ashesashes
Member
Aliens came all this way to get us to mine gold for them on this planet that contains almost none, AND it is probably more abundant on other celestial bodies. They have incredible technology to travel great distances, but need another organism to 'harvest' the metal for them, and all of this is done for some properties of gold that we have yet to discover and exploit.
Hummm. I don't know about the last part, but if they came here to harvest gold, and left with it, wouldn't that mean that there wouldn't be less here now than there was when they arrived?
If someone grew a large plant, harvested it, and I only found the stump, would the right conclusion be that there never was a plant?
As for the genetic engineering of a slave race: maybe they didn't like strip mining.
Or thought making centaurs was funny.
As for the undiscovered use, I thought one of the thesis was that they used atomized gold to ozone's reflective qualities in their atmosphere (post industrial depletion).