Stephen Hawking has been getting a lot of press lately because of his statement that Earthlings should not try to communicate with extraterrestrials because they may pose a threat.
Here’s a link to a fluffy ABC News piece.
Here’s how Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute responded to Hawking’s statement: “Stephen’s (opinion) is one and [though] he’s a brilliant man, I’m not quite sure that his opinion has any more authority over mine or anyone else’s. It’s just a question. We don’t know the answer.”
On CNN.com Tarter responded more fully to Hawking’s statement. It’s a concise op-ed full of mind-blowing ideas and I urge you to read it.
The SETI Institute, it must be noted, does not send signals, but listens for signals. When I interviewed Tarter I asked her why the SETI Institute wasn’t sending signals. Here’s what she said:
As you’re growing up, you first listen. When you in fact have done a significant amount of listening, so that you can begin to make positive detections, that’s what you’re really looking for, or set significant limits as a result of null events, then you can take on the job of transmitting. It’s much harder. Because if you transmit, you first of all should get some consensus from the planet that we want to transmit. Now admittedly we’re leaking our television and radio signals all the time, but for purposeful transmission you’d like to get some global consensus that, yes, we should transmit and this what we’re going to say, and this is who is going to say it. And this will represent earth. Well that’s really hard to do. We don’t have any global organizations that can assist us in this way. And then if you decide to transmit, you have to think really long term. Transmit for a year, and stop. Very unlikely that someone else out there will be looking at you in exactly the right time that the transmission washes over them, in exactly the right way. So, transmission is a long term strategy and humans aren’t really good at that yet. We’ve got some growing up to do before transmission is in our future, I think.
But back to the original question: friendly or hostile, Contact or Independence Day? Why?
Haroon
If we contact and discover them, independence day for them and “the new world” for us. If they contact us, it’ll be independence day for us. Come on, once they see that we have resources that they can use, or vice versa, greed will just take over. Good news though there won’t be problems on earth amongst countries anymore…probably.
Haroon
Of course as Jill Tarter said, no one’s opinion is any more superior than anyone else. It’s opinion not fact.
Stephen Hawking is the man though.
David Licata
Like Neil deGrasse Tyson said in that piece, “When the smartest man in the world utters anything, it’s an occasion to listen.” Did you see A Brief History of Time, the Errol Morris film? Amazing.
I think I wrote this on the Facebook page, but it seems to me whether one thinks aliens would be hostile or benevolent speaks to that individual’s attitude toward humanity. Makes sense, it’s the only example we have, after all.
As always, thanks for commenting, HB.