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WE ARE ALL STARDUST
When I co-founded the SETI Institute in the
1980s, we had no idea whether other stars
had planets. Now we know that planets are
the rule rather than the exception. Another
game-changer has been the discovery of
‘extremophiles’. We used to think life could only
exist in a very small range of conditions, but
that’s gone out the window with the discovery
that life exists in almost every possible
environment on the Earth. The universe looks
a lot more habitable now than when I started
out. This shouldn’t really surprise us. After all,
there is an intimate connection between us and
the cosmos. The primary ingredients for life as
we know it were cooked up in the massive stars
that blew up billions of years ago. We are all
made out of stardust.
NO TIME TO CHAT
The point of SETI isn’t to chat with aliens.
Let’s say we receive a message today. It might
have taken 100,000 years for it to have
crossed the galaxy. So a snappy two-way
conversation – “Hi, how are you?” “I’m fine,
how are you?” – is probably not on the cards.
A better model might be to think about the
fruitful conversations we have today with the
ancient Greeks and Shakespeare. They stored
information they could transfer forward in
time. There’s a great deal we can learn from
ancient cultures, even though we can’t ask
any questions in return.
LISTEN TO THE
DIAL TONE
Whether we’d even be able to understand
the signal is another question. For years we
thought any alien message would be based on
mathematics, because maths is the universal
language of technology. However, after talking
with neuroscientists and philosophers, we
now think our maths mightn’t be so absolute
after all – that it is likely shaped by the
structure of our brains. But if we do detect a
signal, even if we can’t decipher it – even if it’s
just a cosmic dial tone – we would still learn
something incredible: that it’s possible for us
to have a long future. Receiving a message
would mean that technologies, on average,
survive for long enough to line up not just in
three-dimensional space – close enough for us
to find them – but in the fourth dimension,
time. That would show us we have a chance
to survive the technological adolescence we
find ourselves in.INTELLIGENCE
IS KIND
At the moment, SETI’s task is to look for
evidence of alien life, not to try and make
contact with aliens. In the future, when we
have stabilised into a long-lived civilisation,
I think we should look at sending signals to
try and make contact. Some people argue
we shouldn’t do this now, and I agree with
them. But I also have to point out that the
horse has already left the barn. We’ve been
leaking signals for about 80 years now. Also,
the argument against transmitting is that
if aliens are advanced enough to come here,
they would be advanced enough to conquer
us. But if a civilisation is old enough to be
that advanced, there’s a good chance they’ve
outgrown their aggression. Studies show
that we are kinder and gentler today than
we have ever been in history. That should
fill us with hope.AN INTERSTELLAR
COMMITMENT
The reason we should send signals in the
future and not now is that we are still a veryIF WE DETECT AN ALIEN SIGNAL,
WE WOULD LEARN SOMETHING
INCREDIBLE: THAT IT’S POSSIBLE
FOR US TO HAVE A LONG FUTURE.
young civilisation. We are good at making
two-year plans, but if you’re serious about
transmitting signals to other possible
civilisations, we need to be working in
10,000-year plans. Even the modest goal of
listening for messages requires a long-term
view. You don’t wake up in the morning and
say, “Today is the day I’m going to find a
signal.” You have to wake up and say, “Today
I am going to figure out how to search better
than I did yesterday.” You have to be gratified
by incremental improvements, by innovation.
I can’t say I’m going to get a signal in my
lifetime. But I can say that in my lifetime
I’m going to come up with a stable funding
formula for SETI, so this activity can go on for
generations. That’s an achievable goal, and it’s
what the field needs.THE COSMIC
PERSPECTIVE
The inspiring thing about SETI is how it
expands your perspective. It holds a mirror
up to the planet and shows us we are all the
same. The first thing you say about yourself
on your social media profiles should be
the fact that you’re an Earthling, because
at its most fundamental level, that’s what
you are. If there is a signal out there, it’s
not coming to America; it’s the property
of all humankind. For this reason, SETI
requires us to work as one. And if we can
use SETI to organise globally, we’ll be
building scaffolding that we can use to
deal with other problems that don’t respect
national boundaries, such as climate change,
food security, and income inequalities.
An astronomer named Caleb Scharf put
it powerfully. He said, “On a finite world,
a cosmic perspective isn’t a luxury, it’s a
necessity.” The cosmic perspective allows us
to step back and see ourselves as part of a
larger picture, and find the solutions we
need to survive. •