May 27, 2022 07:40 PM
(This post was last modified: May 27, 2022 07:41 PM by C C.)
https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjbgkm/t...-estimates
INTRO: A new thought experiment attempts to at least venture a guess in hopes that other scientists will begin to take METI more seriously, and will try to determine how dangerous it actually is to try to contact alien civilizations.
According to this paper, which the author admits has “some limitations,” there are roughly four “malicious extraterrestrial civilizations” in the Milky Way, and we could likely send out 18,000 interstellar messages to different exoplanets in our galaxy and the probability of ensuring our own destruction would still be about the same as Earth being hit by a “global catastrophe asteroid.”
The paper—which hasn't been peer-reviewed—is called “Estimating the Prevalence of Malicious Extraterrestrial Civilizations" and was written by Alberto Caballero, a PhD student in conflict resolution at the University of Vigo in Spain and the author of a separate study published in Cambridge University’s peer-reviewed International Journal of Astrobiology earlier this month that attempted to analyze where the famous WOW! Signal originated.
Caballero says he had to make some assumptions that make it very difficult to know if his calculations are correct. To do the study, he researched how many external “invasions” there have been on Earth over the last 50 years, meaning countries that invade other countries. He then took that data and applied it to the number of known and estimated exoplanets, and potentially habitable exoplanets, based on Italian SETI scientist Claudio Maccone's estimate that there could be as many as 15,785 civilizations in the Milky Way. (The basic idea—extending Earthbound ideas of conflict into outer space—will be familiar to fans of sci-fi fare such as The Expanse.)
Caballero concludes that the probability of a hostile alien race invading Earth is low—very low. "The probability of extraterrestrial invasion by a civilization whose planet we message is, therefore, around two orders of magnitude lower than the probability of a planet-killer asteroid collision," which is already a one-in-100-million-years event, he writes in the paper.
He also said that there is likely fewer than one malicious extraterrestrial civilization in the Milky Way that has also mastered interstellar travel, which would make them a so-called “Type 1” civilization... (MORE - details)
RELATED (scivillage): Famous 'alien' Wow! signal may have come from distant, sunlike star
INTRO: A new thought experiment attempts to at least venture a guess in hopes that other scientists will begin to take METI more seriously, and will try to determine how dangerous it actually is to try to contact alien civilizations.
According to this paper, which the author admits has “some limitations,” there are roughly four “malicious extraterrestrial civilizations” in the Milky Way, and we could likely send out 18,000 interstellar messages to different exoplanets in our galaxy and the probability of ensuring our own destruction would still be about the same as Earth being hit by a “global catastrophe asteroid.”
The paper—which hasn't been peer-reviewed—is called “Estimating the Prevalence of Malicious Extraterrestrial Civilizations" and was written by Alberto Caballero, a PhD student in conflict resolution at the University of Vigo in Spain and the author of a separate study published in Cambridge University’s peer-reviewed International Journal of Astrobiology earlier this month that attempted to analyze where the famous WOW! Signal originated.
Caballero says he had to make some assumptions that make it very difficult to know if his calculations are correct. To do the study, he researched how many external “invasions” there have been on Earth over the last 50 years, meaning countries that invade other countries. He then took that data and applied it to the number of known and estimated exoplanets, and potentially habitable exoplanets, based on Italian SETI scientist Claudio Maccone's estimate that there could be as many as 15,785 civilizations in the Milky Way. (The basic idea—extending Earthbound ideas of conflict into outer space—will be familiar to fans of sci-fi fare such as The Expanse.)
Caballero concludes that the probability of a hostile alien race invading Earth is low—very low. "The probability of extraterrestrial invasion by a civilization whose planet we message is, therefore, around two orders of magnitude lower than the probability of a planet-killer asteroid collision," which is already a one-in-100-million-years event, he writes in the paper.
He also said that there is likely fewer than one malicious extraterrestrial civilization in the Milky Way that has also mastered interstellar travel, which would make them a so-called “Type 1” civilization... (MORE - details)
RELATED (scivillage): Famous 'alien' Wow! signal may have come from distant, sunlike star
