If anything, we should be thinking about how to emit less radiation that can be traced back to Earth into space.
Best case: aliens send us technology via morse code.
Worst case: relativistic projectile from advanced civilization destroys Earth.
> Like hunters in a "dark forest" ... where any two civilizations cannot communicate well enough to relieve mistrust, making conflict inevitable. Therefore, it is in every civilization's best interest to preemptively strike and destroy any developing civilization before it can become a threat, but without revealing their own location, thus explaining the Fermi paradox.
I think we are before the gap, that might also be because I'm pessimistic about the current state of the world.
That said, if I'm wrong I would rather have any aliens find us. If you're advanced, you probably resolved various issues regarding limited resources, so why would you kill us as being primitive species?
Even in that universe, we know they could easily send probes out to the galaxy and it would solve the whole "chain of suspicion" thing that makes destroying alien civilizations the best option.
“If we were to successfully close a handshake and start to communicate, we could flash a message, at a data rate of about a few hundred bits per second, which would get there in just a few years,”
40 light years in "just a few years"? So this laser beam travels faster than the speed of light?
In any case, I don't open my front door and flash my lights to invite strangers off the street, and I don't think we should be doing the same thing to strangers from outer space, you never know if it's an interstellar axe murderer and if they meet us at our planet, then they are already known to be far more technologically advanced than we are so there's nothing we can do to stop them.
In the US, we got rich and powerful enough around the 1880's that nature was basically conquered and we wanted to start preserving places for their natural beauty. By the 1970's we had set aside huge amounts of land for National Parks, State Parks and wilderness areas. Wilderness areas alone in the lower 48 is about 64.4 million acres, or about the same as cities and towns (urban areas are 69.4 million acres)[1].
I don't think they are asserting that the laser beam travels faster than the speed of light. I think they are referring to Proxima Centauri being about 4 light-years away from Earth [0].
Is this practical given the vastness of space and the directionaality of this laser?
Maybe we should be aiming the big laser at Oumuamua. With a big HEY COME BACK HERE message.
Our first encounter with space faring aliens will probably go about as well as native Americans first encounter with Europeans.
Mere geological resources can be gathered from asteroids or other planets with lesser gravity wells.
The Alien species would have to determine if Human technology, economy and culture holds any value to them. If it does, they will conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the various billions of humans inhabiting the planet, and eliminate the least-productive in order to improve average genetic quality and bring the overall species back to within the carrying capacity of the planet.
For example, 56% of the Earth's population from the least-productive countries could be eliminated, for only a 6% decrease in scientific output, and 17% decrease in GDP. Doing so would also result in a 23% decrease in carbon emissions.
Of course, if they find that humanity holds negative value, they will simply eliminate all humans, and turn the planet into a giant nature park.
Implying these beings would likely have any need to worry about 'decreasing' carbon emissions is ludicrous. It's like humans going to a beehive and worrying about killing some bees to stop honey wastage when the humans poke a hole in the hive to collect honey- no, they'll just completely reconstitute the hive. There's a chance it's some first-interstellar-travel thing we might do right now, but it's more likely it's from the time a civilisation is kardashev-2, given that time would be longer. Fermi paradox's still a problem, though.
If nothing else, you can draw simple two-color pictures by sending pixels in a NxM grid, where N and M are both primes. Enough minds thinking about the problem will eventually figure it out.
