Historical September–October 2017 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
The question isn’t “If?” The question is “When?” That is, when aliens from another planet contact us, what will we say? Do we greet them with open e-arms, do we warn them not to mess with us or they’ll be sorry, or do we ask for their voter ID card?
This ain’t no idle question. Carl Sagan once said that there are more stars in the universe than the number of grains of sand in all of North America. That’s pretty mind-boggling, even more because I write this while on a beach, and I cannot even begin to count the grains of sand in my tennis shoes! Space.com estimates that are between 100 and 400 billion stars in our home, the Milky Way Galaxy (I don’t understand why it’s named after a candy bar). Doing the math – if one percent of these stars have planets and if one percent of these planets are in the Goldilocks Zone, that means that there are 2,500,000 planets with fastfood restaurants and political systems that don’t work. And that’s just in our candy bar galaxy. Dr. Google says that the universe – that’s the whole shebang – contains 1-andtwenty-four-zeros stars. Gasp.
We are surrounded by potentially life-embracing planets and we’ve been broadcasting to them for years.
Some of this was accidental, our television signals flying into outer space. What must those aliens think of us, I wonder, when their introduction is “The Munsters”? And then there are our intentional efforts to tell them, whatever the them might be, that we’re here.
The Voyager probes, sent afar in the 1970’s, contained numerical codes that attempted to identify where Earth is located and drawings of a man and a woman. Attempting to appeal to the aliens’ artistic side, a recording of Johnny B. Goode by our own Chuck Berry was also included on a Voyager probe. Might this mean that the first probe lands at Blueberry Hill?!?
It may be that our calling attention to Earth without knowing who or what is listening is not the brightest idea, sort of like building a downtown football stadium in St. Louis for the Los Angeles Rams.
Some wise people, Stephen Hawking among them, think we’re foolish to be announcing our presence and location to the unknown others. There’s some merit in this thinking; consider what happened to the Aztecs when they greeted Cortes in 1519.
But that horse is out of the cart. Chances are that signals have already been received, interpreted, laughed at, and space ships are headed our way this very minute! Sure, it will take a while for them to get here – the distance is farther even than from Chesterfield to the Central West End – but they’re coming.
They may be coming for curiosity, backgammon partners, for a new planet to populate, or perhaps to find a new food source (gulp!).
I asked a few friends what they think we should say when that inevitable contact is made. Jim captures a sad truth in explaining our condition when he says, “We are a collection of billions who simply refuse to get along with one another.” Tina suggests, “Well, someone’s been busy! Your point?” Dick asks, “Can we be Facebook friends?” while Ann welcomes them: “’Hello, out there’ of course!” Not surprising, the responses of a number of folks were clearly affected by the fact that President Bozo is in office. Reverend Matt cautions them, “If you visit earth, please don’t say ‘take me to your leader.’ He is not so great with foreigners.” Similarly, Rob warns “Avoid earth at all costs…until at least 2020.” Todd says, “You can have our leader,” and Bonnie agrees: “I will take you to our leader if you take him with you.” Gary thinks we really don’t need to worry about hearing from them: “Any alien analyzing our current broadcast discourse would conclude there is no intelligent life on Earth and leave us alone.” (True unless they tuned into American Gladiator!). Marj is even more adamant: “To whom (or what) it may concern: Beware.
On this planet, a deadly brain virus has infected large swaths of the populace and threatens to return its most evolved species into zombies.” (Do you think she’s referring to the presidential election?) As for me, it’s pretty simple.
I think we seize the opportunity to learn from an advanced species to answer an age-old question: “Who killed JFK?”
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, September–October 2017.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times2017_09.pdf, printed page(s) 8; PDF page(s) 8.
