Stephen Hawking warns that “They will be vastly more powerful and may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria,” He has warned against announcing our presence to any alien civilisations, especially to those more technologically advanced than humans.
According to the eminent physicist Stephen Hawking. “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans,” Hawking has said in a forthcoming documentary made for the Discovery Channel.
The film, Stephen Hawking’s Favourite Places, takes viewers to five significant locations across the cosmos, on his spacecraft — the SS Hawking. In the film, Hawking performs a hypothetical flyby of Gliese 832c, a potentially habitable exoplanet located 16 light years away.
“One day we might receive a signal from a planet like Gliese 832c, but we should be wary of answering back,” he said.
“They will be vastly more powerful and may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria,” Hawking warned.
“As I grow older, I am more convinced than ever that we are not alone. After a lifetime of wondering, I am helping to lead a new global effort to find out,” he was quoted.
Hawking believes that, based on the sheer number of planets that scientists know must exist, we are not the only life-form in the universe. There are, after all, billions and billions of stars in our galaxy alone, with, it is reasonable to expect, an even greater number of planets orbiting them. And it is not unreasonable to expect some of that alien life to be intelligent, and capable of interstellar communication. So, when someone with Hawking’s knowledge of the universe advises against contact, it’s worth listening, isn’t it?
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