'When you look at the history of colonisation on Earth, it is pretty bloody awful. 'The chances are slight, but the consequences would be huge - the end of life on Earth,' he said. Professor Barrie Jones, an astronomer with the Open University, added that there is an 'unofficial embargo' about alerting potentially unfriendly species to our presence. 'It's very charitable to send out and encyclopaedia, but that may short-change future generations,' said Dr Vakoch. Nasa attached engravings depicting humans and our planet to the outside of the craft, and aboard it put tapes of voices, birdsong, music, and maps of where Earth is. Others want more recordings of the type included with the Voyager and Pioneer space probes. 'We'll all just be sitting round listening, but nobody's doing any talking.'Ī group of scientists is calling on SETI to broadcast a simple pulsed signal that reveals the presence of intelligent life on Earth. Instead, they say, we should be actively sending out friendly signals to the stars.ĭr Richard Gott, an astrophysicist from Princeton University, told New Scientist: 'SETI's big mistake is that it's relying on ET to do all the heavy lifting. For the last 20 years, it has used radio telescopes to scan the skies for alien radio messages.Īfter getting nothing but static, some of its researchers have decided that listening for aliens is not enough.

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