Worst Case SETI Scenario, by James Bean

 

Worst Case SETI Scenario, by James Bean

Say we find a habitable planet that’s virtually an earth-twin in orbit around a nearby star… like maybe Barnard’s Star. We come to see this “Barnard’s Star C” as an “Earth 2.0”.

If an ET civilization similar to ourselves (a military power with a thirst for real estate and resources) happens to reside there, they too might be looking at Earth through their end of the telescope and say to themselves: “Hey! Barnard’s Star C 2.0” and have the very same ideas about star-shot probes, exploring and eventual colonizing that we would have.

At only a distance of six light-years, our obnoxious colonizing Klingon neighbors bearing beads and blankets claiming to own the land according to their self-proclaimed superior economic system might figure out a way to get here one day. Oops! Oh well!

Other Earths - Communication Between Worlds - Two Newly Archived Editions of Spiritual Awakening Radio

Other Earths - Communication Between Worlds - Two Newly Archived Editions of Spiritual Awakening Radio

 

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"Earth is a beautiful jewel whose dominant life form, humans, are a primitive carbon based species engaged in tribal warfare. Their spiritual essence is suppressed, their history forgotten, and they look to corrupt religious leaders for guidance. Humans use other life forms for food, sport, entertainment and research. They pollute everything in reach." From the SETI Earth Speaks Project, a Treasure-trove of wisdom reflecting about the human condition: http://twitter.com/SETiEarthSpeaks

 

 

"If some day we detect a technological civilization around a distant star, one of our most critical decisions," says psychologist Doug Vakoch, "will be whether we should reply, and if so, what we should say." As the Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute, Vakoch leads an international group of scientists, artists, and scholars from the humanities, as they ponder how we could communicate what it's like to be human across the vast distances of interstellar space.

My guest: Douglas Vakoch is the Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute, as well as the only social scientist employed by a SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) organization. Dr. Vakoch researches ways that different civilizations might create messages that could be transmitted across interstellar space, allowing communication between humans and extraterrestrials even without face-to-face contact. He is particularly interested in how we might compose messages that would begin to express what it's like to be human.

Dr. Vakoch has published widely in scholarly books and journals in psychology, anthropology, astronautics, and the relationship between the arts and sciences. He is the editor of several forthcoming books, including Between Worlds: The Art and Science of Interstellar Message Composition (The MIT Press), Psychology of Space Exploration: Contemporary Research in Historical Perspective (NASA History Series), Ecofeminism in Literature and Rhetoric (Berghahn Books), and Culture in the Cosmos: Extraterrestrial Life and Society (Berghahn Books). His work has been featured in newspapers and magazines such as the New York Times, Nature, Science, and Der Spiegel. As a spokesman on the cultural aspects of SETI, he has been interviewed on radio and television shows on the BBC, NPR, ABC, The Learning Channel, The Discovery Channel, and many others. 

 

 

Douglas Vakoch is the 

Director of Interstellar 

Message Composition 

at the SETI Institute

A link to my interview with Doug Vakoch of the SETI Institute, all about the Search for Extra-terrestrial Life and the Discovery of Earth-like Planets: 

https://www.mixcloud.com/SpiritualAwakeningRadio/the-search-for-extra-terrestrial-life-with-my-guest-doug-vakoch-of-the-seti-institute-part-1

 

All for the love of Wisdom and radio,

James

Spiritual Awakening Radio Productions