Until now, the existence of intelligent life beyond Earth could not be verified. But, if it were confirmed that it exists, How prepared is humanity to establish safe and responsible communication with aliens?
Similar to what happens in the 2016 sci-fi film “The Arrival”, an international group of scientists is working on a communication and language protocol in case of contact with extraterrestrials, as detailed in a recently published statement. University of Saint Andrews, Scotland.
“Science fiction is full of explorations into the impact on human society after discovery and even encounter with life or intelligence elsewhere,” said John Elliot, researcher and coordinator of the Post-Detection Center of the Intelligence Search collective. , in the Extraterrestrial relationship (SETI, for its acronym in English).
“But we need to go beyond thinking about the impact on humanity. We need to coordinate our knowledge not only to assess the evidence, but also to consider the response of human society as our understanding advances and what we know and what we know is communicated. “that we do not know. And the time to do it is now, “she added.
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One of the biggest challenges for this group of researchers will be creating a basic language for communicating with extraterrestrials: “Exploring signals of presumed extraterrestrial origin for linguistic structures and attributing meaning to them is an elaborate and time-consuming process, during which our understanding will advance in many steps as we learn ‘extraterrestrial’,” added Elliot.
Currently, the publication points out, there are established procedures and entities to address the threat posed by asteroid impacts on Earth. but there are no similar institutions for contacting aliens.
Researchers have created, for the first time, a place where they can coordinate the development of a preparedness framework. The idea is to work on issues such as “message decryption” or data analysis for the development of “regulatory protocols, spatial legislation and social impact strategies”.
“Will we ever get a message from ET? We don’t know. We also don’t know when it will happen.” But we know that we cannot afford to be poorly prepared – scientifically, socially and politically – for an event that could become reality tomorrow and that we cannot afford to mishandle it, “Elliott concluded.
Source: Deutsche Welle
Source: Clarin
