[Johnny555]

especially if those astronomers live in nearby systems, such as around Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to Earth, or TRAPPIST-1, a star about 40 light-years away that hosts seven exoplanets, three of which are potentially habitable. If the signal is spotted from either of these nearby systems, the study finds, the same megawatt laser could be used to send a brief message in the form of pulses similar to Morse code.

“If we were to successfully close a handshake and start to communicate, we could flash a message, at a data rate of about a few hundred bits per second, which would get there in just a few years,”

40 light years in "just a few years"? So this laser beam travels faster than the speed of light?

In any case, I don't open my front door and flash my lights to invite strangers off the street, and I don't think we should be doing the same thing to strangers from outer space, you never know if it's an interstellar axe murderer and if they meet us at our planet, then they are already known to be far more technologically advanced than we are so there's nothing we can do to stop them.

[devoply]

I would venture a guess that all so-called intelligent life seeks make use of anything that it can get its hands on and order it according to its will. If this is true, then you really don't ever want to meet other intelligent life. At best they would integrate you into their economic system, just like we integrate people with lower intelligence into our economic system... or underdeveloped countries for that matter. A bit worse would be making us into slaves, which might appeal to their humanity. Most likely is simply to eliminate us and take the planet for their own colony and keep us as pets.

[njarboe]

I like the idea that when an old and powerful Galaxy ranging alien race discovers a planet that has life, they place that solar system off limits to any settlement and only observations are allowed. It does not seem that unlikely, unless life is just not rare at all. If 1 in 1000 or 1 in 100 or even 1 in 10 systems were set aside in this way, that would leave plenty of solar systems to continue to expand into.

In the US, we got rich and powerful enough around the 1880's that nature was basically conquered and we wanted to start preserving places for their natural beauty. By the 1970's we had set aside huge amounts of land for National Parks, State Parks and wilderness areas. Wilderness areas alone in the lower 48 is about 64.4 million acres, or about the same as cities and towns (urban areas are 69.4 million acres)[1].

[1]https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/

[ams6110]

If there is life in the Proxima Centauri system, and it has the technological capability to get to the Earth, I think they already know about us.

[sean2]

Serious question: how could they already know about us?

Are you simply assuming they have advanced signal detection technologies that match their space fairing capability?

[resu_nimda]

We can observe a lot more in the cosmos than we can physically reach. We are mapping out and tracking far more stars and planets than we could hope to reach for a long time. Even within our solar system, we have gained and will gain much knowledge of the outer planets from probes well before we set foot on them. I would expect this property to hold for other civilizations, it's just much easier to observe far away things than to transport complex life forms to them.

[ALittleLight]

Perhaps they periodically send probes like Oumuamua that report on nearby systems.

[JohnJamesRambo]

That’s a closed minded view of intelligence. There’s a level above exploitation where you value other intelligent life and cherish it.

[mrob]

It's well established that fish feel pain[0]. It's also possible to kill them far more humanely that we do now, e.g. by electroshock or by eugenol anesthesia. Despite this, out of the 1+ trillion fish killed by humans every year, almost all of them die slowly and painfully. We choose to do this simply because it's more convenient. Why would aliens treat humans any differently?

Intentionally signaling to aliens is one of the stupidest ideas I can think of. The Killing Star by Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski has a good analogy (longer quote here: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/aliencontact.ph... ), describing a thought experiment of surviving the night in a crime-ridden Central Park:

"How do you survive the night? The last thing you want to do is shout, "I'm here!" The next to last thing you want to do is reply to someone who shouts, "I'm a friend!"

What you would like to do is find a policeman, or get out of the park. But you don't want to make noise or move towards a light where you might be spotted, and it is difficult to find either a policeman or your way out without making yourself known. Your safest option is to hunker down and wait for daylight, then safely walk out.

There are, of course, a few obvious differences between Central Park and the universe.

There is no policeman.

There is no way out.

And the night never ends."

[0] https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/fish-feel-pain-now-wh...

[PhasmaFelis]

> Why would aliens treat humans any differently?

There's no obvious reason why aliens should perceive humans as either a threat or a resource. There may be non-obvious reasons, or they may be irrational about it. But unless interstellar travel is a lot easier than we think it is, it's unlikely that aliens would assume visitation is likely in either direction.

[jobigoud]

There might be a policeman but you don't know how to recognize one.

[ridgeguy]

>There’s a level above exploitation where you value other intelligent life and cherish it.

That sounds like a hope/belief, not a fact.

There may be levels of regard for intelligence that are below pets. See, for example, "To Serve Man". [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_Man

edit for misspelling

[true_tuna]

I haven’t seen much of that from available examples.

[devoply]

Humans cherish their pets. Aliens will cherish humans. Can intelligent life however leave things that they know about alone to do as it wishes without any interference whatsoever? No. In the short term maybe, but in the long term it's impossible. Why? Because either it's under control or it's a threat. Either you are a beast, in which case you become a beast of burden. Or you a barbarian, in which case you should be subdued. Or you are an ally in which case you must be integrated. Or you are food which must be farmed and eaten.

Heck maybe in the long run aliens have more to fear from humans than humans have to fear from aliens. But it's not going to end well for one of them in the long run.

[Johnny555]

Humans cherish their pets. Aliens will cherish humans

Who says they'll see us as pets? Humans also gather horseshoe crabs by the thousands and suck the blood out of them ("only" killing 10 - 30% of them)

https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/how-horseshoe-...

Let's hope human blood isn't useful to the aliens.

[scott113341]

> such as around Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to Earth, or TRAPPIST-1, a star about 40 light-years away...

I don't think they are asserting that the laser beam travels faster than the speed of light. I think they are referring to Proxima Centauri being about 4 light-years away from Earth [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri

[Johnny555]

That may be what they meant, but that's not what they said, they mentioned 2 systems, one is 40 light years away, and said "...If the signal is spotted from either of these nearby systems..."

[jessaustin]

They're talking about interstellar communication, not how long you've lived in your house. 40 years is just a few years.

[Johnny555]

"Few" has a specific meaning when applied to something countable. 40 is not "a few" in any common use of the word.

You don't say "It took the settlers 180 days to ride a wagon across the country, but today it only takes a few hours to drive across the country" when you meant "40 hours".

If you want to use "few", you'd use a different unit like "and now it only takes a few days". Or "And you can send a signal to that star system in a few decades".

[jessaustin]

Your example sort of fell apart there. It took 180 days at some hypothetical moment in history. Now it takes a few days.

There are a few words in English the meaning of which is absolute, regardless of context. "Few" is not among those words.

[Johnny555]

Few doesn't have an absolute meaning, but it does have a consistent relative meaning.

You could take a handful of sand from a sand dune and say "I took only a few grains of sand home with me"

You could say "only a few of the thousands of visible stars are close enough to send a signal to" even if that means hundreds.

But you wouldn't say "it takes 40 light years to reach the star, so the laser can reach it in a few years". You might say "It would take 1000 years for a spaceship to reach the planet, but a laser can do it in a few years" even if a "few" meant 40.