Rational Dreaming
Stephen Hawking may be one of the greatest theoretical physicists in history, but I’m not terribly impressed by his recent warning about making contact with aliens:
In a series for the Discovery Channel the renowned astrophysicist said it was “perfectly rational” to assume intelligent life exists elsewhere. But he warned that aliens might simply raid Earth for resources, then move on.
“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.
I certainly agree that any extra-terrestrial aliens visiting Earth within the next thousand years or more would almost certainly be light-years ahead of us in terms of technology. And rather than being like Native Americans in relation to Columbus, we could be like ants to are in relation to human beings. Given that the Sun was born more than eight billion years after the Big Bang, there has been more than enough time for alien civilizations to be millions, or even billions of years ahead of us in technological prowess.
Thus Hawking’s concerns that aliens might want to raid Earth for its resources would appear to be misplaced. What does Earth have that isn’t available in abundance elsewhere? Not water, not minerals, not energy sources—they can be all found throughout the Solar System. So there’s really no need to trash our planet to get at stuff that’s freely available in places like the asteroid belt, Mars, or Jupiter and Saturn and their moons.
Now, there is one asset that Earth has that could be of great interest to a passing alien fleet—organic life. But, again, it’s highly unlikely that they are going need to rape the planet in order to get what they want. Why collect and transport whole specimens when millions of tiny samples of DNA from each species would give them everything they need in a much more convenient form? And while slavers are a popular staple of the science fiction genre, it would seem unlikely in the extreme that highly advance aliens would be at all interested in rounding up billions of reluctant and rebellious human beings as slave labor.
Aside from life itself, we do have one other asset that might be of immense value to our passing alien fleet—information. Not scientific data—though they might find a small amount of passing interest—but cultural and historical information. If the evolution of intelligent life is rare in the galaxy, it could be our own history and culture that they prize most highly, since it will likely be the most unique thing about us and our planet.
Even to an alien civilization that has spent millions of years exploring the nature of the Universe, our literature, media, and historical records will seem new and fresh, and the most efficient way to obtain it all is by a free exchange of ideas and information, not violence. Even if they only gave us a fraction of their accumulated knowledge, I’m sure we would be more than ready to part with just about all the cultural and historical information we have.
Prof Hawking thinks that, rather than actively trying to communicate with extra-terrestrials, humans should do everything possible to avoid contact. He explained: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.
In the past probes have been sent into space with engravings of human on board and diagrams showing the location of our planet. Radio beams have been fired into space in the hope of reaching alien civilisations.
Hawking is wrong here too. First, there is nothing we can do that is likely to betray our presence more than the simple fact that we live on an planet with an oxygen-rich atmosphere in the middle of our system’s habitable zone.
For example, NASA Kepler mission is expected to detect extrasolar planets with the same size and orbit of Earth up to several thousand light years away, and we are barely 50 years into our Space Age. Just imagine what a million-year-old space faring alien civilization should be able to do.
Anyone looking our way from up to a thousand light years away (at least) will immediately suspect there is life on Earth, and they might eventually detect signs of industrial activity too by analyzing Earth’s atmosphere for pollutants. Therefore, the odd stray radio signal broadcast into interstellar space is hardly going to add our chances of being discovered.
As for using our own history as a guide, I don’t believe that’s of much use either. Looking back at the worst excesses of our conquering past, we see that they were almost all about gaining control over some type of limited resource—land, people, precious metals, slaves, energy sources, even religious assets.
And as I have already mentioned, there is no reason to expect that visiting aliens will be driven by the same acquisitive desires, or that they will find Earth a particularly juicy target. So, while it is certainly possible to dream up plenty of worst-case scenarios, there is every reason to believe that our first alien encounter, should it ever happen, will be peaceful and mutually rewarding.
Prof Hawking said: “To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational. The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.”
The programme envisages numerous alien species including two-legged herbivores and yellow, lizard-like predators. But Prof Hawking conceded most life elsewhere in the universe is likely to consist of simple microbes.
Sadly, I agree with Professor Hawking on this last point. If intelligent life was commonplace, then unless there is some kind of real-life Prime Directive in place barring all alien life from contacting Earth, we should probably have heard from someone else by now.
While the Milky Way is a massive place, even at sub-light speeds it should still take an advanced alien civilization less than a million years to expand across the entire galaxy. Perhaps they are watching us from a safe distance—waiting for the right time to come and say “Hello!”—but I suspect not, and it may well be that we are the only intelligent life in the Milky Way right now.
Either way, Stephen Hawking’s concerns are overblown. Even in the highly unlikely event that aliens are heading in our direction and are implacably hostile, there is very little we can do about it. Maintaining radio silence isn’t going to help us remain undetected, and once they get here, they aren’t going to be stopped simply by slipping a computer virus into their mainframe while they aren’t looking.
So really, there just isn’t any point in worrying at all. Were either doomed or we’re not, and there is very little we can do change that.
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18 Responses to Stephen Hawking Warns Against Making Alien Contact
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Nice post. I especially appreciate the comment that our presence is already easy to detect, simply because of the composition of our atmosphere. Also agreed that intelligence probably isn’t common.
My main disagreement is about motivations and economics.
Sometimes some social (or ecological) situations favor “waste” (think peacock feathers). It’s called costly signaling, and evolves independently over and over again in many contexts. So some aliens may want to come here and do whatever they do because it’s hard and costly, not because it is efficient.
Also about:
“Even to an alien civilization that has spent millions of years exploring the nature of the Universe, our literature, media, and historical records will seem new and fresh, and the most efficient way to obtain it all is by a free exchange of ideas and information, not violence. ”
This scenario could also be bad. Why not just dump a bunch of nanorobots on us and digitize us and the rest of the biosphere as they disassemble our planet?
That would be a much more efficient way to get all of our current mental states, history, ecology, archaeological, and fossil record. If they wanted information, a slow, low-bandwidth, and heavily edited/biased conversation over radio or laser would be a pretty bad way of getting data from the Earth.
Even “nice” aliens motivated only to gather knowledge may be profoundly unpleasant.
While it’s probably not worth worrying about, since there’s not much we can do to hide or prepare. Still, I’d rather escape their notice if they exist and it does seem prudent not to go out of our way calling attention to ourselves.
Hi Eric, thanks for stopping by.
I guess that’s possible (anything is, in the absence of any evidence!). I’m not sure your scenario makes an encounter all that more likely though, since even if the motives are more prideful (or just for the hell of it) than economic, then it would tend to indicate that such efforts would be haphazard and rare—cost is still a barrier, even if it is not a deterrent.
Again, anything is possible, and that’s an interesting scenario, though if aliens were to have access to that incredible level of technology, one would hope that they had put some thought into making in non-destructive! And wrapping up the planet like that would be kind of like killing the goose that laid the golden egg—a one off shot—whereas leaving us intact would allow another harvesting of experiential and cultural data at a later point in time.
All speculation, of course, but it’s fun to ponder the (near) imponderable.
Here’s the thing he is touching on, and there is plenty of evidence to support this. Look up “The Dulce Files” and see what you find. The suggestion is that aliens are not in outer space…we keep looking to the skies, when in fact, they may be under our feet….
Light years are distance not time so aliens cannot be “light years” ahead of us, in terms of time. I’m 19 and I know that…
Interesting points by both Hawking and yourself. The possibility of intelligent alien life out there is an interesting concept and it does give us much to consider. For one, who ever said these aliens would necessarily be more technologically advanced than us? They could be anything from a primitive tribal state to a very similar level to us in their civilization’s development.
Whether alien’s do want to come and pillage out planet, make friends with us or continue to bash rocks together, I agree with Hawking that we shouldn’t be making any extra effort to put our name out there until we are ready. How one determines our readiness is an entirely different discussion, but we should be ready to meet them before we try communicating with them.
Thanks to Stephen Hawking for reminding us Against Making Alien Contact. Nice article
“we should probably have heard from someone else by now” Maybe we have heard from Aliens already.
Couple of months ago I watched an IMAX film in 3D called “The Hubble Telescope”.
Very good, it was amazing to see how far humans can now see into the galaxies etc, one point they showed a part on what they believe was stars being born.
Or maybe the aliens were out and about looking for resources for their planet, and they ran out of fuel, and broke down hovering over Africa?
You do make some excellent arguments over Stephen Hawking though, if an advanced alien civilization millions of years ahead of us into the space age wanted to discover us, they would have no problem finding us.
I love this post about making alien contact. Thanks for this information.
Are aliens really real? I have read so many articles on this but I haven’t seen any not one. However, it is also nice to create an article about fly fishing art. I love to have this as one of the topics.
I don’t believe in aliens. They are just created in everyone’s mind. Well, I hope this is true.
Well, I have never seen aliens before and until now. I hope I can see one.
If we consider aliens as intelligent lifeforms with more advanced civilization than ours then we don’t need those beacons we sent with our probes in outer space for them to find us. If the aliens wanted to make contact, they would have done so long ago.
Whether aliens are true or not, one thing is sure: I haven’t seen them yet. I will just believe if I can see them with my own naked eyes.
if “they” or a quarantine busting faction of them are advanced enough to come here from across a galaxy,it stands to reason they may have had this technical advantage since long before human kind ,or perhaps they’re involved in our creation.so why would they choose to reveal themselves now in dialogue let alone attack us? do we talk to insects which we wish to study? is it conquest when we harvest vegetables we earlier planted? tin foil hats assume our governments are the one’s who freely chose to keep a lid on this,but it should be obvious that the party with the ultimate advances gets to call the shots, otherwise nasa would have been on mars by now, instead of abandoning any moon base (project horizon)mid apollo.
or there may even be a metaphysical connection across galaxies, if there is truth to reincarnation, as this may account for the possibility that if our consciousness exists beyond our physical bodies, we may have originated elsewhere, perhaps from a dying planet that they knew as neighbors.
as keanu reeve’s alien character said “nothing ever dies completely, the universe is very efficient”-everything recycles. i suggest professor kaku’s, not hawking’s assumptions as most likely.there could be civilizations so advanced ,some harness entire stars for energy and others exist without physical bodies. we wouldn’t even know it if they were sharing the same space with us.
“Stephen Hawking may be one of the greatest theoretical physicists in history, but I’m not terribly impressed by his recent warning about making contact with aliens”
…Nor am I impressed with your reckless, childish naitivity in assuming that just because they are more advanced than we are, they will be looking to make friends and save us or whatever else it is you may think they would do…it’s very simple. Neither you nor any other person on this planet knows for sure whether or not they would be friendly, and there would be all varying degrees/levels of advancement they could be. They may not be the angelic beings you would like to imagine, they could very well be highly advanced AND be predatory or oppressive in nature toward other worlds or races.
The bottom line is any intelligent beings that would be able to visit us would be thousands of years (at least) ahead of us, and IF they are not the tree hugging E.T.s you hippies fantasize about and are not here to cuddle and coddle us then we are all in very, very big trouble.
@Jack: in the off-chance you return, thanks for taking the time to reply, though you probably shouldn’t have bothered with your second reply since the original commenter was clearly a spam bot designed to post on threads like this. Calling a spam bot a moron is kind of redundant, so I deleted the original message and your reply.
As for your first comment — who says that aliens would want to save us, or cuddle and coddle us? Not I. Just because I don’t believe there is much of a case for Hawking’s fears, doesn’t mean I believe they’re going to be the reincarnation of the Flower Power movement.
Perhaps, if life is common, they will only take a passing interest in our existence and move on. Maybe they will be a science survey mission with a special interest in primitive pre-fusion, technologies. Or maybe they’re a entrepreneurial entertainment corporation looking to make human culture the new “in thing” in alien high society.
We can always think of reasons why aliens would be implacably hostile to us–I’ve written a couple of short stories myself where Earth doesn’t survive such an encounter–I just don’t see them as being terribly likely scenarios. Even the shortest interstellar crossing takes a colossal amount of effort, and it seems highly unlikely that any advanced species would go to such lengths only to plunder and destroy resources that are worth only a tiny fraction of the costs involved in getting there.
Do I know any of this for a fact? Of course not, and I made it plain that I didn’t, but there is nothing in your comment that rebuts any of my arguments in favor of the likelihood that they won’t be out to get us.
Didn’t Carl Segan after the voyager 2 probe was launched warn against us sending out a message in a bottle and he was one of the people that helped create the gold disk on the probe. I believe he said in an episode if Cosmos that we have wars against each other but we have yet faced something from beyond the earth. It’s not really a question of if it’s a question of when. Let’s just hope they are not out to plunder there is good and evil in the universe. Not just here in Earth.