Scientists say any attempt to communicate with aliens could be futile

What would happen if humans recognized that some UFOs are of extraterrestrial origin and decided to try to establish communication with their crews?

This is asked by a new BBC documentary entitled First Contact: An Alien Encounter, revealing what could be a possible language barrier.

“There may be other things out there that have a capacity that goes beyond what we can imagine. It’s a bit like ants trying to communicate with humans,” said Professor Michael Garrett, director of the Jodrell Bank Center for Astrophysics in Manchester.

“We really do have inflated egos about our ability to think,” said Dr. Louisa Preston, an astrobiologist at University College London. “If you think about 13.8 billion years compared to our 4.5 billion years, we are most likely the ants.”

If there was ever any hint of extraterrestrial life on Earth, its creators are likely long extinct, the documentary hints.

An overwhelming number of people admitted to believing in intelligent extraterrestrial life, according to a Pew Research study. Another 34 percent of the participants said no, and two percent refused to answer. On the other hand, a staggering 87 percent of Americans did not view UFOs as a national security threat. Ten percent saw them as a major threat, and just over a quarter believed the aliens would be friendly up close and personal.

Communication between AIs
Other scientists do not agree that communication with an extraterrestrial intelligence could not be established. First of all, such communication is not unilateral, if a more advanced civilization wanted to communicate with humanity, surely their great cognitive and technological advance over ours would allow them to find a way.

Second, it may not be a fully biological alien intelligence with whom a first communication is established, nor are we directly the ones who interact. Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb thinks most likely, in fact, the first contact will be with some kind of artificial intelligence.

“If our AI systems encounter alien AI systems or vice versa, they could express kinship in their interaction, with our scientists simply serving as bystanders,” Loeb said.

Harvard Man further suggests that our own species could be evolving towards a point where we will merge with machines, or that machines could eventually replace us as the planet’s dominant intelligences.