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Does Active SETI Put Earth in Danger?
Ponca City, We Love You writes "There is an interesting story in Seed Magazine on active SETI — sending out signals to try to contact other civilizations in nearby star systems. Alexander Zaitsev, Chief Scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics, has access to one of the most powerful radio transmitters on Earth and has already sent several messages to nearby, sun-like stars. But some scientists think that Zaitsev is not only acting out of turn by independently speaking for everyone on the entire planet but believe there are possible dangers we may unleash by announcing ourselves to the unknown darkness. This ground has been explored before in countless works of science fiction most notably "The Killing Star," a 1995 novel that paints a frightening picture of interstellar civilizations exterminating their neighbors with relativistic bombardments, not from malice, but simply because it is the most logical action."
Stopping people from deliberately sending signals is not going to make us invisible. We've been sending signals for decades.
This idea is a stretch. Zaitsev is more or less free to "speak" to anyone he chooses.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Space is very big and it takes lots and lots of energy and resources to build a craft--even just a weapons delivery system--to cross the vast distances between stars. It would have to actually be worth it to attack us. Our planet and Solar System contain no resources that aren't readily available and easier to obtain much closer to just about any other star system.
Which probably could explain why aliens might be more pacific than us.
What I'm basically saying, is that "peace" is a prerequisite for achieving "space age",
because "space age" comes only far later after "big weapons" in the technological development,
and without "peace", a civilisation may blow it's entire planet at the "big weapons" stage, long before being able to achieve "space age".
Just look at our history :
As you said, our own worst enemy has always been ourself : the other humans against which we engage war.
Specially in recent history, we've reached the point where some population have enough warfar technology and power that they might oblitared the whole planet if weapon escalation runs out of control.
Nuclear stockpiling and M.A.D. programs are the epitome of this situation.
MAD fundamental premise is that nobody will attack because everyone dies in the process of retaliation that follows (except maybe a bunch of politician hiding into caves with lots of young pretty nubile girls, isn't it, Dr Strangelove ?)
MAD seeks to make atomic war an unaffordable option because of too high cost.
The implicit consequence is that if someone played fool anyway, we WILL all definitely stop existing.
And at the same time, we haven't even reached true space travel yet, and we're very far from being able to do it on a large scale. We can only plant a couple of flags on our moon, and send two motorized webcams to the directly neighbouring planet.
An alien race that is able to detect us AND come toward earth to meet us, must necessarily be extremely advance, far beyond the point at which we are now. Which would possibly mean also having gone through a long story of dangerous technology (military and such).
If that alien race wasn't deeply motivated to be peaceful, they'll have had a lot of opportunity of blowing themselves up with all discovery they had the time to make before achieving space exploration.
Only a race that repress its tendency to kill everything can survive technology.
Even we as human have a small tendency to try to refrain of causing too much destruction.
In antiquity, pillaging and burning down to grounds enemy cities has been standard military practice, even told in classical literature.
In the middle ages, having a lot of deaths during wars was considered pretty normal.
As history progressed more dangerous technology has become available, people start being reluctant using it. Moral value change.
MAD was a pissing context without (hopefully) any real intent to engage all those nukes.
Even if atrocities are comited during modern conflict, those are much more criticized by the public (see current opinion about Irak or the various massacres and ethnic cleansing happening under dictatorship).
Slowly we are discovering that hurting each other may not be the best procedure.
A lot of the "modern" forms of conflict have moved to much more political and commercial ground. Emerging country don't long anymore to conquest foreign land, only to capture their markets.
Thus maybe, we ourselves will be able to survive until space age without blowing ourselves up with all military technology we may invent in the process.
But probably, the first alien race that will meet us will probably be peaceful because other wise, by then, they won't exist anymore.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I've heard that mentioned a lot, that maybe they'll see our Hitler broadcasts and immediately loathe us.
Why?
We think he was horrible, but why would we believe for an instant that an alien might think the same? Maybe some of the powers-that-be up there are scratching their chitinous chins thoughtfully, impressed that we have such men.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Very true. But even if they did, would it sound inherently bad to someone who had no idea of our morality and values?
Hitler: We must exterminate the Jews! They are destroying our society!
Kodos: Wow. Whatever Jews are, they sure are causing that guy a lot of grief. Wonder if he gets it under control?
Since only a small fraction of news on both sides of the issue was televised, ET might not have enough context even to know that we thought it was bad (although they'd know that at least some other factions didn't like him and his plans, even if they didn't really understand all the reasons).
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
There's no doubt that plenty of signal leaks out into space, but it's important to realize how big space is, and how quickly the power of radio signals drop off. Imagine radio waves expanding in a sphere from an antenna. A certain amount of energy is used to create that signal. Right at that antenna, the signal takes up a small amount of space, all that energy is crammed into a small area, the signal strength is strong. That sphere of the broadcast expands out from the antenna at the speed of light. Assuming that nothing absorbs or reflects or otherwise interrupts any of the signal, that sphere of radio waves continues to grow but overall only has the same amount of energy as when it was first released. You can see how very quickly the amount of energy available at any one point on that sphere drops as the sphere expands. Now imagine a sphere with a radius of light-years. That's a whole lot of area to be spreading a set amount of energy over. It's certainly possible to focus radio signals and the like. You don't have to spread all your energy out in all directions, you can aim it somewhat. But you're not going to get a perfectly tight beam, there's going to be some spread, and over interstellar differences, what seems like a minor loss of energy will really start to become significant. And don't forget that focusing your energy into a tight beam means that it will pass by far fewer planets than a signal sent in all directions, and the chances of anyone being there to listen get much smaller.
But wait, it gets worse. There's a lot of electromagnetic noise floating out there in the universe. There's even a big source of it close nearby, we call it the sun. With all that static going on, a weak signal can get very hard to find, especially if you aren't exactly sure what sort of signal you're looking for.
Basically, it's not very realistic to expect people on other planets to be listening in on our TV broadcasts. Even if enough time has passed for the signals to reach them, they're not likely to get enough of a signal to be able to work with, even if they happen to be looking for exactly the right thing at exactly the right time.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
> [...] so they'll just nuke us from orbit. After all, it's the only way to be sure.
Fixed that for you.