Page 7 - IAV Digital Magazine #544

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Stephen Hawking's Concerns About Aliens
The late physics professor Stephen Hawking express ed concern multi- ple times about humans calling out into the vast- ness of space and contacting aliens.
In 2015, Hawking appeared at an
event announcing the launch of the Breakthrough Listen project, which studies radio waves in an effort to find out if any of them are artificial in origin.
Hawking showed support for efforts to find alien life by listening, but
warned against actively reaching out ourselves, using humanity's own behavior as a sign that aliens won't necessarily be friendly.
"If you look at his- tory, contact between humans and less intelli- gent organisms
have often been disastrous from their point of view, and encounters between civiliza- tions with advanced versus primitive technolo- gies have gone badly for the less advanced," he said.
Hawking went on to say that aliens could be vastly more powerful than us and "may not see us as any more valuable than we see bac- teria."
Later, in the 2016 online documen- tary
series Stephen Hawking's Favourite Places, the physicist revisited the topic in reference to the exoplanet Gliese 832 c, which
is considered to be a potentially habitable world.
"If you look at his- tory, contact between humans and less intelli- gent organisms have often been disastrous from their point of view,
and encounters between civiliza- tions with advanced versus primitive technolo- gies have gone badly for the less advanced," he said.
Hawking went on to say that aliens could be vastly more powerful than us and "may not see us as any more valuable than we see bac- teria."
Later, in the 2016 online documen- tary
series Stephen Hawking's Favourite Places, the physicist revisited the topic in reference to the exoplanet Gliese 832 c, which
is considered to be a potentially habitable world.
"One day we might receive a signal from a planet like Gliese 832 c, but we should be wary of answering
back," he said. Jamilah Hah is
also involved in the BITG project. She thinks that the benefits of contacting aliens outweigh the potential risks.
"Stephen Hawking's quote is absolutely inspiring and my personal conclu- sion was that any species capable of understanding and interpreting our message will likely be equally if not more intelli- gent and wary of our existence," she
told Newsweek.
"Thus, as long as contact is approached with a clear sign of peace, it can be assumed that the hopeful possibili- ties and discover- ies that come alongside com- munication out- weigh the risk."
The draft
report outlining the proposed BITG message was published on the arXiv pre-print archive this year.
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