This open letter is a reaction to the article “Should we be signalling our existence to alien life?” published in Science Focus issue 357 (December 2020), in which Douglas Vakoch, president of METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence), talks about his organisation’s efforts of transmitting messages into the cosmos in the hope of establishing contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life.
◈ ◈ ◈
As a little boy, I was obsessed by contact with aliens. I was even attempting to send ‘them’ a message in Morse code by flashing a torch from my bedroom window after being infatuated by 'contact' films such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But as I have become older, wiser, and – you might say – more cynical, I have realised that I was rather naïve in my thinking back then and that advertising our position in the universe to others, without a thorough forethought, is at best foolishly careless and at worst can put the whole of mankind in jeopardy.
METI’s first message, aimed at the exoplanet GJ 273b - a potentially habitable world orbiting Luyten's Star - a red dwarf located in the constellation Canis Minor at a distance just over 12 light years from Earth, was transmitted by 930MHz UHF Radar from EISCAT facility in Ramfjordmoen, near Tromsø, Norway, back in 2017.
Now I came to understand that believing in benevolent extraterrestrials, descending from heavens eager to bestow their advanced technology upon the puny human race, is akin to hoping that America would readily share their nuclear know-how with the developing countries.
Cautious silence is where prudence takes refuge - Baltasar Gracián
Very recently, I have learned about The ‘Dark Forest’ theory – any more technologically advanced alien civilization will launch a pre-emptive strike against any less technologically advanced one to prevent it reaching the same or higher technological level and thus becoming a threat – as postulated by science fiction writer Liu Cixin in his eponymous novel.
Even if we assume that the ‘Dark Forest’ theory is a bit too extreme, the reality is probably not that gloomy, and take the interaction of our very own human civilizations as an example, we will find, time and again, real-life situations throughout the history when the more developed society came across the less developed one – and it never ended up well for the latter one – Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca Empires being a good case in point.
Likewise, even though we suppose that any alien civilization that might be the recipient of our message won’t be outwardly hostile or malevolent, the unfathomable implications of mere contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence on its own would cause a profound social, political, religious and economic upheaval on such an unimaginable scale that all the previous revolutions in the entire history of humanity would pale in comparison. If we again take the well-known precedent of our own Columbian Exchange as an example, history teaches us that such contacts have generally always led to a rapid decline or complete destruction of the 'contactee' civilization, as opposed to the 'contactor'.
The effect of gunfire opened by Spaniards on Incans, who had never encountered firearms or cavalry before, was devastating and their seasoned warriors fled the battlefield in panic despite outnumbering the conquistadors 8,000 to 168. We can only speculate what sort of peculiar yet dreadful weapons could unleash an invading extraterrestrial force against our troops, but the odds are that the outcome of such a conflict wouldn't be much better for us, a newly emerging technological species.
Similar opinions were expressed in the past by others, most notably Stephen Hawking, who in his 2010 interview for BBC opined that, rather than actively trying to communicate with extraterrestrials, humans should do everything possible to avoid contact. “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.” He said, before continuing: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.”
The cosmos is mind-bogglingly vast and who knows - they just might have not noticed us - so why take a chance ?
And the “They already know we are here anyway” argument, used by METI’s president, simply does not stand. Omni-directional radio leakage, e.g. from the early television transmissions, are far more difficult to detect than a highly-focused signal sent from a powerful telescope in the direction of a specific target. The cosmos is mind-bogglingly vast, and who knows –‘they’ just might have missed us – so why take a chance?
More to the point, who gave Douglas Vakoch and his METI the right to decide such a critical issue with potentially catastrophic consequences for the whole humankind by themselves?
Therefore, to sum up: if we are already going to broadcast our existence and location to the stars for everyone out there to see, some broad international consensus should be reached first, ideally under UN mandate. This view was recently echoed by a group of 28 astronomers, astrobiologists, theoretical physicists and other influential personalities connected with space exploration (SpaceX founder Elon Musk and technology writer George Dyson, son of the late Freeman Dyson, amongst them), many associated with BSRC and Berkeley, California, who argue that “Intentionally signalling other civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy raises concerns from all the people of Earth, about both the message and the consequences of contact.”, before adding: “As a newly emerging technological species, it is prudent to listen before we shout.“ and who issued and signed a statement in this regard: Regarding Messaging To Extraterrestrial Intelligence advocating against any impetuous messaging to extraterrestrial intelligences before “a worldwide scientific, political and humanitarian discussion occurs”.
Amen to that.
Louis Wittek, editor of SF4E.COM