If we discover evidence of extraterrestrial life, we will have to decide
whether or not to initiate contact. This assumes that they haven't already
done so.
Over the years, renowned physicist Michio Kaku has made it plain that he
believes we will find extraterrestrial life and that, if we do, we should be
cautious about initiating contact. He went farther in a recent interview
with The Guardian, branding it a "bad concept."
He told the journal, "Since the Webb telescope will soon be in orbit and
there will be hundreds of planets to study, I think the possibilities that
we may establish contact with an extraterrestrial civilization are fairly
high.
"Some of my coworkers think we ought to get in touch with them. I believe
that’s a bad idea. We all know what occurred to Montezuma after his meeting
with Cortés so many centuries ago in Mexico."
For those who don't know, Cortés' Spanish army massacred the defenseless
Aztecs until "the blood of the warriors poured like water," which doesn't
sound like the best way to handle the first encounter with extraterrestrial
life. Given that the signatures we are likely to find will be of
civilizations thousands or perhaps millions of years in advance of us, Kaku
has elaborated on the idea in the past, explaining that even though he
believes that alien life will generally be peaceful, that doesn't mean that
we should take the chance of announcing ourselves to the universe.
2018 saw him state, "We cannot take the chance." Because we don't know what
their goals are, we shouldn't try to reach out to extraterrestrial life in
space.
He thinks that the threat isn't so much that aliens will necessarily be
"bad," but more that they could not care at all. He equated our place in the
cosmos to a deer in a forested area. While deer are at risk from hunters in
the forest, the true threat comes from developers who could plow over the
forest and ruin their habitat.
He said, "In fact, if you read HG Wells' classic work War of the Worlds,
the Martians weren't malevolent in the sense that they wanted to torture us
and do all kinds of cruel things to mankind. No, we were only blocking the
road.
