Stephen Hawking Calls Human-Alien Contact “Risky”
Posted By timothy on May 23, 2010
In Discovery Documentary, British Astrophysicist Warns Alien Life Could be Hostile
Rep[rinted from http://www.wedg.com/goout.asp?u=http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Space/stephen-hawking-alien-contact-risky/story?id=10478157
Alien encounters may seem like sure-fire winners to Hollywood, but one of the world's most famous scientists thinks they may be "too risky" be be worth seeking.
Steven Hawking discusses the risks he says alien life poses to humans.
In a new Discovery Channel documentary, which premiered Sunday night, British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking said that communicating with aliens could be a threat to Earth.
Hawking said it is likely that alien life exists, but a visit from extraterrestrials might be similar to Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas.
"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," he said. "We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet."
In the new program, "Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking," he speculated that aliens' capabilities "would be only limited by how much power they could harness and control, and that could be far more than we might first imagine."
He said it might even be possible for aliens to harvest the energy from an entire star.
"Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach," Hawking said.
Humans Only Recently 'Tapped Into Our Cosmic Neighborhood'
But don't start worrying quite yet. It's unlikely that those traveling troublemakers will visit us anytime soon, said space watchers.
Jill Tarter, director of the Center for SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Life) Research at the SETI Institute, said that her center uses radio telescopes and optical telescopes to listen for signals of technology from extraterrestrial life. So far, after more than 40 years, there has not been a peep.
She said SETI's technology is advanced enough that it can detect signals from up to 1,000 light-years away. There are about one million stars in that zone. A signal could have been sent 1,000 years ago, before that civilization had any knowledge of Earth.
But she said that as humans have leaked radio and television broadcasts into space over the past 100 years, it's possible that other planets could be monitoring Earth.
"It's quite reasonable that we might be on someone's transmission list," she said.
She emphasized, however, that though it's an effort worth considering, SETI doesn't actively transmit messages to space. So far, it has only listened.
"The question of whether or not we should transmit is a question that deserves a global conversation, and we're trying to figure out how to have that," Tarter said.
Stephen Hawking is a boss.
Why do we keep asking what Stephen Hawking says about God? No one asked Mother Teresa what she thought about astrophysics." (via Facebook)