WHAT鈥橲 the best way to look for signs of intelligent extraterrestrials?
You鈥檙e probably thinking about giant radio dishes scanning the sky, and
scientists who spend months sifting the data for meaningful signals. But Allen
Tough has a much more direct approach: put up a website and invite aliens to
e-mail you.
Is he serious? It seems so. Tough is an emeritus professor of adult education
at the University of Toronto. He reinvented himself as a futurist and joined in
the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) in the 1980s. He thinks ET
may already be watching us and waiting for an invitation to make contact. Hence
his 鈥淗ello to ETI鈥� Web page (http://members.aol.com/WelcomeETI/hello.html). The
page offers visitors from space a hearty welcome and explains why Earthlings are
worth contacting. It also provides a clickable e-mail link to Tough.
Say what you like, but Tough鈥檚 effort has earned the endorsement of a
worldwide team of 80 collaborators, including about half the SETI Committee of
the International Academy of Astronautics鈥攖he body that develops protocols
for all SETI research鈥攁s well as sci-fi luminaries such as Arthur C.
Clarke.
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鈥淚t鈥檚 a long shot,鈥� admits Ray Norris, an astrophysicist at the Australia
Telescope National Facility in New South Wales. But Norris is among the 80 who
have added their names to Tough鈥檚 invitation and promised the extraterrestrials
that they will read their e-mails when Tough forwards them. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a search you
can do with almost no cost,鈥� says Norris, 鈥渟o you might as well do it.鈥� Indeed,
Tough funds the entire $20 a month for the project out of his own
pocket.
Tough鈥檚 approach rests on a towering truss-work of hypotheses, some easier to
swallow than others. In common with most SETI enthusiasts, he believes that
intelligent and curious life forms may have arisen elsewhere in our Galaxy, well
before ourselves. But he also supposes they will have noticed that Earth
harbours life and sent a robotic probe 鈥渁bout the size of a champagne bottle鈥� to
investigate. They may even be watching over us now, he says 鈥� and what
better way to find out all about us than by surfing the Net?
鈥淭he Web is such a great way to learn about our civilisation,鈥� says Tough,
鈥渟o obviously any smart intelligence that鈥檚 here is going to be monitoring it.鈥�
Hence the Web page.
Experts in website design give the page a thumbs-down. The site鈥檚 colours are
鈥渦nfriendly鈥� and its call to action lacks force and visibility, warns Bill
Daggett, an e-commerce consultant in Los Gatos in California鈥檚 Silicon Valley.
So can Tough鈥檚 site compete for alien attention among the billions of pages on
the Web? And could it persuade extraterrestrials to make contact?
It depends on your aliens. Any beings clever enough to build interstellar
probes may be sophisticated enough not to care about glitzy graphics and
animations, says Mark Rodeghier, the scientific director of the Center for UFO
Studies, an independent institute in Chicago. 鈥淚t鈥檚 about as plain a website as
you鈥檒l find,鈥� he says, 鈥渂ut I don鈥檛 think they鈥檙e looking for a flashy one.鈥� Yet
he doubts that sending e-mail can compete with actually landing in the flesh (or
whatever passes for flesh among aliens), and he鈥檚 sceptical that the Internet
beats radio or TV as a way to talk to or learn about Earthlings.
Indeed, for one reason or another Tough鈥檚 site clearly isn鈥檛 engaging its
target audience. In the five years since the prototype 鈥渉ello鈥� page went live,
it has generated only a trickle of e-mail from visitors claiming to be from
other planets鈥攏one genuine, says Tough. He writes a friendly reply to
every e-mail that comes in, asks a few questions and answers those posed to him.
After three or four exchanges, he introduces the idea that he needs some kind of
evidence to support their claims of alien status. 鈥淎t that point most
correspondents sort of fade away,鈥� Tough says. He describes the claimants so far
as sincere but deluded.
So how could Tough ever know for certain that a correspondent is the alien
they claim to be? After all, the 鈥渢all, athletic millionaire鈥� in an Internet
chat room is more likely to be a pimply 13-year-old. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 the one place where
I think perhaps Allen has a flaw,鈥� says invitation team member Don Scott, who
gives NASA workshops for schoolchildren across the US.
Others aren鈥檛 so worried about this. Norris is head of the IAA鈥檚
post-detection committee, so if SETI scientists ever detect a signal, it鈥檚 his
job to lead the verification efforts and preside over the verdict. He says the
scenario that the SETI community anticipates is receiving a radio or optical
signal that they will have to prove originates in space and has not been
contaminated by human noise. Yet the idea of assessing the authenticity of
e-mail does not appear to faze him. He and Tough have ideas for tests, he says,
although he declines to provide details. 鈥淚鈥檇 rather not, because it rather
helps the hoaxers,鈥� he says.
So suppose the day arrives, and a message from a bona fide alien lands in
Tough鈥檚 e-mail box. What then? Surprisingly, Tough has no firm plans so far
other than to circulate the e-mail to the others in his group. They intend to
announce the news quickly, he says, but would they then turn matters over to
international authorities? Tough says the question hasn鈥檛 occurred to him. 鈥淎
lot of it is going to depend on what ETI wants,鈥� he says. 鈥淚f ETI wants to go to
the UN, then great.鈥� Presumably Tough would not mind supplying the UN鈥檚 e-mail
address.
He admits to some anxiety about what might happen immediately after contact,
with different groups on Earth struggling to be heard, but he is overwhelmingly
optimistic about the final outcome. 鈥淚 think in the long run that the benefits
will be enormous,鈥� he says. The website airs his hopes for a fruitful dialogue
with the visitors, suggesting, for example, that they might help us cure our
social and environmental ills, and that we could team up to 鈥渄evelop an
inspiring symphony or a magnificent piece of visual art that harmoniously
combines our efforts and yours鈥�. Of course, we may be lucky just to receive some
interstellar spam.