A Hundred-Million Bucks To Find Aliens? Why Steven Hawking May Be A Little Nuts On This One

Today, famous Astrophysicists, Steven Hawking, and Russian billionaire, Yuri Milner (ranked 46th in Fortunes 50 most influential business people in 2010) have teamed up on a $100M project to listen for signs of extraterrestrial life. Milner--who made a great deal of money investing in Facebook and other tech companies, claims that they can leverage the computer power of Silicon Valley to hunt the entire Milky Way and 100 other surrounding galaxies. In addition to using some of the world's most powerful telescopes, it will also harness the power of SETI@home: a network of over 9-million computers that has been harnessing it's collective computing power to search for alien life forms. Steven Hawking was no less than hawkish with this poignant statement: "We are alive. We are intelligent. We must know."

While I admire the big-thinking of Hawking and Milner, a question that dominates my mind when reading such articles, or talking to people about the existence of aliens, is 'If we find these beings, and start communicating with them, what then? What's the end game? Suppose they're more intelligent than we are--what then? Have we not learned from Ridley Scott's (maker of the Alien movie series, and his most recent Prometheus) horror-wrought skepticism of even cracking open this extra-terrestrial pandora's box? 

The Co-Founder of Sun Microsystems, Bill Joy, made a case that we should place legal parameters around the asking of certain kinds of questions, lest our curiosity lead to larger catastrophes. To me, this search for alien life forms should be on that list, simply because we don't understand the risks such communication and engagement might pose. Yes, we can all think of the propaganda piece E.T. whose cute, cuddly alien could easily cozy up with Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy, but that's simply showbiz; the reality of it, to me, is closer to Scott's: these could be supra-intelligent beings that could easily destroy us. 

And there are many different theories about their intelligence, and their participation in such wonders of the world--as the Pyramids and Stone Henge, as Carl Sagan and, contentiously, Erich von Danikan (one of the founders of SETI) maintained among others--suggesting these beings to possibly have greater intelligence than we can realize. 

So is this new project of Hawkings and Milner to be celebrated or that which should raise the hair on our backs, as well as our eyebrows? If the truth is out there, is it worth the risk of finding it? Sometimes an unknown truth is better left alone than found and left to its own devices. This should definitely rank up there with other existential risks to humanity, and something we as human beings should be keeping watch of. 

So is this new project of Hawkings and Milner to be celebrated or that which should raise the hair on our backs, as well as our eyebrows?

We'll just have to wait and see...