There has been much debate among scientists about the risks of sending out signals into space and listening for responses, with concerns that any contact with aliens would inevitably be bad news for humanity, potentially leading to human conflict.These fears, however, are unfounded, according to a paper published in the journal Space Policy that is a critique of a previous study discussing the geopolitical dangers of detecting extra-terrestrial life.
"In their 2022 paper for Space Policy, Wright et al. criticise the contention made by Wisian and Traphagan in their 2020 paper for Space Policy that there was a measurable risk of conflict being induced by one party merely detecting an alien signal in a passive SETI search - and then attempting to maintain exclusive access to that signal," John Rummel, a former SETI programme scientist and senior astrobiologist at NASA, told Newsweek.
SETI (Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence) and METI (Messaging Extra-terrestrial Intelligence) are organisations dedicated to finding and communicating with potential alien life in the universe, respectively.
The observable universe, or the area of the universe from which light has had time to reach our solar system, is approximately 93 billion light-years in diameter, with our Milky Way galaxy alone containing around 100 billion stars. Scientists hope that the sheer number makes intelligent life like ours statistically likely on at least a few other planets within communicable range of Earth.
"The Milky Way galaxy contains billions of stars, the vast majority of which are orbited by planets. And the universe contains billions of galaxies. If Earth is the only planet in the universe with life, it would be a miracle, and I don't believe in miracles. So there is almost certainly life out there "METI International President Douglas Vakoch told Newsweek.
"In our paper, we argue that the specific scenario that many people imagine, that the signal will contain "advanced" physics and engineering that we can use to build new technologies, perhaps even military technologies, is pretty unlikely, and that even if it does happen, there's not much governments could do to get a monopoly on that information," says the author of the space policy paper and professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the Penn State Extra-terrestrial Intelligence Center. "Because a signal from space is accessible to anyone on Earth with a satellite dish, there's little point in, say, sending the army in to take over a radio telescope facility."
"The issues raised [in 2020] represent a problem in international cooperation that could be applied to any technological advance (e.g., atomic weapons, quantum entanglement, etc.)," Rummel added.
According to Wright, the reactions of people to that information are difficult to predict, which means that governments may mistakenly believe that sending in the army is a good idea.
"To avoid this, we argue that policymakers and government officials should be aware of SETI and understand the nature of any early-detected signal. There are some protocols in place that SETI practitioners are aware of and generally try to follow, such as widely sharing the details of any detected signal to avoid misunderstandings."
Signal Transmission
While there has been no evidence of alien life, we have been sending radio signals into space since the dawn of wireless communication on Earth.
"Some people are concerned that if we send intentional radio messages into space, we will reveal our existence for the first time, potentially opening ourselves up to an onslaught of hostile aliens," Vakoch explained. "But it's too late for Earthlings to flee. For a century, we've been making our presence known in space via unintentional radio and television signals travelling at the speed of light."
The fact that we have yet to receive a response does not necessarily imply that we are alone in the universe.
"A lot of those ideas stem from the mistaken belief that we've been working hard for decades to detect alien life, and that our lack of success thus far must mean they either don't exist or are hiding," Wright explained. "In fact, the radio search for alien life has only scratched the surface, and thanks to the Breakthrough Listen project, we've only recently conducted thorough radio searches of the nearest stars across much of the radio spectrum. So there's no reason to believe anyone is hiding; they could all be out there, but we haven't checked the right stars or frequencies yet."
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