Minnesota Urban Debate League
SETI
Negative
Index
Inherency: Status Quo Solves ....................................................................................................................... 2
Solvency: SETI Inefficient .............................................................................................................................. 4
Solvency: Alien life highly improbable .......................................................................................................... 6
Impact Turn: Alien hostility ......................................................................................................................... 10
China Counterplan Solvency ....................................................................................................................... 13
1
Minnesota Urban Debate League
SETI
Negative
Inherency: Status Quo Solves
China's FAST observatory better than SETI, newly constructed, larger, and fully funded
Quick--11
[Darren Quick, “China building world’s biggest radio telescope”, Gizmag, 16 June 2011,
http://www.gizmag.com/five-hundred-meter-aperture-spherical-radio-telescope/18930]
Since its completion in 1963, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, with a diameter of 305 m (1,000 ft) and a
collecting area of 73,000 square meters (790,000 sq ft), has been the largest single-aperture radio telescope ever
Arecibo is set to lose its title with construction now underway in Guizhou
Province in southern China of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope
(FAST). Upon its expected completion in 2016, FAST will be able to see more than three
times further into space and survey the skies ten times faster than Arecibo.
constructed. But
FAST was first proposed by China for the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), which has since opted to combine the
signals of thousands of smaller antennae spread over a distance of more than 3,000 km (1,864 miles), combining for
a total collecting area of approximately one square kilometer (0.38 square miles). The SKA will be built in the
southern hemisphere with South Africa and Australia currently vying for the right to host the project. Despite this,
an international review and advisory conference on the science and technology of FAST
held in Beijing in 2006 concluded FAST was feasible. In the following year funding for
FAST was given the green light and the approved budget now sits at CNY700 million (approx.
US$107.9 million). Construction in the Dawodang depression in south Guizhou commenced in March. Unlike
Arecibo, which has a fixed spherical curvature focusing radio waves into a line above the
dish where they are focused to a single point by more mirrors, FAST's cable-net supporting
structure will be able to deform the surface in real time through active control. As PopSci
explains, this will allow a subset dish's 4,400 triangular aluminum panels to form a parabolic
mirror anywhere within the larger bowl that is nearly the size of the entire Arecibo dish.
Using FAST's unparalleled sensitivity and high surveying speed, the project is expected to
enable the surveying of neutral hydrogen in the Milky Way and other galaxies, the
detection of new pulsars (both galactic and extragalactic), the search for the first shining
stars, and of perhaps most interest to many people, the search for extraterrestrial life. It is expected
to be able to detect transmissions from over 1,000 light years away.
2
Minnesota Urban Debate League
SETI
Negative
China's FAST has higher chances of finding extraterrestrial life
O'Neill--11
[Ian O’Neill, “Monster Chinese Telescope the Next ET Hunter”, Discovery News, 21 June 2011,
http://news.discovery.com/space/monster-chinese-telescope-the-next-et-hunter-110621.html]
Not only will the adaptive shape of FAST enable astronomers to direct this powerful radio
antenna with ease, its sensitivity will be second to none. It will be able to "see" three times
deeper into space than Arecibo and generate the sharpest ever radio observations of
interstellar gas, pulsars, supernovae, black hole emissions and join the effort to hunt for
signals from extraterrestrial civilizations. In 1995, the SETI Institute launched Project
Phoenix, an attempt to survey 1,000 nearby sun-like stars, listening out for any artificial
radio "beep." With the inclusion of FAST, the scope of this project could be increased, allowing
SETI to survey 5,000 of the nearest sun-like stars. FAST could theoretically detect ET "phoning
home" up to 1,000 light-years away. Could FAST be the radio eye we need to spot our
transmitting intelligent extraterrestrial neighbors? We'll have to wait another five years to find
out.
SETI isn’t dead; multiple partners are using a telescope in Virginia to continue research
Shiga--11
[David Shiga, “SETI’s new focus,” New Scientist, 21 May 2011, LexisNexis7]
SETI targets 'Goldilocks' planets Previous searches for alien radio signals have focused on stars deemed benign –;
Funding woes may have shut
down a major SETI observatory, but the search for extraterrestrial intelligence isn't dead.
In fact, it's more focused than ever. Previous searches for alien radio signals focused on
stars considered friendly to life, based on how often they experience violent flares. On 8
May, astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley, the SETI Institute of
California, and the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory started SETI scans that
target stars thought to have planets in the "habitable zone", which could host liquid water.
They plan to point the powerful Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia at
54 of these star systems, plus 32 others deemed interesting. The SETI Institute's own array stopped
now astronomers are targeting planets in the habitable zone of their stars
listening for signals in April because of a funding shortage.
3
Minnesota Urban Debate League
SETI
Negative
Solvency: SETI Inefficient
SETI uses a completely inefficient method of communication; better alternatives exist
National Geographic Magazine--04
[National Geographic Magazine, “Alien Contact More Likely by ‘Mail’ Than Radio, Study Says,” 3 September
2004, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/09/0901_040901_alien_contact_2.html]
A new study suggests it is more energy efficient to communicate across interstellar space by
sending physical material—a sort of message in a bottle—than beams of electromagnetic
radiation. Solid matter can hold more information and journey farther than radio waves,
which disperse as they travel. The institute listens for radio signals in interstellar space. So far,
it has not detected any signs of alien life. That, however, does not prove there is no alien life.
Instead, it could be because radio signals get diluted as they travel across great distances in
space, says Rose, whose research grew out of his work at the Wireless Information Network Laboratory
(WINLAB) at Rutgers University. He learned that the "energy budget" required for sending a radio signal increases
with distance. Beams of radiation are cone-shaped and grow in size as they travel outward,
meaning the great majority of their energy is wasted. Potential recipients may not even be
capable of receiving the message. "There's no guarantee that there's anything out there that is
evolved that can listen to the message, hear it, and decode it," Rose said. A far more energy efficient way of
communicating over great interstellar distances is to send a physical object with encoded information, Rose said.
Such a package is not diluted as it travels across space. It also stays where it lands. "Our calculations suggest
that it's not only more energy efficient to send a package than radio waves," he said, "it's
outrageously more efficient."
Even humans have moved past radio; we can’t expect intelligent aliens to utilize outdated
technology
The Guardian--10
[The Guardian, “Aliens can't hear us, says astronomer,” 27 January 2010,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/jan/27/aliens-cant-hear-us-astronomer]
US astronomer Frank Drake – who has been seeking radio signals from alien civilisations for
almost 50 years – told scientists that earthlings were making it less likely they would be heard
in space. "The trouble is that we are making ourselves more and more difficult to be heard,"
said Dr Drake. "We are broadcasting in much more efficient ways today and are making our
signals fainter and fainter." In the past, TV and radio programmes were broadcast from huge
ground stations that transmitted signals at thousands of watts. These could be picked up
relatively easily across the depths of space, astronomers calculated.Now, most TV and radio
programmes are transmitted from satellites that typically use only 75 watts and have aerials
pointing toward Earth, rather than into space. "For good measure, in America we have
switched from analogue to digital broadcasting and you are going to do the same in Britain very soon,"
Drake added. "When you do that, your transmissions will become four times fainter because digital uses less
power." "Very soon we will become undetectable," he said . In short, in space no one will hear us at all.
What is true for humans would probably also be true for aliens, who may already have moved
to much more efficient methods of TV and radio broadcasting. Trying to find ET from their
favourite shows was going to be harder than we thought, Drake said.
4
Minnesota Urban Debate League
SETI
Negative
Aliens are more likely to harness the power of neutrinos over radio waves—Radio is a
Random and Unlikely Guess
Discovery News--11
[Discovery News, “Do Aliens Speak Particle-Tongue?” 18 April 2011,
http://news.discovery.com/space/aliens-neutrinos-communications-seti-110418.html]
Extraterrestrials may have a better way to communicate across space than radio waves or
optical beams. A team of scientists suggests ET could encode neutrinos, for example. These particles of matter
are similar to electrons, but since they have no electric charge, they can pass through anything. This makes them
ideal for long-distance travel, as neutrinos are undisturbed by gas, dust and other matter that
can block radio waves and other types of electromagnetic radiation. Astronomers have been
scouring the galaxy for decades for alien-produced radio signals -- and more recently for nonnaturally occurring light pulses, as well -- to no avail. "We really have no clue as to how some
advanced civilization might want to transmit to us, nor do we have any really good idea why they would
want to transmit to us," physicist John Learned, with the University of Hawaii, told Discovery News. "Everything
that we're doing is exploratory science: You don't know the game; you don't know if you're in the game; you don't
know the rules of the game... which is what makes it so much fun," said Learned, who, along with colleagues, has
written a series of articles about how neutrinos could be used for communication. ET could, for example, send out a
neutrino beam at precise (and non-naturally occurring) energy levels that would be sure to catch a scientist's eye.
"If there's a civilization, like our civilization, which is at the stage of setting up large neutrino
detectors, then one would see this signal of a unique signature and you would right away say:
'What the heck is going on here? This is certainly not a natural signature.' This is something that
would really get your attention on the very first (detection.) And then on the second one you'd be saying: 'Huh?
What in the world is going on here?'" Another possible communications technique is to use neutrinos
to shift the blink rate of a commonly known type of pulsating star called Cepheid variables,
which are used to help determine the distances between galaxies.
It will be difficult to adapt to civilizations that have advanced technology
Harrison and Dick--2000
[Albert A. Harrison and Steven J. Dick, “When SETI Succeeds: The Impact of High-Information Contact", The
Future Foundation, July 2000, http://www.futurefoundation.org/documents/hum_pro_wrk1.pdf]
Perhaps the most common expectation is that ET civilizations will be technologically advanced (White, 1990 ).
Given present search procedures, we are unlikely to encounter a civilization that is below our
current technological level, since such a civilization is unlikely to use powerful radios, engage
in space travel, or under take other activities that we can detect. It seems statistically unlikely
that we would encounter a civilization that is exactly at our level of technological maturity;
hence, we expect to encounter civilizations that, compared to us, are technologically advanced.
Astronomer Ray Norris (1998) calculates that the average civilization may be two billion years older
than our own. Human experience suggests that technological advances accelerate over time; we
have seen more technological advances during the last one hundred years than in the preceding
two million years . What are the chances that we could identify, never mind understand, such
a society? It might be much easier for prehistoric man to grasp cellular telephones, computers,
lasers, and jet transports.
5
Minnesota Urban Debate League
SETI
Negative
Solvency: Alien life highly improbable
If there were advanced aliens, we should have seen then already
Michael--11
[George Michael, “Extraterrestrial Aliens, friends, foes, or just curious?” Skeptic magazine- a journal of the skeptic
society, an academic and educational organization, 2 June 2011]
Alas, so far, the SETI project has not yielded any tangible evidence of alien civilizations.
SETI uses scientific methods to scan the galaxy for electromagnetic transmissions from
civilizations on other planets. Supposedly, a Type II or Type III civilization would leave a
detectable footprint in the galaxy, such as radio transmissions or infrared emissions.
According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, an advanced civilization would generate
large quantities of waste heat which would be detected by our instruments. Almost
certainly a device such as a Dyson sphere would dramatically alter the light spectrum of the
enclosed star, and in doing so, create a noticeable infrared glow that could be identified by
peering astronomers, even on the far side of the galaxy. Nevertheless, no telltale signs have
yet been detected. Kardashev countered that alien civilizations have not been found
because they have not been properly searched for."
Expansion and Colonization is a Natural Process; If There Were Intelligent Life in the
Universe it Would Be Nearby
Space Review--07
[The Space Review, “The other side of the Fermi paradox,” 19 February 2007,
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/810/1]
There is a significant connection between the categories of “We Will Exist On Earth Only” and “We Will Not
Exist”. Webb explained the strong motive for all civilizations—both extraterrestrial and
human—to pursue colonization: “…in any case it seems a wise idea for a species to expand
into space to guard against the possibility of planetary disaster”. Remaining on a single planet
increases the risk of extinction, as Stephen Hawking and many others have stated.
The Fermi paradox is based on the premise that it is natural, logical and right for
extraterrestrial civilizations to colonize space. The other side of the Fermi paradox is that it is natural,
logical, and right for human civilization to colonize space. Anti-human-spaceflight advocates tend to hold the
contradictory idea that colonization is alright for extraterrestrials, but wrong and immoral for us. However,
colonizing and populating space is advantageous for every civilization; whether it happens to be
extraterrestrial or terrestrial is beside the point. Webb’s 50th solution is the one that he believes is the most likely.
Unfortunately for extraterrestrial enthusiasts, the solution is depressingly pessimistic:
“…the only resolution of the Fermi paradox that makes sense to me—is that we are alone.”
Webb’s preferred solution is highly controversial, but it satisfies Ockham’s razor; out of all
the Fermi paradox explanations, it is the simplest one. On the other hand, the solution is only as good
as the evidence it is based on. New evidence could lead to a different solution to the paradox.
If extraterrestrial civilizations do not exist, it is even more important for humans to survive
and colonize space. If we do not do it, then no one else will. If extraterrestrial civilizations exist, the
task will be shared. In any case, the ultimate goal for all civilizations is to spread life throughout the galaxy, to
transform a largely dead galaxy into a living one.
6
Minnesota Urban Debate League
SETI
Negative
The sheer number of coincidences necessary for a planet to support life create mean we are
alone; negative probability outweighs all affirmative advantages
Mullen--01
[Leslie Mullen, “Cosmic Evolution”, Astrobiology Magazine, 18 May 2001,
http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/139/galactic-habitable-zones]
"I think this is a very, very interesting idea," says Dr. William Borucki, a research scientist in the Planetary Studies
Branch of the NASA-Ames Research Center. "I'm delighted to see this theory. I like how Gonzalez has imagined the
consequences of planets existing at different parts of the Galaxy. Now scientists need to check the math to make
sure it all adds up." Our Milky Way Galaxy is structured much like billions of other spiral galaxies. The galactic
disk contains a lot of interstellar matter (like dust and gas), as well as young and intermediate-age stars. While
young stars can be found scattered throughout the Galaxy, the stellar population tends to
be older in the bulge around the galactic center. Many of these older stars are gathered
together into globular clusters, which orbit the nucleus of the Galaxy in a region known as
the galactic "halo." Strong emissions of infrared radiation and X-rays from the galactic
center indicate clouds of ionized gas rapidly moving around some sort of supermassive
object, quite possibly a black hole. There are billions of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, and some are more
metal-rich than others. Part of this is a condition of age: The older a star, the more metal-poor it tends to be. That's
because the most ancient stars formed from just hydrogen, helium, and lithium. When the most massive of these
stars exploded, nuclear reactions fused these light elements into heavier ones. These heavier "metals" became part of
the raw material from which a second generation of stars formed. Each stellar explosion led to a greater abundance
of available metals. A metal-rich star, therefore, has material that came from many previous generations of stars.
Our Sun is unusually metal-rich for a star of its age and type. Scientists aren't sure why. It could be
that the Sun formed in a part of the Galaxy that had an abundance of metals, and then migrated to its present
position. Based on studies of extrasolar planets, metal-rich stars are more likely to have planets
orbiting around them. One reason for this may be that a certain minimum amount of
metals is needed to form rocky bodies (including the cores of the gas giant planets). A metal-rich
interstellar cloud that collapses to form a star would therefore be more likely to form planets than would a metalpoor cloud. Besides requiring a metal-rich star, a Galactic Habitable Zone excludes stars too
close to the galactic center. Our Sun is a nice distance away from the galactic center, about
28,000 light years. Being in the outer region of the Galaxy protects our Solar System from
the huge gravitational tug of stars clustered near the galactic center. If we were closer in, the
combined gravity of all those stars would perturb the orbit of comets in the Oort cloud. The Oort cloud, which
circles the outer perimeter of our Solar System, contains trillions of comets. The gravitational disturbances caused
by other stars would send many of those comets in our direction - increasing the rate of comet impacts and
endangering - if not eventually wiping out - life on Earth.Staying away from the galactic center has an additional
advantage. The center of the Galaxy is awash in harmful radiation. Solar systems near the center would experience
increased exposure to gamma rays, X-rays, and cosmic rays, which would destroy any life trying to evolve on a
planet. "Large, complex organisms are much more sensitive to environmental perturbations than simple life," says
Gonzalez. "Our hypothesis deals exclusively with complex life, more specifically, aerobic macroscopic metazoan
life. The effects of radiation would damage the ozone layer, as well as increase radiation levels at the surface of a
planet from secondary particle cascades in the atmosphere." Keeping out of the way of the Galaxy's
spiral arms is another requirement of the Galactic Habitable Zone. The density of gases and interstellar
matter in the spiral arms leads to the formation of new stars. Although these spiral arms are the birthplaces of stars,
it would be dangerous for our solar system to cross through one of them. The intense radiation and gravitation of a
spiral arm would cause disruptions in our Solar System just as surely as if we were closer to the center of the
Galaxy. Luckily, our Sun revolves at the same rate as the Galaxy's spiral-arm rotation. This synchronization
prevents our Solar System from crossing a spiral arm too often. "At our location, our orbital
period is very similar to that of the pattern speed of the spiral arms," says Gonzalez. "This means
7
Minnesota Urban Debate League
SETI
Negative
that the time interval between spiral arm crossings will be a maximum, which is a good thing, since spiral arms are
dangerous places. Massive star supernovae are concentrated there, and giant molecular clouds can perturb the Oort
cloud comets leading to more comets showers in the inner solar system." The unusually circular orbit of
our Sun around the galactic center also tends to keep it clear of the spiral arms. Most stars
the same age as our Sun have more elliptical orbits. "If the Sun's orbit about the galactic
center were less circular," says Gonzalez, "the Sun would be more likely to cross spiral
arms." Thus, thanks to a lot of unusual characteristics of our Sun, our Solar System is
lucky enough to lie in a Galactic Habitable Zone. Gonzalez argues that these characteristics made it
possible for complex life to emerge on Earth. More than 95 percent of stars in the Galaxy, says Gonzalez, wouldn't
be able to support habitable planets simply because their rotation is not synchronized with the rotation of the
galaxy's spiral arms. Add all the other factors involved in keeping a solar system habitable, and
it seems that the odds of finding another solar system in a Galactic Habitable Zone are
close to impossible. "This is a good theory," says Borucki. "I think this idea is a spark that will initiate similar
research. Like a spark plug, it can't drive the car, but it provides the necessary impetus to get
the car moving."
8
Minnesota Urban Debate League
SETI
Negative
Author Indict: Exopolitics
Exopolitics Authors are Self-Serving, Non-Falsifiable Tabloid Journalists
Komarek--09
[Ed Komarek, ET Investigator, Author and Researcher, “Exopolitics Dispute,” 23 July 2009
http://exopolitics.blogspot.com/2009/07/exopolitics-dispute.html]
Michael Salla has also brought similar issues of exopolitical peer review and policing in the exopolitical field that
suggest that academics, himself included, are the more qualified to sit in judgment as to the qualifications of
Dr. Michael Salla offers through the Exopolitics
Institute courses on exopolitics and how to qualify to be an extraterrestrial ambassador.
Dr. Salla charges a considerable sum of money that has elicited recently an article by Billy Cox in a
exopoliticians and the vetting of contactees.
mainstream Florida newspaper. In turn Dr. Salla has vigorously attempted to refute allegations. I briefly entered the
fray with an, I told you so email, not being able to resist my better instincts. Michael Salla says, "As for the Billy
Cox and criticism of the Certification program, my rebuttal is here: http://exopolitics.org/Exo-Comment-84.htm. Dr.
Michael Salla also offers the following link for publication in regards to his position on Alex Collier:
Alfred Webre was singled out by Michael
Horn for publishing tabloid like articles in the Internet media that have little evidential
basis like, NASA to Bomb the Moon, Reverse Speech proves Obama to Disclose, and One Billion Abductions
Worldwide. Other investigators outside of exopolitics have expressed to me their dismay over
this sort of behavior from Alfred who can write very well written articles involving the UN
and UFOs. Alfred Webre vigorously disputes this accusation. "I would take issue with the characterization in
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/exopolitics/message/916.
your article - that my articles for Examiner.com are "tabloid-style"These articles are intentionally written in popular
journalistic style for a mass media on-line newspaper and vary between 750 and 3000 words. I stand behind all of
the science in the articles. I am reaching the mainstream with these articles and last month my verified statistics
showed over 100,000 readers. My articles were the highest ranked Political Examiner articles in the USA."
Michael Salla has also been accused of writing articles with little evidential backing that
serve to compromise the credibility of some good scholarly articles that he has written and
published. This all raises the minds of many the issue of the ability of some exopolitical
investigators to discriminate between well documented UFO/ET cases and cases with
dubious value that are most likely hoaxes."
9
Minnesota Urban Debate League
SETI
Negative
Impact Turn: Alien hostility
[DO NOT run with the China CP]
Scientific consensus states that aliens are highly likely to be more advanced than humans
and hostile, leading to slavery, colonialism or extinction; this turns the case
Michael--11
[George Michael, “Extraterrestrial Aliens, friends, foes, or just curious?” Skeptic magazine- a journal of the skeptic
society, an academic and educational organization, 2 June 2011]
Popular culture continues to reflect our fascination with extraterrestrial aliens. For instance, in March 2011, a new
film—Battle: Los Angeles—was released which depicts yet another hostile alien invasion of Earth. The purpose of
the offensive is to eradicate the human population so that the aliens can harvest our planet's resources. Just a few
months before in the film Skyline, aliens use massive force fields to vacuum humans into their craft whereupon the
space invaders remove their victims' brains. Adding a sense of verisimilitude to the film's trailer was a clip created
for the film of a television news program featuring Dan Rather reporting on Stephen Hawking's warning. In April
2010, the Discovery Channel broadcast a documentary in which Hawking speculated on the existence of
extraterrestrial life. In his mind, the multitude of billions of star and galaxies implies that
life in other solar systems is almost a certainty. Hawking pondered an important question:
Could visitors from extraterrestrial civilizations pose a threat to Earth? In the documentary, an
armada of massive space ships roams the galaxy as interstellar nomads, who having exhausted all the resources on
their home planet, search for other planets to conquer and colonize. He concluded that making contact
with aliens is "a little too risky." Moreover, drawing upon the experience on Earth, he mused that "if
aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus
first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans."'
Hawking is not the first scientist to warn of the potential hazards of alien contact. In his book.
The Third Chimpanzee, the noted geographer and evolutionary theorist Jared Diamond offered
an essay on the perils of attempting to contact alien civilizations, observing that whenever a
more advanced civilization encountered a less advanced one, or species that have evolved
from different ecosystems, came into contact with each other, the results have often been
catastrophic for the weaker party, including slavery, colonialism or extinction. He once
described the 1974 Arecibo message, which was aimed at the globular star cluster M13 some 25,000 light years
away, as suicidal folly, comparing it to the Incan emperor describing the wealth of his kingdom to the gold-crazed
Spaniards. Sending out radio signals, he concluded, was "naïve, even dangerous."' Even the late astronomer, Carl
Sagan, who was generally sanguine about the prospects of interstellar comity, once
counseled that a relatively young civilization such as Earth's should listen quietly, "before
shouting into an unknown jungle that we don't understand."
10
Minnesota Urban Debate League
SETI
Negative
Aliens will kill us. They are out there and are a threat we should be worried about. Be
afraid
Leake--10
[Jonathan Leake, "Don’t talk to aliens, warns Stephen Hawking”, The Times, 25 April 2010
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7107207.ece]
The aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He
has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity
should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact. The suggestions come in a new documentary
series in which Hawking, one of the world’s leading scientists, will set out his latest thinking on some of the
universe’s greatest mysteries. Alien life, he will suggest, is almost certain to exist in many other parts
of the universe: not just in planets, but perhaps in the centre of stars or even floating in
interplanetary space. Hawking’s logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe,
he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In
such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved. “To my
mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational,” he said. “The real challenge is
to work out what aliens might actually be like.” The answer, he suggests, is that most of it will be the equivalent of
microbes or simple animals — the sort of life that has dominated Earth for most of its history. One scene in his
documentary for the Discovery Channel shows herds of two-legged herbivores browsing on an alien cliff-face where
they are picked off by flying, yellow lizard-like predators. Another shows glowing fluorescent aquatic animals
forming vast shoals in the oceans thought to underlie the thick ice coating Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter. Such
scenes are speculative, but Hawking uses them to lead on to a serious point: that a few life forms
could be intelligent and pose a threat. Hawking believes that contact with such a species
could be devastating for humanity. He suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and
then move on: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into
something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having
used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become
nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.” He concludes that trying
to make contact with alien races is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the
outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which
didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.” The completion of the documentary marks a
triumph for Hawking, now 68, who is paralysed by motor neurone disease and has very limited powers of
communication. The project took him and his producers three years, during which he insisted on rewriting large
chunks of the script and checking the filming. John Smithson, executive producer for Discovery, said: “He wanted
to make a programme that was entertaining for a general audience as well as scientific and that’s a tough job, given
the complexity of the ideas involved.” Hawking has suggested the possibility of alien life before but his views have
been clarified by a series of scientific breakthroughs, such as the discovery, since 1995, of more than 450 planets
orbiting distant stars, showing that planets are a common phenomenon. So far, all the new planets found have been
far larger than Earth, but only because the telescopes used to detect them are not sensitive enough to detect Earthsized bodies at such distances. Another breakthrough is the discovery that life on Earth has proven able to colonise
its most extreme environments. If life can survive and evolve there, scientists reason, then perhaps nowhere is out of
bounds. Hawking’s belief in aliens places him in good scientific company. In his recent Wonders of the Solar
System BBC series, Professor Brian Cox backed the idea, too, suggesting Mars, Europa and Titan, a moon of
Saturn, as likely places to look. Similarly, Lord Rees, the astronomer royal, warned in a lecture earlier this year that
aliens might prove to be beyond human understanding. “I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in
forms we can’t conceive,” he said. “Just as a chimpanzee can’t understand quantum theory, it could be there are
aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains.
11
Minnesota Urban Debate League
SETI
Negative
Aliens Will Consider Us Low-Level Life Forms—We Will Be Colonized or Destroyed
Henderson--10
[Trilby Henderson, Independent Journalist, “Space Colonization or Extinction of the Human Race Says Hawking,”
Suite101.com, 10 August 2010 http://www.suite101.com/content/space-colonization-or-extinction-of-the-humanrace-says-hawking-a272555#ixzz1Lj5di7IK]
As part of his “Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking” television series, Hawking
recommends the
human race take precautions to avoid contact with so called aliens during any future space
travel or space exploration. His theory uses the behaviour of the human race to predict
what aliens might do should we come in contact with them, or vice versa. Hawking predicts aliens
“would be only limited by how much power they could harness and control”, adding “ if aliens ever visit us, I
think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America,
which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.” Hawking’s theories are
supported by several academics, including Dr. Blair Csuti, a research associate at Oregon State
University. “Professor Hawking’s trepidation about the wisdom of overtly seeking contact with them is wellfounded. We have no way of discerning the intent of alien visitors except after-the-fact. The
Darwinian concept of natural selection supports the assumption that aliens visiting newly
discovered planets, like Earth, would place their own interests above those of
unsophisticated indigenous residents,” said Csuti, according to the Journal of Cosmology. Professor
Robert Ehrlich of George Mason University agrees, pointing to the attitude the human race has historically taken to
Earth’s other species. “Given the probability that the gap in intelligence between alien visitors
and humans would be far greater than that between humans and our close relatives on
Earth, how could they not think of us as a very lowly life form, certainly not worthy of
treating as equals?”
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Minnesota Urban Debate League
SETI
Negative
China Counterplan Solvency
China creating largest radio telescope in world
Trei--11
[Michael Trei, “China starts construction on the world’s largest radio telescope”, DVICE, 15 June 2011,
http://dvice.com/archives/2011/06/china-starts-co.php]
If you want to search the universe for extraterrestrial radio signals, you're going to need a
pretty big antenna, so China has just broken ground on what will become the world's
largest radio telescope. The Five-Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope
(FAST) will have nearly three times the surface area of the dish at Puerto Rico's Arecibo
Observatory, the current record holder, and will be capable of receiving signals from as far
as 1000 light years away. While FAST will be joining SETI in the search for ET and his pals, China's main
goal is to check out pulsars, supernovas, and other interesting things happening in deep space. Building
something this freakin' huge takes time (FAST is 1,640 feet across), so China says they won't be
firing this sucker up until 2016. That means they will be right on time to pick up some hot
signals that started their journey way back in 1016.
China and South Africa creating and hosting new radio telescopes, better equipped than
SETI
Defence Web--11
[DefenceWeb, “China building world’s largest radio telescope”, 28 June 2011,
http://www.defenceweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=16653:china-building-worldslargest-radio-telescope&catid=90:science-a-technology&Itemid=204]
China has begun construction of the world’s largest single aperture radio telescope – the
Five hundred metre Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), which will be completed
in five years time. It will be able to see more than three times further into space and view
the skies ten times faster than the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which holds the title
of the largest single-surface radio telescope ever built. According to New Scientist magazine,
FAST came about when China unsuccessfully entered the global Square Kilometre Array (SKA)
competition for a radio telescope with a collecting area of one square kilometre. FAST’s
surface will be able to change shape to help it survey the sky, allowing it to examine objects
seven billion light years away. In contrast, the Arecibo dish is fixed and focuses radio waves
on a point above the dish, where they are analysed. However, this means that not all of the
collecting surface is being used. The FAST telescope overcomes this issue by allowing its 4 400
triangular aluminium panels to move, changing the dish’s shape. The telescope is being
constructed in a remote region of the Guizhou province in southern China, to avoid disruptive
man-made radio interference.
13