ET stay home

We should resist the efforts of Russian scientists to contact aliens who could threaten our very existence.

They sent the first satellite into space. They got the first mammal into orbit, and then the first human being. Now, the Russians are pursuing an altogether more ambitious extraterrestrial project. They're actively trying to make contact with alien beings. And some astronomers fear the project could have catastrophic consequences.

Of course, efforts to pick up incoming signals from alien entities are well established. Over 170,000 volunteers worldwide are currently using their home computers to help analyse radiotelescope data for the eight-year-old Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Seti) programme run by the University of California Berkeley's space sciences laboratory. Cornell University astronomers operating the world's largest radiotelescope, in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, are delivering 100,000 gigabytes of information a year to the project - roughly the amount of data stored in the US Library of Congress.

Read complete article