Ever wonder why scientists never seem to get any good data on aliens? The story goes that there is no hard evidence because aliens are so advanced they don’t need to make contact with humanity in order for us to win. If you were hoping for a signal from us, maybe you should take this as an opportunity. If we could only hear from them, maybe it would be easier for them to spot our signals and contact us. In the meantime, think about how incredible it would be if we finally found out what was going on out there. Maybe we’d be able to help them. It would be a huge, historical moment. We’d all save the planet.
If aliens are out there, don’t you think they’d want us to find out? There are two ways that aliens could contact us, and both are big enough events for life on Earth. Either humanity develops space travel at a faster rate than alien life does. Then humans go into space and listen for signs of alien life, or we finally detect alien life, whichever happens first.
The problem is that it’s really, really hard to detect alien life. The level of technology required to find aliens is so high that there’s no way we’d be able to detect alien life without wanting to communicate with them first. And even if we developed that technology, it would take enormous time and resources to communicate with them. This means either they can’t hear us right now or they can’t hear us soon enough.
Of course, there are other reasons why the planet might not be sending out signals in response to the “Hello Earth” message sent out by NASA in 1977. Maybe aliens sort of look like us, but they’re way more advanced than we are. Or maybe they’re so advanced, they don’t need to make contact with us. Maybe we’d be so offended by the idea of some superior species that wants to step in and save the planet we’d get angry.
According to Zachary Manchester, who wrote a book on SETI: “Whether or not people are ready for it, the discovery of extraterrestrial life—and I mean intelligent life—will be one of the most profound events in human history.” There’s also a chance that our world is at such an early stage that aliens can’t detect any signals from our planet. This is a little sad for humanity, but it’s still very exciting news for the aliens. If we detect life on another planet, our species would know that there is hope for the future of Earth. We’d know that it’s possible to survive any number of disasters and calamities that might make our planet uninhabitable.
Perhaps we could finally find a way to talk with aliens if we can just figure out how to listen to the proper frequencies and types of signals. And then we could figure out how to turn on the light and make contact with them. And then we could finally find out what was going on out there and how they could make such advanced tech. It’s worth a shot, isn’t it?
It would be a huge moment in human history if humans ever find life on another planet. A little bit of bad news for us: NASA believes there is a 0% chance that we’ll ever see aliens or learn about them for ourselves. This is probably because we can’t hear signals from other planets. Perhaps if humans didn’t think this way, we wouldn’t be so terrified by the thought of aliens using their superior technology to contact us. Maybe NASA would be a little more eager to find out if there was a signal from us. Maybe we’d be a little more likely to hear a signal from them.
But we don’t have any advanced technology that could detect aliens. We’re not getting signals back from aliens, and we’re not getting signals from space in response to our messages. So there’s no reason to expect that we’ll ever hear from outer space or really even learn anything about aliens. Our planet hasn’t heard anything back because they can’t hear us either, and they can’t do anything about it because they don’t know how or they don’t want us to know it’s happening.
