Humans have been around for millions of years, but only in the past century have we begun beaming radio transmissions powerful enough to reach any alien planets. If we do make contact, what might our intelligent counterparts look like?
The scoop:
Ever imagined what that first moment of alien contact might be like? Perhaps a slimy green creature descending from a saucer-shape spaceship, or maybe just a repeating radio beacon.
To find out what the experts think, Discovery Space linked up with Seth Shostak -- senior astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) institute who consulted on "The Day the Earth Stood Still" movie remake.
Dave on Earth (1:01 PM): Hi Seth. How are you?
SethHeartsAliens (1:02 PM): Just peachy-keen, Dave!
Dave on Earth (1:03 PM): Great. So we're here to chat about aliens... but before we start, what do you have to do with extraterrestrial life?
SethHeartsAliens (1:03 PM): Well, my day job is to look for them.
Not here on Earth, but aliens that might be on other worlds, sending us a radio broadcast.
Dave on Earth (1:04 PM): I know some would beg to differ, but so far I assume we haven't talked to aliens yet. Correct?
SethHeartsAliens (1:05 PM): That's correct. We still haven't received any radio signals that we believe were sent by extraterrestrials.
We're looking, of course, and our search is speeding up, too.
Dave on Earth (1:05 PM): What about the "Wow!" signal?
SethHeartsAliens (1:05 PM): Well, that was a strange signal received in 1977 with an antenna in Ohio.
No one yet knows for sure what it was, but it was only picked up once. So... if you can't see it again, if you only hear it a single time, then you can't claim that it was ET.
You just don't know.
Dave on Earth (1:06 PM): Thanks. If we did make contact, do you have any idea what the aliens might look like?
SethHeartsAliens (1:07 PM): That's a question that everyone asks!
In the movies they often look a lot like us -- two arms, two legs, a head, two eyes, and so forth.
But really, if you go down to the local zoo, and check out the critters there, THEY don't look like us.
So I don't think aliens would, either.
But my personal opinion is that if we find a signal...
... it will be coming from a society that's more advanced than ours.
So they may have already invented thinking machines.
Dave on Earth (1:08 PM): Thinking machines?
SethHeartsAliens (1:09 PM): Yep. I'm willing to bet you a lunch that any signal we eventually find will be coming from ...
... you said it, thinking machines!
Dave on Earth (1:09 PM): So my computer could be an alien?
SethHeartsAliens (1:09 PM): Well, I don't know how smart your computer is. When it's clever enough to take over your job, I'll be willing to admit that it might be like an alien!
Dave on Earth (1:09 PM): The one I'm working from is pretty dumb, but it has a few tricks up its silicon sleeves.
SethHeartsAliens (1:10 PM): Glad to hear it has sleeves!
But this would be the kind of machine that could teach high school chemistry, or write that Great American Novel.
Dave on Earth (1:10 PM): Honestly, I don't think of machines when I think of aliens.
Why do you think it will be a machine and not, well, a living thing?
SethHeartsAliens (1:11 PM): I think this is just a matter of time scales.
Imagine an alien society that invents radio, similar to the way we did 100 years ago.
Within a century, they've invented computers.
And within a century after that, maybe, they've invented thinking machines.
So: if any aliens we hear are as much as a few centuries ahead of us, they've already invented their successors.
Dave on Earth (1:12 PM): I see... don't you think that's a little depressing?
SethHeartsAliens (1:12 PM): I think we're just subjecting ourselves to wishful thinking when we imagine that the aliens will be protoplasm blobs the way we are!
Dave on Earth (1:12 PM): True... I suppose I just never like that robot from "Lost in Space."
I wouldn't want to meet that kind of "thinking machine" -- too annoying. I'd rather meet other protoplasm blobs.
SethHeartsAliens (1:12 PM): Machines don't bug me that much. And we could be their pets!
Robert May... Yes, I met that fellow once! But he was a very limited robot.
All he could do is roll around the landscape saying "Danger, Will Robinson!" A dog can do more than that.
The machines we'll have a century from now will be rather more sophisticated, I think.
Dave on Earth (1:14 PM): Ok, so let me rephrase my big question:
What might an alien "thinking machine" look like? Obviously this is speculative territory, but it's your job to think about these things :)
SethHeartsAliens (1:14 PM): Well, it may not matter much what it LOOKS like.
What counts is what it is doing that we might detect, even from light-years away. And as you implied, we don't know.
But maybe it's sending out light or radio signals that our telescopes could pick up.
That's one way to find them .. maybe the best way.
Another possibility is that they are building giant structures that we could see.
Dave on Earth (1:15 PM): Is there a chance SETI and everyone else is looking for the wrong thing?
SethHeartsAliens (1:15 PM): Of course there's a chance that we're doing the wrong thing, but if you don't know, then I think you should do SOMETHING.
We'll never find the aliens by just throwing up our hands and saying "we don't know how to look!"
Better to explore and not find them, than to not explore and be guaranteed not to find them!
Dave on Earth (1:17 PM): Thanks. Now another question...
Do you ever ponder why they would want to contact us -- and would you be afraid of ever making contact?
SethHeartsAliens (1:17 PM): Well, I'm certainly not afraid of hearing them on the radio. After all, they won't know that we picked up their signal.
Dave on Earth (1:18 PM): What if their politically correct greeting is to chew off one of our arms or something?
SethHeartsAliens (1:18 PM): If aliens ever came to Earth --- well, that might be a bit different!
Indeed, usually when an advanced society visits a less-advanced society, it's bad news for the less-advanced.
Frankly, I don't know why we'd be visited. I think it's unlikely that the aliens even know we're here.
Dave on Earth (1:19 PM): I see. Here's another depressing thought:
What if they know about us, but are completely avoiding us?
Maybe they know that we smell bad. Or that we're jerks to our planet
SethHeartsAliens (1:19 PM): Gosh, no one likes to be a social outcast!
But as I say, I don't think they know about how we smell or how we treat our planet.
And that's because signals that would tell them that -- for example, our TV shows -- haven't reached them yet, most likely.
They may know about the oxygen in our atmosphere, and that might tell them about plants on Earth. But I doubt any of them know about humans!
Maybe they'll come to Earth to save the chestnut trees, but I doubt it.
Dave on Earth (1:22 PM): So to touch on something you typed a moment ago...
If no aliens probably know about us yet, why are we looking for signs of them?
SethHeartsAliens (1:22 PM): Well, that's a good point. Maybe they have no reason to be sending radio messages, for example, to Earth.
But on the other hand, perhaps we're just in the "beam" of a galactic broadcast... one that's not really intended for us.
We might pick up that.
Dave on Earth (1:24 PM): I see... so it's also an issue of why they would want/need to broadcast.
Do you think it's safe to assume that intelligent aliens would be curious as we are?
SethHeartsAliens (1:24 PM): Yes, and that requires reading their minds! I doubt that we can do that very well.
I'm sure curiosity is something that any intelligent being (even a machine) would have. It's a valuable trait.
It's not just a human trait. Plenty of animals exhibit curiosity... sometimes it pays off (for example, with a nice dinner!)
We're curious to know if there are Martians, even if you'd need a microscope to see them!
Dave on Earth (1:26 PM): So that means whatever, or whomever, is out there must have grown up as a species according to evolution?
SethHeartsAliens (1:27 PM): Well, in the beginning, I'm sure that any aliens that are out there began as biological beings.
Even if they've become machines...
Dave on Earth (1:27 PM): Their "thinking machines" would be different, right?
Let's hope they're a far cry from the ones we see in the Terminator series.
SethHeartsAliens (1:27 PM): Yes, well the Terminator guy looked a lot like ... us!
The machines might just look like a lot of circuitry and some solar cells, for all we know. Just floating in space.
Not very attractive, unless you're another machine!
Dave on Earth (1:29 PM): You brought up Martians.
How would finding a few microbes not native to Earth on the Red Planet change things?
SethHeartsAliens (1:29 PM): It would be a VERY big story.
Not because finding pond scum is in itself so remarkable; you can find pond scum in your neighborhood pond.
But finding MARTIAN pond scum would say, "Hey, life must be everywhere because, look, the next planet out from the Sun also has life!"
Dave on Earth (1:29 PM): Well, we've had plenty of false-alarms that were big stories
SethHeartsAliens (1:30 PM): Yes, well, science often produces false alarms.
Dave on Earth (1:30 PM): I see -- so it's not the life itself, but the fact that it's all over the place.
And that would mean more chances out there for finding beings at least a bit similar to us.
SethHeartsAliens (1:31 PM): Well, the life itself would also be interesting. But the really big part of the story is that it would tell us that lots of worlds probably have life.
Of course, the Martian life might NOT be very similar to us. Might not have DNA, for example.
Every biologist would want to know, "could you have life without DNA?"
Now there's one other possibility...
Dave on Earth (1:32 PM): Oh?
SethHeartsAliens (1:32 PM): ...and that is, Martian life infected Earth a long time ago.
So that we and the Martians might be relatives. But that's just an idea.
We'll only know if and when we find any Martians!
I kind of like the idea that I might be descended from Martians... but it's likeable, not likely!
What we would share with any alien is the fact that we both arose from stardust.
Dave on Earth (1:36 PM): Good point. To recap:
We have no idea what aliens would look like, but if we hear from anything it's probably going to be a machine -- they live longer and might be smarter than anything biological.
We also don't know if aliens would want to find us and, if they did, what they might do.
But whoever they are, they probably started out biologically and evolved on the same principles as everything on Earth.
And no matter where "they" are, we, like them -- even the machines -- are made of stardust.
SethHeartsAliens (1:37 PM): That's about the size of it!
Of course, we'll only know if this is true by picking up a signal or by finding aliens in some other way.
So that's why we keep looking!
Dave on Earth (1:38 PM): My final big question:
Why do you think humans should look? Or listen, for that matter?
SethHeartsAliens (1:38 PM): Well, there are a lot of reasons you could think of for listening for signals.
Maybe, if we heard anything, and could understand it, we could learn important things. That's one possibility.
We would also learn that Earth isn't so special, and that's interesting to know, too.
But I think the real reason we look is, as you mentioned before... curiosity.
We've already talked about that a bit. It's a human quality (although not just humans), and it's a great thing.
Why else would you want to know what's at the bottom of the oceans? Or on the far side of the Moon?
Curiosity drives us to explore. And exploration is a wonderful thing for us to do.
That's my take on it. We could just sit around and play solitaire forever. But exploration is the thing, in my opinion.
Let's find out what the universe has to offer.
Dave on Earth (1:41 PM): Thanks so much Seth
SethHeartsAliens (1:41 PM): It's been fun!
An interview published on discovery channel website by Dave Mosher
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