While scientists are still to determine whether some extraterrestrial civilization may exist somewhere out there in the universe, one astronomer points out that we apparently don’t have a plan for a yet-hypothetical situation where aliens actually reach out to us.
According to the Daily Star, prominent popular scientist and Australia’s Astronomer at Large Fred Watson pointed out that scientists do have a checklist to establish whether a communication attempt by aliens is genuine, but don’t have a plan for actually establishing contact with them.
“There’s a well-established chain of boxes that need to be ticked and it would go through a lot of analysis to ensure that what you’re talking about is a real phenomenon,” he said. “However, once scientists identified what had happened, it’d then be up to the political leaders of the world to decide what to do about it, and as far as I’m aware, there’s no plan in place.”
He did note, however, that there is a rather “gloomy outlook about there being intelligent life forms” out there in space, with the “overwhelming opinion” being that “microbial life might exist.”
“The common view is we are just a complete freak of nature – intelligent life is so rare and is such an unlikely event," Watson remarked.