Who Should Speak for the Earth?
By Jack W Traphagan
Extraterrestrial communication forces us to confront cultural assumptions.
This Article From Issue
July-August 2021
Volume 109, Number 4
Page 210
On November 16, 1974, a small team led by astronomer Frank Drake beamed a coded signal from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico toward globular star cluster M13, about 25,000 light years away. The message contained a rudimentary map of our Solar System, a graphic depiction of the composition of DNA, and a human stick figure. The content consisted of just 1,679 binary digits, and the odds of it ever being intercepted are extremely low, although not zero. Even if it were received, would it be understood? When I show a printout of the message to college students in my classes, they always have a difficult time interpreting most of the contents other than the stick figure—and my students are all human.
QUICK TAKE
- Even if the likelihood of reaching an alien civilization is extremely small, efforts to contact extraterrestrial life pose an existential risk to all of humanity.
- Human history has shown that interactions between distinct cultures are often disruptive, challenging, and even violent. Interactions with aliens could be similarly dangerous.
- Intercultural diplomacy will be a crucially important piece of communicating with aliens, and we will need people from across academic disciplines and the globe participating.
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