SETI, Fear and Trembling
Though the recent discovery of what is purported to be an extraterrestrial signal is deemed by SETI (the privately funded Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute) as being highly exaggerated, it does raise the question of what happens when -- years, decades, centuries from now -- we eventually determine that humankind has received a signal from an alien intelligence. With 200 million stars in this galaxy alone and (based on initial surveys) most having planets – odds would have it that somewhere in the universe several worlds might produce life technologically advanced enough to announce their presence at great distances.
Throughout the years conventional wisdom has proposed several scenarios that would result from such a find: a) Upon discovering another intelligence not of this world, all religions will be rendered trivial, the sectarian violence that has plagued mankind for two millennia will end and we’ll all become tasteful secular humanists; b) Mankind, forced to view itself as one species instead of a group of divisive, carping nationalities, will band together and realize how silly it is to fight over trivial things like genocide and slavery; c) Mankind, upon finding evidence of another intelligence, will no longer feel alone in the universe.
It is the last of these scenarios that seems the most reasonable and grounded. But for those who have the privilege of pondering such things, I am not convinced that such a discovery would make them feel any better about their place in the universe, and they may feel a whole lot worse. Any signal will most likely not be found in our galactic neighborhood, some five, ten, or one hundred light years away, but will most likely be found many orders of magnitude more distant, perhaps even outside our galaxy. Even at the speed of light, this distance would make practical communication with a civilization impossible, assuming a signal that had traveled some 100,000 light years would still have someone around to hear its reply some two hundred thousand years later.
Arthur Clarke once wrote that space is small; it is planets that are big – you can conceptually put your arms around a planet’s dimensions, but space doesn’t offer that kind of grappling hook. A distant signal would provide scale and heartbreaking perspective to the immensity of the universe, driving home our isolation, putting into sharp relief a question that was previously academic.
Though the recent discovery of what is purported to be an extraterrestrial signal is deemed by SETI (the privately funded Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute) as being highly exaggerated, it does raise the question of what happens when -- years, decades, centuries from now -- we eventually determine that humankind has received a signal from an alien intelligence. With 200 million stars in this galaxy alone and (based on initial surveys) most having planets – odds would have it that somewhere in the universe several worlds might produce life technologically advanced enough to announce their presence at great distances.
Throughout the years conventional wisdom has proposed several scenarios that would result from such a find: a) Upon discovering another intelligence not of this world, all religions will be rendered trivial, the sectarian violence that has plagued mankind for two millennia will end and we’ll all become tasteful secular humanists; b) Mankind, forced to view itself as one species instead of a group of divisive, carping nationalities, will band together and realize how silly it is to fight over trivial things like genocide and slavery; c) Mankind, upon finding evidence of another intelligence, will no longer feel alone in the universe.
It is the last of these scenarios that seems the most reasonable and grounded. But for those who have the privilege of pondering such things, I am not convinced that such a discovery would make them feel any better about their place in the universe, and they may feel a whole lot worse. Any signal will most likely not be found in our galactic neighborhood, some five, ten, or one hundred light years away, but will most likely be found many orders of magnitude more distant, perhaps even outside our galaxy. Even at the speed of light, this distance would make practical communication with a civilization impossible, assuming a signal that had traveled some 100,000 light years would still have someone around to hear its reply some two hundred thousand years later.
Arthur Clarke once wrote that space is small; it is planets that are big – you can conceptually put your arms around a planet’s dimensions, but space doesn’t offer that kind of grappling hook. A distant signal would provide scale and heartbreaking perspective to the immensity of the universe, driving home our isolation, putting into sharp relief a question that was previously academic.
posted by Call Stack at 8:31 AM
1 Comments:
Under this scenario, it would almost be preferable to remain ignorant of any extraterrestrial civilization, because of the irresistable human nature to want what we can't have. Locked in this state of perpetual frustration, we would at first bemoan our separation between species, then make some futile attempts to work around the problem, and then failing that, simply deny that a message from another world ever really existed. Aesop really had humanity pegged!
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