The lines between science fiction and science fact are beginning to become strangely blurred. Technology is rapidly catching up to the stuff of imagination seen in movies. Could the confirmation of life on another planet be next? That question, and the research into it, have moved more into the mainstream over the years. Have we even invested the correct technology to connect with another civilization? What would happen if we ever did make contact?

Nobel laureate, Dr. Charles Townes lays out the effect a first contact could have on humanity, “This is the thing that many people argue that well since there surely has to be some other intelligent life somewhere.  This other intelligent life might be a million years ahead of us that’s a very short time. They would be so much more skillful than we.  So much more knowledgeable. Maybe they’re watching us all the time.  They know exactly what we’re doing. They don’t bother to come by, they don’t want to disturb us and so on. But they have technology far beyond ours and of course if we could contact them and learn that technology just think what that would do. That would make us ashamed of ourselves.”

Listen to the rest of this interstellar discussion in the latest episode of the Free To Choose Media Podcast, The Search for E.T.

Original Record Date: 1993