There’s been a rather startling decision today amongst the SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) researchers.
Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, announced to his peers at a conference today that it’s time to begin what’s known as ‘active SETI’.
This is when we actively broadcast and effectively 'alert’ potential neighbors to our presence.
Needless to say, this was a very polarizing conference.
People from Stephen Hawking all the way to science fiction writer David Brin have spoken out against broadcasting our presence into interstellar space.
They both have made comparisons to what happened when industrial civilizations first encountered indigenous peoples. Things never went well for the locals.
David Brin spoke at the conference and said, “The arrogance of shouting into the cosmos without any proper risk assessment defies belief. It is a course that would put our grandchildren at risk.”
I was initially sidelined by the idea. SETI Institute has never broadcasted into space in an attempt to make humanity’s presence obvious to alien observers. I hadn’t therefore really considered the topic much and shared the same worries as David Brin initially.
In my opinion though Dr. Shostak put an end to that worry:
“I don’t see why the aliens would have any incentive to do that.
Beyond that, we have been telling them willy-nilly that we are here for 70 years now. They are not very interesting messages but the early TV broadcasts, the early radio, the radar from the Second World War - all that has leaked off the Earth.
Any society that could come here and ruin our whole day by incinerating the planet already knows we are here.”
The point is if there’s a hostile and capable alien presence nearby, they would already know about us. The technology required to get to Earth even from the nearest star system is far more advanced than anything we can even dream up at the moment. Detecting our presence at that point is a cake walk.
Active SETI, would be a redundant risk as we’re clearly visible to those significantly advanced civilizations already (if there are any). That we’re here at all still suggests there are none.
To any nearby neighbors stuck on their home planets or solar systems, we are now going to be actively broadcasting messages.
Read more about today’s meeting at BBC World News.
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