Finding and messaging ET: So What?

For more than four decades, astronomers have been searching for technosignatures: signals coming from  distant technological civilizations. The first SETI searches began in the 1960s by searching for extraterrestrial radio waves and have more recently expanded to include optical (visible) signals, such as powerful laser pulses. 

We know that, like technological progress, the search is also accelerating, evolving with the development of new antenna arrays and new networks of telescopes which will soon be capable  listening to the entire sky, everywhere, and all the time. It is impossible to know when we will get our first contact and what this message will say, but we know that this discovery will have an ethical and political impact on our world. 

And then what will happen next? Will the detection of ET  be dangerous or beneficial for humankind? Will it change everything, including our place in the universe or will we simply continue our life knowing that ‘We are not alone’?

To discuss these points, we invited four SETI researchers: Julia DeMarines, Astrobiologist and Science Communicator at the UC Berkeley SETI Research Center, Doug Vakoch, President of METI, Eliot Gillum, director of LASER SETI and Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute.