Instructions for First Contact

I would like to share a few bits of information I've gathered from around the web about space and aliens and the like.  We'll start with a brief history lesson regarding the Voyager space probes.

In 1977 (the same year that brought us Star Wars), the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes were launched for deep space exploration.  Voyager 2 was the first (and only) probe to take a close-up look at Uranus and Neptune, and Voyager 1 is the furthest human-made object from Earth.  They are currently just a few years from exiting our solar system.

They carried, in addition to all the sensory stuff, a sampling of music and greetings in fifty-five languages, in case extra-terrestrial life ever found them.

In 1979, Star Trek: The Motion Picture hit theaters.  Let's get one thing clear: the television show Star Trek started airing in 1966, eleven years before any of that Star Wars plagiarism.  Anyway, the premise of ST:TMP was that some advanced alien race had found one of the Voyager probes and repaired it with their own technology, in the process giving it sentience and causing it to come back to Earth looking for its creator.  In the Star Trek novel The Return, William Shatner claimed the aliens that modified Voyager (or V'ger, as it called itself, because the "OY" had been scratched off and apparently its self-identification was based on its hull markings) were Borg, but it's usually best to ignore anything William Shatner writes.

Or directs, so you can go ahead and ignore Star Trek V.

To be fair, the Voyager probe in question in ST:TMP was Voyager 6, but bear with me here.


In April of this year, Voyager 2 started sending back information in an unknown data format.  You know, like if you send your professor a .odt, but he doesn't have OpenOffice.  Wikipedia calls this "scientific data format problems," but alien expert Hartwig Hausdorf (the perfect name for someone in a generally discredited profession) suggests the probe has been hijacked.  As in, some alien race is sending us their term papers, but we're using different word processors.  Kinda freaky in light of that whole Star Trek thing, right?  Especially since it almost meant the destruction of Earth.  Actually, kinda freaky regardless.

But there's one more thing I want to tie in to all this.  This data corruption--or hijacking--happened just three days before Stephen Hawking (you know, the astrophysicist slash smartest person ever to cameo in Star Trek) warned that instead of seeking out alien life, we should be doing everything we can to avoid contact.  He speculates that intelligent life we meet could well be nomadic, looking for new worlds to conquer and strip of resources before moving on (not that it wouldn't have some poetic justice in it).  If that also sounds like a movie plot, it's because it is.

So basically we're all going to die.  There is no possible way we would be prepared to fight off aliens capable of interstellar travel, so we might as well just accept it.

BUT, in case we do meet intelligent life that isn't just interested in a delicious new planet or paving a new intergalactic highway, and in case you happen to be the person who makes first contact, you should probably be prepared.  To this end, the folks over at io9 have posted this comprehensive guide for how to make first contact with extra-terrestrial life.

If you're in danger of not sleeping because of all this Voyager 2 creepiness, go ahead and read the "current status" section of the Wikipedia article on Voyager 2.