ET? We’re not ready!

 

Fyodor Yurchikhin photographed on board the International Space Station Credit: NASA

Such is the opinion of Fyodor Yurchikhin, member of the International Space Station's Expedition 24. This is how the cosmonaut answered one of the questions left in an “ISS mail box” installed in Moscow’s Cosmonautics Memorial Museum, a joint initiative with the Russian space agency Roscosmos. For Fyodor Yurchikhin, mankind lacks the maturity to make contact with an extraterrestrial civilisation. “We’re only just beginning to understand what a united world is. So, we’re still not ready to make contact with extraterrestrials. We still have to learn to communicate with each other”, he states.  Many scientists have also studied the question of the consequences resulting from potential contact with an extraterrestrial civilisation. Some believe that humans could benefit from significant technological advances while others warn that extraterrestrials may not necessarily be driven by the best intentions, a possibility recently echoed by the famous British physicist Stephen Hawking (see this Enjoy Space article). This fascinating question is obviously covered in the new exhibition at Cité de l’Espace, the space theme park in Toulouse, entitled “Extraterrestrials: are you ready for the encounter?"

Special Cité de l’Espace ET website

Published 30 July 2010