How should humanity respond to first contact from extra-terrestrials? UK alien hunters to ask the public in the largest ever survey of its kind
- A survey has been launched which will ask the public how we should respond
- The views they will gather will help shape plans for an international protocol
- Scientists send probes to planets in the solar system to search for alien life
- SETI’s Breakthrough Listen project uses antennas to try and pick up signals
- But there is no procedure enshrined in international law on how to respond to a signal from an alien civilisation
Scientists have decided that a huge public survey should be conducted on how we should respond should we be contacted by aliens.
Members of the UK Seti Research Network (UKSRN) are to launch what is believed to be the largest ever survey of public attitudes towards alien contact today.
The views they will gather, taken at the Royal Society’s summer science exhibition, will help them shape plans for an international protocol.
They will set the ground rules on how organisations should share news of any signals that are detected; what sense can be made of them; and how humans might reply.
Although scientists send probes to planets in the solar system to search for alien life there is no procedure in place in the event that aliens attempt contact with Earth.
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Scientists have decided that a huge public survey should be conducted on how we should respond should we be contacted by aliens (stock image)
WHAT IS SETI’S BREAKTHROUGH LISTEN INITIATIVE?
Breakthrough Listen is a privately funded, decade-long research project based at the University of California, Berkeley.
It has just announced a significant number of new observations.
They examined roughly 1,300 nearby stars using large antennas in West Virginia and Australia.
For each of these star systems, they sifted through several billion radio channels, looking for a signal of the type that only a radio transmitter can produce.
No extraterrestrial radio emissions were detected.
But those 1,300 stars represent only a minuscule sample of the total planetary population.
‘There is absolutely no procedure enshrined in international law on how to respond to a signal from an alien civilisation,’ said Dr Martin Dominik, an astronomer at the University of St Andrews told the Guardian.
‘We want to hear people’s views. The consequences affect more people than just scientists.’
Last month, astronomers from Breakthrough Listen, a $100 million project to search for intelligent extraterrestrial communications in the Universe announced they had heard nothing after scanning one million stars in our galaxy, 100 nearby galaxies and the plane of the Milky Way.
But Dr Dominik says that Breakthrough Listen has barely scratched the surface.
‘If there were tens of quintillions of other civilisations like ours evenly distributed in the Milky Way, the Breakthrough Listen project would not have heard a thing,’ he said.
‘It makes sense to create a legally binding framework that is properly rooted in international law,’ he said.
‘If there are public consequences of replying and sending out messages that is a political decision and not one to be taken by scientists.’
Dr John Elliott, a reader in intelligence engineering at Leeds Beckett University, said that the Seti Institute, a research organisation whose mission is to explore the universe, would inform the world that communication has been made.
But in an era of social media, a flood of fake news and conspiracy theories could leave people utterly confused about the truth, he told the Guardian.
He said that while scientists might receive an intercepted signal complex enough to be from an advanced civilisation.
But it might take weeks or months to understand, if it can be deciphered at all.
There is also the added problem that any signal could easily be electromagnetic noise from equipment or a snippet of a terrestrial broadcast that leaked into space, unintended for such distant ears.
‘We can’t rely on there being a Rosetta stone [an ancient Egyptian stone tablet that enabled hieroglyphs to be read], or some great decipherment crib, in the signal. It could be an image or simply junk,’ Dr Elliott said.
‘It will take time to understand and if that work starts to drag out and there is nothing new we can say, the information vacuum will be filled with speculation,’ he said.
‘Conjecture and rumour will take over.’
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