…yet it is something scientists have pondered: Whether it is wise to send signals into outer space so that alien races might find them and therefore find us.

Again: Is that a wise thing to do?

As presented in this article by Ellie Abraham on indy100.com, some scientists feel this is not a wise thing to do…

Broadcasting Earth’s location into space could cause an alien invasion, experts warn

If you’ve followed my writings, you know about my Corrosive Knights series and, well, what its ultimately about (not SPOILERS!).

The idea of an alien race finding out about us, one optimistically hopes, would be a good thing, that we would engage with a more advanced race and together make our way into the stars.

Of course, any race that can make it to Earth would have to be a more advanced race than ours, at least at this point. The furthest we’ve made it to taking humans ”out there” is the Moon, though we have sent automated/robot vessels to other planets within our solar system, including Pluto.

So this theoretical alien race which might get our signal and therefore might come visit us, we hope, is a peaceful one…

…but…

What if it isn’t?

I know, I know… it sounds like science fiction and all, but assuming there is a race out there that hears our signal and has the means to visit us, what’s to say it isn’t a warrior race?

What’s to say it isn’t a race with bad intentions toward any other alien races?

The bottom line is… I feel this is a legitimate concern. We want to find other alien races out there. We like the idea that we’re not alone out there. But we simply have no idea what may happen if/when we do get in touch with them.

It might be a beautiful thing.

But it might be something tragic.

No, this isn’t about The X-Files (though I’m eager to see the new episodes, now that you mention it!), but rather the recent reveal that the U.S. Government spent some $22 Million (let’s face it, chump change) to investigate UFOs and other unexplained phenomena.

Which led me to this intriguing article by Jacob Brogan and found on Slate.com…

We Shouldn’t Be Looking For Aliens.  We Should Be Hiding From Them

To be clear, the article does not address anything new and startling regarding arguments among scientists and others about whether we should be trying to find other alien life or not.

Indeed, while one could adopt an optimistic Star Trek-like philosophy regarding alien cultures and the need to find and interact with them, there is a certain dark reality concerning what has happened in Earth’s past when cultures have found themselves.

Within the above linked article is this quote by Chinese science fiction writer Liu Cixin:

No civilization should ever announce its presence to the cosmos, [Liu] says. Any other civilization that learns of its existence will perceive it as a threat to expand—as all civilizations do, eliminating their competitors until they encounter one with superior technology and are themselves eliminated. This grim cosmic outlook is called “dark-forest theory,” because it conceives of every civilization in the universe as a hunter hiding in a moonless woodland, listening for the first rustlings of a rival.

I must admit, while I’d like to think that finding and interacting with other alien cultures sounds incredibly intriguing, there is a part of me -a sizable part, truth be told- that worries about exactly what Liu Cixin states.

As I noted before, when the European explorers met the native Americans in both North and South America, the results were not good, to say the least, for the Native Americans, be they Aztec or American Indians.

What’s to say that meeting up with an alien race capable of bridging the enormous gap between the stars (something we obviously haven’t come close to be able to do), won’t arrive to our planet and look at us much like those European explorers did to the natives way back when?

In which case, we could rapidly be toast.

A while back I wrote about the intriguing discovery astronomers made involving star KIC 8462852.

While you can read the entire post here, the essence of the story was this: Something mysterious is blocking the star’s light, something which astronomers at that point could not explain.

One astronomer brought out the stunning idea that perhaps the blocked light could be the result of aliens building a Dyson Sphere.  A Dyson Sphere is a massive artificial structure built around a star and whose purpose it is to collect all energy flowing from said star…

This concept is pure science fiction and, even in the original article, scientists were extremely hesitant to give credence to that idea.

The best natural theory put forth to explain the star’s loss of light became the idea of a passing comet storm.  A large group of comets therefore block the star’s light.

Alas, that theory is now gone as well, as mentioned in this article found on i09, The Case of the So-Called Alien Megastructure just got weirder.  The gist of the article is found in this paragraph:

…astronomer Bradley Schaefer of Louisiana State University decided to look at photographic plates of the sky dating back to the late 19th century. To his amazement, he learned that over the last hundred years, KIC 8462852’s light output has steadily faded by about 19%, something that’s “completely unprecedented for any F-type main sequence star.”

The steady fading through all those years hurts the theory of a comet swarm cause and leaves scientist once again wondering exactly what is causing the strange dimming of that star’s light.

Fascinating, fascinating stuff.

As a writer who delves in the fantastic, articles like these get my blood pumping.  Written by Ross Anderson for theAtlantic.com, the article explores…

The Most Mysterious Star in Our Galaxy

In a nutshell, there’s a star, KIC 8462852, which displays some strange -mysterious even- fluctuations in the amount of light emitted by it.

It would appear something quite massive -more massive than a planet the size of Jupiter- is blocking the star’s light and scientists are at the moment at somewhat of a loss to explain what exactly is doing this.  It could be some kind of massive asteroid belt, but that appears unlikely given the star’s age.  It could also be some recent “event”, perhaps involving comets or planets crashing into each other, that caused a vast field of rocks to orbit the star and block her light.

Or…

(Forgive me, I’ve always wanted to use that image!)

Seriously, though, the fact of the matter is that the dips in starlight emerging from KIC 8462852 might (and I can’t help but stress the word might) be evidence of an alien culture.

How?  It is possible that what blocks the star’s light is some kind of massive solar array designed to capture the star’s light and convert it to energy.

Again, this is nothing more than a highly speculative theory and one that could quite likely be proven wrong.  But I have only scratched the surface as to why this theory is even in consideration versus other more natural explanations.  I highly recommend reading the above article as well as this one, by Phil Plait for Slate.com, which also examines this star’s mysterious light emissions:

Did Astronomers Find Evidence of An Alien Civilization?  (Probably Not.  But Still Cool.)