First contact with aliens could be more likely to start a war between humans on Earth

In movies, the first contact between humans and aliens usually ends in a war – between humans and aliens. But in the real world, first contact is much more likely to end in human-to-human war. and humans.

It was the conclusion of a groundbreaking study published two years ago, which has helped spark an increasingly intense debate between two scientific camps. The first camp is pessimistic and fears that first contact will have disastrous political consequences on Earth. The other, more optimistic group insists that humanity might encounter extraterrestrials for the first time and not go crazy about it.

This is not a purely theoretical debate. There is a practical – and potentially very serious – purpose behind the academic back-and-forth: to start preparing politicians for the possibility of first contact, and to try to get them to handle it like adults.

“We really need to make sure that those of us on the ground are ready to succeed, and that policy makers and government officials understand how [the search for extraterrestrial intelligence] works and what was actually found,” Jason Wright, a Penn State astronomer, told The Daily Beast.

Part of the urgency is fueled by the fact that there is a growing consensus in the scientific community that extraterrestrials are out there, somewhere, and that first contact will happen, eventually.

It’s basic math. There are a hundred thousand million stars in our galaxy alone. And potentially hundreds of thousands of millions of planets. In our solar system alone, there are several planets and moons besides Earth that have water and could, in theory, harbor life. We have already discovered thousands of exoplanets in the Milky Way, many of which are showing early signs that they could potentially harbor life. With better instruments, we’re about to discover thousands upon thousands more new worlds in our galaxy – the odds of at least one harboring intelligent life aren’t so far-fetched anymore.

Nowadays, it is not controversial for a scientist to believe in extraterrestrials. But believing that first contact is imminent is still a marginal position. The universe is incredibly vast. Our probes can only reach so far. Our radio receivers can only listen to a few nearby star systems.

Even if we directly observe evidence of extraterrestrial life – extant or extinct, microbial or sentient – ​​we might not recognize the evidence for what it is. Indeed, several scientists credibly believe that we have observed extraterrestrials before, but most are highly skeptical of such claims.

All this to say that more and more scientists think it’s time to think about the political implications of first contact. “If there is contact, things will probably move very quickly, and we may not have time to carefully check our reasoning,” Chelsea Haramia, a philosopher at Spring Hill College in Alabama, told The Daily Beast. “It’s better to do what we can now – and recognize what we can’t do – with the knowledge we have.”

When Kenneth Wisian and John Traphagan, a geophysicist and religious studies expert respectively at the University of Texas, researched the issue in 2020, they came away more than a little worried.

Their main concern was that whichever country first came into contact with intelligent extraterrestrials – through a survey, a radio broadcast or any other means – might suddenly become the most powerful country all time. Even if he was not very powerful before the first contact.

Knowledge of extraterrestrial technology, “if used by just one nation here on Earth, could enable it to dominate the world,” Wisian and Traphagan wrote in their peer-reviewed studypublished in the journal Space policy. “Controlling communication with a [extraterrestrial intelligence] could be the biggest “prize” ever awarded in an international competition. »

And this price could start the war, because the countries which doesn’t contact the aliens rush to find out where ET is and how they could start their own interplanetary conservations. If the country that made the contact does not voluntarily share the information, its rivals could try to deport it. “To think anything else is to be pretty naive,” Traphagan told The Daily Beast.

It was an alarming statement. But not all ET rhythm scientists agreed with this. A team led by Wright refuted Wisian and Taphagan by a peer-reviewed study which appeared online on September 29 and is also expected to be published in Space policy. Their main argument is that the most likely method of contacting extraterrestrials is also the simplest and cheapest: radio.

Almost any country with satellite television could use the same basic technology to listen to and respond to extraterrestrials. “There are huge numbers of satellite dishes designed to communicate with Earth satellites that could easily be repurposed for such an effort,” wrote Wright and his co-authors, including Haramia and NASA policy adviser Gabriel Swiney.

In a first contact scenario involving an extraterrestrial radio signal, there is no easy way for a country to monopolize contact with ET, Wright’s team explained. And even if it were possible, there’s not much the country that made the first contact could learn from extraterrestrials disrupting the world order, Wright and company added.

After all, we already have nuclear weapons. And nuclear weapons trump everything. “Strategic nuclear weapons already exhibit destructive force far beyond what is practical for warfare,” wrote Wright and his co-authors. “Even more advanced weapons are unlikely to destabilize the international system; a country with an alien weapons system would still be subject to nuclear deterrence.

Both Wisian and Traphagan disputed some of Wright’s team claims. If an alien radio signal is weak, it may require a very large and very expensive radio receiver to pick it up. “The installation needed would be the ordering of a major radio telescope,” Wisian told The Daily Beast. “These are limited in number, aren’t quick to build, and are fixed locations.”

In the case of a weak extraterrestrial signal, perhaps a wealthier country could monopolize the first contact, at least temporarily. Again, this could mean war.

But Wright, for his part, cautioned against assuming that first contact would play out in predictable ways. If and when that happens, it will be unprecedented. Politics could defy expectations. “One concern is that we’ll hit historical analogies or highly dramatized sci-fi tropes that are actually totally inappropriate,” he told The Daily Beast.

And either way, both sides — Wisian’s and Wright’s — said they agreed on the best solution to even the most dire first-contact scenario. In anticipation of the possible day when aliens will talk to us, we should start talking to each other.

“Perhaps the most effective way to prevent our scenario is through the formal and informal sharing of scientific information,” Wright said. “Protocols for instantaneous sharing and storage of incoming data would ensure that at least the detection, but not the ongoing messaging, would be widely known.”

After all, if every country has access to all potential extraterrestrial signals, no one can go to war over them.