The universe and our Bug-Eyed Monster problem

“There is absolutely no procedure enshrined in international law to respond to a signal from an alien civilisation,” said Martin Dominik, an astronomer at the University of St Andrews.

“It makes sense to create a legally binding framework that is properly rooted in international law.”

Well, yes, it would make sense. But if the Bug-Eyed Monsters do send a message, would we really want to reply at all?

Bug-Eyed Monsters (BEMs), generally portrayed carrying off half-naked Earth maidens with evil intent, were a standard feature of pulp science fiction in the ’50s. We are all more sophisticated now, of course, but fear of alien contact is not necessarily irrational.

The specific reason for Dominik’s remarks is a survey of public attitudes towards alien contact that was launched this month by London’s Royal Society and the UK Seti Research Network.

But, in broader terms, it is a response to two important developments in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (Seti) that occurred in 2015.

One was a debate at the American Association for the Advancement of Science convention in 2015 about whether “Active Seti” was a good idea. Should we advertise our existence, or is that asking for trouble? Many of the scientists backed a declaration that a “worldwide scientific, political and humanitarian discussion must occur before any message is sent”.

The other major event of 2015 was the launch of Russian-Israeli tech billionaire Yuri Milner’s 10-year Breakthrough Listen project, which is buying thousands of hours of time on the world’s most powerful radio telescopes to search over a million stars for artificial signals.

This is “Passive Seti” and there’s certainly no harm in just looking for signs of the existence of other civilisations in the galaxy. There is “no bigger question in science”, said the late Stephen Hawking, who was an advisor to the project. But if you find such a civilisation, an enormous debate will immediately erupt over whether we should reply or not. Hawking thought not.

The Breakthrough Listen project has been running for several years and last month announced it has so far examined 1,000 star systems within 160 light years of Earth, but detected no transmissions from alien civilisations.

It is remarkably quiet out there, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that there are no other civilisations. There is a rival hypothesis which suggests there may indeed be one or more civilisations in our galactic neighbourhood, but that they are observing radio silence.

Why? Because they know, or at least suspect, that there is something big and bad and dangerous lurking out there in the dark and they do not want to attract its attention.

This hypothesis is increasingly being called the “Dark Forest Problem”, after the extraordinary success of Chinese science-fiction writer Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Problem trilogy. It traces the calamitous consequences over 400 years of an alien contact scenario, initiated by well-meaning human beings, that goes wrong.

Nothing in the science we know makes this hypothesis plausible. Interstellar travel is virtually impossible and neither trade nor conquest would be profitable. Or so we assume.

We still have much to learn about the universe – the role of “dark matter” and “dark energy”, for example – and distance alone might not be enough to protect us from any ill-intentioned BEMs.

So, Dominik is right: we do need to have an international discussion about whether we should make our existence known. And it would be wise to have it before the media circus that would erupt if we actually found a message.

Gwynne Dyer.

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