Is humanity prepared for contact with intelligent aliens?

By?Leonard David

?published?about 8 hours

A new study calls for humanity to prepare for an encounter with extraterrestrial intelligence and examines the possible social consequences of such contact.

First, the consequences of first contact strongly depend on how it takes place. The paper believes that first contact with?alien life?poses considerable risks for humanity. Additionally, a first-contact event could also take place without being culturally recognized.

Andreas Anton of the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health in Freiburg, Germany, leads the intriguing new research paper.

Related:?The search for alien life

Scenarios

Anton and colleagues serve up a set of scenarios:

• The signal scenario?is the basis of?SETI?(search for extraterrestrial intelligence) programs, in which radio astronomers search for signs of alien civilizations. It assumes that radio telescopes can pick up artificial signals from the far reaches of space.
• The?techno signature?envisions that future powerful telescopes will find evidence of past or present extraterrestrial technology.
• The?artifact scenario?assumes that one day, somewhere in our?solar system?(or even on Earth itself), we will encounter the material remains of an extraterrestrial civilization — such as a space probe.
• The?encounter scenario?involves the appearance of an alien spacecraft in near-Earth space that can be assumed, based on its flight maneuvers or other actions, to be controlled by biological or artificial intelligence.

Biological beings or artificial intelligence?

The prospect of an encounter scenario, the paper points out, raises an important question: Whether a biological life form or an artificial intelligence controls the alien technology.

"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 superfast travel (maybe faster than light) and would thus be 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 add.

Be prepared.

The paper acknowledges that the more we know about?the universe?and the further we penetrate the cosmos through our research activities, "the more likely it is that we will be confronted with alien civilizations, their signals or their legacies."

That being the case, the researchers suggest humanity needs to be prepared as a global society for this scenario.

"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."

?This research paper, "Meeting Extraterrestrials: Scenarios of First Contact from the Perspective of exosociology," is available?here.?

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