Have you heard that NASA wants to get in touch with aliens? In all fairness, they’re not the first and they won’t be last, but it’s still insanely dangerous:
NASA scientists revealed the image in a study that’s part of a project called the “Beacon in the Galaxy” (BITG).
The main aim of the BITG project is to send a message to any alien civilizations that could be out there.
Scientists think the pixelated illustration of a naked man and woman waving hello could help us finally make contact with extraterrestrials.
Along with the nude figures and a DNA depiction, the scientists have also tried to depict gravity.
This all adds up to become an updated binary-coded message that can be sent into space.
Scientists think a binary-coded message is most likely to be understood by aliens.
...The concept of sending depictions of naked humans to space isn’t new.
The Pioneer plaques sent to space on the 1972 Pioneer 10 and 1973 Pioneer 11 missions, also featured drawings of naked humans.
The plaques are attached to the antennas on the crafts.
There are a lot of bad ideas in the world, but this is the sort of thing you hear about mad scientists doing in the movies. It’s a “Yes, my name really is Dr. MurderEvil and I am putting the brains of serial killers into giant, aggressive white sharks because you people are incapable of understanding my GENIUS” level terrible idea.
Why?
Let’s just start with these questions: Why would anyone want to potentially alert aliens to our presence? What is the risk/reward ratio there? What are they even trying to achieve? Is it just something like, “Wow, it would be like REALLY COOL if we sent a message out into the universe, and THEY RESPONDED! Like everyone would be talking about it!” That’s the “reward.”
On the other hand, this is a policy that LITERALLY risks the continued existence of humankind.
Again, how’s that risk/reward ratio looking?
Granted, if we somehow had confirmation that there was a friendly, helpful species of aliens waiting to come out and give us a cure for cancer, unlimited power, and teleporters in return for dinner with our president and a few truckloads of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, I’d say “go for it.” In fact, feel free to take the president along with Ben & Jerry back to Alpha Centauri in the name of improved relationships between our people.
However, that’s not what we’re doing. Instead, we’re basically blasting a message out to the whole galaxy saying, “Hey, look at us! Here we are!”
At this point, how many alien movies and TV series have we all seen where humanity is desperately trying to fight back against an alien race that’s destroying/harvesting or enslaving us without a second thought? Let’s just hit a few of the highlights in case nothing is coming to mind:
Alien, Battle: Los Angeles, Battlefield Earth, The Blog, Brightburn, Cloverfield, The Day the Earth stood still, Independence Day, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Mars Attacks, Monsters, Predator, Prometheus, Slither, Species, The Thing, War of the Worlds… we could add hundreds more.
We also can’t forget this classic Twilight Zone episode:
Why does NASA want to potentially recreate one of these movies in the real world? Because if their mission somehow succeeds, it’s likely how it would play out. Keep in mind, that an alien race capable of getting that message and visiting here would be as technologically superior to us as we would have been to our caveman ancestors.
As we look at human history, as well as how our species has treated other species over time, what in the world makes us think that’s a good idea?
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Look at the historical interactions between stronger, technologically superior nations and the weaker, technologically inferior nations they’ve run across. How has that turned out for the weaker nations? How did things work out between say, Cortes and the Aztecs? English colonists and Indians? The Romans and Carthage?
Historically, do you know what has happened to the weaker countries in situations like that throughout history? They’ve been conquered. Taken as slaves. Forced to pay tribute. Unwillingly recruited into alliances. They’ve been turned into little more than a plantation that ships resources to the stronger nation. They’ve been forced to move. They’ve been converted to new religions. Their leaders have been forcibly replaced with men loyal to the stronger nations. Sometimes, they’ve even been annihilated entirely.
It’s not a pretty picture… and that’s with our own kind.
Of course, it’s much worse if we’re talking about humans and other species. We buy and sell them like slaves. We eat them and make products from their bodies. We force them, sometimes in inhumane conditions, to spend their lives producing products like eggs and milk for humans. We take them as pets. We put them in cramped environments like aquariums and flush them down the toilet when they get sick. We hunt them for sport. We put them in zoos, so we can look at them for our amusement. We forcibly neuter and spay them. We stick hooks through their bodies so we can use them as bait to catch other animals we want to eat. We toss them alive into boiling water. We poison whole colonies of them or swat them out of mid-air without a second thought. We force them to fight each other to the death for our amusement.
Whatever you may think about the late, great physicist Stephen Hawking, he was 100% right when he said:
"We don't know much about aliens, but we know about humans. If you look at history, contact between humans and less intelligent organisms have often been disastrous from their point of view, and encounters between civilizations with advanced versus primitive technologies have gone badly for the less advanced. A civilization reading one of our messages could be billions of years ahead of us. If so, they will be vastly more powerful, and may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria."
The world has enough problems as it is without these highly educated idiots potentially creating the biggest nightmare humanity has ever faced times 20. Yet, we have multiple governments including our own, astronomers, and billionaires desperately trying to get the attention of any alien species, without regard to their intentions or whether we could defend ourselves from them. If there’s anything all of humankind should be able to agree on, it’s that this is a dangerous idea that could potentially mean the end of our species and it shouldn’t be allowed. Yet, we don’t talk about it this way. It’s all fun and games. It’s all a big joke… until it works and we’re all dead, slaves, or cattle.
There's also the very real possibility that we are the only intelligent life in the universe. To people who say that's unlikely, there is at present absolutely zero scientific evidence that there is any other life out there. You can come up with ad hoc explanations why we just haven't seen them, but the actual evidence is that there's none. The argument, "But the universe is so big, there just MUST be aliens out there somewhere", that's like saying, "The Pacific north west is so big, there just MUST be a Bigfoot out there somewhere", or "The Atlantic Ocean is so big, there just MUST be Atlantis under there somewhere." That's not how science or probability works. And if there are no aliens, then all this work is a waste of time and money.
Yes. If there are intelligent aliens, we have literally no idea what their reaction to us would be. They MIGHT see us as a charity case and come offering all sorts of assistance. They might see us as great potential slaves and come to conquer us. They might be fascinated by our children's finger painting and want to trade advanced technology for this great art. They might have some totally alien reaction that we can't even comprehend. Hoping that an interaction would be positive for us is a big gamble. Like selling your house so you can use the money to buy lottery tickets.
John, I've read those SF books, too, and even though the odds are long, we might attract unwanted attention, so I'd agree, it is a bad idea. Especially since we have no space fleet we could deploy to defend the solar system if a hostile race should arrive. Of course like in "Footfall", maybe we could secretly build Orion? Tough, esp since we've let all of our steel plants shut down and move to China. Finally, I'd be a lot more comfortable if we would actually use some of that "infrastructure" money that senile grandpa Joe wants to spend, to build Skybolt so we could at least have a non-Armeggedon chance to destroy any extinction event earth bound meteor, and perhaps that could have an anti-ship role as well.
May 9, 2022·edited May 9, 2022Liked by John Hawkins
You are too late!
I take it you have already heard that the U.S. Air Force has confirmed the existence of images, including a good number of relatively high-speed, high-resolution motion pictures of unexplained and as-yet inexplicable craft moving in ways no man-made flying object ever has, and none known to us currently could. They've been around since not long after World War II. (WWII, of course, was what enabled us to develop nuclear weapons, the unusual nature of which enables us --- as they may have enabled our Extraterrestrial Voyeurs (EV) --- to detect their detonation.
In recent years, they have frequently amused themselves by puttering around Top Secret military sites and "secure" National Defense installations as our jets tried and failed to keep pace with them like the Wright Brothers trying to keep pace with a F-104 Starfighter.
The United States has not, to our knowledge (for whatever little that is worth), attempted to engage, attack or force down any of these UFOs, although we have no idea what measures such knee-jerk bellicose nations as Russia and Red China may have taken. All we know for sure is that they've been here awhile --- possibly more than 70 years --- and they show no signs of going away, probably because we've shown neither the capability nor the will to do anything about them.
That is surely for the best. They cannot be unaware of the vastness of human military arsenals and our fondness for using them. But if EVs have vehicles that give off no heat or energy signatures, move faster than we can and jink effortlessly at sharp angles that instantly would tear our most robust aircraft to shreds, they can pretty much regard us abouit as threatening as clever rabbits.
So, what are they doing? Whether it's for EV amusementr on "Galaxy's Funniest Inter-Solar System Videos" or because it takes time to build and launch a freighter large enough to store so much frozen raw meat, the answer must be information-gathering and reconnaissance. What can be made of us, our planet and our solar system?
So make that the subject of your next speculation:
It seems the Extraterrestrial Voyeurs have already found us. Now what? Brightest hopes, darkest fears. What could they do? What should we do?
Very interesting subject and a beautifully presented argument. If we are being observed by EV's I hope it's purely for the sake of fascination for what they've found on this rock - bizarre, dangerous creatures best observed at a distance.
There's also the very real possibility that we are the only intelligent life in the universe. To people who say that's unlikely, there is at present absolutely zero scientific evidence that there is any other life out there. You can come up with ad hoc explanations why we just haven't seen them, but the actual evidence is that there's none. The argument, "But the universe is so big, there just MUST be aliens out there somewhere", that's like saying, "The Pacific north west is so big, there just MUST be a Bigfoot out there somewhere", or "The Atlantic Ocean is so big, there just MUST be Atlantis under there somewhere." That's not how science or probability works. And if there are no aliens, then all this work is a waste of time and money.
Yes. If there are intelligent aliens, we have literally no idea what their reaction to us would be. They MIGHT see us as a charity case and come offering all sorts of assistance. They might see us as great potential slaves and come to conquer us. They might be fascinated by our children's finger painting and want to trade advanced technology for this great art. They might have some totally alien reaction that we can't even comprehend. Hoping that an interaction would be positive for us is a big gamble. Like selling your house so you can use the money to buy lottery tickets.
John, I've read those SF books, too, and even though the odds are long, we might attract unwanted attention, so I'd agree, it is a bad idea. Especially since we have no space fleet we could deploy to defend the solar system if a hostile race should arrive. Of course like in "Footfall", maybe we could secretly build Orion? Tough, esp since we've let all of our steel plants shut down and move to China. Finally, I'd be a lot more comfortable if we would actually use some of that "infrastructure" money that senile grandpa Joe wants to spend, to build Skybolt so we could at least have a non-Armeggedon chance to destroy any extinction event earth bound meteor, and perhaps that could have an anti-ship role as well.
You are too late!
I take it you have already heard that the U.S. Air Force has confirmed the existence of images, including a good number of relatively high-speed, high-resolution motion pictures of unexplained and as-yet inexplicable craft moving in ways no man-made flying object ever has, and none known to us currently could. They've been around since not long after World War II. (WWII, of course, was what enabled us to develop nuclear weapons, the unusual nature of which enables us --- as they may have enabled our Extraterrestrial Voyeurs (EV) --- to detect their detonation.
In recent years, they have frequently amused themselves by puttering around Top Secret military sites and "secure" National Defense installations as our jets tried and failed to keep pace with them like the Wright Brothers trying to keep pace with a F-104 Starfighter.
The United States has not, to our knowledge (for whatever little that is worth), attempted to engage, attack or force down any of these UFOs, although we have no idea what measures such knee-jerk bellicose nations as Russia and Red China may have taken. All we know for sure is that they've been here awhile --- possibly more than 70 years --- and they show no signs of going away, probably because we've shown neither the capability nor the will to do anything about them.
That is surely for the best. They cannot be unaware of the vastness of human military arsenals and our fondness for using them. But if EVs have vehicles that give off no heat or energy signatures, move faster than we can and jink effortlessly at sharp angles that instantly would tear our most robust aircraft to shreds, they can pretty much regard us abouit as threatening as clever rabbits.
So, what are they doing? Whether it's for EV amusementr on "Galaxy's Funniest Inter-Solar System Videos" or because it takes time to build and launch a freighter large enough to store so much frozen raw meat, the answer must be information-gathering and reconnaissance. What can be made of us, our planet and our solar system?
So make that the subject of your next speculation:
It seems the Extraterrestrial Voyeurs have already found us. Now what? Brightest hopes, darkest fears. What could they do? What should we do?
Very interesting subject and a beautifully presented argument. If we are being observed by EV's I hope it's purely for the sake of fascination for what they've found on this rock - bizarre, dangerous creatures best observed at a distance.