Name: Should we try to communicate with aliens? | BBC Ideas
Uploaded: 2025-11-13T18:20:41.000Z
Duration: 5 min 22 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Has been for as long as anyone can remember.

the universe is so vast, many scientists think it's unrealistic to imagine we're the only form of life in it.

Alien life may also be what we would consider intelligent.

But as the physicist Enrico Ferguson fermi asked in 1950, if we're not alone, where is everybody?

The universe is full of natural radio waves generated by stars and planets and galaxies.

That's Mike Garrett, an astrophysicist and active member of seti, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

Artificial radio waves are very spiky because they convey information.

So we're looking for anomalies, the signature of potentially other intelligent civilizations out there broadcasting to the universe.

What SETI assumes is that the aliens are very motivated, that they're going out of their way to send us intentional signals for our benefit.

And that's Douglas Vacoach, the founder of meti, which stands for Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

Maybe we should do the heavy lifting by reaching out first.

Making the first move in any relationship has its risks.

Opening oneself up to rejection or worse.

Stories of alien fleets visiting Earth with the sole intention of wiping us out are common ground for science fiction.

But there is a theory that if we're not careful, this could become science fact.

I think one of the things that Stephen Hawking, famous cosmologist, was said about this idea of transmitting signals is that it might not turn out very well for us here on this planet, just like it didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans when Columbus first settled there.

But METI is amongst those who see this argument as a red herring.

Douglas and his colleagues believe that through TV and radio broadcasts, not to mention mobile phone towers, Earth has been leaking radiation into space for decades.

This leakage is exactly what sets it look for as signs of life elsewhere.

So it stands to reason that if aliens are listening, they could probably already hear us.

One theory, known as the zoo hypothesis, is that aliens already know we exist.

But rather than making contact, they're studying us from afar as if we were animals in a zoo.

Douglas thinks that by sending out regular messages, we can demonstrate both our intelligence and and desire to communicate.

If you Imagine we go to the zoo and we're walking around and we see a bunch of giraffes.

What happens if one of them turns around, looks us in the eye, and

starts pounding out a series of prime numbers with its hoof?

We're trying to be the galactic giraffes here.

But for SETI and Mike, this remains problematic, though not against communicating per se.

Mike argues that we need to think much more carefully about what we want to say and how we want to say it.

Who speaks for Earth and who has the right?

When I see a lot of these signals being sent, they don't represent all of this planet.

You know, just arbitrarily sending signals out into space is not very democratic.

If humans were to enter a dialogue with an alien species, how would we get them to understand us?

Because of the enormous distances involved, we're also dealing in difficult timescales.

If we send a message to a life form thousand light years away, it will take 1000 years to reach them.

And assuming their technology is similar to ours, we'd wait another thousand years for the reply.

It's almost like you get an email from someone 10 years ago and they say, yes, sounds great, but

you don't even remember what it was about.

This only works if it's something embraced by generations to come.

The first message sent into space for the benefit of aliens was in 1974, more than 50 years ago.

And so far, we've received nothing in return.

Which returns us to Enrico Fermi's question, where is everybody?

Meti will continue reaching out to those planets that orbit within what's known as the Goldilocks Zone.

Not too hot, not too cold, just right for potential life.

Meanwhile, Mike and SETI will keep an ear to the sky, advancing techniques to pick up signals from other worlds.

And maybe one day, just maybe, if we detect a signal and we know that we are not alone in the universe, I think that should make people happy.

If we discover another civilization and they're very different from us, we'll realize actually how similar we are to our neighbors.

Should we try to communicate with aliens?