World’s top alien hunter speaks out over fears that extraterrestrials will ‘trigger the destruction of Earth’
Astronomer Seth Shostak locks horns with Professor Stephen Hawking after the British physicist claimed communicating with aliens will spell doom for humanity
The world's most prominent alien hunting astronomer has rubbished Professor Stephen Hawking's claim that communicating with aliens will spell doom for humanity.
Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute, questioned the British physicist's claim that beaming messages out into space could be a red rag to aggressive alien species.
Last week, Professor Hawking suggested getting in touch with extraterrestrials could encourage them to come and pay us a visit - with disastrous consequences.
But Shostak, a respected stargazing scientist, claimed we don't have anything to fear.
, he wrote: "Sure, Martians could mount an attack on Earth in the near future. But that’s one worry that won’t keep me awake at night.
"Nor should it trouble you."
The SETI Institute is dedicated to listening out for signals sent out by alien civilisations, which may be trying to communicate with other species.
But in a documentary called “Stephen Hawking’s Favourite Places” on CuriosityStream, the Professor said "we should be wary of answering" these transmissions.
“Meeting an advanced civilisation could be like Native Americans encountering Columbus," he said.
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Shostak pointed out that we have already given away our location due to the radio waves and other accidental "leakage we’ve been wafting skyward for seven decades".
"We’ve been busy for a lifetime filling the seas of space with bottled messages marking our existence and position, so it’s a bit silly to fret about new bottles," he added.
"So should we worry about a future, deliberate transmission to the stars? NASA doesn’t seem concerned: in 2008, it broadcast a Beatles song in the direction of the north star. It will take four centuries to get there."
The stargazer said that even if aliens managed to pick up our transmissions, it was unlikely they would manage to get to Earth
any time soon.
He wrote: "The difficulty extraterrestrials would have in noticing our incidental emissions pales in comparison to the challenge they’d face in launching weaponry our way.
"Note that our fastest rockets, as impressive as they are, would take 80,000 years to reach even the nearest star. Aggressive aliens would obviously require far better hardware. Interstellar travel, let alone warfare, is easy only in the movies."
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