An esteemed astronomer who believes alien life may exist said he’s cautious of sending messages into space because “we don’t know what’s out there”.
Physicist Adam Frank thinks we should “lay low” on Earth as trying to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligence is just like “sticking your head out the grass and saying we’re tasty”.
The 62-year-old American believes there is at least microbial life in the universe as solar systems “can certainly be inhabited”.
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Speaking to 5 Live Science Podcast, Frank said: “So I do talk about METI – the messaging extraterrestrial intelligence – and in general, I’m not a big fan of it. Because really, we don’t know what’s out there, and it may be that the best decision is to kind of lay low.
(Image: Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF)
“Don’t stick your head above the grass and be like, ‘hey, we’re here, we’re tasty’.”
Frank admitted scientists have “been putting out emissions” to contact aliens but it’s the equivalent of a “low hum”. “When you do METI, you’re really screaming into the void,” he said.
“And unless somebody knew exactly where to look, they wouldn’t hear us. There’s all kinds of radio transmissions in the galaxy.”
The astronomer admitted he is “very optimistic about the possibilities of at least microbial life”. “I think it’s going to be pretty hard to imagine that microbial life hasn’t evolved elsewhere in the universe, probably quite often,” he said.
“Now, animals, and then intelligence, that may be difficult for evolution to achieve, looking at Earth’s own history. But I certainly think that life in general is going to be quite common in the universe.”
(Image: Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF)
Frank said the statistical understanding that life exists in space is recent, with the discovery of the first planet orbiting another star in 1995. “Before that, some people thought that planets were very, very rare,” he added.
“Now, we understand that every star that you see in the night sky hosts a family of worlds. If you count up five of those stars, one of them has a planet in the right place for life to form, meaning that liquid water could form.”
The scientist said the odds of life in space has “vastly increased” and “solar systems can certainly be inhabited”. He added: “There’s vastly more places that we now know of where life can form. Now, of course, until you look and you find it, statistics is still just a guess.
“But in terms of at least having places to look, there’s been an explosion of possibilities.”
The astronomer and writer is a leading expert on the final stages of the evolution of stars. He works as a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Rochester, New York, US, and has won several awards for promoting public understanding of science.
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