Motherboard explores UFOs, UFO culture, and the paranormal.
Stephen Hawking famously said that sending messages from Earth into deep space could destroy human civilization: “If aliens ever come to us, I think the result will be the same as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America.” which was not very good. Native Americans.”
Hawking’s words have often been used to discourage the practice of METI, which is messaging extraterrestrial intelligence. But how many “malicious” alien civilizations are there? And what are the chances that we will receive any messages sent to our galaxy from a rogue alien civilization? There has been little research on the subject, and very few scientists have speculated.
A new thought experiment attempts to at least anticipate that, in the hope that other scientists will begin to take METI more seriously, and attempt to determine how dangerous it really is to attempt to contact alien civilizations. .
According to this paper, which the author believes has “certain limitations”, there are About four “malicious extraterrestrial civilizations” in the galaxyAnd we could potentially send up to 18,000 interstellar messages to various exoplanets in our galaxy and the chances of ensuring our own destruction would still be the same as Earth being hit by a “global disaster asteroid.”
The paper – which has not been peer-reviewed – is called “Estimating the prevalence of malicious extraterrestrial civilizations” and was authored by Alberto Caballero, a PhD student in conflict resolution at the University of Vigo in Spain and author of a separate study. were. Published in peer-reviewed Cambridge University International Journal of Astrobiology Earlier this month an attempt was made to analyze that famous WOW! Signal originated.
Caballero says he had to make some assumptions that made it very difficult to know if his calculations were correct. To do the study, they researched how many external “invasions” have occurred on Earth over the past 50 years, meaning countries that have invaded other countries. They then took that data and applied it to the number of known and predicted exoplanets, and potentially habitable exoplanets, based on Italian SETI scientist Claudio McConne’s estimate that the galaxy might have 15,785 civilizations. (The original ideaan extension of Earthbound ideas of conflict in outer spacewill be familiar to fans of sci-fi fare such as Spread,
Caballero concluded that the chances of a hostile alien race invading Earth are slim – very low. “The probability of an extraterrestrial invasion by a civilization whose planet we are conveying is, therefore, about two orders of magnitude less than the probability of a planet-killer asteroid collision,” which is already a 100-million-year event, that paper writes in.
He also said that there is likely to be less than one malicious extraterrestrial civilization in the Milky Way that has also mastered interstellar travel, which would make them a so-called “Type 1” civilization.
“0.22 Type-1 civilizations (capable of near-interstellar travel), and 4.42 civilizations if they were all like humanity (we’re not Type 0 yet),” he said. “I don’t mention 4.42 civilizations in my paper because 1) we don’t know that all civilizations in the galaxy are like ours (below Type-0), and 2) a civilization like ours probably wouldn’t pose a threat to another because we have They don’t have the technology to travel to the planet (we’ll have access to that technology once Type-1 is created).
Caballero told Motherboard in a phone call that, as societies have become more advanced, there have been fewer invasions, suggesting that alien civilizations capable of destroying Earth would be less interested in actually doing so because they make technological progress.
I had based the paper only on life as we know it. We do not know the minds of supernatural beings. An extraterrestrial civilization might have a brain with a different chemical composition and they might not have our empathy or they might have more psychotic behaviors,” he said. “I found a way to do that. [the study]Which has limits, because we don’t know what aliens will be like. ,
“I think it’s still quite a secret topic, unfortunately, no one is willing to talk about it,” he said. “There’s a fear of sending the message out there, but there’s little research on whether it’s actually dangerous.”
Caballero understands that this isn’t necessarily the most sophisticated science, but he said he hopes that by putting a number in there, he can start a conversation about whether sending a message into space is really that risky.
“The fact that the estimated probability of extraterrestrial invasion is two orders of magnitude lower than that of a planet-killer asteroid collision should open the door to the next stage, an international debate raging on to determine the conditions under which the first Serious interstellar radio or laser messages will be sent to potentially habitable exoplanets nearby, he wrote.
