How will we make the first contact with aliens?
Fifteen years ago, the crew of an American jet fighter made the first contact with what some consider extraterrestrial life.
What the fighter crew actually associates with was probably some kind of high-tech drone.
However, the first contact is probably getting closer, say scientists at The Daily Beast. It could happen tomorrow. It could be a decade or so, and it could be much, much further in the future. For human civilization, this meeting can change everything. But it may not change anything.
Scientists have been scrutinizing outer space for decades, searching for signals, artifacts, biological markers, or other evidence that life exists beyond Earth.
Some are looking for microbial life — proof that evolution is in the way of other planets and could produce or have already created intelligent life. Others listen to signals coming from outer space, probably triggered by advanced civilizations.
Search is motivated in part by simple math. Our galaxy itself includes at least four billion Earth-like planets. To believe that something that we can classify as “life” can only develop on our planet is arrogance, they explain.
It can only be a matter of time before a telescope, radio, or space probe — or, far less likely, a combat aircraft — encounters alien beings.
To be clear, David Fraver and Jim Slate did not search for little green men in 2004. They were on a routine training mission 100 miles off the coast of Southern California in the cockpit of their F / A-18F fighter jet.
A nearby Navy radar operator directed Fraver and Slate to investigate the mysterious object that appeared on the ship’s screens.
The sensors showed that the unidentified flying object was moving down to the ocean from a high altitude of 80,000 feet, briefly “hanging” at 20,000 feet and then descending to the height of the waves. As Fraver and Slate approach the possibility of visual contact with UFOs, they are startled by what they see.
“It looked like some kind of airplane. Oval shape. About 40 feet long. It was rising above the water, scattering waves and foam.” Fraver points the F / A-18 directly at the object. “Suddenly a UFO jumped,” Fraver tells the New York Times, “accelerating like something I’ve never seen.”
“Everything was extraordinary. I have no idea what I saw. The equipment had no turbines, wings or rotors and was ahead of our F-18s. “
Navy pilots have had similar UFO experiences in at least two other cases in recent years. Videos from the booths of meetings gather millions of views on social media. Amid interest from possible alien visitors, news emerged that a trio of influential US senators has been spending tens of millions of dollars over the years in a military office investigating UFO sightings.
The Navy refuses to speculate exactly what the sites may look like. Many experts consider these to be random electronic glimpses of touch screens or just someone’s high-tech drones.
The military certainly does not even suggest that they were alien spacecraft. To avoid a firm stance on flying saucers, the Navy prefers to use the term “Unidentified Air Phenomena” to describe what everyone else calls UFOs.
Scientists speaking to the Daily Beast are not particularly concerned with the mention of the Navy’s mysterious flying objects. In their minds, the little green men probably don’t cross a vast galactic distance, just to fly over San Diego and make fun of Navy fighter pilots.
“I don’t think we’re particularly interested in another civilization to visit,” says Avi Leeb, a Harvard physicist at the Daily Beast. “The reason is we are not so intelligent. Open the newspaper every day and realize how unintelligent we are. “
“We are much more likely to find traces of other civilizations from a distance,” Loeb adds. “We would see signatures of them in space, or catch a signal they send, or find or see evidence of technological equipment that transcends us or find the surface of a planet that is modified in a way that suggests intelligent technological civilization.”
Based at the California Institute for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, we expect to find extraterrestrials by intercepting one of their radio transmissions or laser-based communication signals.
In the 120 years since broadcasting pioneer Nicholas Tesla first heard what he believed to be an alien radio broadcast, scientists have not yet registered a signal that is indisputable evidence of extraterrestrial life. Tesla’s signal turned out to have nothing to do with the aliens.
But scientists are still searching. The SETI Institute, with its huge radio telescopes, is in the process of exploring millions of stars and listening carefully to alien broadcasts. “I’d bet on SETI,” said Douglas Vacoc, who heads the research organization METI International in San Francisco, to The Daily Beast. New methods for space exploration may soon surpass SETI’s methods as humanity’s best means of finding extraterrestrial life. Using probes and robotic rovers, NASA and other space agencies are just beginning to search under the surface of Mars and the moon for evidence of the life of germs there.
If there are germs, then evolution happens. And we know from our experience that evolution can lead to an intelligent life, whatever that means. Find a few viruses on several other planets, and the possibilities begin to branch out almost endlessly.
“There is essentially no place in the universe that excludes existing life,” Martin Dominic, an astronomer at St Andrews University in Scotland, told The Daily Beast.
Our search for microbial life is about to accelerate. In 2021, NASA plans to include its new James Webb Space Telescope. “One of the major applications of the James Webb Space Telescope will be to explore the atmosphere of different exoplanets to look for the building blocks of life elsewhere in the universe,” NASA said.
Meanwhile, the European Space Agency (ESA) has set a launch date for 2028 for its Atmospheric Remote Sensing Infrared Large Telescope, which will scan distant planets. Together, NASA’s James Webb and ESA’s ARIEL represent an intelligence effort that exceeds SETI’s potential, Wakoc says.
If we make our first contact before 2028, it will probably be on the radio, Wakoc explains. After 2028, we are more likely to find life in the atmosphere of our own home planet.
At a talk in Germany in 2012, SETI Institute astronomer Seth Shostak bet everyone in the room that the human race will make its first contact with extraterrestrial life in the next 24 years.
Seven years later, Shostak does not give up his bet. This first meeting with aliens can lead to many other meetings. “The universe, we can conclude, is full of life,” Shostak tells The Daily Beast.
“The response will depend on people’s expectations,” says Wakoc. Today, millions of people already believe that there is life beyond Earth, he added. They are just waiting for confirmation.
“However, the first contact we hope will inspire us to greater humility as a species and civilization,” says Shostak. “We would learn something important, and it could change our perspectives on how important we are and the Earth.”
“Earth is not the center of the universe,” Dominic says. “The sun is not the center of the universe.” There is life on our own, insignificant, blue, and green planet. Why not have a life somewhere else? Why,” Dominic asked, do we have to be the only ones?
