BRENT: Earth beams out greetings into the cosmos, only for war-like or exploitative aliens to follow the signal home and start trouble. At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of the Sciences in San Jose, scientists on both sides are set to debate whether or not that situation is likely, and if the potential for communication is worth the risk.
On one side of the debate, their are “Active SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence)” advocates. These are people who believe the reward of potentially contacting alien life far outweighs the risk of alerting any ill-meaning lifeforms to our presence.
“Active SETI is a reflection of SETI growing up as a discipline,” said Douglas Vakoch of the SETI Institute. “It may just be the approach that lets us make contact with life beyond Earth.”
Vakoch said that any instances of aliens visiting Earth had a chance to turn out like Christopher Colombus’ visit to the Americas “which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.”
However, Vakoch added that any civilization with the capability to reach Earth could already pick up on radio and TV signals that have leaked into space.
Astrophysicist David Brin called the SETI Institute’s “barn door excuse” (i.e. there’s no going back, as we’ve already sent signals into space) a bad one. Brin went on to cite the Fermi paradox, which questions why we haven’t been contacted by more advanced lifeforms if they are out there. Brin said there are 100 reasons why we might not have been contacted and only a dozen of them are positive.
Both sides will hash out their arguments in more detail at a panel during the conference.
For what’s it worth, Frank Drake, the man who famously composed an equation to determine the likelihood of extraterrestrial life, is against active SETI.
Tesla driverless system to use updated radar technology
WASHINGTON: Electric carmaker Tesla announced Sunday it was upgrading its Autopilot software to use more advanced radar technology. In a...
