Active SETI - Potential Risk

Potential Risk

Active SETI has been heavily criticized due to the perceived risk of revealing the location of the Earth to alien civilizations, without some process of prior international consultation. Notable among its critics is scientist and science fiction author David Brin, particularly in his article/"expose" Shouting at the Cosmos.

Around 1978, the US House Science Sub-Committee consensus was that we should not transmit to an alien civilizations, even if it initiated the conversation, in case it was a berserker.

However, Russian and Soviet radio engineer and astronomer Alexander L. Zaitsev has argued against these fears: see Sending and Searching for Interstellar Messages and Detection Probability of Terrestrial Radio Signals by a Hostile Super-civilization. Indeed, Zaitsev argues that we should consider the risks of NOT reaching out to extraterrestrial civilizations: see Making a Case for METI.

To lend a quantitative basis to discussions of the risks of transmitting deliberate messages from Earth, the SETI Permanent Study Group of the International Academy of Astronautics adopted in 2007 a new analytical tool, the San Marino Scale . Developed by Prof. Ivan Almar and Prof. H. Paul Shuch, the San Marino Scale evaluates the significance of transmissions from Earth as a function of signal intensity and information content. Its adoption suggests that not all such transmissions are created equal, thus each must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis before establishing blanket international policy regarding Active SETI.