Read Extraterrestrial Civilizations Online
Authors: Isaac Asimov
Secondly, it is impossible to search the heavens with new expertise, new delicacy, new persistence, new power, and fail to discover a great many new things about the Universe that have nothing to do with advanced civilizations. Even if we fail to detect signals, we will not return from the task empty-handed.
We can’t say what discoveries we will make, or in what direction they will enlighten us, or just how they may prove useful to us, but humanity has (at its best moments) always valued knowledge for its own sake. The ability to do that is one of the ways in which a more intelligent species would be differentiated from a less intelligent one; and an advancing culture is differentiated from a decaying one.
Nor need we fear that in the end knowledge will have to be valued for its own sake only. Knowledge, wisely used, has always been helpful to humanity in the past; and there is every hope it will continue to be helpful in the future.
But suppose we do find a signal of some sort and decide that it must be of intelligent origin. Will that be of great value to us?
It may be that it won’t be a beacon at all; that no one is trying to attract our attention or to tell us anything. It may be the inadvertent overflow of technology, just a jumble of everyday activity, like the ball of microwaves that is now steadily expanding from the Earth in every direction.
That in itself—the mere recognition of a signal as representing the existence of a far-off civilization, even one from which we can extract no information at all—is quite enough, in some ways.
Think of the psychological significance right there. It means that
somewhere else a civilization exists,
*
which, judging from the mere strength of its signals, might just be advanced beyond our own. That alone gives us the heartening news that at least one group of intelligent beings has reached our level of technology and has succeeded in not destroying itself, but has instead survived and advanced onward to greater heights. And if they have done so, may we not do so as well?
If this thought helps keep us from despair during humanity’s mountainous tasks of solving the problems that lie immediately ahead of us, that alone may help move us toward the solution. It might even, perhaps, provide the crucial feather’s weight that may swing the balance toward survival and away from destruction.
Nor can it be possible that we will get no information other than the mere existence of the signal. Even if there is no intelligent message in the signal, or none that we can interpret, the characteristics of the signal could tell us the rate at which the signal-sending planet revolves about its star and rotates about its axis, together with perhaps other physical characteristics that could be of great interest and use to astronomers.
And suppose we recognize that there
is
useful material in the message, yet remain at a total loss to determine what that useful material might mean.
Is the message then useless? Of course not. In the first place, it presents us with an interesting challenge, a fascinating game in itself. Without coming to any conclusion as to specific items of information, we might reach certain generalizations concerning alien psychologies—and that, too, is knowledge.
Besides, even the tiniest breaks in the code could be of interest. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that from the message we get the hint of a relationship that, if true, might give us a new insight into some aspect of physics—it might even seem a trivial insight. Yet scientific advances do not exist in a vacuum. That one insight might stimulate other thoughts and, in the end, greatly accelerate the natural process by which our scientific knowledge advances.
And if we do come to some detailed understanding of the message, we might learn enough to be able to deduce whether the civilization sending it is peaceful or not.
If it is dangerous and warlike (a very slim chance, in my opinion), then the knowledge we will have gained will encourage us to keep quiet, make no reply, do our best to shield as far as possible any leakage into outer space of anything that will give a hint of our presence. Perhaps the knowledge we gain will give us some insight into how best to defend ourselves if the worst comes to the worst.
If, on the other hand, we decide that the messages are coming from a peaceful and benign civilization, or from one that cannot reach us whatever its attitude, then we might decide to answer, using the code we have learned.
To be sure, the civilization may be so far away from us that, thanks to the speed-of-light limit, we cannot expect an answer for, say, a century. There is, however, no great problem in waiting. We can go about our own business while we wait, so we lose nothing.
The advanced civilization at the other end, on receiving our answer and knowing that someone is listening, may perhaps at once begin to transmit in earnest. Though we wait a century for it, we would find ourselves thereafter getting a cram-course in all aspects of the alien civilization.
There is no way we can predict how useful such information will prove to be, but surely it cannot be useless.
In fact, if we move to the romantic extreme of supposing that the speed-of-light limit can be beaten and that there is a peaceful and benign Federation of Galactic Civilizations, our successful interpretation of the message and our courageous answer may amount to our ticket of entrance.
Who knows?
Even disregarding the vast curiosity that has always driven humanity, and the intense interest we all must have in so overwhelming a question as to whether or not there are other civilizations in the Universe in addition to our own, it does seem to me that no matter what we do in attempting to answer that question, we will succeed in profiting and in helping ourselves.
Therefore, for the sake of all of us, let’s abandon our useless, endless, suicidal bickering and unite behind the real task that awaits
us—to survive—to learn—to expand—to enter into a new level of knowledge.
Let us strive to inherit the Universe that is waiting for us; doing so alone, if we must, or in company with others—if they are there.
*
If there are other classes that are unknown, then we would not, in any case, detect any messages sent by way of them.
*
I feel by no means as certain in making this statement as I would have been a few years ago. Over the last few years there have been attempts to detect the neutrinos produced by the Sun and far fewer have been detected than should have been detected. Astronomers have not yet made up their minds as to the significance of this.
*
Or wavelengths. The longer the wavelength, the lower the energy; the shorter the wavelength, the higher the energy.
*
Each radio telescope would seem like a round eye, metaphorically speaking, gazing at the sky. The word
cyclops
is Greek for
round eye
.
*
On the other hand, if we detect nothing, that is not definitive proof that there is nothing there. We may be looking in the wrong place, or in the wrong fashion, or with the wrong technique, or all three.