Stephen Hawking: Contacting aliens may be a bad idea
No, it is not a cookbook. What gave you that silly idea?: Parts of this actual photo come from NASA.Courtesy Mark RyanRemember back a couple years when the Vatican said it was okay to believe in extraterrestrials? Well, now noted physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking says if they do exist - and he figures the odds are pretty good they do - it might not be that great an idea to try to contact them. He points to what happened to the Native Americans who greeted Columbus and figures the same kind of thing could happen to the entire human race if the aliens turn out to be a tad too aggressive and covetous of our planet and its resources.
"We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet." - Stephen Hawking
And let's not forget that delightful Twilight Zone episode where apparently chummy nine-foot tall aliens arrive promising peace and prosperity and a book titled To Serve Man and start shuttling loads of humans back to their planet (supposedly for free vacations) before it's realized the "altruistic" book is actually a cookbook.
With that in mind, Hawking may have a good point. You can read more of what he thinks here. Or do you think he's just being anti-social?
EmailYour Comments, Thoughts, Questions, Ideas
Explore
Recent comments
Subscribe
Connect with Science Buzz on Facebook and Twitter.
You can also subscribe to our RSS feed using any newsreader software.
I think the worst thing about contacting alien life will be the shocking discovery that, contrary to everything the movies have told us to expect, they won't all be bipedal vertebrates who speak English.
i agree with the professor that contacting aliens wont be a good idea .......definetly its not neccessary that they should be having a good behaviour or they are gentle ........
but i also say that there is no life outside this planet earth no matter how much we do discoveries the life only exist on earth n nowhere else. apart from our solar system there are many others but no life discovered yet as the conditions outside are not favourable for life to exist.yeah if we do discover an organism on earth having limbs like humans n is aquatic then surely our scientists are gonna call them ALIENS.
i think so too XD
cool
Dr. Hawking is brilliant, and based on the fact we're destroying our own planet and resources, and hoping we can get resources from elsewhere, it makes sense. I'd never be so pompous as to think we are the only ones in the universe!
it may be a good idea or even a bad idea,if we will not try to connect them then how we'll know about their technology n if we think that if dont connect with them then we r safe..i think its not right becouse they are very powerfull n if they want to destroy us then they can.
professor say that there may be life on other planets really its intersting and me also think so.
Post new comment