We don’t know the mind of extraterrestrials.
“I did the paper based only on life as we know it. “I don't mention the 4.42 civilizations in my paper because 1) we don't know whether all the civilizations in the galaxy are like us (below Type-0), and 2) a civilization like us would probably not pose a threat to another one since we don't have the technology to travel to their planet (we will reach that technology once we become a Type-1).”Ĭaballero told Motherboard in a phone call that, as society has become more advanced, there have been fewer invasions, suggesting to him that alien civilizations capable of destroying Earth would be less interested in actually doing so as they progress technologically. “0.22 Type-1 civilizations (capable of nearby interstellar travel), and 4.42 civilizations if all of them were like humanity (we aren't a Type 0 yet),” he said. He also said that there is likely fewer than one malicious extraterrestrial civilization in the Milky Way that has also mastered interstellar travel, which would make them a so-called “Type 1” civilization.
"The probability of extraterrestrial invasion by a civilization whose planet we message is, therefore, around two orders of magnitude lower than the probability of a planet-killer asteroid collision," which is already a one-in-100-million-years event, he writes in the paper. (The basic idea-extending Earthbound ideas of conflict into outer space-will be familiar to fans of sci-fi fare such as The Expanse.)Ĭaballero concludes that the probability of a hostile alien race invading Earth is low-very low. He then took that data and applied it to the number of known and estimated exoplanets, and potentially habitable exoplanets, based on Italian SETI scientist Claudio Maccone's estimate that there could be as many as 15,785 civilizations in the Milky Way. To do the study, he researched how many external “invasions” there have been on Earth over the last 50 years, meaning countries that invade other countries. The paper-which hasn't been peer-reviewed-is called “Estimating the Prevalence of Malicious Extraterrestrial Civilizations" and was written by Alberto Caballero, a PhD student in conflict resolution at the University of Vigo in Spain and the author of a separate study published in Cambridge University’s peer-reviewed International Journal of Astrobiology earlier this month that attempted to analyze where the famous WOW! Signal originated.Ĭaballero says he had to make some assumptions that make it very difficult to know if his calculations are correct.
A new thought experiment attempts to at least venture a guess in hopes that other scientists will begin to take METI more seriously, and will try to determine how dangerous it actually is to try to contact alien civilizations.Īccording to this paper, which the author admits has “some limitations,” there are roughly four “malicious extraterrestrial civilizations” in the Milky Way, and we could likely send out 18,000 interstellar messages to different exoplanets in our galaxy and the probability of ensuring our own destruction would still be about the same as Earth being hit by a “global catastrophe asteroid.”
0 kommentar(er)
