Is humanity even ready for its first contact with intelligent aliens?

There’s this new study suggesting that we should get ready for meeting aliens, and it looks into what might happen socially if that actually occurs. So, how things go down during our first encounter with aliens is a big deal. This paper is saying that it could be pretty risky for us humans. And on top of that, the whole event might go down without us even recognizing it culturally. Guess who’s behind that cool new research paper? It’s Andreas Anton from the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health in Freiburg, Germany.

• So, in the hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), they’re all about the signal scenario. Basically, they’re using radio telescopes to catch any artificial signals coming from way out there in space.
• Here’s the lowdown on the technosignature scenario: They’re thinking that in the future, super-duper telescopes will spot signs of alien tech, whether it’s from back in the day or happening right now.
• With the artifact scenario, the idea is that at some point, maybe in our own solar system or even here on Earth, we might stumble upon the leftover stuff—like a space probe—belonging to an alien civilization.
• Alright, so with the encounter scenario, we’re talking about an alien spaceship showing up close to Earth. The deal is, from the way it moves or what it does, we figure it’s being controlled by some kind of intelligence, whether it’s living beings or artificial.

Also Read: Next-gen space telescopes could leverage deformable mirrors

Do aliens use artificial intelligence?

So, the paper brings up a big question about the whole encounter scenario: Is the alien tech being run by living beings or some kind of artificial intelligence?

“A biological life form, we suspect, could potentially cause greater anxiety, as the immediate question would be what ‘they’ want here. It also has an inbuilt assumption that they have a relatively nearby base or have superfast travel (maybe faster than light) and would thus be very far ahead of us technologically,” Anton and co-authors write in their paper. 

“However, the question of whether the encounter is with a biological life form or the emissaries of a machine civilization could remain unresolved for a long time,” they added.

Humanity needs to be prepared

The paper wraps up by saying the more we explore the universe and dig into space through our own research, “the more likely it is that we will be confronted with alien civilizations, their signals or their legacies.”

So, the researchers are saying, given all that, we gotta get our act together as a global society and be ready for this situation.

“In the political sphere, the question of how to deal with this discovery and possible communication with extraterrestrial civilizations would lead to a global discourse,” they write in the paper. “International cooperation would be essential to develop a unified approach to dealing with this new reality.”

You can check out this research paper called “Meeting Extraterrestrials: Scenarios of First Contact from the Perspective of Exosociology” right here.

Are we alone in the cosmos?

Wanting to figure out where we fit in the universe is something humans have been curious about for ages. People have been thinking about this question for thousands of years. Way back, even before Christ, Greek philosophers like Anaximander and Epicurus had ideas that the cosmos is filled with planets, and some of them might have life.

For the longest time, we were stuck just guessing, but then we hit a breakthrough. Once we came up with telescopes and got the hang of the scientific method, things changed. We hit those milestones ages ago, and now scientists are going full steam ahead in the hunt for extraterrestrial life.

Okay, maybe saying “going great guns” is a bit much. But we’ve made some serious headway, especially in the past decade, and there might be some major discoveries on the horizon. Let’s quickly check out where the search for ET started and where it’s going.

A century-long hunt for aliens

Back in August 1924, one of the early attempts at searching for extraterrestrial life went down. Astronomer David Peck Todd and his crew got creative, sending a radio receiver up into the sky using an airship. The idea was to catch any signals from potential Martians, especially since Mars was swinging by Earth at that time.

The serious hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence, known as SETI, didn’t really get going until 1960. Cornell University astronomer Frank Drake took the lead that year, using a radio telescope in West Virginia to eavesdrop on signals from the stars Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani. This project, called Project Ozma, was inspired by a groundbreaking paper from 1959 by Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison.

Ever since then, scientists have been on the lookout for “technosignatures” in the sky. At first, they were all about radio signals, but now they’re also keeping an eye out for flashes of light. That’s where the growing trend of “optical SETI” comes into play.

SETI scientists have to stay open-minded because who knows what kind of messages an advanced alien civilization might shoot our way. So, astronomers in the game usually keep an eye out for signals that seem strange and artificial—something not cooked up by any known natural space stuff.

Will humanity be able to decode ET signals (if any)?

There’s a new study out in Acta Astronautica that delves into the stats of the whole quest for alien civilizations. This study goes all statistical with Bayesian analysis to calculate the odds of catching a signal from alien tech. Now, with Bayesian stats, it’s more about how probable things are, not absolute certainty—it’s like viewing the universe through the eyes of a gambler. So, here’s the lowdown: Two key assumptions are in play. First, we’re betting that intelligent life can pop up somewhere out there in the universe (just look at us humans, right?). Second, even after 60 years of searching, we’ve got zilch in terms of signals.

The author tosses in a couple more ideas on top of that. First off, they’re suggesting that smart civilizations could pop up randomly, anywhere and anytime. So, Earth isn’t like the VIP spot in the universe—we’re just as likely to come across aliens as anywhere else. Second, if an alien crew is beaming signals into space, those signals could either spread out in all directions (kinda like how our radio signals do) or be shot randomly. Now, picture this: If most of these civilizations decided to aim their signals toward the middle of the galaxy, we’d have a tough time picking them up from 30,000 light-years away from the galactic center.

These guesses kind of add up, given what we already know. I mean, they’re not any crazier than other ideas, right? So, taking all this into account, the author went on to calculate the maximum number of signals we might get from alien tech. The best-case scenario envisions a 95% chance that, in a century, there won’t be more than five whopping alien signals zooming around the galaxy.

So, it’s like flipping a coin—a straight-up 50/50 chance—that we folks on Earth will pick up a signal in the next 1,800 years. Unless some clever alien crew intentionally shoots a signal our way, our odds of stumbling upon something exciting anytime soon aren’t that great. But hey, that doesn’t mean we should throw in the towel. So, if you’re hoping for some evidence of aliens making an appearance soon, maybe tuning in to those congressional hearings about UAPs is worth a shot after all.

Also Read: 99% of space junk goes unnoticed, but not for long

Are aliens deliberately hiding from humans?

The researchers behind this study got into the nitty-gritty with some math. They whipped up these sophisticated mathematical models to see what would happen if you started harvesting energy from a planet. Then, they used these models to figure out how this energy-harvesting could impact the survival of a high-tech society.

The researchers didn’t just stick to the math—they also delved into info from past civilizations that bit the dust on Earth, like Easter Island. They used this data to fuel their models. What they uncovered pointed to four potential trajectories for how civilizations develop. In each of these scenarios, grabbing energy and tapping into resources ultimately leads to significant climate shifts that shake up the world for any intelligent society on a planet—kind of like us humans here on Earth.

Scientists have tossed around a bunch of ideas about why we haven’t made contact yet. They’ve suggested everything from aliens taking a nap to playing a game of hide and seek on purpose. Some brainy folks have even floated the notion that really advanced societies might end up wiping themselves out before they get a chance to reach out to other smart beings in the universe.