We have yet to discover any signs of an extraterrestrial civilization — a prospect that could quite literally change overnight. Should that happen, our sense of ourselves and our place in the cosmos would forever be shaken. It could even change the course of human history. Or would it? Last week, SETI’s Seth Shostak made the claim that we’ll detect an alien civilization by 2040. Personally, I don’t believe this will happen (for reasons I can elucidate in a future post — but the Fermi Paradox is definitely a factor, as is the problem of receiving coherent radio signals across stellar distances). But it got me wondering: What, if anything, would change in the trajectory of a civilization’s development if it had definitive proof that intelligent extraterrestrials (ETIs) were real?...
Posted on: Sat, 31 May 2014 03:00:22 +0000