After futile decades of listening for any signs of a civilisation beyond Earth, SETI – the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence – is considering broadcasting our own message to the stars.
New Scientist reports that a meeting will be held in Texas in June to discuss if, and how, and in what form, such an attempt at communication should be made.
There is opposition. Our oldest stories tell us that it’s not always wise to let the gods notice you, which is what’s on the mind of SF author David Brin. He resigned from a SETI panel because he felt there wasn’t enough discussion of the potential repercussions from such a broadcast. He says: “I dislike seeing my children’s destiny being gambled with by a couple of dozen arrogant people who cling to one image of the alien”
Interesting. I see Brinn’s point, but I suspect we’re a pretty noisy place anyway. If an advanced civilization was capable of interstellar travel and looking for trouble…I would suspect they’d have found us by now.
Even if intelligent aliens existed, they may not be transmitting any signals; and their brains and senses may be so different from ours that we couldn’t recognise them.
It will take many thousands of years for a signal to reach its intended destination; but as the saying goes, you have to be ‘In It, To Win It!’
For now, I’ll sit on my SETTEE with a cold beer to wait for any life changing news.
Cheers!
The New Scientist piece links to some of the statistics – a narrow transmission, such a vast, vast potential search area, the challenge of finding a form of communication understood by both sides… But it’s important to try on so many other abstracted levels. Not to try sends out a message – about human endeavour and science, I think.