{"id":33,"date":"2016-05-15T04:23:32","date_gmt":"2016-05-15T04:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=33"},"modified":"2016-05-15T04:23:32","modified_gmt":"2016-05-15T04:23:32","slug":"ufo-day-aliens-earth-extra-terrestrials-nasa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=33","title":{"rendered":"What Would Happen if Aliens Landed on Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I<\/span>n an undisclosed location, somewhere along the Mediterranean coastline, is a subterranean bunker. Under the harsh glare of artificial lights, an Israeli Air Force commander is briefing his group of \u201cGeneration Y\u201d cadets. This is the <\/p>Ofek<\/em> (Horizon)<\/a> unit of the army; young, highly trained specialists who fight the final frontier.\n\nToday\u2019s mission: \u201cAliens are landing in Israel. We need to hack the systems.\u201d The cadets get to work, in an attempt to sabotage the invading alien spacecraft as the commander watches.\n\nIt\u2019s all actually a cyber-defence training exercise, an elaborate set-up. So aliens aren\u2019t secretly landing on the Western Wall.\n\nBut what if they were?\n\nStephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, and other more intelligent people, agree \u2013 there\u2019s life out there. It\u2019s a logical deduction \u2013 planets past number, billions of stars, galaxies galore, it all adds up. Water has been discovered on Mars, a sign that even if extra-terrestrial life hasn\u2019t existed so far, it could in the future.\n\nLike Einstein said, \u201cWhy should the Earth be the only planet supporting human life? It is not singular in any other respect.\u201d\n\nSo, in 2015, NASA got scientists, historians, philosophers, and theologians to discuss a global contingency plan. \u201cTo try and prepare the public for what the implications might be, when such a discovery is made,\u201d\u00a0said former chief NASA historian, Steven J Dick<\/a>. Agenda points: what do aliens look like, what might they be made of, what happens when we find them, and whether they’re a Samantha or a Miranda.\n\nPop culture\u2019s already played out some of the scenarios. The projections say we\u2019d either be scared of them (\u2018The Thing\u2019<\/em><\/a>) or try to hit on them (Leeloo<\/a>, Fifth Element<\/em>). Some of them (Naavi<\/a>) seem like they would be fun to get high with.\n\nHawking, however, believes that the encounter would more probably not end in an orgy. He thinks things would end badly for us \u2013 that we\u2019d be the Native Americans to the alien Europeans. In other words, he thinks the aliens would bring their own plants, animals, and diseases into our ecosystem.\n\nBut that\u2019s only if aliens are intelligent and capable of interstellar communication.\n

What if microbes hitched a ride back to Earth with an astronaut\u2014the premise of\u00a0Alien<\/i>. That could go one of two ways. They\u2019d use us as host organisms. Or, in an unhappy twist, they\u2019d win the\u00a0War of the Worlds<\/em>.<\/blockquote>\nEarth has been sending out radio and TV broadcasts since 1936\u2014the Berlin Olympics. If someone\u2019s out there, intelligent enough to watch or listen to these signals, they\u2019ve been watching years of TV and radio broadcasts. They could create a Facebook account and troll a YouTube video. They could hum along to the Beatles\u2014NASA even beamed\u00a0Across the Universe, across the universe<\/a>.\n\nThat\u2019s assuming information relayed is received instantaneously. But since we haven\u2019t made contact in\u00a080 years of broadcast, and given the speed waves travel through space, it\u2019s likely that any alien life observing Earth is looking back in time at King Arthur\u2019s round table, not at Kim Kardashian\u2019s ample\u2026\n\nIt\u00a0could also be that alien life is a microbial organism, at the bottom of the evolutionary scale.\u00a0Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at\u00a0the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) institute,\u00a0says that\u2019s most likely. It\u2019s an extrapolation from habitable worlds we’ve explored, with water and oxygen \u2014 like Mars and Europa. We\u2019ve seen no signs of advanced beings. But, what if, microbes hitched a ride back to Earth with an astronaut\u2014the premise of Alien.<\/em>\n\nThat could go one of two ways. They\u2019d use us as host organisms. Or, in an unhappy twist, they\u2019d win the\u00a0War of the Worlds\u2014the 1897 H G Wells story where aliens colonise us before they\u2019re defeated by a common virus. The premise of this novel is also the reason why the Mars rovers have been barred<\/a> from immediately inspecting water on the Red Planet.\n\nNational Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden has said<\/a> aliens have been trying to make contact with us for ages, though given the deep encryption, we\u2019ve no idea what these messages would look like or whether we\u2019d be able to read them. But Snowden is also linked to a conspiracy theorist’s claim that the US government is being controlled by tall, white, Nazi-sympathising aliens<\/a>.\n\nThe pressing problem with all these projections is there\u2019s no post-detection policy in place. It is likely that alien contact would be sudden, but no country has adopted any policy to decide what happens when contact is made. A body\u00a0does, however, exist within the United Nations (UN), the\u00a0Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space<\/a>,\u00a0to deal with the \u201csharing of information about potential dangers in outer space\u201d.\n\nIn 2014, there was even talk of a UN ambassador<\/a> being appointed for alien contact (didn\u2019t happen).\n\nScientists say chaos can only be avoided if there is global cooperation in forming an international political body, a plan, ratified by world powers.\n\nSETI, in another instance of America taking the lead, has compiled a set of guidelines that Earth needs in the battle versus the Universe. The\u00a0treatise<\/a> commits,\u00a0\u201cStates, Parties to inform the United Nations as well as the public and the international scientific community\u2026 of the nature, conduct, locations, and results of their space exploration activities.\u201d\n\nThe protocol, adopted in 1989, is that anyone who detects a radio signal indicating alien life should get in touch with SETI researchers, who will help verify it. At this point, the International Astronomical Union and the UN need to be notified. Each organisation will then conduct its own fact-finding mission before the discoverer gets to make the first public announcement.\u00a0The coordinates are to be kept secret, so that everyone with a radio telescope doesn\u2019t get to say hi to the alien.\n\nChances of the global protocol getting deployed are about the same as global poverty getting eradicated. Trump will orate, Putin will posture, and missionaries will open\u00a0alien conversion camps<\/a>.\n\nLet\u2019s hope someone tells Israel.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scientists are certain extra-terrestrial life exists. But who on Earth is in charge of dealing with aliens?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":34,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-weird"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat Would Happen if Aliens Landed on Earth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Scientists are certain extra-terrestrial life exists. 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