Extra-terrestrial life; for decades, it has been the soul of science fiction and the reason behind an extensive search for life supporting exoplanets. Percivell Lowell viewed Mars through his telescope and was in the perception that the vast canyons and ‘channels’ discovered by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli were canals meant to transport water from its poles to its dry, dying inland by sophisticated creatures. This speculation did not take long to catch the eye of the public in anxiety to contact these so called “aliens”. What is the point of a maddening search for E.T?
The search for E.T may be sheer anxiety in the simplest words. We have always asked questions; the tougher the question, the more we strive for its answers. To me, searching for alien life is perhaps an attempt to get rid of this “loneliness” – the feeling that the only life we know exists on Earth may be depressing to some. The question that strikes me is that are we really lonely? There is no guarantee that if we ever discover some intelligent form of life, they will give us company. They might as well be cosmic villains to us. From a fairly optimistic point of view, they might as well lead the human race and other life on earth to survival as Earth slowly begins to die due to the monstrous sun.
The latest E.T sensation: Breakthrough Listen. This colossal project is truly a breakthrough in the search for E.T. By far it is the greatest search for E.T ever attempted. Russian millionaire Yuri Milner has sponsored this monumental project costing $100 million with a minimum span of ten years, covering an area of the sky ten times larger than previous searches. What’s even more appealing is that the project is fifty times more sensitive than previous SETI research programs which will result in being able to scan at least five times more of the radio spectrum at a rate 100 times faster – fascinating!
While researching for this article, I was greatly concerned about whether or not we will be sending signals out to ‘them’, if we ever detect ‘them’. I was somewhat frightened to be honest – what if I found out that we will be sending out signals to ‘them’? It came to me as a great relief when I learnt that Breakthrough Listen will only search for signals – if they discover intelligent life, no signals will be transmitted until a great international debate on whether or not this is a good idea is concluded. Sending signals to intelligent life poses a great risk to life on Earth.
Though the news of this catchy project delighted me like countless others, I was soon immersed in a question that engrossed me; are the pricey searches for E.T really worth in a world that struggles to survive due to social, economic and political conflict? In my opinion, science should be more focused on searching for potentially habitable worlds that have no living inhabitants. As of now, space travel to other solar systems and/or planets may sound like sci-fi (as seen in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar), but in the several millenniums to come, mankind would have advanced greatly in the realm of space travel. In all these years, it is very much likely that a planet capable of supporting life will be detected and the ability of earthlings to survive there will be confirmed. Perhaps, contacting E.T for survival in the long term is not necessary. Perhaps, Interstellar is the fate of mankind.
Moreover, former chairman of the board at the SETI institute, John Gertz supports the idea that contacting E.T should be banned as a whole: “You’re going to risk the entire fate of the planet just to get a conversation going?” he cleverly asks.
However, if we were to contact E.T today, how would we possibly do it? Here are some of the most effective ways. Today, we have lasers that can outshine the sun for a nanosecond. If such a laser is blasted to a possible planet with life, it can’t be ignored. The internet can be broadcasted as a whole, which will transmit more data than necessary that is enough to be ‘self-decoding’. Thirdly, habitable planets can be ‘pinged’ with direct and dynamic radio beacons. Lastly, we can compose intelligent messages of electromagnetic waves. It is highly unlikely that these will be done in the near future, however if intelligent life forms receive such signals, Earth would be hard to miss – and humanity could potentially be threatened from cosmic villains.
In case intelligent life receives any of the countless signals we unknowingly send to outer space such as TV and radio transmissions, we have no ‘peace treaty’ with them that they will not want to colonise us and exploit our resources. I believe that the human race is capable of surviving without ‘outside help’. “A civilisation reading one of our messages could be billions of years ahead of us. If so, they will be vastly more powerful and may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria,” wisely stated by famed theoretical physicist Dr Stephen Hawking.
In any case, is letting the universe know of our existence worth risking the existence of mankind as a whole? Even if Breakthrough Listen discovers aliens, I am not at all in favour of contacting them.
If the ultimate fate is to be annihilated by the sun, what is the purpose of humans?
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