Moontanman

Actually I am writing a novel similar to that Groups of Von Neumann machines that go to planets and build and infrastructure out of the raw materials but they reproduce with variation and eventually they stop ignoring inhabited planets and go for the easy targets of already purified materials in the infrastructure of inhabited planets and built their own infrastructure like they normally would and another group that evolves to just make copies of themselves from the already available materials of inhabited worlds...

That makes no sense to me, can you try to make it clearer?

One thing that might help is stop giving tax breaks to companies who outsource their manufacturing to other countries or set up shell companies in other countries so they don't have to pay taxes here.

Wouldn't this apply to all genomes?

That is probably the scariest possibility...

I must be mentally challenged...

What are you trying to assert here?

In fiction there are several possibilities often asserted as part of the story, Indifferent aliens, aggressive hostile or aggressive benign, curious but distant, but one of my favorite stories is about an alien super intelligence that goes mad and decides to play god in it's declining years... with humans as it's playthings...

External resources? Disbelief is not an explanation and any computer or mind has to be programmed to think. In organic evolved minds this "program" is both learned behaviors and or inherited tendencies toward certain behaviors... Like I pointed out earlier about the chicken and the egg, you have to go back before both to find the beginning of either...

Good point, I would like to think superior beings would indeed be superior but no reason to expect it...

We are getting off topic here but I can indeed show that your incredulity is unwarranted... I am sure there are already other threads on this because I have made these arguments many times...

What's the difference between Dale Earnhardt and Batman? Pretty close to reality...

This looks like argument from incredulity, "seemingly" I honestly don't get the implication of "we don't know how one cell replicates exponentially" What would you expect to see?

Not bad, aliens with god like powers might very well do that...

None the less, please don't do that...

Something interesting for those of us with a laser fetish... New military laser system takes down mortar rounds... http://www.gizmag.com/hel-md-vehicle-mounted-laser-test/30116/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=da80c1591c-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-da80c1591c-90207101

I know I let the battery go dead all the time and the date is always wrong...

Some photos of my cactus blooms this summer. This one was 10 inches across. A nice cluster. One that never bloomed before, nice and purple pink. Small cluster.

So far, and I know this is arguable, I see nothing that could be gained by invasion that simple industrial processes couldn't make cheaper and less costly in their own solar system or in any uninhabited solar system. I think the idea of colonization would have to be much rarer than actual visitation due to the idea that life has adapted to the Earth not the other way around and life that had adapted to another planet wouldn't necessarily be able to thrive on the Earth. The slave idea is tempting but robots can do almost anything a human can do and they don't require any special treatment and do not revolt (everyone knows humans are revolting all the time ) Trading technologies seems a much more likely idea but that implies a relatively equal footing for both sides... Sadly religion might be the most likely scenario... Then again maybe we taste like their version of chicken...

Ctenophores, it would now seem, are the most basal of all living animals according to genetic analysis. Sponges have long been considered the most basal or closest living representative of the base of the animal tree. Sponges which lack a nervous system or muscles would appear to have descended from animals that had those traits instead of being animals that never had them. ​Ctenophores are predators that eat plankton and swim with cilia, have smooth muscles and a nervous system would appear to be more advanced than sponges but apparently this is not true. Details here... http://www.the-scientist.com//?articles.view/articleNo/38619/title/A-New-Basal-Animal/

The land whales are extinct but ask and ye shall receive... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_cetaceans

hey, could be the next Darwin's day award winner, lol

I think it's simply being made too complex because we think it has to be. unicellular creatures display behaviors, abet simple ones, but scaling up from those simple behaviors at some point you have a mind and the humans mind is neither the biggest or most complex.

I think that's a rat hole that has no end, you have to go back before chickens to find the origin of the egg and so to to find the origin of the mind...

While i tend to agree that amphibians probably evolved in freshwater others do disagree but just because no current amphibians live in salt water doesn't mean none ever did or that they didn't originate there. There are modern amphibians that lay their eggs on land and modern reptiles that give birth to live young, it not always a good idea to extrapolate backwards into time to make assumptions...