If we find aliens, or they find us, what happens next? Most of the answers to that question come in the form of films. There’s Contact (we build a space ship), District 9 (coexist unhappily), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (friendly abductions) and Independence Day (bang!). Next week, Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival will give its answer, but what’s the plan in the real world?
Well, there has been a lot of thought about it. “There’s a big debate within the whole community over whether we should respond or not,” says Dr John Elliot, joint coordinator for the UK Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Seti) Research Network – although he admits that it may not be a choice that any single body gets to make. Seti’s policy, once it is fairly sure that an intercepted signal is an alien message, will be to share it openly to allow people all over the world to try to understand it. Thereafter, it will be hard to stop anyone from answering. “I would have thought that there would be a reply made in some form at some point round the globe by someone with the required equipment,” Elliot says.
This scenario imagines receiving a transmission, but not alien visitors themselves. The chance of that is considered remote, even by those who expect aliens to exist, because even aliens are presumed to work within the laws of physics. In summary: our galaxy is a flattish disc about 100,000 light years across, and our planet is right at a sparse edge of it; only a small proportion of the planets in our galaxy are within, say, 1,000 light years of us. As a result, even a craft from such a nearby planet travelling directly towards us at half of light speed – which may be impossibly fast for a machine with life inside it – would take 2,000 years to get here. Why would it come? And what are the chances of it arriving exactly now?
This article presumes that it's some kind of electromagnetic signal we receive. It's doubtful that such a signal, if verified, would be announced to the world. The Gatekeepers are not on board. If their ships suddenly appear all over the Earth hovering in the sky, that's another matter. And remember, if it's not on CNN, it didn't happen. ;-) To read more, click here.