Are aliens real? The question has fueled conspiracy theories for decades and attracted at least one former U.S. president. In a recent interview, Barack Obama became the first US president to confirm the existence of extraterrestrial life but insisted it was not housed at the top-secret Area 51 military base in Nevada.
For Bill Diamond, president and CEO of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (Seti) in California, Obama’s beliefs are not radical. Seti is the world’s leading research organization dedicated to the scientific search for life beyond Earth, and Diamond insists aliens are out there.
“Oh, yes,” said the 69-year-old scientist. “I do believe aliens are real. Of course… if you were trying to get a job at Seti, that’s one of the questions we’d ask. If you didn’t believe aliens existed, it probably wouldn’t make sense to work here with us.” Diamond’s job involves overseeing a team of scientists working on various projects and sifting through reams of data from radio telescopes, looking for patterns that cannot be explained by nature.
Bill Diamond, current president of Seti, California, spends his days thinking about vast distances and civilizations he may never see – Stuart Bebb/Seti
Diamond is careful to distinguish what alien means, though. He’s not talking about flying saucers and kidnappings. “Life is probably very common in the universe,” he said. “When you start talking about complex organisms, intelligence, and then eventually technology, things become different.
“Permissible conditions [aliens] Existence, primarily time and evolution, may not be as universal as the conditions that allowed only rudimentary cellular life to emerge. But statistically speaking, there will be many examples of intelligent and ultimately technological life on other worlds. “
So what would they look like if they did exist? The public’s imagination of aliens in movies and novels is of little people flying through our skies in spaceships and carving delicate patterns into wheat fields. Diamond smiles at the cliché. Reality, he argued, was both less dramatic and less imaginable.
“It’s hard for us to imagine what aliens would be like,” he said, but noted that our planet’s biodiversity may provide clues. He believes aliens may even resemble creatures such as jellyfish. “In my opinion, we have jellyfish, which look very special and a bit like aliens, and all kinds of sea creatures, birds, reptiles and mammals and so on.” On Earth alone, evolution has produced creatures that look almost otherworldly. Octopuses have nervous systems that extend into their arms, and whales are capable of complex communications. If such diversity exists under one sky, perhaps it’s not so difficult to imagine that stranger things still exist under another.
Diamond points out that the same laws of physics apply everywhere. Gravity, chemistry, and energy behave the same way in the known universe. This doesn’t mean the aliens will look like humans, but it does mean they will be subject to similar limitations. “They will obviously be affected by their environment. A planet larger than Earth would have a stronger gravitational field, which would require an organism that could withstand that gravitational pull, and therefore would likely be a more physically powerful species. A slightly smaller planet would have a lower gravitational field, which might allow for more elongated, less rigidly structured organisms.”
Former US President Barack Obama reiterated his belief in the existence of extraterrestrial life in a recent interview – YouTube
So if aliens do exist, how do they communicate? Diamond knew exactly what he wasn’t expecting. “I think crop circles are unlikely,” he said. “If you are an advanced civilization and you are able to come here in some capacity and have an impact or impact on our planet, and you want to draw our attention or have the technology to access the Earth in some direct or impactful way, you have technology far beyond what we can imagine.”
Such a civilization will not happen to us by accident. It already knows we’re here. It will study our atmosphere and radio signals. It will understand our technological proficiency and will almost certainly understand our language, Diamond said.
Instead, he thinks contact is more likely a signal. “The first contact was certainly the observation of a phenomenon that does not occur naturally, and we could say that this is technology,” he said. “Of course, if an advanced civilization wanted to contact us, radio transmission would be one of the most efficient ways.”
However, he joked that even if aliens could contact us, they probably wouldn’t want to. “There’s a joke among some researchers,” he said. “When alien spacecraft fly over Earth, they lock the doors.”
In Sethi, Diamond describes three ways scientists are searching for life. The first is “in situ” exploration, where instruments are sent directly to places of interest. NASA’s Perseverance rover is currently exploring Mars to determine whether life exists or has ever existed there. Currently, this approach is limited to our own solar system. The second is remote observation. The James Webb Space Telescope can examine the atmospheres of distant planets about 1,000 light-years from Earth. The third is the search for alien intelligence itself, although Diamond prefers a more precise description. What Seti was really seeking, he said, was alien technology that could serve as a representation of life and intelligence.
So when will this happen? “Seti’s discovery could happen tomorrow, or it could not happen in a thousand years, we don’t know,” Diamond said. “But one of the things we also say in this industry is that the chance of finding life beyond Earth is zero if you don’t look for it.”
The challenge, he explains, is scale. If a signal were sent from Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to our solar system, it would only take four years to get here. However, if an alien civilization 1,000 light-years away sent a message today, it would take 10 centuries to reach us. If we reply, our response will take the same amount of time. Therefore, any communication will span generations rather than a lifetime.
“The chance of finding life beyond Earth is zero if you don’t look for it,” Diamond said.
That hasn’t dampened his optimism. Humanity has had technological capabilities for less than a century. By that time, we had gone from inventing radio to building space telescopes that could study the world hundreds of light-years away. Given enough time, our influence will expand.
If the detection is confirmed, it would be historic. Diamond and his colleagues are already thinking about what this means. What impact will this discovery have on humanity as we know it? Diamond hopes to make it better.
“Whatever the nature of this discovery, it will almost certainly have implications for us,” he said. “How will it affect religious beliefs as well as government and international diplomacy?”
For a man who spends his days thinking about vast distances and civilizations he may never see, this conclusion is strikingly human. “I hope we’ll be excited about this news rather than threatened by it. Maybe people will finally realize that we’re all on this planet, like an island, and in this together, so it might be wise for us to collaborate rather than fight each other.”
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