Some scientists already consider our encounter with extraterrestrials so certain that they say that the time has come to prepare us for living with them.
According to British astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the expected encounter with some kind of extraterrestrial life should occur at most within the next hundred years.
The professor stated that we will find these aliens on some rocky planet that has carbon dioxide and ozone in the atmosphere.
The question remains whether we should introduce ourselves to them or not.
“We need to think about it now. Who will we tell about the discovery first? For the press? For the prime minister? For the Pope?”, she said at a conference held in Dublin, Ireland.
If we decide to make contact with the aliens, the chat could take decades or even centuries if it’s through radio or laser.
“Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. So our conversation could take 50 or 100 years or even longer just to reach its destination,” Burnell said.
On the other hand, a group of scientists argues that we should not introduce ourselves to aliens, as extraterrestrials could be hostile and invade Earth.
Scientists think that a group that can travel through space has technology advanced enough to annihilate us.
“Exactly what happened when Christopher Columbus arrived in America could happen. Things did not end very well for the native population,” said scientist Stephen Hawkins, a famous British physicist and cosmologist who died in 2018 and worried about the possibility that extraterrestrials could invade Earth in search of natural resources, among other things.
