During a recent Reddit AMA well known physicist, futurist and overall swell guy, Michio Kaku “stuck his neck out” and declared that he expects aliens to make contact with humans within this century. “I personally feel that within this century, we will make contact with an alien civilization, by listening in on their radio communications. But talking to them will be difficult, since they could be tens of light years away. So, in the meantime, we must decipher their language to understand their level of technology.” What a nice thought, right?
Not according to fellow physicist Michael Hippke, it’s not.
As an aside, we might want to look into the possiblity Michio terrorized Michael Hippke in high school because almost as soon as Kaku expressed his romantic optimism for human alien phone tag Hippke published a paper questioning the wisdom of picking up the phone to begin with. That timing is just too close to be a coincidence.
Hippke’s paper titled Intersellar Communication: Message decontamination is Impossible, states that given the high probability aliens are capable of space travel they might also be quite capable at coding. Following that logic, Hippke theorizes these aliens might try and use that knowledge to hack our systems. And the easiest way to accomplish that goal would be to disguise their attack in heartwarming messages from space. So, he advises that if you receive an unexpected call from Alpha Centari it’s probably not that chick from the bar the other night, so just hang up. It was most likely just a home mortgage refi robo-call but better safe than sorry.
“There are several possible threats from an ETI message. On the most basic level, a message might represent a statement like, ‘We will make your sun go supernova tomorrow,’” the report states. “True or not, it could cause widespread panic. More realistically, a longer text could have a demoralizing cultural influence.”
I mean, just when you were trying to like the idea of meeting another alien civilization a scientist just comes in an ruins everything. Just like always. Scientist’s really are the Red Grin Grumbles of hopeful romanticism. Get laid, nerds.
ET noticed you have malware and wants you to give him remote access to your computer.