Suppose it were all true. Just for a moment, what would happen if an alien craft landed in your backyard? What should we say to other intelligent beings? In which language? Who should speak for Earth?
Naturally, this will depend on the intentions of the visitors, but there is going to be a time when contact will be made with ETs. The chances for the existence of ET intelligence are gigantic. It is not a question of `if´ or `how´ or `why´, but `when´. In the cosmic perspective, there is no reason to think we are the only ones. It is just a matter of time until we find them. The Universe has trillion of Earth-like planets, and is 14 billion years old; time enough for intelligent civilizations to arise. It would be miraculous if no other advanced empire has ever existed in the depths of interstellar space.
Several messages have already been sent to space. The first messages were sent aboard Pioneer X and XI, currently two ghost ship missions traveling into interstellar space. Carl Sagan thought that one day they would be found by advanced civilizations, so he convinced NASA to include a plaque on each of them. Some of the things on the plaque were a drawing of the Solar System, and a male and female figure. Interestingly, the two naked figures awakened a big agitation (as the picture appeared published in newspapers and TV programmes). I wonder if it would have helped if we had clothed them…
The most elaborate audiovisual message, `The Sounds of the Earth´, was on-board the Voyager I and II space vehicles, who are heading off into deep space. It included the sounds of the Earth: wind, volcanoes, the chirping of frogs, lightning, laughter… it also included greetings in 55 languages (including whale language) and a message in latin `per aspera ad astra´ (through hardship to the stars) in morse code. Several musical selections from different cultures were also incorporated: such as The Magic Flute by Mozart or Beethoven 5th Symphony for the classically inclined ETs and Chuck Berry for aliens who like boogie! Photographs were also part of the message, showing our life on Earth; human society, chemical definitions, vertebrate’s evolution, a diagram of the conception and fertilization, the DNA structure…
Will anyone receive this message?
Replica of the Pioneer Spacecraft and the message on the plaque. Photo taken at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
We have been advertising our presence as a technological civilization for decades. However, active SETI is a controversial topic. Many scientists have suggested that we are playing with fire letting ETs know our existence. Even the cosmologist Stephen Hawking warned: do not transmit to ET! I think this fear has little logical foundation. Even if there is a danger, it is too late to hide our existence. Any intelligence with the ability to travel between the stars would have known of our presence long ago, and can already detect TV and radio signals leaking from Earth, expanding from Earth at the velocity of light in a spherical wavefront. It is too late to be hesitant and shy. We have already announced our world to the cosmos. There is no added danger transmitting messages.
What will those who receive the message be like?
It is very likely that if we receive any signal is not coming from a biological organism, is coming from a computer. Machines are becoming advanced enough that they may be called intelligent. Artificially intelligent. This idea is not crazy at all. The biological organisms may have given up their biological bodies for a computer one.
The search for ET is not very different from the search of our own future
We are a very young technological civilization and we really do not know whether we can save our planet, manage the problems we are facing in our world or whether is possible to grow old in other solar systems.
But if somebody contacts us, we get a proof that a future, in cosmic times, is possible, because technological civilizations have a much longer lifetime. We will get a proof that somebody else made it though. They figured out how to endure and that would change how we see our place in the cosmos. It would encourage us to find solutions to the difficulties we face as a society. My personal feeling is that the shock of finding ETs will rock our world to its core. We will see a new Earth emerging from the afterglow; one that may become a better place. Eventually they will respond. And we don’t know how that first contact with aliens will be, but what is certain is that it will be a turning point in the history of humankind.
