SOLVENCY: TIMEFRAME FOR RESPONSE

Even in this best scenario, a phone conversation is out of the question. The vast distances of space can make radio waves seem slow. At the speed of 186,000 miles per second, a radio signal would require 4.5 years to reach Alpha Centauri, one of the closest stars to the sun. If the message comes from a very distant star system, it may have been sent centuries ago. If extraterrestrials have not found a faster means of communication that they are willing to share, we have to settle for digesting their initial message, knowing fully well that they may no longer exist or that their civilization may have changed drastically over the ages. The extraterrestrial message has been compared to an ancient manuscript from a lost civilization on Earth. It provides the thought processes of beings we will never see.

The problem with most evidence for aliens and UFOs is that it is completely reliant upon massive media and governmental conspiracies and anecdotal evidence without a smidgen of physical or testable evidence. Granted, it would be great if an advanced civilization came to Earth, but why should descriptions of beings that mastered intergalactic travel seem so reminiscent of the latest sci-fi blockbuster? Maybe it’s part of the conspiracy.

Let there be no mistake. METI is a very different thing than passively sifting for signals from the outer space. Carl Sagan, one of the greatest SETI supporters and a deep believer in the notion of altruistic alien civilizations, called such a move deeply unwise and immature. (Even Frank Drake, who famously sent the "Arecibo Message" toward the Andromeda Galaxy in 1974, considered "Active SETI" to be, at best, a stunt and generally a waste of time.)

Simple propagation algorithms show that - based on reasonable assumptions for ship speed and rebuild times - a single self-reproducing probe might create enough progeny to visit every star in the galaxy within less than five million years. A mere heartbeat in the life of our cosmos.

(In The Third Chimpanzee, Jared Diamond offers an essay on the risks of attempting to contact ETIs, based on the history of what happened on Earth whenever more advanced civilizations encountered less advanced ones... or indeed, when the same thing happens during contact between species that evolved in differing ecosystems. The results are often not good: in inter-human relations slavery, colonialism, etc. Among contacting species: extinction.)

[Luke; "The METI Controversy": Should Detection by an Exo Civilization Be Viewed as a Threat?; Outskirts Press; 14 July 2009; http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/07/the-meti-controversy-revisited-is-detection-by-an-exo-civilization-a-threat-a-galaxy-insight.html; retrieved 14 August 2011]

Which brings up the inevitable question -- “How do we decide who will speak for us?"

Zaitsev has already sent several powerful messages to nearby, sun-like stars—a practice called “Active SETI.” But some scientists feel that he’s not only acting out of turn, but also independently speaking for everyone on the entire planet. Moreover, they believe there are possible dangers we may unleash by announcing ourselves to the unknown darkness, and if anyone plans to transmit messages from Earth, they want the rest of the world to be involved. For years the debate over Active SETI versus passive “listening” has mostly been confined to SETI insiders. But late last year the controversy boiled over into public view after the journal Nature published an editorial scolding the SETI community for failing to conduct an open discussion on the remote, but real, risks of unregulated signals to the stars. And in September, two major figures resigned from an elite SETI study group in protest. All this despite the fact that SETI’s ongoing quest has so far been largely fruitless. For Active SETI’s critics, the potential for alerting dangerous or malevolent entities to our presence is enough to justify their concern.

“We’re talking about initiating communication with other civilizations, but we know nothing of their goals, capabilities, or intent,” reasons John Billingham, a senior scientist at the private SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. Billingham studied medicine at Oxford and headed NASA’s first extraterrestrial search effort in 1976. He believes we should apply the Hippocratic Oath’s primary tenet to our galactic behavior: “First, do no harm.” For years Billingham served as the chairman of the Permanent Study Group (PSG) of the SETI subcommittee of the International Academy of Astronautics, a widely accepted forum for devising international SETI agreements. But despite his deep involvement with the group, Billingham resigned in September, feeling the PSG is unwisely refusing to take a stand urging broad, interdisciplinary consultation on Active SETI. “At the very least we ought to talk about it first, and not just SETI people. We have a responsibility to the future well-being and survival of humankind.”

This is one reason why most SETI pioneers advocated a “first, just listen” approach. But there is another: What if there is something dangerous out there that could be alerted by our broadcasts? This ground has been explored in numerous scientific papers and, of course, in countless works of science fiction. Few people alive today embody the convergence of hard science and fictional speculation better than David Brin, an author of both peer-reviewed astronomy papers and award-winning science fiction novels. In an influential 1983 paper titled “The Great Silence,” Brin provided a kind of taxonomy of explanations for the lack of an obvious alien presence. In addition to the usual answers positing that humanity is alone, or so dull that aliens have no interest in us, Brin included a more disturbing possibility: Nobody is on the air because something seeks and destroys everyone who broadcasts. Like Billingham and Michaud, he feels the PSG is dominated by a small number of people who don’t want to acknowledge Active SETI’s potential dangers.

Yet critics argue that listening for signals and actively seeking out alien life are very different pursuits. At the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, Alexander Zaitsev, chief scientist at the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics, has been using a 70-metre-wide radio telescope in the Crimea to beam signals to nearby star systems – a practice known as “active Seti”.

Alexander Zaitsev, Chief Scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics, has access to one of the most powerful radio transmitters on Earth. Though he officially uses it to conduct the Institute’s planetary radar studies, Zaitsev is also trying to contact other civilizations in nearby star systems. He believes extraterrestrial intelligence exists, and that we as a species have a moral obligation to announce our presence to our sentient neighbors in the Milky Way—to let them know they are not alone. If everyone in the galaxy only listens, he reasons, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is doomed to failure.

[Alezander, IRE of Russia; Rationale for METI; 2011; http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1105/1105.0910.pdf; retrieved 13 August 2011]

[Alezander, IRE of Russia; Rationale for METI; 2011; http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1105/1105.0910.pdf; retrieved 13 August 2011]

Carl Gauss was thinking about how to tell the aliens of the existence of intelligent beings on Earth. In 1896 Konstantin Tsiolkovsky published in the weekly "Kaluga Herald” an article with the project on the same topic. The main question related to these and many similar projects (Schirber, 2009), is: "How to understand the interest of the outstanding scientists of the past to this problem? Why do they think about these topics and with which connected such need?" The issue is not as simple as itseems at first glance, it should not be reduced to the appearance of possible eccentricities of those noted scientists…

SOLVENCY: ALIEN HACKERS
BEFORE WE CONTINUE SETI, WE MUST ASSESS THE THREAT OF A HACK AND IMPLEMENT PROTECTIVE MEASURES-Carrigan ‘06
[Richard; Researcher @ Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory; Do potential SETI signals need to be decontaminated?; 03 Aug 2006; http://home.fnal.gov/~carrigan/SETI/SETI_Hacker_AC-03-IAA-8-3-06.pdf; retrieved 20 Jun 2011]

The combination of energy cost and speed of transmission strongly favor the use of electromagnetic signals for propagation of information over interstellar distances. Present SETI

The central premise of this article is that an ETI signal could be malevolent. The concept is that the signal might be able to take over the receiving computer or urge the construction of a translator with an unknown agenda. I call this hypothesis “SETI Hacker.” This concept is not new. It is a theme in a large body of science fiction7. What is new here is an attempt to discuss the possibility in analytical terms and look for means to denature SETI signals.

As noted earlier, archaeological signatures and beacons appear to be comparatively safe for SETI. Characteristically a beacon would transmit little information. On the other hand it may be a short step from a beacon to a message. For example a beacon could point to a signal in a