestors a distant relation can best be traced. This can only work if for the entire life cycle the individual studied has not been exposed to the rigors of interstellar travel. It is one thing to allow for reconstruction of missing genealogical components if the language is similar, the defining facial features are similar, but above all else, the habitat must be identical, down to the atmospheric composition. Otherwise, the DNA is compromised.
 
waito_x said:
Late to this channel. Just wanted to revisit the argument carried here, that haplo breadcrumbs can indicate which isolated community of ancestors a distant relation can best be traced. This can only work if for the entire life cycle the individual studied has not been exposed to the rigors of interstellar travel. It is one thing to allow for reconstruction of missing genealogical components if the language is similar, the defining facial features are similar, but above all else, the habitat must be identical, down to the atmospheric composition. Otherwise, the DNA is compromised.
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The habitat of Indians is wildly different, from cold and wet Chile and British Columbia, to hot and dry Sonora and Atacama Desert, to cold and snowy Great Slave Lake, to hot and wet Amazon. Yet the Indians of distant parts of New World, although somewhat different from each other, are much less distinct from each other than Africans and Europeans from each other.
 
Observe that Random Dent arrived on Earth in a stolen starship.
She had violently (though nonfatally) attacked its owner Ford Prefect, stranded him on a planet unpleasant to leave and fled with his starship.
She obviously was able to pilot the starship, though we don´t know whether she as a teenager had the formal training to do so, or whether se ad, or required, a licence to fly a starship.
How would Earth handle First Contact with who, in underlying truth, is a thief in a stolen starship? Since this is First Contact, no way to check her veracity or get wanted notices she chooses not to mention.
 
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