Why did the team keep a bird with them?

As far as elements making up the environment are concerned, yes. There's no scientific reason to assume that aliens have or exist in elements that remain unknown to us. In reality, instruments would be used to identify the composition of the atmosphere inside the alien spacecraft. However, I realize this is a movie, not reality, and the bird was undoubtedly more dramatic and entertaining. I enjoyed it.

Non Sequitur. The're is no scientific reason to assume at first contacts the aliens even use carbon based life or DNA for that matter. We can conclude the aliens came from an environment not of our earth which leaves the possibility they came from a world that has phenomena we may not have observed on earth yet especially with chemical reactions alone. Hell they appear to be transdimensional beings all together so who knows what new particles and forms of matter their bringing with them let alone biological hazards. Hell I personally would have used robotic probes and not even sent a team in. I'm all for first contact (not really) but we should try to make sure we don't risk going exinct before we start first contact. On earth All six kingdoms of life have entities that are hostile to other organisms. Yes even poisones plants that kill insects for nitrates.

reply share

add reply

formatting help

Wow. Don't want THIS person on my exploritory team.... can't accept the POSSIBILITY of anything outside known science... YIKES :D

He/She embodies everything wrong about the religion of science in one paragraph. :)

reply share

add reply

formatting help

Are you saying that if the atmosphere doesn't kill a canary it must therefore logically be assumed that it won't kill humans?

The canary was fucking dumb. End of.

No one suggested the converse was true in that a live canary means a live human. Its just another way to see if the alien environment is harmful to biological matter in this case one that is similar to humans. Its not a guarantee, just another test for failure to abort the mission amd start a bird autopsy when they start dying. IE a dead canary means with high probability a dead human. I'm pretty sure they were testing if the bird would get sick off bacteria or viruses. Things that are hard to detect normally with spectrometers or instruments in general. No this doesn't remove the danger and it wasn't a good idea for our female lead to take of her helmet. Thats what we call stupid. Not the fact that they used a canary.

Do you think it was dumb that we humans sent monkeys and dogs into orbit before we tried our luck with humans? We sent them first to see if radiation would mess them up. The effects of radiation wern't that well understood back then it wasn't till people started getting sick from nuclear bomb tests that we started paying attention. Like wise who knows what Aliens will bring with them. Being transdimensional they could be bringing new fundamental particles for all we know. Just like how we were ignorant of radiation being so destructive to our biology.

reply share

add reply

formatting help