Why aliens would do well to give Earth a wide berth
Four recent events have given some encouragement to scientists who are trying to make contact with intelligent life forms elsewhere in the universe. In April 2016, Stephen Hawking unveiled a remarkable project to hunt for alien life in a 25-trillion-mile sweep of outer space, backed financially with £70 million from Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg and russian internet tycoon Yuri Milner. In July 2016, in a £890 million mission, Nasa’s Juno spacecraft reached Jupiter and discovered plumes of water on one of that planet’s moons. In August 2016, a ‘second Earth’, now named Proxima B, was discovered orbiting Proxima Centauria, the closest star to our sun. It’s only 4.2 light years away (virtually on our doorstep) and orbits within the ‘habital zone’ where it’s neither too hot nor too cold, just right for liquid water. In September 2016, a russian telescope detected a mysterious burst of radio signals from outer space. The implications of this are mind-blowing: are aliens trying to contact us? The possibility of other intelligent life in the universe might excite scientists, but do they really understand the implications? If our world has, as believed by some, already been visited and studied by some alien ‘David Attenboroughs’, they must have been amazed at the advances we’ve made in travel, communication, medical issues and weaponry in the past 150 years. We can circumnavigate the Earth in days and communicate by satellite with any part of our planet. We have atom, cobalt and hydrogen bombs. We’ve walked on the Moon and sent probes to the far regions of the universe: we could be a serious threat to other planets. We might have advanced scientifically, but we remain savages, unable to live in peace with our neighbours, killing others because they look different or think differently, and are ruled by obsessive beliefs in a variety of religious myths. How could we hope to communicate with strange beings? our fears and instinct for self-preservation would place us on the defensive, choosing to attack rather than communicate. For years, I’ve watched science fiction films whose theme has been of alien invaders trying to conquer the world. But does Earth deserve to survive? I’m on the side of the aliens. If I could send a message into space, it would be to warn anyone out there to avoid us. If they’re more civilised than us, they might need to destroy us. Perhaps they could devise a humane way of eradicating life on our planet: destroy all our food chains, creating a dreadful famine, then we savages here would finish the job for them by resorting to murder and cannibalism.
CELIA GRAHAM-TURNER, Birmingham.