Scientists have created a group that must decide how earthlings should act in case of contact with aliens

Scientists are creating a response center in Scotland, which should develop a strategy for the behavior of mankind after the discovery of an alien civilization. At the same time, they are concerned that people are not ready to meet with alien life. The Guardian.

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As astronomers scour space with their powerful telescopes and other equipment, they notice something that makes them gasp. From the depths of distant galaxies, a weak but steady signal is coming, and perhaps this is a message from a highly developed civilization.

If so, then establishing contact with an alien civilization will be a transformative event for humanity, for which, of course, not all countries of the world are ready.

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“Look at the mess we made when Covid hit. We behaved like a chicken with its head cut off,” says Dr John Elliott, a computational linguist at the University of St Andrews. “We cannot afford to be ill-prepared scientifically, socially and politically for an event (extraterrestrial contact) that could occur at any time.”

This frank assessment of the earth's unpreparedness for contact with alien life is at the heart of the creation of the Seti (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) center in St. Andrews.

Over the next month or two, Elliott plans to assemble a team of international researchers and qualified individuals. They will take over the preparatory work: they will analyze the mysterious signals or even artifacts and work out every aspect of how we should respond.

“Until now, the focus has been on finding signals. But we need to know what we are going to do about it. What's next? says Elliott. “We need strategies and scenarios to understand what we need to do and how to do it. It’s like the Scout motto: Be prepared.”

The advances made over the past 30 years have increased the enthusiasm for the search for aliens. Since 1992, when astronomers first confirmed the existence of a planet outside the solar system, more than 5000 such worlds have been discovered. Scientists now suspect that most of the Milky Way's 300 billion stars have their own families of planets.

“When people say they don’t think there is life out there, they are actually going against the current of scientific opinion,” says Elliott.

However, the abundance of planets and the suspicion that at least some of them are habitable is only part of the story. Much more powerful telescopes now make it possible to scan vast outer spaces.

Seti researchers have already developed some guidelines on how to behave if telescopes detect a "technosignature" - an interstellar message from an advanced civilization. A 2010 declaration from the International Academy of Astronautics urges those detecting mysterious signals to first rule out prosaic non-alien sources such as a microwave oven in a corridor. If the signal is confirmed, the researchers should inform the public and the UN Secretary General.

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But there are few indications of what to do next. How should the message be studied? Does it have to be published in full before it can be transcribed? Will governments allow it? Should humanity react? If so, who decides what we will send back?

“After the initial announcement, we will be looking at the impact on society, the spread of information, the media, the impact on religions and belief systems, the potential for disinformation, what kind of analytical capabilities we will need, and more. We need to have strategies, to be transparent about everything we find - what we know and what we don't know," says Elliott.

While individual scientists and a small number of organizations have already developed plans for the event of first contact with aliens, Elliott believes that this work is fragmented. Seti will bring together all the necessary experts to draw up a plan "for any scenario we face, or at least all the ones that we - humanity - can think of."

Another important goal is the serious involvement of the UN, perhaps the only global body with influence to coordinate the processing of a message and, in particular, any response. The vast distances between the stars mean that conversations can span generations. And this is provided that the civilization did not die out during the time when the message reached us.

Are we really going to communicate with aliens when we can barely communicate with beings on our own planet? Even if the signal cannot be deciphered, researchers can obtain information about the intelligence of the sender from the complexity of its structure.

The prospect of sending any response has drawn criticism from some quarters. The late Stephen Hawking, a Cambridge cosmologist, warned in 2016 that humanity's first contact with an advanced civilization could resemble what happened when the Native Americans encountered Christopher Columbus, which "didn't turn out so well."

Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at the City College of New York, said referring to aliens "would be the biggest mistake in human history."

However, Elliot is more optimistic. He believes it would be a shame if advanced civilizations kept to themselves and made no effort to communicate.

“This is such an opportunity to make a connection if there is other life out there, and everything indicates that there should be one,” he says. “If we have an opportunity, I don’t think we should pass it up.”

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Lewis Dartnell, an astrobiologist and professor of science communication at the University of Westminster, said the new center at St. Andrews is "an important step in raising awareness of how ill-equipped we currently are" to detect a signal from an alien civilization.

But he added that any sentient aliens would likely be hundreds, if not thousands, of light years away, meaning communication times would be measured in many centuries.

“Even if we received the signal tomorrow, we would have enough time to assemble an international team of diverse experts to try to decipher the meaning of the message and think carefully about how Earth should respond,” he said.

“The big challenge is to establish some form of international agreement to prevent capable individuals or private corporations from independently responding—before there is a consensus about whether it is safe to respond at all, and what we would like to say as one planet " Dartnell added.

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