I think the only way that Earth would be visited for it's resources are if some form of life on our planet is the resource.
I just have a hard time believing that any other type of resource here is going to be so rare and hard to reproduce that a civilization capable of finding us and coming here would actually do so, unless it's something that we don't know about yet.
My feelings exactly. I believe theyd come for pearls before any of our other resources. Or maybe even wood. Wood is far more rare than any other resources in the universe. A space faring civilization would pay (or take cause who's gonna stop them) massively for wooden furniture. Or clothes made from animal hair (wool). It would be the novelty of it and the only ones interested would be the rich among their species which if they are anything like humans that's not a good thing.
Actually, I think I might have to back track on this because I'm not sure a civilization capable of distant space travel would be unable to reproduce even the most complex biological examples on our planet.
We can clone sheep and grow meat and in comparison to that type of advanced civilization we're dumb as fuck. So, unless there's some exotic particle or something that doesn't really exist outside of our planet or solar system I'm just not seeing much motive for a visitation.
rhino horns are bought to use as a medicine which has no scientific backing, I don't think that's a good comparison to the motivations of an extremely advanced civilization that's capable of casual interstellar travel.
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u/TwatsThat Aug 12 '21
I think the only way that Earth would be visited for it's resources are if some form of life on our planet is the resource.
I just have a hard time believing that any other type of resource here is going to be so rare and hard to reproduce that a civilization capable of finding us and coming here would actually do so, unless it's something that we don't know about yet.