First Contact Speculations

Given the announcements about finding more and more Earth-like planets around other Suns and potentially life-friendly regions in Jupiter and Saturn’s satellites, I would like to offer the following predictions.

• Actual First Contact has already happened. People do not discuss the distance between Roswell and Alamogordo, which is near the site of the first A-bomb explosion, and which happens to be only 145Km by air.
• Since First Contact among two cultures, which significantly differ in their technological sophistication, is usually harmful to the less technologically advanced culture, it was decided not to publicize this fact without preparing the Earth culture for those news.

  Furthermore, it was decided that the Earth people are to be the ones to “discover” the alien culture, rather than vice versa.

• Several SciFi stories assumed that alien cultures would discover the existence of a technological Earth culture by radiation from its first A-bomb explosions. Arthur C. Clarke’s “2001 Space Odyssey” assumed that this would happen when a certain slab is excavated on the Moon. The Star Trek world assumed that the discovery would by detecting the radiation emitted by Zefram Cochrane‘s first FTL flight using a warp drive system.

  However, I believe that the real “Zefram Cochrane” moment would be when the Earth culture proves its ability to defend life on Earth by deflecting or destroying killer asteroids.

Hence, my prediction is that once a dangerous asteroid has been detected and successfully neutralized, it will be announced that some Earth probe ship has at last found signs of alien life.

Author: Omer Zak

I am deaf since birth. I played with big computers which eat punched cards and spew out printouts since age 12. Ever since they became available, I work and play with desktop size computers which eat keyboard keypresses and spew out display pixels. Among other things, I developed software which helped the deaf in Israel use the telephone network, by means of home computers equipped with modems. Several years later, I developed Hebrew localizations for some cellular phones, which helped the deaf in Israel utilize the cellular phone networks. I am interested in entrepreneurship, Science Fiction and making the world more accessible to people with disabilities. View all posts by Omer Zak