Last October, a conference at the Royal Society looked into “the detection of life, the communication with potential extra-terrestrial civilizations, the implications for the future of humanity, and the political processes that are required.” It was a fascinating gathering, one whose results I’ve been able to study ever since thanks to Keith Cooper, who forwarded videos of a debate there on interstellar messaging (METI) and passed along transcripts of the various panels. Keith is editor of the superb Astronomy Now and is an accomplished writer on space exploration and astronomy, with over 100 articles published. I especially want to mention SETI: Cosmic Call and SETI: Terminating the Transmission in relation to what follows below.
For as Keith and I discussed these issues, it occurred to me that our correspondence in the form of a dialogue was a natural for Centauri Dreams. So here’s a slightly edited version of some recent thoughts of ours on SETI, the strength of extraterrestrial signals, and the possibility of sending return messages to the stars. Expect more in this exchange in the near future.
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