Don't trust aliens!

The British scientist feels it is more than likely that other civilisations exist in the Universe, but isn't so sure that meeting them would be a good thing...

 

Stephen Hawking is very interested in space. In 2007, he took part in a commercial parabolic flight with the company ZeroG Corp. It enabled him, for a short time, to experience the state of weightlessness so familiar to astronauts. Completely paralysed by illness, he really enjoyed abandoning his wheelchair. Crédit : ZeroG Corp

Born in 1942 in Oxford in the United Kingdom, Stephen Hawking is considered to be one of the most gifted physicists of our day. His theories on cosmology and black holes have already become milestones. So when he talks about alien life in a new TV documentary series, it's easy to understand why we prick up our ears.

It's rational to think about aliens
"Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking" produced by TV's Discovery Channel is not about the scientist brandishing the facile notion of fear of otherness, exploited in so many SF films notably in the 1950s. Stephen Hawking's implacable reasoning unfurls in two very logical stages. Firstly, he feels that with the Universe totalling 100 billion galaxies (each one with tens or hundreds of billions of stars), we can no longer claim that the Earth is the only planet to harbour life.

"Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking" dreams up different alien creatures. Some are similar to us, such as this hypothetical squid living in the ocean hidden beneath the ice field on Europa, Jupiter's moon. Credit: Discovery Channel

"To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational,” he says, going on to state that the real question is what they might look like! And this is where the second chapter of his thought process opens. The TV series, in which he participated very actively, provides images of potential life forms in order to illustrate the scope of possibilities and to demonstrate, more importantly, that humans probably do not have a monopoly on intelligence… or the spirit of conquest, not to say exploitation!

Why would ET be nice?
Stephen Hawking clearly admits to not being enthusiastic about an encounter, judging this eventuality “a little too risky”. He uses our own history to back up his argument: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

Getting noticed by an alien civilisation may not necessarily be a good thing, according to Stephen Hawking. Particularly if it is after our planet's resources and has technological supremacy... Credit: Discovery Channel

The physicist even imagines very advanced civilisations moving from planet to planet as they exploit resources, becoming galactic nomads that would find the Earth tempting. His advice? Humanity must make progress in science and technology to be on more of an equal footing in the event of contact. This theme of an encounter, developed in the Discovery Channel's series "Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking", is also at the heart of a brand new exhibition at the Cité de l’Espace entitled "Extraterrestrials: Are you ready for the encounter?".

Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking (Discovery Channel)

Feature: "So where are the extraterrestrial beings?"

Published 29 April 2010