Many scientists liken the encounter with extraterrestrials will have an unimaginable outcome for humanity, possibly like Neanderthals using rudimentary tools to confront the US Air Force with stealth aircraft or missiles. guide.

Of course, that image is still only in Hollywood movies. Up to now, scientific projects have not found evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial life. But we can still ask the question: if we find aliens, what will humans do?

There is no specific plan

Although the aliens in the movie Arrival arrived on Earth in a spaceship faster than the speed of light, the more likely scenario is that humans will discover another civilization by catching their electromagnetic waves, astronomer writer Seth Shostak told Live Science.

He leads the effort to find such radiation at the SETI Institute, California, USA. (SETI is an abbreviation for the scientific branch of “searching for extraterrestrial intelligence”). For many years, independent SETI organizations or the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have been observing and listening to all directions in space.

Humanity’s most serious option after detecting with high accuracy alien signals is presented in the two-page document “post-detection protocol” of the National Academy of Science and Technology. International Headquarters (IAA), including experts in the field of SETI.

The protocol encourages such information “to be made public, reported to the scientific community and to the Secretary-General of the United Nations,” to encourage monitoring and analysis.

Independent SETI organizations and NASA have been listening and looking for possible signals from extraterrestrial intelligence. Photo: Getty.

However, Mr. Shostak told Live Science the process is a general guideline and is not binding on law.

“Only advice is to share information… The United Nations has a copy of this procedure, and keeps it in a file cabinet somewhere. There is only such value,” he said.

In other words, people have no specific plan.

A report called “10 decisions that will turn the world upside down” by the IAA further analyzes the prospect of alien discovery.

Accordingly, there will be a complex reaction on Earth: politicians can use it to frighten the public. The sense of threat would be greater if the signal was emanating from within the Solar System, or detected in multiple stars because it suggests interstellar travel is possible.

The IAA advises that “no one should respond to signals without prior consent from an international organization, such as the United Nations.” So, at least in theory, “choosing a first answer for aliens would be a slow and painful process,” the IAA report says.

Plus, if extraterrestrials are hundreds or thousands of light years away, a “chat” with them might not be as exciting as you think. It would take hundreds or thousands of years just to send a message and receive a reply, easily putting humanity off.

The distances in the universe are so far that the light and electromagnetic waves of an extraterrestrial civilization would take hundreds or thousands of years to reach Earth. Photo: Getty Images.

Like “Neanderthals encounter the US Air Force”

Aside from the IAA’s general guidelines, Mr. Shostak is not aware of any government options for contacting aliens.

If other civilizations can fly to Earth, it doesn’t matter what kind of plans humans have, because they will surely be thousands of years ahead of us in technology.

“It would be like the Neanderthals facing the US Air Force,” Shostak told Live Science .

The US government has no interest in SETI research. “SETI is not a government program, although I would love to have their support,” he told Live Science .

He also believes that the government does not have black-clad, black-glassed agents, often referred to as “men in black” in the movies, who appear whenever there is an extraterrestrial threat. For example, in 1997, the SETI program caught a “false alarm” signal that was thought to be the most likely to come from extraterrestrials.

“We were convinced it was real,” Shostak told Live Science . “I was just waiting to see if ‘men in black,’ or the Pentagon, or the White House would show up and find out. No one called us. But the New York Times did call.”

Scenario meeting extraterrestrials

Although there is no specific plan to welcome aliens, scientists always have for themselves sci-fi movie scenarios.

According to Shostak, the highest possibility when humans detect alien life, they will be in their primitive form. This assumption is based on the fact that we have not detected any signs of intelligent life in the explored places. Furthermore, philosophically, on Earth itself, life existed in its primordial form much longer than human civilization, according to Live Science .

The Gaia spacecraft launched in 2013 by the European Space Agency (ESA) has located billions of stars in the Milky Way. Photo: ESA.

Otherwise, we will encounter a race of intelligent aliens far beyond us, capable of interstellar travel. According to the hypothesis of Jacob Haqq-Misra, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University, just as the ant cannot understand human actions, we humans will not understand how the other race will behave towards us. .

The famous astronomer Carl Sagan thinks that if they could travel between the stars, they would have evolved to the point of no longer caring about wars, invasions, in a way that we humans have not yet formed. tolerable, according to Live Science . (Just like the ant doesn’t understand why humans don’t need to constantly run around and find their way back to the nest.)

Mr. Haqq-Misra also concurred. “Such a modern society has solved the problems of development for a long time and there is no need to eat humans anymore,” he told Live Science.

But Mr. Shostak doesn’t think so. Although the aliens have different living conditions, having to acquire finite resources will probably also make invasion their ulterior motive. “I guess resources will be finite everywhere in the universe,” said Shostak.

Fermi’s paradox

For some researchers, the fact that these encounters haven’t happened is not taken for granted. They also see this as a paradox. Accordingly, there are more than 100 billion planets in our Milky Way galaxy alone. If only a very small percentage had an environment suitable for life, it would also be many millions of planets, according to the website Futurism . But the Fermi Paradox asks: why are we still alone?

The Milky Way has more than 100 billion planets, many of which are considered suitable for life by scientists. Photo: NASA.

One explanation is that primordial life existed somewhere in the universe, but was not an intelligent being.

“The time period during which humanity itself is at an advanced level of technology is only a few hundred years. Compared to the history of time, that’s nothing,” Marc Kaufman, science writer for the Washington Post and author of a book on the subject, told Universe Today.

He said it’s entirely possible that life on another planet evolved into a civilization and then went extinct, and we missed their date for billions of years.

Physicist Brian Cox also thinks that we hardly meet extraterrestrials because their too modern civilization will self-extinct due to not being able to control their own too advanced technology, according to Futurism . (Similar to human weapons of mass destruction!).

In the present, those who want to meet aliens have only to be patient. The Cornell University study also estimates that given the size of the Milky Way, it will take another 1,500 years for the probability of receiving signals from alien neighbors to be large enough.