The scientific community is buzzing with anticipation as NASA prepares to launch its James Webb Space Telescope on December 25. Some scientists are excited at the prospect of traveling through time to discover the origin story of our universe, while others hope it will help us connect the dots between classical and quantum physics.
One researcher thinks the JWST could be a sign of bad news. In an interview with the Guardian over the weekend, one of the scientists responsible for string theory said he didn't think humans should contact aliens. Here is the relevant excerpt.
We will have thousands of planets to look at soon, and I think we can make contact with an alien civilization. Some of my colleagues think we should reach out to them. I don't think that's a good idea. We all know what happened to Montezuma when he met Cortés.
It is interesting that Kaku would bring up the topic of first contact. According to legend, the Aztec empire was accidentallyceded to the Spanish Conquistadors over a language misunderstanding.
According to historians, Montezuma II bragged about keeping the Aztec throne warm for him, but he meant it in a sarcastic way. The rest is history, because Cortes didn't get the tone.
It seems like Kaku warned us that aliens could be the Aztecs and the Spaniards. We might send a message such as "we come in peace" when we discover them and the aliens will interpret it to mean "come rule us." It could happen.
When it comes to discussing what might happen if we discover alien life, we could engage in endless speculation. We can see how they tie into what we find when we take a moment to state some key facts about the JWST.
It is 100X more powerful than Hubble and uses a different technology to see things further away.
Hubble wasn't designed to do this, but it will do it.
If everything goes according to plan, it will reach its destination, calibrate its sensors, and be fully-operational by May 2022.
The telescope is going to the second lagrange point. The telescope can stay in line with the Earth while it is 1.5 million kilometers away from home. The Hubble was right above our planet.
This incredible vantage point will allow us to see and study the universe in new and exciting ways. Researchers will be able to study the origins of the universe with the help of the JWST. We could possibly discover aliens with it as early as next year.
What would that mean? We don't know what kind of aliens we might find. Maybe they will be amoeba-like. Intelligence hasn't evolved yet, so maybe we'll find a planet where flora and fauna flourish. It could mean we find intelligent life. The only thing we know for certain is that any life we find should be very, very afraid.
Almost every civilization that has inhabited Earth has either warred with other civilizations or been dominated by one. Earth is home to 8 billion people who are under a policy of mutually assured destruction.
The US is currently fighting the longest war in its history, and NASA is a government entity. Almost everything about the state of our world shows that violence is inevitable. We are likely to go to war if we meet an intelligent species.
More than 41,000 species on Earth are currently threatened. In order to protect alien creatures from our destruction, we need to treat them with more respect than we do ourselves.
There is no guarantee of any life out there. Even if there is, it could take decades, centuries, or millennia for us to find it or develop the right technology. If there is, and they aren't powerful enough to stop us from doing what we always do, we hope we don't find them until we learn how to be better neighbors to everyone.
