Humanity has been dealing with some crunchy issues over the past year: a global pandemic, economic dislocation, climate change and heightened geopolitical tensions over Ukraine and Taiwan, to name a few. But in future we may look back on our times and ask one far more consequential question: was it really such a good idea to contact aliens?
Michio Kaku, the prominent theoretical physicist and author, is not alone in thinking that any successful attempt to alert any extraterrestrial intelligence to our presence might be a catastrophically bad idea. “I think it would be the biggest mistake in human history,” he told the New York Times last year. Kaku conjured up images of technologically superior interstellar conquistadores mishandling humans as brutally as Hernan Cortes dealt with Montezuma’s Aztecs in the 16th century. “If the aliens were to come, it’s not going to be a pretty sight,” he said. “Some people will worship them as gods. Other people will think they’re devils. And other people will want to cut a deal.”
But there are many astronomers who are excited about the idea of making contact with any extraterrestrial intelligence and are stepping up efforts to do so. One of the aims of the $10bn James Webb Space Telescope, which has just been launched, is to search for habitable exoplanets (planets orbiting stars outside our solar system), where other lifeforms may yet be found.