A brilliant young professor, shaped by personal challenges, prepares a groundbreaking plan to respond to contact from aliens. With sweeping research, our writer explores the first contact scenario as never before. The real-life stakes could be higher than imagined.

If alien contact is made, most of us won’t know—at first. 

Governments would have an interest in locking down the information for as long as possible. As potential scenarios for encountering extraterrestrial life become further grounded in science, they can be anticipated with more specificity. If contact comes to pass, we will look to the people who have spent years envisioning the scenarios by applying expertise and imagination in equal parts. 

This piece draws from interviews and reporting while playing out a contact scenario set in 2032.

the 12-year-old boy walked with his grandfather alongside the busy roads of Hyderabad, India. He treasured these conversations, basking in a grandparent’s wisdom on the big questions of the world. Many children through the ages stare up at the sky, the sun, the stars, and they wonder. 

What is it like up there? 

What can’t we see? 

Could there be life somewhere else? 

But Manasvi Lingam was no ordinary 12-year-old. In addition to the usual queries, he wondered, Could you have life even if an enormous cloud of gas ends up blocking the sun? 

These walks with Manasvi’s grandfather may have occurred a stone’s throw from rumbling cars and from the daily grind, but they felt far away. The boy was transported. “The real world became a blur,” he recalled, looking back as a 33-year-old, “whereas the world of the imagination, of the mind, was rendered more real.” 

As he grew up, Manasvi’s path took a turn toward the practical. He studied engineering physics at the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay. “I studied engineering in India because that [is the] sort of thing that many people do to get more jobs. Coming from a Third World country, one always has that factor in mind,” Manasvi explained with an infectious smile. With broad shoulders and unfailing politeness, he projected competence and reassurance. 

Manasvi’s interests in what could be awaiting us from beyond never went away. A circuitous path to studying space was in store, and a discovery about himself was also to come: He had a sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL), which made many sounds muffled or difficult to hear. He brought a unique vantage point to a field that cannot exist without new thinking, becoming Assistant Professor of Astrobiology, Aerospace, Physics and Space Sciences at the Florida Institute of Technology. By 2021, he and a mentor prepared to unveil the first-ever textbook on communication with alien life. Around that time, I interviewed Manasvi-- particularly memorable to me because, like him, I have mild to moderate hearing loss. Also memorable because we discussed how alien contact could unfold--and how that could steer the course of humanity’s future.  

On August 12, 2032, I am scooped up from a Midwestern airfield and ushered into the expansive 60,000-acre Army base of Fort McCoy located near the inconspicuous town of Tomah, Wisconsin, stepping into a maelstrom of uncertainty. The Search for Extraterrestrial Life Institute (SETI), identifies an unusually orderly signal fewer than 20 light-years away. The signal is repetitious and moving closer to Earth. 

As a bilingual journalist with experience tracking the impact of breaking news across cultural boundaries, I’ve received clearance from the United States government agency charged with assisting a blue ribbon committee of experts appointed by the Vice President in anticipating public responses. One of the tests that I have undergone to receive clearance was a psychiatric assessment to see how I would respond to drastic scenarios and, apparently, I responded better than I thought I would. I receive a tag for my blazer that simply says “Julia,” as though anything more would be classified. 

I am led into a room with approximately fifty people. Everyone seems to be talking at once-- with all the noise, I have trouble picking up what people are discussing. It can be difficult for me to understand what a person says when there is background noise. This, of course, can present a challenge when I am supposed to learn and synthesize important information, but it also amplifies the diligence and care I take with my work. 

At the front of the room stands Dr. Raum, whom I will soon learn was a CIA analyst, and United States Colonel Leşker. Colonel Leşker announces that scientists involved in SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Life Institute, had confirmed the reception of an “orderly”-- that is, non-random--signal coming from space and coming closer. 

Murmurs break out in the room, but I again struggle to pick up everything my colleagues are saying. I find that isolating. I am expected to work on communication with aliens when I am having trouble communicating just with humans. Colonel Leşker introduces Dr. Amie Inconnue, an astrophysicist tapped to be the lead scientist, to explain more about the contact. 

Dr. Inconnue turns out to be right next to me. She explains the expert consensus: Everything about the message points to extraterrestrial life. The capacity for delivering the message in itself indicates aliens with intelligence superior to ours. I can understand Dr. Inconnue much better than the others because she is close by. Experts from astronomy, linguistics, cognitive science, cryptography, and archaeology were quickly pulled together to face the ultimate puzzle of how humankind should respond to the message; other cells work day and night at the Pentagon, the State Department, Langley, and Fort Meade in Maryland. Inconnue expresses one major development that has shocked even those who have been theorizing about this moment for decades: The messages traveled to us faster than the speed of light. 

Nothing before this has been observed to be able to travel faster than the speed of light. Overthrowing this reliable rule could panic even scientists, particularly during an event that rose to the level of a national security emergency. But, as Manasvi told me, any establishment of contact with non-microbial extraterrestrial life will set off a panic, and there are not guidelines for how nations should respond. 

I am concerned about how people would react upon learning that the existence of non-microbial extraterrestrial life has been confirmed, and to signs that indicate they possess superior intelligence to humans. After all, aliens did what we could not--they found life outside their own. For some, cognitive dissonance would set in, their entire perceptions of the world-shattering. High-ranking individuals argue about next steps. Colonel Leşker raises the point that if the aliens do not have a peaceful intent, humans would need to know to prepare to defend ourselves. 

For a few hours, different teams of experts get to work. I am partnered with a team of cognitive scientists, and I encourage the others to input all of our ideas into a shared document. While 

it is good to have everything discussed verbally, I also do not want to miss anything. A lot of people are shouting around me. That is, until the head of the linguistic team, an NSA codebreaker, and an archaeologist make a joint announcement 20 minutes later. 

The message sent through the radio bursts has been determined to resemble Sumerian, an ancient language that was spoken in Mesopotamia that became extinct around 1800 B.C.E. Fringe historians have previously theorized that Sumerian tablets reveal that aliens came to Earth and interacted with the Sumer people in ancient times, leaving behind advanced scientific tools. Could it be that the Sumer people tried to send a message back after the aliens’ interaction with them on Earth? 

After the linguistic team determines that the only part of the message discerned so far is “silim,” which is a greeting in Sumerian, the Pentagon liaison confirms the team must move forward with planning to establish contact with the alien intelligence. 

In my interviews with Manasvi, he had explained to me that there are three likely scenarios for how communicating with aliens could work, the first being through fast radio bursts. Fast radio bursts are pulses of radio waves caused by a high-energy astrophysical process that is not fully understood by scientists yet. 

“A one-way communication is that [the aliens] could send a message in a bottle,” Manasvi explained. “It’s like a galactical postal service. These packages would travel much slower than the speed of light. They would take much longer to arrive.” Humans could also “send some kind of probe that would be somewhere in [our] solar system. In that case, it would be much easier to communicate with such a probe because the time would be much shorter.” 

At our base in Wisconsin, scientists try to determine if there would be a way to send a response back quicker than the speed of light, or whether they could rely on a probe. 

Reflecting on Manasvi Lingam’s path allows me also to reflect on what we tap into when we try to understand the implications of alien contact. When Manasvi arrived at the University of Texas, Austin, in 2010 as a graduate student with tentative plans to specialize in condensed matter physics, he found that the culture in Texas was not all that different from the old Hollywood Turner Classic movies from the 1930s and ’40s that were broadcast in India when he was a child. 

Manasvi explored studying astronomy but found that the research being done there was not his “cup of tea.” He contacted his advisor, physicist and applied mathematician Philip J. Morrison, to discuss his options. Manasvi decided to focus on plasma physics from a mathematical standpoint. Manasvi’s mind had the ability to jump to ambitious practicalities of ideas that seem abstract to many. He recalled that plasma physics had “some appeal to it that maybe it could help solve the energy crisis to some degree.” 

Though childhood conversations with his grandfather maintained a place in his heart, Manasvi usually refrained from sharing his interest in astronomy and extraterrestrial life with others. Manasvi described his often-solitary working style as being similar to the character Ekalavya from the ancient Indian epic, the Mahābhārata. 

“Ekalavya doesn’t have a teacher… so he made a clay idol of a teacher,” Manasvi recounted. “In the same way, [...] I would mostly just try to think about these issues myself and after if I had any doubts, I would contact some people and so on. I think I sort of enjoyed doing a lot of my science in more of an introverted and more internal kind of fashion.” 

In the Mahābhārata, Ekalavya is from a lowly tribe who becomes a strong fighter, even after sacrificing his thumb to his clay guru. Similar to Ekalavya, Manasvi found himself navigating work in the United States as an ultimate outsider, an immigrant with a disability. “I am a minority on multiple levels,” Manasvi reflected. 

The Mahābhārata is an Indian epic which mainly revolves around the lives of two families-- Pandavas and Kauravas--who fight for the throne of Hastinapura during the Kurukshetra War. In the 10,000-verses-long poem, there are also Vimānas, which some have interpreted to be interstellar spaceships, depicted as flying palaces and chariots in the epic. 

Manasvi became a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University after finishing his PhD in plasma physics. While there, Manasvi decided to test the waters to pursue his lifelong interest in astronomy. At the time, thinking about and talking about the search for extraterrestrial life was far removed from the core of plasma astrophysics. Like Ekalavya, Manasvi was ready to learn more about this field in an introverted way.  

Okay, I have some interesting ideas, let me just put them to paper, Manasvi thought to himself. He submitted research to a journal as an experiment. “I was quite naive about the whole thing and it was good in a way because if I had begun to overthink everything, then maybe I wouldn’t have gotten around to experimenting,” Manasvi had told me. “Before you know it, you’re overthinking things and debating the pros and cons.” 

Imagination was always key to the evolution of science. During an internship in Italy, Manasvi began to paint and now turns to the hobby whenever he has time and the urge to clear his mind. He described his style as “retro,” with a particular interest in shadows. Manasvi believed painting to be similar to astrobiology in some aspects. “Both are about harnessing the forces of one’s imagination [and] both these disciplines offer a means of creating imagined worlds.” 

For Manasvi, his work on communication with aliens hinged on the existence of intelligent non-microbial extraterrestrial life, for which there had never been a consensus in astronomy. Manasvi was taking a risk by submitting this research paper. 

Fortunately for Manasvi, naivete helped him have “a good experience”--one that paid off. Manasvi’s paper “Interstellar Travel and Galactic Colonization: Insights from Percolation Theory and the Yule Process” was published in the Astrobiology journal, a feather in the cap of a young scientist. 

It was around 2015 when Manasvi was diagnosed with SNHL, which explained hearing difficulties dating to his childhood. Manasvi said that his hearing loss plays out in subtle ways. “I don’t really go to many conferences and prefer to avoid larger crowds because it’s harder for me to comprehend what’s going on and it can be a bit stressful.” 

During the coronavirus lockdowns, both academia and journalism adjusted. Switching to teaching classes remotely, Manasvi could wear headphones and have captions on his computer. Likewise, as a journalist, conducting interviews online allowed me to avoid background noise in my recordings. Both with limitations with our hearing, Manasvi and I were able to communicate particularly well because we understood the access needs that the other faced due to our own experiences. 

A few weeks pass while we are hunkered down at the base in Wisconsin. Our engineers try to identify methods to send a radio blast back into space that would not take hundreds or thousands of years to arrive, but they are unsuccessful, as are the other teams with which we are in touch around the clock. Dr. Inconnue and Colonel Leşker coordinate another group meeting. Scanning the faces around me, I can sense that many colleagues have not slept in days. 

Scientists in Shenzhen have been working on a probe which could help us send an interstellar message, Inconnue explains. We have the chance to collaborate. 

Around me, I hear objections that working with scientists in China could pose a security risk, and a flurry of groans and expletives fly. I feel a migraine coming on. Having to put in extra work by lipreading to understand what others are saying is exhausting and sometimes painful. Colonel Leşker tells the group to focus and get to work, repeating his mantra from the earlier meeting that we need to know the intentions of the aliens before calibrating a possible response. 

An incredible possibility looms over all this: the aliens may help us. Science fiction depicting aliens traveling from other worlds to ravage our planet for resources overlook how much energy such journeys would expend, far more than the travelers could likely recoup. But a motive that defies such calculus would be a philanthropic one. If the aliens are the same ones that interacted with the Sumer people thousands of years ago, they could likely be much more advanced than us and have solutions to some of our most dire problems, the ravages of climate change at the top of the list. If a craft has been moving toward us, their instruments would pick up the full experience of our electromagnetic spectrum--moving through a kind of primer of our electromagnetic history starting with the 1920 broadcast of Warren Harding’s presidential victory. They would see our society advancing as they get closer, and they would pick up the changes in atmosphere, such as increasing carbon dioxide and the presence of pollution, and certain radio isotopes generated from nuclear explosions--a snapshot of our planet’s perils. 

Diplomats arrange a team to work with Shenzhen. The lead linguist, whose name I later learned was Dora--short for Descubridora-- discusses the importance of sending a simple message that the aliens would not misinterpret. The linguists recommend that the message that they send in Sumerian would translate to, Welcome, what should we talk about? which would allow the alien recipients agency while leading them to reveal at least some information about their intentions. 

All of this preparation occurs without the guarantee that the probe will actually serve its purpose: to allow a message to be sent from a position outside earth without taking years to reach a destination in space. The cognitive scientists’ team discusses how we prepare the general public for information that aliens not only exist, but also that they made contact. It seems like the best solution would be to deliver gradual updates to the public, each of which contain a small amount of information, starting after we send our reply. 

Another few weeks of preparation pass, and we are called in for a special meeting. Colonel Leşker, Dr. Inconnue, Agent Raum, and the U.S. Secretary of Defense are standing at the front of the room. This time, the U.S. Secretary of Defense addresses the group and confirms that the probe from the team of scientists in Shenzhen works. The Secretary of Defense has given his approval for this mission to move forward. 

Everyone rushes to their respective stations, with the team leaders shouting instructions. The cognitive science team begins to draft memos and also pinpoints which groups of people would react negatively to the news. We discuss whether or not we want to have world leaders in each country tell its citizens what is disclosed in the memos. I stare at a photo of my dog Lucky, whom I have always called my lucky charm. A few hours later, someone shouts: Message sent! It seems that the procedure had gone smoothly despite the lack of guidelines. 

Or, so we thought. 

One member of the military intelligence community who was stationed at the base has leaked to the press that an alien message had been received. The leaker was identified quickly and taken into custody, but the damage is done. As the news spread, conspiracy theories followed. An hour later, we learn that the members of the cult Heaven’s Gate, which revived after a contentious midterm election cycle in 2022 in the United States, have committed mass suicide because the original leader of the group, Marshall Applewhite, claimed that Heaven’s Gate would close after there were signs of aliens. If the alien message was expertly delivered through galaxies, our society’s own communications proves far messier. 

I recall Manasvi noted that when the news in fall 2020 that there are signs of microbial life on Venus was shared officially, it did not receive a massive amount of media attention. Microbial life seems too different from our own to inspire people’s imagination, positive or negative. 

We now have to try to stop a dangerous and violent response to the fact that aliens appear more advanced than we are.

If Manasvi’s insights seemed unnaturally prescient, it’s because this all almost happened before… maybe. On October 19, 2017, for the first time in our history, an interstellar object--coming from another, unknown solar system--was detected passing through our solar system. Professor Abraham “Avi” Loeb gathered a team at Harvard University. Loeb thought Pan-STARRS, the institute that detected the object, was not doing enough to find more information about ‘Oumuamua, as it became known. “The way I operate is, I see an anomaly and I try to explain it,” Loeb said. “If I have more data, it’s for the better because it gives you more clues. It’s just like a detective story. Try to figure out the truth.” Loeb considered the possibility that the object had been engineered by aliens. 

His team of post-doc space detectives included Manasvi, who by this point had joined the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics as a postdoctoral fellow. They investigated the evidence that ‘Oumuamua might be an artificial object--something constructed by an intelligent source. Loeb’s team found pushback in the scientific community for even raising the question whether ‘Oumuamua could be a sign that there is non-microbial extraterrestrial life. “I understand that some of my conservative colleagues have a problem with the alien[s] because there is this baggage of science fiction, which I also don’t like,” Loeb explained. (Loeb did appreciate The Martian and The Arrival.) But the team also found that much of the scientific community bent over backwards to avoid considering alien intelligence. Loeb elaborated: “I’m completely surprised that people raise their eyebrows and say, ‘Oh, there are some anomalies but let’s not put [aliens] on the table. It’s never aliens.’ Because that to me is non-scientific.” 

Loeb was quick-moving and unfailingly polite. His office in a blocky 1970s building was decorated with children’s drawings, paeans to the imagination we possess mostly in our youth. For Loeb, mobilizing younger scientific thinkers with diverse backgrounds was key to breaking the logjam of old ideas. “It’s the fact that they have no baggage,” the professor explained. “They’re fresh. They come to the scene without any ego [and the] related strings attached to them.” Manasvi, from Loeb’s vantage, seemed to come out of nowhere, and that was thrilling. Under Loeb’s oversight, Manasvi tackled the riddle of ‘Oumuamua along with other up-and-coming scientists, including John Forbes, an expert in galaxy formation (and an avid board game player) and an undergraduate named Amir Siraj (who was also a pianist who had performed with the Boston Pops). 

Manasvi explained that the density of ‘Oumuamua could indicate something peculiar. “There is a possibility that some of these objects could be trapped within a solar system and they are passing through,” Manasvi said. “The idea is just that a fishing net would catch fish, the combination of Jupiter and the sun would together sort of have to trap the objects and the moon, too.” 

The team spent six months analyzing ‘Oumuamua, questioning the nature of the object. In November 2018, the team at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics had a paper published in Astrophysical Journal that implied that the object was not an active comet. By July 2019, pushback against the idea that ‘Oumuamua is an artificial object grew louder, including in a Natural Astronomy paper. 

This was far from the first time that scientists gave serious attention to evidence of alien life and alien technology, including in a 1959 Hindi text of Vaimānika Shāstra that claimed that the Vimānas featured in epics such as the Mahābhārata were advanced aerodynamic flying vehicles, an argument later disputed by the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. SETI was framed as “a project which started in 1959 to search for radio signals from intelligent life in space” by California Institute of Technology. 

Although Manasvi had envisioned his working style as similar to the solitary Ekalavya, he ultimately found a series of mentors who influenced his approach to his work, allowing him to cast aside the metaphorical clay teacher. While he was working on a paper with Loeb, Manasvi started to wonder if stellar flares, a sudden eruption of magnetic energy on or near the surface of the sun, could lead to mass extinction. Loeb connected Manasvi with Andrew H. Knoll, the Fisher Professor of Natural History at Harvard University, to help Manasvi work through his theories. 

Manasvi met with Knoll every four-to-six weeks to discuss topics ranging from the history of life on Earth to planetary exploration. Manasvi said that Knoll taught him two things often neglected in academia: taking an inclusive approach to scientific issues and how to be a “decent and well-rounded human being.” Drawing from different disciplines meant the possibility of escaping conventional wisdom when considering reaching intelligent life. “It’s very indicative that one doesn’t have to do research with a given faculty,” Manasvi explained. “I learned a lot about the general practices of science and how to think about things in a holistic matter.” 

While Manasvi’s adjustment to American culture when he first studied here was relatively smooth, a rising number of white Americans, through conscious or unconscious xenophobia, would never see Manasvi as being one of them. Thinking of the dual meaning of the word “alien,” an immigrant’s experience was a powerful perspective to bring to the intellectual process of trying to put oneself in the position of that ultimate outsider: aliens...from another planet. Many people saw immigrants as different entities and used that as a reason to justify neglecting or fearing them.  

Professor Knoll found that Manasvi always seemed to have done his reading ahead of their conversations and “didn’t simply sit at [his] feet to learn what geologists had to say.” Manasvi drove the discussions through his curiosities and would ask questions of Knoll such as: Does the star matter? “My abiding memory of those discussions is his curiosity in learning beyond their disciplinary boundaries,” Knoll recalled their lively exchanges with a smile. “To be a scientist in the 21st century, we all have to do that.” 

In an email to Manasvi in early 2018, Avi Loeb mentioned he was reading the 1966 book Intelligent Life in the Universe by Carl Sagan and Iosif Shklovsky. Loeb and Manasvi discussed the still-groundbreaking staple of scientific thought experiments. “That was one of the few books at the time that tried to take a unified perspective. It talked about the origin of life. It also talked about intelligence and technology,” Manasvi said. “Avi was reading that book and was saying that it is really nice... I am surprised that there haven’t been subsequent books that adopt this type of philosophy.” 

Loeb and Manasvi decided to write a book of their own about communication with aliens--one they would style as a textbook, a manual for an all-but-inevitable future when contact begins. “[Books on] astrobiology deal almost exclusively with microbial life, and those on SETI almost exclusively with technological, intelligent life,” Manasvi explained. “Our primary goal was to place both of them on an equal footing and show that they are complementary to one another and share deep connections with one another.” 

Soon after their initial conversation about Intelligent Life in the Universe, the two scientists shared their plan with Harvard University Press. Loeb and Manasvi recalled that Harvard University Press, which was excited about their book. Earlier published work tended to either explore the existence of microbial life, or to study SETI’s search for signs of intelligent life, but rarely had both lines of inquiry been addressed together. 

Manasvi found a unique path to becoming an astrobiologist. “It’s been a very winding route but I like to think that every step of the way, even if it’s not directly related to astrobiology, there were definitely things that I learned from those other fields which have proven to be useful.” 

The base goes under lockdown at 3 p.m. the day after we send a message into space. We are ordered to go back to the residences on the base and await further instructions. The alarms are blazing and the excitement that many people felt after the probe worked is gone.

Colonel Leşker’s voice booms through the digital assistant in my room 20 minutes later: The extraterrestrial life is now an imminent threat. Their reply message in Sumerian translates to ‘We now believe that you will attack us too.’ And to whom did “too” refer to? Who had attacked or tried to attack them?

How could everything go wrong so quickly?

Dr. Inconnue shares two hypotheses she develops to understand the apparent hostility. The first theory posits that another alien intelligence had attacked them, and they see us as a possible threat. Inconnue also theorizes that the first radio burst that led to us gathering at Fort McCoy was sent around a hundred years ago, and they responded back to us quickly due to improved technology on their end.

Is there a possibility that the aliens observed or learned about the Heaven’s Gate mass suicide and riots? My team asks. Humans’ responses to the existence of aliens may be influenced by their spiritual beliefs, culture, and experiences. If aliens with intelligence comparable to ours learn that some humans want to harm them, that experience could also change their response to humans.

The United States and most other countries enter a mandatory lockdown to prepare for a possible attack. Militaries around the world prepare defense scenarios. Picking up on my messages to colleagues, Twitter curates itself to show me meme posts and videos from people demanding that we should ignore the lockdowns. Aliens do not exist. We should not trust the government when they hid that there were aliens in the first place from everyone. If it’s the end of the world, I am going to do what I want. Once more people see these, they might also start to ignore lockdown policies. And some might want to take up arms against the enemy, which could be both the government and the aliens.

I am unsure whether these lockdowns would protect us from alien hostility. Theorists can predict what is likely to happen and try to minimize harm in a situation, but a theory is a theory. My hearing has made me sensitive to the power of allowing background noise to fade away. Manasvi had talked with me about how, in relation to his own hearing, when there are a large number of people in one area, “I usually have to rely on a fair amount of guesswork and extrapolation in such scenarios.” This is a unique skill, and one we can all strive to deploy in a moment of life-and-death chaos. Too many people prioritize being heard as an end in itself, and in turn confusing hearing others with understanding others.

If the aliens know that certain parts of the population are responding poorly to their existence, maybe they would know of those who are not. Colonel Leşker shares that an international task force from Switzerland, Japan, and Uzbekistan are charged with trying to peacefully negotiate with the aliens. A small group of the world’s top thinkers on alien communication--Manasvi Lingam key among them--are huddled with that task force.

Dr. Inconnue announces a breakthrough. The aliens agree to interact with the Neutrality Coalition about humans’ response to aliens, and all we can do is wait to see what happens.

The future, by necessity, will always catch up with--and sometimes crash into--the futurists. Scientists including Manasvi who believe that there may well be life with intelligence similar to or beyond that of humans do not know how aliens would respond to us. Manasvi explains that, as a result, scientists who do research on space have split views on whether contact should be made with aliens at all. The late theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking famously advised that if aliens ever make contact, we must ignore it or risk our destruction. Would the silent treatment work best? 

“People who are in favor of broadcasting signals are people who tend to be of the optimistic camp and do not see a big risk if E.T. were to notice us or visit us,” Manasvi says. “Those who are against sending signals think that is inherently risky because we do not know anything about the motives of the E.T. We don’t know whether they will be hostile or friendly.” Aliens could also make contact with humans, and no linguist would be able to decipher the message, according to Manasvi. In that scenario, while communication would be established between humans and aliens, we would not be able to understand each other. 

While scientists have yet to discover non-microbial extraterrestrial life, aliens could have already discovered humans and Earth--and moved on. “If the E.T. is quite intelligent, they might not be interested in making contact and sharing information,” Manasvi says. “Indifference is also a possibility.” 

This indifference, or the existence of aliens, could shatter exceptionalism possessed by humans who believe they are the superior species that a higher power created and oversees. “It could provoke an existential crisis, especially in some sections of humanity, who may have very specific worldviews that are shattered,” Manasvi explains. 

Much of the work by Manasvi and others relies on the assumption that intelligent aliens exist and communication is possible. With new discoveries, there is always hope. Just in September, astronomers detected a chemical that indicated new potential for microbial life. Manasvi, who wrote a paper with Loeb on the topic, said that “further work is necessary” to understand if there is microbial life in the solar system. His textbook with Loeb on alien communication, Life in the Cosmos: From Biosignatures to Technosignatures, is slated for publication in June 2021. 

If contact is made with aliens, Manasvi believes “it is better to be on the safe side” so humanity is not destroyed. Still, Manasvi thinks that some sort of signal from unknown life could “deepen the worldview of naysayers who think that humans are the only intelligent species.”

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