Jade Small
Jade Small
January 18, 2024 ·  4 min read

Scientists To Broadcast Earth’s Location To Aliens, Ignoring Stephen Hawking’s Warning

Aliens have been a hot topic for decades now. Do they exist? Is there really intelligent life out there? There is many controversial thoughts about the existence of extraterrestrial life and one of them is the fact that government knows more than they let off. Thankfully, they have become much more open about the phenomenon. In fact, they have announced that they want to start broadcasting the location of planet earth to potential aliens that may or may not be out there. Stephen Hawking had warned us against doing such things. Yet, scientists will be scientists, and they are going ahead with it anyway.

Stephen Hawking Expressed Concern

It’s hard to say what might happen when we finally make contact with another species other than humans that come from a far-off planet. Those that would have the technology to receive our message are likely to be more intelligent than we are. Therefore, they probably already know of our existence. But there is still the chance that they are not friendly. Stephen Hawking made it clear he thinks it is a bad idea to send out a signal to unknown species.

Hawking attended a launch event for the Breakthrough Listen Project. An organization that researches various radio waves in space to see which they can find that are of artificial origin. He was openly supportive of the scientists listening to frequencies to see if they are of alien origin, but he warned them against reaching out to them blindly by releasing our own radio wave that is sent out in a beam into the vastness of space.

Stephen Hawking
Reuters

He said: “If you look at history, contact between humans and less intelligent organisms have often been disastrous from their point of view, and encounters between civilizations with advanced versus primitive technologies have gone badly for the less advanced.”

This is not the first time that he expressed this concern, so he feels strongly about staying hidden in our quiet part of the galaxy. He fears that these scientists have forgotten the potential risks because they are great. There is the chance that the alien race that receives our radio wave and responds to it by visiting us, will not exactly be the kind of neighbor who just wants to borrow a cup of sugar.

Read: Stephen Hawking’s Last Warnings To Humanity

The Beacon in the Galaxy Project Explained

In case you were wondering, the signal they want to send out is not exactly new. The project was named The Beacon in the Galaxy (BITG) message. This is not humanity’s first attempt at sending such a message out into the universe, but it is a revised version of the Arecibo message, which was developed and sent out in the early 1970s. the Arecibo was based on a binary coding system of ones and zeros. When it was de-coded, there was information about humans like our solar system, and our DNA. There was also a visual representation of people in stick-figure form.

The BITG message is also going to have the same basic information that the Arecibo message had. So, like the solar system, our DNA, and the human form. But, it has been upgraded to include more intricate mathematics and scientific discoveries. So the new BITG message will show the alien race who receives it what we are capable of. We can hope they do not pass us off as an underdeveloped or unintelligent species. This could be a benefit or an utter detriment to our survival.

Matthew Chong, a student at Cambridge University majoring in math and science helped outline the contents of the BITG message in an interview with Newsweek.

“Extended from the 1974 Arecibo message and the 1999/2003 Cosmic Call. The main part of this BITG Message contains a new set of graphical information in the form of images and special “alphabets” to represent numbers, elements, DNA, land, ocean, and human, etc. Starting by an artificial header and footer that consists of prime numbers.” said Chong.

BITG is Yet to Be Released

One thing we can say is there is still time to breathe because they have not yet released the beacon. There is an indefinite amount of time before they do so because the date has not been announced. They have expressed their wish to transmit the beacon from the SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array which is in Northern California. As well as the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope in China.

Keep Reading: Stephen Hawking: Humans Only Have About 1,000 Years Left

Sources

  1. Scientists will send a radio message into space revealing Earth’s exact location to ALIENS despite Stephen Hawking’s warning they may want to destroy us.Daily Mail. Sam Tonkin.
  2. Scientists Make Message to Send Earth’s Location to Aliens, Ignoring Stephen Hawking’s Warning.” Newsweek