>From The Sunday Times December 16, 2007 Don’t call the aliens,they might not be friendly Tony Allen-Mills in New York FOR decades it has been a staple of science fiction � somewhere out in the galaxy, a highly developed alien race picks up a radio signal from Earth, and decides to eat us for lunch.
In a world plagued by war, hunger and disease, a possible attack by little green men may not rank high among most nations’ concerns. Yet for a small group of scientists who are harnessing increasingly powerful technologies in a trans-galactic search for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, the prospect of catastrophe has stirred an angry debate. Two senior scientists have resigned from an elite international study group in protest over a lack of public discussion about the possible consequences of attracting the attention of aliens by sending signals deep into space. “We’re talking about initiating communication with other civilisations, but we know nothing of their goals, capabilities or intent,” warned John Billingham, a former Nasa scientist who has quit an extraterrestrial study group set up by the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA). The scientists involved are all acutely aware of the dangers of ridicule in their discussions of ET and his more sinister cousins. Yet recent advances in radio telescope technologies, and a substantial flow of private funding into ET-related projects, has transformed the “search for extraterrestrial intelligence” (Seti). In California last October, astronomers switched on the first elements of a giant new array of radio telescopes that will vastly extend the sweep of signals into outer space. Known as the Allen Telescope Array, it was built with the help of a $25m (£12.3m) donation from Paul Allen, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, and is a joint project of the Radio Astronomy Laboratory of the University of California at Berkeley, and the Seti Institute, America’s foremost centre of ET research. “I like to call Seti the longest of long shots,” Allen said when the telescopes were commissioned. “But if this array picks up a signal, that would be an amazing thing � a civilisation-changing event.” Yet critics argue that listening for signals and actively seeking out alien life are very different pursuits. At the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, Alexander Zaitsev, chief scientist at the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics, has been using a 70-metre-wide radio telescope in the Crimea to beam signals to nearby star systems � a practice known as “active Seti”. It is the steady shift from listening to transmitting that has divided the Seti community and raised awkward questions that no one has yet been able to answer. Who will speak for Earth if an alien civilisation replies? And are we really in danger of inviting Armageddon? Sir Bernard Lovell, the British founder of Jodrell Bank, once remarked that it was a “dangerous assumption” that any alien life would turn out to be friendly. If an alien fleet mobilises against us, Allen should be one of the first to know. “If they do find something, they’re going to call me up and say we have a signal,” he said. “So far the phone hasn’t rung.” Yet the question of whether we should go actively looking for ETs still needs to be debated, insists Michael Michaud, a former US State Department official who has also resigned from the IAA study group. Michaud is alarmed by his colleagues’ reluctance to halt transmissions pending consideration of the possible consequences. a.. Have your say a.. Have your say I agree ...other races will be more evolved and hopefully they will help us to wake up. Heather, Panama City, Florida Assuming that truly alien races would behave like humans do is an extremely anthropocentric view. Any intelligent races we may encounter would likely have motivations and desires so unfathomable that we'd likely never even begin to understand them, and vice versa. Or, we may encounter intelligent races with no such thing as what we call an 'agenda' at all. My tongue-in-cheek bet is that once humans learn how to control permutations in gravity, we'll start hearing all kinds of chatter. The races we talk to with our gravitic cell phones will raise an eyebrow at our bizarre use of radio signals for interstellar communications. "Don't you people know how slowly those move?" Quantum entanglement is a much better bet for those long-distance phone calls. Chuck, Portland, Oregon As I have already experienced seeing three UFO's and had confirmation from local air traffic control I believe "they" have already been here. Would you you cross the road to calm down uncivilised warring gangs armed with lethal weapons and lethal intent? No. I suspect that would be the attitude of an advanced intelligence too about visiting this very dangerous planet. If we have the capability to transmit signals then it is reasonable to believe that an alien civilisation with more advanced technology have been listening to us for years. It could be that the aliens are waiting to see if we destroy ourselves or grow up before they risk a visit. George Hillier, Sandbanks, England What is the point of wasting energy by beaming radio signals into space in the vain hope that some alien race will be able to detect it? Apart from the waste, given mankind's own propensities, it would seem to be wise just to keep quiet and listen. It's just engineering (not scientific) vanity - my signal's bigger than yours, nyah, nyah ne nyahnyah. Bill Q, Derby, Whenever a superior civilisation discovers and conquers a lesser one, it wipes it out either intentionally or by disease. Just look at history and what happened in the new world of America, and in Australia with the local inhabitants. If Aliens can get to us first, they will be more superior than us, therefore we should not be first in alerting them to our presence. George, London, Fermi's paradox states that given we are a young star and that any civilisation attaining intersteller travel shoul be capable of colonising the entire Galaxy in about 10,000 years - "So where are they?" Every year 1,000's of UFO reports are ignored - yet many are very credible - multiple witness observations of structured craft with ground and airbourne radar confirmation are on file. The USA's project sign in 1947 caim to the conclusion that UFO's were Alien spacecraft, so did Canada's project magnet and the French GEPAN study. Wake up - they are here already here and there is plenty of solid evidence availabel from old government papers now released. Our governements choose to deny the evidence because they cannot stop the UFO's flying around in our airspace and don't want to admit they are powerless. As for SETI - why are advanced intersteller civilisations going to communicate by radio waves!!! It's like Indian's trying attract another continents attention with smoke signal andrew moore, Koh Samui, Thailand I'm with Carl Sagan on this one. Sagan wrote about the evolution of possible advanced civilizations, including our own. He believed that all intelligent life reaches a turning point in their evolution in which they gain the technological capability to self destruct. We now have that capability in the form of the hydrogen bomb. His belief was that civilizations had to pass this critical test in order to go on to being advanced civilizations. Any civilization that has the capabilities to travel at the speed of light and come down to earth, has passed the critical self-destruction test. It also follows that civilizations that have passed the self-destruction test have learned to be peaceful and have reached a higher plane of spiritual development. Charly, Tucson , AZ a.. 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