...and don't let them use our satellites against us, either.

From The Sunday Times

April 25, 2010

Don't talk to aliens, warns Stephen Hawking

 

THE aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact.

 

Hawking's logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved.

 

"To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational," he said. "The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like."
 
The answer, he suggests, is that most of it will be the equivalent of microbes or simple animals — the sort of life that has dominated Earth for most of its history.
 
[But} a few life forms could be intelligent and pose a threat. Hawking believes that contact with such a species could be devastating for humanity. He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is "a little too risky". 
 
He said: "If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans."
 

 

full @ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7107207.ece

 

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