If we aren’t alone in the universe, how would we treat our intergalactic neighbors?

The new movie District 9 considers this question by envisioning a present-day Earth where humans and extraterrestrials coexist, albeit uneasily.

Two decades after a colossal spacecraft has stalled over Johannesburg, South Africa, its passengers—millions of confused, malnourished aliens called “prawns” by disparaging humans—have been ghettoized into a grimy, apartheid-echoing militarized zone known as District 9. Then an evil corporation called Multi-National United decides to relocate them to an even more bantustan-like tent city. The subsequent eviction process touches on a host of legal and ethical issues like: What would earthlings do to ET visitors? Kill them? Conduct medical experiments? Attempt to extract valuable weaponry? All of the above?

To aid in our speculation, Pop Omnivore talked to Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the nonprofit SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and author of the new book Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

What sorts of “signs” does SETI look for?

Radio waves, flashing lights, and big lasers that might be detectable—you know, the kinds of signals a technologically competent society could make.

Has any preparation has been done for “galactic diplomacy,” should there be a SETI success?

That’s a bit too far away. There is a whole field called “space law” that’s a well-established field. It deals with things like who owns the moon, but it doesn’t have anything that has to do with aliens.

If they did come here, it would be like the North American Indians getting together in 1491 and saying, “Now what sort of diplomacy would we exercise should the Europeans show up on the beach?”

Are there any legal guidelines in place?

What people normally do is look for historical precedence, but here you [would] have a different species altogether. If they have the technology to get here, then the idea that you’re going to be in charge of what happens to them is very naive.

What about ethical issues? Any anticipation of how we might treat an alien species?

The very fact that they’ve gotten here means this particular species—if it is a species, rather than some sort of synthetic intelligence—[is] so far beyond us, the idea we’ll regard them as a low-grade life form [as happens in District 9] isn’t at all realistic.

We tend to think of alien intelligence as being from stars, like ours, with zillions of individuals running around with three-pound brains. At the point where you get enough technology that somebody might find you or you can go somewhere, then you’re probably beyond just simply biological beings.

If extraterrestrials invaded Earth, would we see our armed forces turning them into ketchup like in movies?

That’s right—they have blood, and it’s red too. How convenient! Again, I don’t think so. Any society that can come here probably can take care of itself. In general, I think it’s going to be a bit like Bambi meets the U.S. Air Force: Bambi is not going to win.

How do you feel about today’s Hollywood portrayal of the human response to extraterrestrial life?

That doesn’t bother me too much since Hollywood is always looking for bad guys. Everyone is very sensitive, and anytime you pick a bad guy there will be some organization in place to defend them. But aliens don’t have such organizations, so aliens are always the bad guys. In this film, they were kind of troublesome, but they weren’t bad or evil.

Any plans in place for controlling the media’s coverage of a post-detection event?

There isn’t, actually. I think that the SETI community in general does not think it’s a good idea to try and keep secrets—like Men in Black, where the government tries to cover stuff up. Lots of people believe aliens came to New Mexico in 1947. This is a very popular point of view, that there would be secrecy, and that’s not the way science works. Science is about letting everybody get some data so we can learn as much as we can.

Anything else you’d like to add?

Let me just summarize the current protocols of the SETI Institute.

First, if you find a signal that you think is extraterrestrial, your first obligation is to check it out. Make sure that’s what it is and that you’re not being misled by terrestrial interference.

Second, make the information available to all the astronomers in the world right away, but also everyone else, including the government and the public, so no secrecy.

Third, you don’t send back a response without an international consultation.

Is there an international body in place for that?

No, it’s very ambiguous. There’s no plan in place to announce the discovery of life in the solar system. It will be very chaotic. People will say, “Well that’s not good, you should have a plan!” But maybe chaos is the normal human response to learning something new. I don’t think Copernicus had a plan.

—Katie Jewett

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