If an advanced civilization were to arrive in our solar system

In the image:

“If an advanced civilization were to arrive in our solar system, we would be totally powerless against it. Their science and technology would far exceed ours. It is useless to worry about the possible malevolent intentions of an advanced civilization with which we might come into contact.

It is very likely that the very fact that they have survived this long shows that they have learned to live with themselves and with others. Perhaps the fear of extraterrestrial contact is a simple projection of our backwardness, an expression of our guilty conscience in the face of our past history: the havoc wreaked on civilizations that were only a little further behind than ours.

Remember Columbus and the Arawaks, Cortés and the Aztecs, even the fate of the Tlingit in the generations after La Pérouse. It will remind us and we worry. But if an interstellar army appears in the skies I predict it will be very accommodating.

A very different type of contact is much more likely: the case we have already discussed in which we receive a rich and complex message, probably by radio, from another civilization in space, but with which and at least for a while. time we do not come into physical contact.

In this case, the transmitting civilization does not have the means to know if we have received the message. If we find the content offensive or frightening, we are not required to respond.

But if the message contains valuable information, the consequences for our civilization will be astonishing: penetrating the science and technology of aliens, their art, music, politics, ethics, philosophy and religion, and above all achieving a profound deprovincialization of the condition. human. We’ll see what else is possible.”

– Carl Sagan.