Lead scientist Stephen Hawking has suggested that aliens most likely exist given the vastness of the universe, and humanity should do all it can to keep quiet about it. The human race, he says, could be in great danger if aliens ever did decide to come visit Earth. And Hawking’s incredible claim certainly has the backing of many respected scientists, and a massive body of statistical data.
Though Hawking is certainly one of the most high profile scientists to suggest turning off transmissions seeking out alien life and cloaking the Earth, he is not the first. There have been several high profile scientists who, particularly in recent years wished to be on the cutting edge of science and propose theories supported by a wealth of statistical data. Given that the universe has hundreds of billions of galaxies that we know of, and possibly more, and each galaxy is comprised of hundreds of millions of stars, the likelihood of us being alone becomes a seeming statistical impossibility. The fact that we have not discovered a planet like ours, of course is not strong evidence since we do not yet possess the ability to detect Earth-like planets at long range.
And yet there is another side to the argument for life elsewhere in the universe, and it’s a troubling one Stephen Hawking himself expressed concern over. If there are aliens out there, it might be wise for humans to stay away from them. Hawking suggests that since we are only just beginning to achieve technology capable of communicating with aliens long-range, then they likely have had this technology forr considerably longer than us and are therefore more technologically advanced than us. And if they are more technologically advanced, then we must carefully take into consideration their motivations. Hawking suggests that it may be possible for aliens to merely come in, take our resources and leave our planet and our infrastructure severely damaged. If that was the case, then perhaps it would behoove us to stay silent and hope no alien races discover us.
Should humanity look into ways of cloaking ourselves? Of course our communication can only travel at the speed of light. Will we really even be able to stop those from reaching distant star systems? And can we be sure that no other life forms have searched the sky and seen an Earth from millions of years ago with the potential to be inhabited? One factor often not taken into consideration is that any species moving toward our planet over the course of a thousand years would have to bring a considerable amount of its resources with it in order to survive the journey. An arriving caravan of aliens would not merely bring their ships, but almost definitely would bring a considerable cross section of their entire civilization. And during the long period of time in transit, a civilization of its own may pop up completely out of touch with home base, and with their own intentions and motivations. They may not be keen on the idea of merely taking our resources in order to trek back home. An alien civilization running low on resources would have to be incredibly far-sighted in order to even consider a mining operation that brings Earth’s resources back to their home planet. The most likely scenario, it seems, holds that any civilization approaching Earth would do so with the intention of making this planet their home.