Humans have long been thinking (most likely wishfully, given the odds) about the possibility of contact with extraterrestrial intelligence.
The etched plaques and disks sent beyond the Solar System on Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft were the most concrete instances of reaching out, even as plenty of efforts have been made to listen for incoming signals.
A new approach is getting under way. Lucy Hawking, the daughter and sometime writing partner of the physicist Stephen Hawking, is seeking answers to a rather grand question from students in communities around Arizona State University:
For many years, scientists have been looking across the universe for signs of intelligent life. But what would happen if we made contact with an alien civilization? What would we say if the aliens tuned into Earth and said ‘Hello?’
If you had to speak for humanity, what would you say?
Hawking is asking on behalf of the “Dear Aliens” contest that’s just gotten under way at the university’s Origins Project, where she is in the midst of a yearlong stint as the first writer in residence.
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Students from kindergarten through high school in Maricopa County are eligible. But after discussing the contest with Hawking and university officials on a recent visit, they heartily approved my inviting Dot
Earth readers to post their own “Dear Aliens” missives here.
Here’s are the rules for Arizona students. Try to keep Dot Earth “letters” shorter than 200 words.
I spoke with Hawking about the contest while visiting the school recently to do an onstage conversation on humanity’s prospects in this century with Brad Allenby, a longtime contact of mine on human development. Watch the short video of the interview above for Hawking’s thoughts on the benefits of such an effort.
Winning entries, the school says, will be broadcast into space during a science and culture festival at the Tempe campus on April 9.
Arizona State is a suitable venue for such a contest, she said, given that Paul Davies, a physicist and astrobiologist there, directs the “post-detection task group” for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence study group of the International Academy of Astronautics.
Here’s my missive:
Dear Aliens,
We’re going through puberty on the scale of a planet, so we hope you aren’t too startled by the messy nature of things here. How long did it take you, as a species, to grow up?