END TIMES

Maybe Let’s Not Try to Talk to Aliens

In an effort to speed up the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, some researchers are sending messages into the cosmos. We may not like the answer.

Illustration: Jon Han

Asteroids, supervolcanoes, nuclear war, climate change, engineered viruses, artificial intelligence, and even aliens — the end may be closer than you think. For the next two weeks, OneZero will be featuring essays drawn from editor Bryan Walsh’s forthcoming book End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World, which hits shelves on August 27 and is available for pre-order now, as well as pieces by other experts in the burgeoning field of existential risk. But we’re not helpless. It’s up to us to postpone the apocalypse.

SETI — the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — is passive by nature, a human ear cocked towards space. The hope is that there are extraterrestrial intelligences out there trying to message us, and we just need to be ready with our radio telescopes to hear, ready for that moment of contact.

But listening isn’t just a search method — it’s a philosophy. Early SETI advocates like the astronomer and author Carl Sagan took it for granted that any alien civilization we might come into contact with would be more advanced…