{"id":18162,"date":"2022-10-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-10T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/?post_type=purple_issue&p=18162"},"modified":"2022-11-02T12:50:17","modified_gmt":"2022-11-02T11:50:17","slug":"first-contact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/2022\/10\/11\/first-contact\/","title":{"rendered":"First contact"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

FIRST CONTACT<\/span><\/h2>\n\n

WHAT HAPPENS IF WE EVER DETECT A SIGNAL FROM EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE? <\/p>\n\n

by DR STUART CLARK <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n

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I<\/span>t all seems so simple in the movies. An astronomer \u2013 often a maverick \u2013 is sitting alone in a radio telescope\u2019s control room when a strange signal comes across the speakers. Somehow, the astronomer knows instantly that it\u2019s from another world and, a few computer clicks later, the message is decoded and the plot begins to unfold. <\/p>\n\n

But how easy would it be to understand what an extraterrestrial civilisation is saying to us in real life? With a renewed interest in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) sweeping across the world, that\u2019s the question increasingly being discussed by linguists and other scientists. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m optimistic. I\u2019m quite certain that there\u2019s no point in sending a signal that you don\u2019t want to be understood. So it\u2019ll be understandable,\u201d says Sheri Wells-Jensen, associate professor of linguistics at Bowling Green State University, Ohio, and a board member of the Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI) organisation. However, that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019ll be <\/span>easy <\/em>to understand. Without direct access to the beings who wrote the message, it could take years, decades or centuries for us to decode the message. Or we may never decode it all. And here\u2019s where things truly take a turn. Based on some researchers\u2019 thinking, it may be that never decoding the signal is the best, safest option because we\u2019ll have no way of knowing what such a message contains.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

\u201cWITHOUT DIRECT ACCESS TO THE BEINGS WHO WROTE THE MESSAGE, IT COULD TAKE YEARS, DECADES OR EVEN CENTURIES FOR US TO DECODE THE MESSAGE\u201d <\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

It\u2019s easy to assume that a message would be benign, perhaps supplying us with information to shortcut centuries of scientific investigation, but some experts now think that the message might have a darker \u2013 even dangerous \u2013 intention. If so, is our quest to answer the question of are we alone, a case of being careful what we wish for? <\/p>\n\n

A REALISTIC POSSIBILITY<\/h5>\n\n

The idea of other life in the Universe stretches back to antiquity. But according to David Dun\u00e9r, a professor in the history of science and ideas at Lund University, Sweden, it became more realistic to consider the possibility in the 16th and 17th Centuries. This was the time of the Copernican revolution, when Earth was realised to be a planet circling the Sun, and the Sun was accepted to be just another star. This meant that all the other stars in the Universe had the potential to have planets around them as well. <\/p>\n\n

During the 18th and 19th Centuries, scientists began to think of ways we might communicate with extraterrestrials. Thinking that the Moon could be inhabited, German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss suggested cutting down large swathes of the Siberian forest to display geometrical shapes. To be certain the signal was not misinterpreted as a natural phenomenon, he suggested that the forest be cut into a geometrical representation of the Pythagorean theorem. <\/p>\n\n

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German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss suggested cutting shapes in forests try to communicate with extraterrestrials living on the Moon<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

It was in 1960 that American astronomer Frank Drake launched SETI as it exists today. He used the Green Bank Radio Observatory\u2019s 26-metre dish to scan for alien radio signals from the nearby stars Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani. He didn\u2019t receive anything that stood up to scrutiny, but it established the idea of using radio telescopes to search for extraterrestrial radio signals.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

While interest in the endeavour has waxed and waned over the years, currently things are looking up. \u201cThere\u2019s a resurgence in SETI at the moment,\u201d says Prof Michael Garrett, director of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics and the current chair of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) SETI Permanent Committee. He says that a catalyst for this new interest is the investment made by Russian-Israeli venture capitalist Yuri Milner, who studied theoretical physics at Moscow State University. As part of his Breakthrough Initiative programme, Milner has set aside $100m in funding for SETI. Beginning in 2016, Breakthrough Listen started using radio telescopes at the same Green Bank telescope where Drake began the search.<\/span><\/p>\n\n