Please Leave A Message After the Beep

I just read an article in the current edition of “The Skeptic” magazine, a fine publication for those who actually like to consider the facts before making absurd declarations, or perhaps even for those who actually use facts to avoid making absurd declarations. This particular article discussed a proposal associated with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence program (SETI) to send high energy laser pulses out into space as a message to any technological civilizations which might be watching. I would like to keep the story straight (why start now, you ask?), but I don’t have the article in front of me and cannot recall the author’s name; however, his basic theme was that we should give it a lot of thought before we actively seek to announce our presence to a galaxy potentially full of completely unknown creatures, civilizations and behavioral norms.

We have, of course, been leaking radio signals in a wide range of frequencies out into space for some time now. Mr. Marconi’s first signals should be reaching the orange giant Iota Cephei about right now, but radio waves diffuse quickly and may be indistinguishable from interstellar background noise at a distance, hence the laser idea. In December of 2008, an Australian astrophysicist observed a decidedly nonrandom pulse in the laser frequency range emanating from the night sky, and he and others have been scanning the same area of space almost nightly since. While it is not possible to say what exactly the signal was, astronomers believe communicating by laser over the vast distances between stars makes more sense than radio waves because of the coherence of the beam and ease in distinguishing it from background noise. The real question is, does it make sense for us to attempt to attract the attention of our galactic neighbors?

For those of us who grew up on Star Trek, Star Wars and the Outer Limits, we are pretty much used to the anthropomorphic intelligent alien that displays the standard range of human failures like greed, alcoholism and offensive body odor. We tend to create our aliens as we create our gods, in our own image. Some are loving and merciful; some are jealous and destructive, but for the most part they have practical limitations in their technology, resources and ambition, just like us. Occasionally we conjure up the more indecipherable extraterrestrial, such as Arthur C. Clarke’s monolith wielding phantoms who rescue the emotionally fragile HAL from certain doom, but these aliens are not generally useful metaphors for human self-analysis and there is not much box-office appeal in the Godzilla vs. Bambi scenario of infinitely scientifically superior alien civilizations. We prefer to imagine hard drinking Klingons or, at worst, creepy scorpion-lizard things lurking in the Nostromo’s bowels. The problem is, since we are the only example of a technological civilization that we have, there is no basis upon which to extrapolate probability with respect to what intelligent aliens would be all about.

So, is it really smart to broadcast our social security number and mother’s maiden name out into the cosmic void? How do we know that the sentient beings potentially listening are nice people? What if they want to eat us? Most people that speculate about these things have speculated that civilizations advanced enough to engage in interstellar communication will probably be trustworthy, but we humans are currently contemplating interstellar communication and I wouldn’t trust the human race any farther than I could throw Jupiter, especially not under the stress of contact with intelligent extraterrestrials. Many respectable persons have further speculated that an alien race capable of physical contact with us, whether in person or through their mechanical representatives, would have to be so advanced that their moral refinement would be assured. While this sounds like a truly lovely sentiment, there is no empirical way to test such an assumption other than phoning E.T.’s home and waiting for an answer, and then you’re committed. Evolution by natural selection implies a certain cruel logic and the citizens of any technological civilization orbiting some distant star would most certainly be descendents of creatures with sharp teeth, as are we.

Another point of view, which I find ironically comforting, is that any civilization advanced enough to contact us (i.e. visit us, enslave us, blow us up, etc.) would find us completely useless and uninteresting and would therefore not bother to pick up the phone. Some speculate that any aliens capable of spanning the unfathomable distances between stars have probably already scouted us out and moved on to something more worthwhile. Others suggest that we are all by our lonesome in God’s infinite creation, or at least that life is so rare and the Universe is so huge that there is little to no probability that any spacemen will find us, or that we will find them, within the probable life of human civilization. Any, or even most, of these things could be true. We don’t know, but it could also be true that the Borg have already picked up the signal and the invasion fleet is on the way.

A lot of people will probably find this whole discussion to be pointless; why would we be worrying about aliens when the world’s environment and economy are shot to hell? Many likely think SETI is a waste of taxpayer money, which it certainly is not, if only because it is completely privately funded, but no doubt the question of alien contact is not currently a priority to the average person. However, whether or not we should attempt to signal alien civilizations is to me a very important question, not as a specific debate about the potential risks or rewards of such a course of action, but because of what it says about how we see ourselves and our position in the cosmological order. If the truth be told, the average American would probably say that we are ready to take our rightful place in the galactic community and, with a little technological assistance from the Vulcans, we will quickly be up to speed on promoting truth and justice amongst the stars. I don’t know what the average Cambodian would think, but in general humanity could probably do with a humbling experience beyond the failure of global financial institutions. I am in favor of blasting the laser signal throughout the heavens in the hope that some polite and well dressed aliens will stop by and inform us of what a third-world hell-hole Earth is, with rampant disease, pervasive poverty and a truly staggering level of mindless violence, and when we inquire as to the solution to these problems they will say “quit being assholes” and fly away. It could happen.