Alan Boss, Carnegie Institution of Washington astronomer, on the search for extra terrestrial life
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Most of the big ground-based radio telescopes are trying to detect life rather than beam out our presence. In fact, there’s an active argument within the extraterrestrial intelligence community as to whether we should be announcing that we’re here, instead of just listening quietly. That’s associated with worrying about aliens coming to enslave us and kill us. Some people think we should stay quiet… That’s kind of silly. The speed of light is so fast and distances are so immense between stars that there’s zero probability that anybody could come here to invade. Traveling between stars is pretty much the territory of science fiction. With our current best rockets, it would take us 100,000 years to reach the closest star. I wouldn’t worry about the interstellar air-raid sirens going off tonight.
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