Written by: Aryan Thagunna - 2022003, Grade X
Posted on: 20 October, 2020
Ever since we humans progressed in the field of communication, we did not look back. The invention of the telephone was the first piece of this massive puzzle. Since then we have discovered many ways to communicate with each other. Should it be radio waves or infrared waves, they were all major stepping stones in the way we communicate. Today we can communicate through various means with each other. To some extent, we have pioneered communication. With each other.
When we first began understanding space we have always had that one question. Is there an extraterrestrial (ET) life? It has been the point of interest of people of all ages from scientists to conspiracy theorists (to be fair everything is interesting for these guys). As far as I know, there are only two ways of exploring this question. Search for them yourself or wait for them to find you. As of today, we do not have the means or knowledge to go on a galaxy excursion. So are we just going to wait for the day we see a huge spaceship over our heads? Or are we going to send them a map of the universe we have explored so far giving them the location of our planet? The same question was asked by many scientists years ago. In the end, they chose to go for the latter choice. Hence SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) was established. Scientists decided on sending patterns of signal in forms of electromagnetic or other sorts of communication media that other potential life would be able to intercept. They even sent two golden phonograph records attached on the two voyagers into space for ET to intercept. Trying to reach out to aliens was in a full phase when many notable scientists started having second thoughts. Should we really be attracting attention from the unknown? Who knows how advanced the aliens are. One of these scientists was Stephen Hawkings. He stated that whenever two civilizations meet and one is more advanced than the other, the weaker one suffers. Due to the uncertainty of the likeness of the extraterrestrial life that intercepts our message, should we really be taking such a risk?
The other major factor we must take into consideration is the way our messages might be intercepted and interpreted. The golden record I mentioned earlier is as the name suggests a golden record that contains images and sounds from the earth. Will ET be able to understand the instruction inscribed on the record about how to play it. Even if they are able to play the record, will they understand that we are just trying to reach out and communicate? Or will their interpretation of our messages be different than our intentions? Or what if extraterrestrial life is not what we think at all. We describe things we do not know of or have not seen the way we have been living. The messages we have sent might have a very different meaning in the world of the unknown. Reaching out to things we do not know is in fact a blind shot. We do not know the severity of the risk we are taking. But if there actually is something out there that can intercept and interpret our messages, we cannot turn back now. It has been more than 60 years since we started reaching out. If something out there does exist that can intercept our messages, it is most likely that it already knows we are here. So is it on its way here or is it playing the silent game with us? I hope you sleep peacefully tonight now knowing that you might be waking up to an alien invasion tomorrow.
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