Space Perspectives.

Abstract

STEPHEN Hawking recently advised that we ought not to make contact with intelligent aliens, because they would be so much more advanced than us. He states, “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 2010). He suggests that aliens might simply raid the Earth for its resources and then move on. I speculate that they may use us as they would any other resource with as little respect as we have shown to other life forms with which we currently share a planet. Or perhaps they would see us as an out-of-control species of pest and, with the kindness and ethical values of an advanced species, promptly weed us from the “Gaia-garden” that we call Earth (Gaia hypothesis see Lovelock 2000). They could effectively save millions of species and restore the “Gaia-balance” for the loss of one species, plus a few others dependent on humans –– various body lice and some microscopic gut flora.