Calling All Aliens!

Get ready to phone E.T.

In 1974, in response to the broadcast of the Arecibo Message -- the first serious effort at Active SETI or METI (Messages to Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) – astronomer Sir Martin Ryle expressed misgivings, saying any creature receiving the message may be “malevolent or hungry.”

Some are resurrecting those concerns today as scientists – and others – seriously pursue plans to broadcast messages to the stars in the hopes they will one day be received, and answered, by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization.

Such plans are under debate at the International Academy of Astronautics’ symposium on SETI, taking place right now at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

So far, no one presenting at the conference has explicitly expressed concern over such plans, and some have expressed unqualified and enthusiastic support for – and intention to send – such messages.

Traditional or “passive” SETI experiments began almost 50 years ago with Frank Drake’s pioneering research, which led to the first true SETI program – Project Ozma – and the Drake Equation. (Drake was also one of the folks behind the 1974 Arecibo Message.)

Five decades later, SETI scientists have yet to detect an unmistakable signal from an alien civilization – although they will be the first to tell you they have only scratched the surface of the vast galactic haystack. (Try this on for size: According to Dr. Jill Tarter, the SETI Institute’s science director and a presenter at the conference, there are more stars in the Universe than grains of sand on Earth.)

Now, some SETI scientists want to speed up the search by announcing the presence of humanity to the cosmos, in hopes a receiving alien civilization will be moved to respond in kind.

Russian astronomer Alexander Zaitsev is easily among the most enthusiastic supporters of this effort. Zaitsev plans to broadcast what he calls the Earth Radio Message starting in October.

Controversy over the wisdom of METI has roiled the SETI community for several years, as detractors – including diplomat Michael Michaud – have argued for restraint, or at least debate, before broadcasts begin.

METI advocates such as Zaitsev point out humans have already been announcing their presence to the cosmos for decades through military and civilian radar and broadcasting.

Critics have advanced plans to revise voluntary protocols governing the practice of SETI by adding proposed restraints on the practice of METI. (Current SETI protocols already provide that no broadcast response to a received alien signal should be given without international consultation.)

At the UNESCO conference, SETI Institute astronomer Seth Shostak vigorously and eloquently argued against such efforts, stating the SETI community has no right to tell others not to broadcast.

Shostak’s fear is the controversy will wrongly paint SETI as a dangerous activity -- which it is not, since traditional SETI has always been a purely “listening” exercise and most SETI scientists have no intention to broadcast anything.

“Leave SETI alone,” Shostak implored those who want to place new restrictions on METI in the current SETI protocols.

Shostak labeled as “paranoia” fears a successful METI project might point a malevolent extraterrestrial species to our existence here on Earth.

Do we “cower and hide,” Shostak said, asking if we do, must we tell our progeny to also hide forever?

Concluding his remarks, Shostak labeled efforts to use the existing SETI protocols to proscribe active broadcasts to aliens a “senseless, paranoid, and useless Maginot Line against an unfound, undefined and unknown foe” and called SETI an endeavor "too noble to be caged by fear and bad policy.”

However, one of Shostak’s colleagues at the SETI Institute, Doug Vakoch, offered a different viewpoint, telling his colleagues he viewed passive SETI as potentially more dangerous than actively broadcasting signals because if passive SETI ever does receive an alien signal, that success will lead to unrestrained and unregulated broadcasting by everyone with access to a transmitter.

Alexander Zaitsev, the Russian METI advocate, challenged this view, suggesting if everyone – including the aliens – are afraid to broadcast out of fear of invasion by an interstellar civilization, then traditional or passive SETI has no chance of success because there will be no signals to receive.

Others at the conference, such as William Edmondson of the University of Birmingham, suggested METI may prove useful in planning passive SETI strategies, on the assumption figuring out how to signal an extraterrestrial species will be instructive in how to search for a similar civilization’s signal beamed toward Earth.

Later in the conference, anthropologist Kathryn Denning of York University in Toronto argued for more respect on all sides of the controversy.

Whether or not to expose humanity to the potential risks of METI is ultimately a social and not a scientific question, Denning said, similar to current debates over climate change and global warming.

Because scientists cannot offer the public a realistic or quantifiable risk/benefit analysis, Denning suggests those involved in the debate acknowledge the hopes and fears of the opposing view.

“The real question is: who is entitled to make decisions that may affect all?” Denning proposed.

More to come . . .