Did you know that there’s a group of people who have taken it upon themselves to curate our communications with aliens?
Our response to any alien contact needs to be considered carefully, according to the physicist Paul Davies, who chairs the post-detection response group of the SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) Institute in California. He has what he calls “an awesome responsibility”.
Listening out for aliens is the longest of long shots. We can search for signs of intelligent life out there only in a narrow range of all the possible signals they might send. And “out there” is vast – we can scan only a tiny fraction of the sky.
What’s more, the timing is crucial. Aliens would have to develop technological capabilities at roughly the same time as us, possibly within a few tens of thousands of years. That’s because technological civilisations often implode and thus have a limited lifespan. So, it is ironic that seeking alien contact could well be the very thing that triggers our own implosion.
I don't think we have to worry about ET contact triggering our implosion. We are doing a perfectly good job of that. To read more, click here.