Are We prepared to receive a Visit from Extraterrestrials?

O documentário "A Visita" expõe os inúmeros desafios que a humanidade teria que enfrentar no caso de um contato aberto com extraterrestres.

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Although humanity is already relatively prepared for a hypothetical collision with an asteroid, it does not seem to be as prepared for another equally cinematic event: the arrival of a manned spacecraft of extraterrestrial origin.

How to contact this artifact?

Who would talk to the crew?

 

What risks should be taken into account?

How would the population be informed about this event?

This hypothesis, as fascinating as it is terrifying, is the starting point of the documentary The Visit, which shows in 90 minutes the countless biological, ethical and political challenges that authorities and experts would face.

Danish director Michael Madsen’s documentary is a conversation about this hypothesis with experts to learn about their impressions, concerns and fears.

Astrophysicist Mazlan Othman, director of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, was considered a spokesperson for humanity in such a situation.

The interviewees sincerely acknowledge that nothing is prepared, which is an advantage: this allows them to speculate on how to manage the situation throughout the film.

“I doubt they would come by chance, but why us?”, says Othman.

Astrobiologists from NASA, jurists, theologians, anthropologists, specialists in biological contamination, former communications and defense officials from the United Kingdom, complete a series of interesting personalities capable of developing a possible response to this event, which would have an infinite number of levels.

The documentary addresses how the announcement should be made to the public, and a public relations expert suggests that the announcement should be made, to the British, by naturalist David Attenborough.

Other issues addressed are the mission of a select group of scientists who would work as experts who we should distrust due to the interests of their countries and the concerns of the volunteer who will inspect the aircraft. Even the precautions taken by the former British military leader who advocates reacting calmly to avoid generating “anxiety” in visitors.

Perhaps the most interesting reflections are those proposed by Douglas Vakoch, responsible for designing the messages we would send to extraterrestrials at the SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), since the questions for visitors serve to define us.

For example, Vakoch recalls that when humanity made a very complete self-portrait to send on the Golden Record of the Voyager probes to the ends of the galaxy, with photos, audios and descriptions of all kinds, it consciously avoided showing some of our most visible characteristics such as civilization: war, weapons, violence. We mislead those who might be invited to visit us with images of laughing children and beautiful landscapes.

The film questions not only our importance as human beings, but also the definition of life itself.

Will the alien visitor be a life form like the ones we know, with its DNA so we can identify it, or will it be some kind of biological competitor that could threaten us, even unintentionally?

And beyond these scientific details, are they a threat?

To know or avoid it, we may first need to communicate with the visitor, like the character François Truffaut played in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.