Why we shouldn't fear the search for alien life

from
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/chinas-possible-alien-satellite-signal-highlights-extraterrestrial-com-rcna33602

Why we shouldn't fear the search for alien life

But rather than hope that the extraterrestrials have launched signals 
our way, let's knock on their door — and get their attention.

These antennas, each about 20 feet in diameter, are part of the Allen 
Telescope Array, in the California Cascades about 250 miles north of San 
Francisco. The Array, which has 42 antennas in total, was built by the 
SETI Institute to be optimized for its searches for extraterrestrial 
transmissions.Seth Shostak / SETI
June 16, 2022, 1:31 AM PDT
By Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute

For more than six decades, a small group of scientists (including me), 
has been trying to pick up radio transmissions from other planetary 
systems, motivated by the fact that doing so would demonstrate that 
someone intelligent is out there. This effort, known as SETI (the Search 
for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence), is straightforward and technically 
fairly simple, as it doesn’t require interstellar travel for either the 
aliens or the earthlings. It’s a strictly passive endeavor that uses big 
antennas with highly sensitive receivers to sniff out signals over a 
broad range of the radio dial. Case in point: Reports this week say 
Chinese researchers may have picked up signs of alien civilizations (or 
maybe it was just radio interference.)

Rather than hope that the extraterrestrials have launched signals our 
way, maybe we could knock on their door and get their attention.

In any case, some researchers believe we should be taking a more active 
role in probing nearby space. They argue we should prod the aliens with 
signals of our own, inviting them to respond; an idea known as “active 
SETI.” Rather than hope that the extraterrestrials have launched signals 
our way, maybe we could knock on their door and get their attention.

In practice this amounts to sequentially aiming a powerful radio 
transmitter at one star system after another while transmitting a 
friendly message (perhaps similar to the engraved plaque that was 
affixed to the Pioneer space probes in the 1970s) that, one hopes, will 
trigger a similarly friendly response.

This sounds straightforward, but it still requires some decisions to be 
made. To begin with, how do we encode the message in a way that space 
aliens, whose English-speaking abilities are surely sub-par, will 
understand? In addition, what information should we transmit? 
Shakespeare’s plays? The books of the “Harvard five-foot shelf”?

Alien invasion? See the definitive news report on intelligent life in 
the universe
JUNE 30, 202111:25

Recently, a new idea about cosmic signaling has appeared. It’s the work 
of a global team of researchers led by Jonathan Jiang of the Jet 
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Like many of its 
predecessors, the new communication scheme harkens back to the short 
pictogram transmitted from the Arecibo, Puerto Rico, radio telescope in 
1974. Mathematics, physics, astronomy and biology are the touchstones 
for these pictograms — all subjects that are presumed to be required 
coursework for extraterrestrials. We won’t share a common language with 
advanced aliens, but we can safely presume a shared familiarity with 
science and math.

However, the idea of trying to initiate contact is not looked upon 
kindly by everyone in the research community; critics of this more 
aggressive approach see the possibility of a calamitous outcome to 
betraying our existence to unknown beings. It’s been likened to shouting 
in a dark forest. The potential consequences could be dire, so we 
mustn’t take chances. We should keep our heads down.

This a popular point of view — it was even endorsed by Stephen Hawking. 
But I don’t agree. Laying low might seem like cheap insurance against 
catastrophe, but my opinion is that the potential costs could outweigh 
any potential benefits.


Homo sapiens might (might!) be around for a long time, and insisting 
that we never, ever point a powerful radio transmitter skyward could 
prove to be a weighty albatross burdening our descendants.

Remember, we can only be threatened by species that have the means to 
either come here or send their weaponry our way. Either option demands a 
degree of technical sophistication that’s far beyond our own. And if 
such aliens are already that advanced, then they can be presumed to have 
large antennas and sensitive radio receiving equipment, and to have had 
such technologies for a while. That means that irrespective of their 
personal natures, they can likely detect the television, radio and radar 
signals we’ve been lofting skyward since World War II.

In other words, it’s entirely too late to worry about giving away our 
position. Additionally, if we were to agree that attempts to signal 
unknown aliens should somehow be forbidden, what happens when we 
establish colonies or way stations elsewhere in our solar system? Do we 
set limits on any transmissions to these outposts because of the 
inevitable “spill” radiation that would continue into deep space? And 
what about the use of radar for establishing the orbits of long-period 
comets as a matter of defense against the type of deadly impact that 
doomed the dinosaurs? Do we give that up, too?


The paper from Jiang et al. describes in detail a scheme for sending an 
informative postcard to other Milky Way inhabitants. The public reaction 
to this work has been modest, and much of the press coverage has fixated 
on the proposal to include images of nude humans. One might conclude 
from this reporting that the real issue with active SETI is the 
impropriety of transmitting images of humans in the buff. In other 
words, guardians of terrestrial decorum seem less concerned about 
possible destruction of the planet than with keeping aliens from seeing 
what we look like underneath our clothes. From my point of view, both 
worries are wacky.

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Seth Shostak
Dr. Seth Shostak is senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain 
View, California, and the host of the “Big Picture Science” podcast.