Aliens in Real Life

The following text was originally found at http://www.vexen.co.uk/life/out.html, but that site seems to have since dissapeared. Credit for the below text is due to "Vexen Crabtree"

This page assumes the existence of ETI, and presumes that we have detected them. We cannot tell for sure if the message was intended for us, or what it means. What should we do?

We know that they're out there - The Situation

Let us presume for this page that we know for sure there is IL (intelligent life) out there and that they are advanced to a level that would enable us to communicate with them. We do not know if they have detected us, but we know where they are and we can conceivably send satellites there.

Problems

There are immediate problems and deeply important questions that we need to consider.

# Will they try to kill us?
# Will war break out?
# Should we try to destroy them?
# Should we communicate with them?
# Should we sent a probe?

Some of those may seem a little drastic but read on and you will see my reasoning...

Threats of war

War between two planets, assuming we are not spread all over the galaxy, is going to be a big stretch of the word "war". War could mean a single missile sent from here to there that is powerful enough to destroy the planet. That could be all - one missile - no threats, and one side will have eradicated the other and it could be done without the victim planet ever having any warning or knowing why, or who done it.

No intelligent person will want to eradicate a possibly intelligent planet though - so what could the reasons be for doing so?

First of all, they might do it to us. There is no way of telling what type of life they are, what their morals are or how they think. They might have no moral problem at all with eliminating a possible threat.

Secondly, any person on Earth can send something into space if they have the means. Upon discovering life there will be some people who choose that it is best if we destroy them. It doesn't matter why they think it, some people will. There is a chance that a group of people could attempt to destroy the alien planet and either fail or succeed. Failure would mean that they, upon realizing the threat, may well try to return the favour.

Thirdly, human error. We could send a satellite for the purpose of communicating a "hello" to them. But what if the satellite crashes into one of their satellites, or if it crashed into something important on the planet. What if the communication it sends is completely misunderstood or the physical method that it uses to communicate the message harms the aliens? They could take it as an act of war...

What happened to the Aborigines of Australia when we (Europe) colonized them? What happened to the natives of America when we settled there with our guns? We arbitrarily exterminated them and didn't stop until it was too late. At the time it was natural to do so. This was a stage of the development of Homo Sapiens that we hope we have left behind - the way that we assimilate or destroy those that we can.

How do we know that the race we are just about to communicate to has also gone past this stage? They could, just like we did, decide it was right to come over here and claim our planet as their own. We did it in the name of religion, the pagan aborigines were declared by the Church as "unholy" and therefore felt it morally necessary to wipe them out. We have no way of telling how an alien species would react upon learning of our existence. If they also have the concept of religion, then their religious book could state "all that which is not from this planet I give you is immoral, unethical and evil" and if this religion was dominant, that's the way they would consider us to be.

Possible actions on our behalf

Until we decided on a correct course of action after discovering there was alien life we would no doubt do nothing. There is not much chance that we would launch anything without first being sure that we were doing the correct thing.

There would be campaigns for Human Safety - those who do not wish to take the risk of contacting an alien species. Campaigns also for Moral Communication - that we are morally required to hail the other species out of respect and support so that a friendly symbiotic co-existence could be established.

1. Communicate to them - using mathematically based patterns or similar predictable patterns. This would be the fastest method of communication but unless they have a satellite dish (or otherwise) tuned in correctly they could miss it. We would have to keep repeating the message until we receive a response.
2. Send a probe - in order to send them a physical object with a great deal of information so that they can analyse it and respond. A probe however, is much slower, but the bandwidth would be much higher and there is not much chance of them missing it.
3. Do nothing - this is the safest approach, where we avoid letting them know we are here.
4. Send a bomb - and destroy the planet. This is the highly paranoid course of action, one that I hope we will never choose to take. One reason is that if we fail, they could do it to us. We could have no way of knowing how many planets they are spread across - they could still hit us back even if we did destroy a planet.

Given that option four is immoral, insecure and scientifically blasphemous we are left with communication or abstination.

Communication

Let us presume that they are 80 light years away. This is not a long way but still covers quite a few stars.

If we want to communicate with someone who we know exists, who probably do not know we exist we must first attract their attention. For example, someone could be trying to contact us but so far we could have missed the signal through unfortunately not facing a receiver in the correct direction!

If we sent a message, it would take 100 years to get there. They would have to detect it (how would we know that they had received it?) and then send one back, which would take at least another 100 years. This means that a reply would take 200 years! We would have to keep scanning from about 190 yrs after to 250 yrs after our transmission to see if they have replied to our one message. We would also have to keep re-sending the signal for the 100 years in case they have not detected it yet!

Only when we got a reply, in 200 years time, could we stop re-sending the original message! Obviously even if we did discover an IL in our lifetimes we certainly would never learn the outcome. If Human life was extended to beyond 200 years on average then perhaps it would seem more exciting - the prospect of still being alive when we are expecting an answer!

How long would it take us to establish a dictionary of mathematical terms with which to communicate? Depending on the length of the transmissions, (they would have to be highly repetitive in order to be easily recognizable and to prevent data corruption), it could take well over a thousand years to learn anything about them, or they about us.

It is possible to send pictures in binary, using multiples of prime numbers as obvious dimensions to sort the bit-map, but how much could we learn from that?

Optimistic Learning Curve

We could learn a lot about them. They could send, or we could, a series of these bit-maps which maps several intersections, thereby allowing a low-resolution 3D model to be built. This would lead to knowledge about their possible bone-structures and therefore their chemical make-up, metabolic rate, perhaps life span, and details about their environment.

We could calculate likely gravity strengths of their species' home planet; and possibly information such as light conditions, and the type of star that they orbit. All this can come from a simple physical description!

A probe would include a series of 3D models designed to suit different types of receptors, infra-red, visible light, ultra-violet, etc, until all major areas are covered. They be blind, or color blind, or infer things about their environment by other means so we could still suffer from out-of-context communication problems. A probe from one species to another is surely the scientists dream! Imagine the materials they would use, or the things we could copy! Or maybe they send a probe which is relatively primitive - but this page assumes we recognize them as intelligent. The previous page deals with the problems of identifying life.