Rabie asks the question: "What if our search for Aliens goes horribly wrong?" In a recent interview with The Guardian, string theorist Michio Kaku stated that while the chances of making contact with aliens are high, reaching out to them would be a “terrible idea.” (Others disagree, arguing that alien civilizations will likely pose no threat to us.) Kaku cited the much-anticipated launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which is currently slated for October 31, as an indication of how far we have come in the ongoing quest to find aliens.
The JWST will observe exoplanets in infrared wavelengths that astronomers have never examined them in before, allowing them to make far more detailed observations of alien worlds. “That’s why I think the chances are quite high that we may make contact with an alien civilization,” Kaku tells The Guardian. “There are some colleagues of mine that believe we should reach out to them. I think that’s a terrible idea.”
Therein lies the debate. To use the slang of text messaging, do we leave aliens on read?
HOW DO WE MAKE CONTACT WITH ALIENS?
IN 1960, astronomer Frank Drake began the search for alien signals being sent to us from beyond the Solar System. At the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, Virginia, Drake pointed a radio telescope toward two nearby Sun-like stars, Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani, which seemed like good candidates for hosting habitable worlds. After observing the stars for 150 hours over the course of four months, Drake’s initial hunt for alien life was unsuccessful. However, the initial observations launched our modern-day search for alien civilizations that is ongoing today. That initial experiment led to the foundation of the SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, California. The non-profit organization searches for narrow-band radio transmissions from other planets.
The SETI method is based on the idea that life not only developed on another planet but that it evolved the same way that life did on Earth, advancing enough to create modern-day technology. Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center and principal investigator for the Breakthrough Listen project, has been listening to the cosmos to detect direct emissions from alien technology since 2012.
“The search for extraterrestrial intelligence almost exclusively uses what we call remote sensing methodologies,” Siemion tells Inverse. “We basically use large telescopes to try to detect a particular type of electromagnetic radiation that we know to only arise from technology.” Astronomers hunting for these signals use optical telescopes, infrared telescopes, and radio telescopes to detect technologies that uses the same physics that we use on Earth. However, the SETI method relies on listening in to the cosmos, rather than reaching out to aliens. “So the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is almost exclusively an entirely passive activity,” Siemion says.
On the other hand, some astronomers believe in sending out signals so that Earth can be detectable as well, rather than waiting to listen in on another civilization’s signals.
CAN YOU HEAR ME? — Astrobiologist Douglas Vakoch, president of the METI (Messaging ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) Institute, wanted to reverse the process to let the aliens know that we are here. “What happens if every civilization out there is doing that, we are just listening and not transmitting,” Vakoch tells Inverse. “It will be an incredibly quiet universe.” The METI organization sent out its first radio transmission in 2017, and they are currently in the process of building a laser transmitter to reach further distances by encoding messages into narrowly-focused bandwidths. However, not everyone is on board with the idea of transmitting our own signals into the universe.
Read on in the article ......
[Note: for a review of alien possibilities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlPG7CwudAs ]
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