Scientists at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom are alarmed by NASA’s plans to broadcast location data and other information into space, warning that this effort could have dangerous unintended consequences, including triggering an alien invasion.
The event concerns the planned “Signal in the Galaxy” (BITG), a data release by a NASA-led research team to greet “extraterrestrial intelligences.” The US space agency wants to send this signal from the SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope setup in California and China’s 500-metre aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST). This signal will include information such as the biochemical composition of life on Earth, the time-stamped position of the Solar System in the Milky Way, digitized images of humans and an extraterrestrial invitation to respond.
Anders Sandberg, senior research fellow at Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute (FHI), argues that such a publication can be risky. He said that while the message seems highly unlikely to actually reach an alien civilization, if this unexpected situation does occur, the response may not be just a friendly greeting.
Sandberg said in an article in the UK’s Telegraph that there is a “laugh factor” around the search for alien life: “Many people refuse to take anything about it seriously, but because it’s such a big deal, very sad.”
Toby Ord, another FHI scientist at Oxford, suggested that this should be discussed publicly before signaling aliens. He added that even listening to incoming messages can be dangerous. For they can be used to ensnare earthlings: “These dangers are small but poorly understood and not yet well managed.”
Ord says there is no scientific consensus on the ratio of possible peaceful civilizations to possible hostile civilizations in the galaxy: “Given that the disadvantage may be much greater than the advantages, this does not seem like a good situation to me to take active steps towards contact. ”
Weaker signals have been broadcast into space in the past using older technologies, such as the Arecibo message sent in 1974. Russian scientists made a series of such publications in 1999 and 2003, called Cosmic Summons. “The poor aliens may already be getting many different messages for many different reasons,” Sandberg says.
Scientists from the BITG group suggest that an alien species advanced enough to communicate in space would most likely achieve a high level of cooperation among themselves and therefore would know the importance of peace and cooperation. But Canadian futurist George Dvorsky dismisses this theory as an old metaphor, saying he can think of many scenarios in which extraterrestrials with malevolent tendencies continue to exist.
Stephen Hawking also warned
Some scientists, including Stephen Hawking, have warned in the past that these messages could be risky.
Hawking pointed out in a 2010 documentary that interactions between civilizations at different levels of technological advancement tended not to work out well for the less advanced group.
Hawking said, referring to the arrival of Europeans in the Americas, “We just have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life can turn into something we don’t want to meet.”
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