Humanity's wiiled contact with aliens,.....

Humanity's willed contact with aliens, Stephen Hawking warns, could mean devastation

Don't stop reaching out

We're not alone, suggests celebrated scientist Stephen Hawking. The universe has 100 billion galaxies, so it's logical to expect life to exist out there. True Given that a single galaxy contains hundreds of millions of stars, we can scarcely cling to an inflexible belief in the earth's monopoly on life. But it's harder to support Hawking's idea that we earthlings souldn't try to contact extraterrestrials.

          Human nature, he argues, is a clue that visitors from outer space may be hostile. If men have fought, looted and plundered down history, aliens too may be resource-seeking raiders. We should, therefore, lie low rather than court devastation by encountering space nomads on possible missions of inter-galactic conquest and colonisation. 

         Hawking's position is deeply problematic. Pursuit of knowedge is science's defining core. This quest bears risks that can't always be pre-assessed. Abiding optimism is yet the basis of the scientific enterprise, not paralysing fear. Science means pushing frontiers-from particle physics to space probes-and space may not even be the final frontier. Seeing everything in their own image is a peculiar-and dangerous-proclivity humans need to overcome. To believe aliens will be a mirror image of man-that too, of his darker side-is to lean on an anthropcentrism that has no scientific basis, Indeed, the earth's biodiversity itself suggests the universe may bear life in multifarious forms.

           Even if intelligent aliens exist and do resemble us, it's hubris to think they couldn't have superior social and moral systems based on civilised values like non-violence and harmony. Why should they necessarily be evil rather than good? The point is simple. Aliens may come with fangs bared. Or they may come in peace. If we-being true to the best in the human spirit-don't reach out, we'll never know, will we?