One of the most famous quotes of the English writer, scientist, futurist and inventor Arthur Charles Clarke reads as follows: “There are two possibilities: either we are alone in the universe, or not. And both are equally frightening. At the moment, we know absolutely nothing about extraterrestrial intelligent life, as well as about the possibility of its existence. But even among the brightest minds of science, there is an opinion, or even a certainty, that sooner or later we will make the first contact.
Good or bad, but we do not sit idly all these years and just wait, when the aliens themselves will be the first to reach us. We made several attempts to appeal to the stars and, it seems to us, even did everything possible so that aliens from other planets could notice us. Humanity's desire to find "soul mates" has been around for much longer than you might imagine. We feel alone and so we keep looking.
In 1820, the Austrian astronomer Josef Johann Litrov proposed to draw giant symbols in the form of circles, triangles and squares in the sands of the Sahara Desert, fill the resulting recesses with kerosene and set them on fire at night. Thus, the scientist wanted to make a communication contact with Mars. In 1896, Nikola Tesla proposed a version of a device that could transmit electricity without wires, which could also be used to communicate with Mars.
More recent attempts by mankind are the Vodger 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft. Both carry on their skin maps of pulsars that can lead intelligent beings to our home. The Arecibo message, a coded radio message, was sent into space in 1974. But despite all these attempts, Frank Drake, the creator of the very original map of the pulsars, which was mentioned above, once said that his creation is unlikely to ever be discovered by anyone. The probes can take half a million years to travel from one star to the next, and they are not directed towards any particular star. It is also unlikely that Arecibo's radio message will ever receive a response. But nevertheless, this does not stop others from sending the same radio messages into space, as did, for example,European Space Agency last year.
But still, these are just radio messages and unmanned spacecraft. We are too far apart to expect an early response from a possible intelligent life. For example, astrophysicist Neil Degrass Tyson is sure that we will not make the first contact with intelligent extraterrestrial organisms in the next 50 years.
"Not. I believe that we (or they) may be too far from each other in space and possibly time. By the definition of "complex life forms," I think you mean something that is not single-celled organisms. That is, living organisms with arms, legs, their own thoughts, and so on. Everything will depend on our ability to travel in interstellar space. But this will definitely not happen in the next 50 years. Not at the level of technology that we have now,”commented Tyson.
There is no one hundred percent sure way to contact extraterrestrial life, or even just be prepared for the fact that they themselves will contact us. Nevertheless, we can prepare as much as today's technology allows. We can also continue to send signals in the hope that someone will respond to them. However, touching on the latter - here everything can turn out to be much more complicated than it looks at first glance. How can we be sure that our messages will be perceived by intelligent extraterrestrial life as harmless? These messages must be completely understandable. But how can we make them that way, if we don't even have an idea of how aliens present a harmless message to themselves? Most likely, the pulsar map mentioned above isas well as the Arecibo message are suitable as an example of a universal harmless message, but the desires for more active action are facing criticism, including from prominent scientists.
For example, physicist Stephen Hawking, who is generally not against the idea of the likelihood of another life in the Universe, believes that we should not so actively try to declare our existence to the rest of the cosmos, as well as what we are already capable of. In his opinion, whatever intelligent civilization we meet, “it is likely to be much more advanced than we are. And so much so that in her eyes we can look no more valuable than any bacteria. This can lead to very undesirable and sad results that can lead to our extinction or, at best, the fall of a civilization.
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Michio Kaku, another popularizer of science, also shared his thoughts on how to make contact with extraterrestrial life. In his opinion, we simply will not be able to contact them due to the low development of our technologies and a common understanding of the Universe. Once a scientist even compared us trying to get in touch with aliens, with ants trying to get in touch with us.
“If ants, sitting on an anthill, see the construction of a 10-lane high-speed highway next to them, will they begin to understand how to communicate with the workers building this highway? Will they assume that workers can communicate on the same frequency as themselves? In fact, ants are so primitive that they don't even understand what a 10-lane highway is. So what can we say about the methods of communication and certain frequencies?"
Regardless of what place we occupy in this universe, many still believe that we are not alone in it and that we are on our way to the first contact. Now, perhaps the most important thing is to prepare. To everything, whatever happens.
Nikolay Khizhnyak