24 Mar 2018

Do scientists invite total strangers to their home?



Long ago, I read one of the books of Carl Sagan. I remember that I was reading it intently, and after that, I saw a movie that was made based on Carl Sagan's book "Contact" on TV. In that movie, my favorite actress Jodie Foster plays the main character and I recorded it and saw it again and again. Since then, I came to like seeing science fiction movies often. My favorite movies are "Interstellar", "2001: A Space Odyssey", "Contact", "The Martian", "Moon", "Inception" and so on. These movies gave me lots of simulations of science and I started to pay attention to the real world's science more than before.


I heard the Voyager was loaded with the Golden Record and was launched in 1977. The Golden Record contains greetings in 55 languages, music and more than 100 images.

Firstly, I thought that was amazing. It made me feel that the world I had seen in the science fiction movies had arrived. I simply thought it was a good idea to send messages into space, but gradually my opinion has changed. The reason I have changed my idea was I have seen one image, a solar location map. The question I have got in my mind was very simple.

Do you tell a stranger your home address?

In the movie "Contact", an extraterrestrial who has a gentle mind and who is thoughtful of human beings appeared. On the other hand, in "Star Wars" there is a war the same as the title and a massacre is taking place. The extraterrestrials in these two movies are different types and I think, in the real world, these two types of extraterrestrials can exist.
Yes, I believe that there is intelligent life in the universe somewhere.

I have seen pictures of so-called UFOs, but that isn't the reason I believe in the existence of intelligent life. The universe is huge, far beyond our imaginations and I think the possibility of existing intelligent life is high, but they are not close, I don't think they are our neighbors, somewhere far far away.

History proves that human nature may not be better even if we become intellectual. In the old days, there were uneducated people who had a warm heart and were kind everywhere in the world. On the other hand, there are more educated people in our society now, but there are still people who are brutal and selfish. As you can see in the news, there are still wars and massacres occurring in the world. I think creatures like extraterrestrials might be the same as us. I hope that they have sense and a thoughtful heart, plus the same feelings of value and morality. This is very important. I don't think that it will come true, but for example, if extraterrestrials came to the earth and found that there are many natural resource that they wanted to get on the earth, they can get it by force. To speak of extremes, if they thought that human beings seemed delicious to eat, what could we do? The only thing we can say is we don't know what extraterrestrials think of.

Sending messages to unknown creatures that might have been higher civilizations and dropping a bottle into the ocean containing a letter, can expect very different results. Sending messages and the location map into somewhere in the universe seems to be risky. We don't know what kind of creatures they are. If my memory is correct, the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa once displayed a doll of the creature "Dinosauroid" that the reptiles evolved. They might be like that doll. The doll didn't look well-disposed.

In the time period that current people are alive, I don't think it will happen, but if extraterrestrials visit the earth in the future, there are lots of things that we have to consider. How about quarantine? They might have an extraterrestrial virus. This reminds me that many Aboriginal people died because the Europeans brought viruses long ago. The same things might happen too. Am I too pessimistic?

If it's possible I would like to take Voyager's solar location map back. Where is it now? Oh, no, it may be outside of the solar system already! The feeling I have got now is similar to when I sent an email to the wrong person. It's too late!

I know that the scientists who prepared the Voyager Golden Record had certain reasons and they thought it's good for humanity's future. I think they are very smart people, and I know I'm just a pessimistic ordinary person who doesn't have any special knowledge of space science but let me ask them a question.

Do you send an invitation card to total strangers to your home party?

2 comments:

  1. This is a very interesting way of thinking about it!

    I too, think that if we really were to make close contact with aliens in the future, there would be many complications. With a little bit of my own pessimism, I think that if scientists did receive contact from alien life, they would have to keep it a secret. Many people in general society would be too excited / scared to think properly about their response to the situation.

    Hopefully by the time the solar map gets read, we are well prepared to keep our planet safe and have peaceful contact with aliens :)

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  2. It reminds me that there was an incident that people believed the broadcast of the radio in the United States, and people became the panic.

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