Sophia Anagnostakis Current
Event-Should Humanity Try to Contact Alien Civilizations?
Sophia Anagnostakis
2/24/15
Earth Science
Current Event 1
Wall, Mike. "Should Humanity Try to
Contact Alien Civilizations? | Space.com." Space.com.
N.p., 24
Feb. 2015. Web. 24 Feb. 2015.
Since the beginning of Earth,
humans have looked up at the sky and seen thousands of stars. As we have
discovered more and more about our solar system, there has been a big question
asked… Is there life on other planets? Researchers want to launch an experiment
called “active SETI” to send out transmissions into the solar system not only
to listen for signs of life, but to signal other life forms (if they exist)
that we exist too. Douglas Vakoch, director of interstellar message composition
at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California hopes to use big radio
dishes to send out transmissions to nearby stars. "It's like sending a lot of hieroglyphics to the 19th
century — they [aliens] can figure it out based on the redundancy,"
Shostak said during the AAAS (Association for the advancement of Science) discussion.
"So, I think in terms of messages, we should send everything."
But, every big decision comes along with controversy in our world. Researchers are nervous that since humanity
has only been a technological civilization for a few generations, if we are to
find life on another planet, they will most likely be way more advanced then
us. It is likely that they would be able to come to Earth and take over, like
countries did in the past when they discovered new land. This would be a
difficult topic to gain support for, since it is so controversial.
This
article is relevant to our society today, because if we were to find life on
another planet and they were more advanced then us, they could try to take our
planet over. This is very unlikely, but we have seen this type of thing happen
in history when discoveries of new territories occurred and people wanted to
expand their country into the new area taking over anyone who lived there previously.
This is why researches have consulted historians to look into the past and see
if this is truly a possibility if we do find other life in our solar
system.
Overall I
think that the author did a good job getting all of the information you needed
to understand the article without making it too lengthy. It was not hard for
me, someone who has not done a lot of research on the topic of the possibility
of life on other planets, to understand the different things that were
discussed in the article. He seems to have used credible people for quotes who
actually work on researching this topic. But, I think that the author
definitely could have elaborated more on the different reasons why researchers
believe that there are life forms on other planets, because he did not give
much background at the beginning of the article.
This is a well written article, and I was particularly fond of the introduction. Specifically, that way the article seamlessly blends from one paragraph to the other by making two entirely different subjects relevant to one another is fantastic. You also do a great job of critiquing the article, which although you did review, you aren’t hesitant whatsoever to get to the core of the issues you found in it. I was very fascinated by how you managed to point out how the relation of aliens to us humans is quite similar to that of the indigenous people of the new world to their technologically superior european brethren. This is a fascinating way to relate the article with real life, and how aliens could potentially impact us. Another fascinating fact is how this is a difficult issue to gain momentum with, as people are hesitant to even begin attempting to contemplate the full extent of what aliens present as a potential threat. The only issue I had was that I would recommend polishing up the rhetoric, as well as the grammar, as there were a few issues. Otherwise, it was an excellent article!
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