Extraterrestrial Civilizations - Isaac Asimov [139]
Of the seven stars listed in the table, three—Delta Pavonis, Beta Hydri, and Zeta Tucanae—are located so far south in the sky as to be invisible from the northern climes where astronomy is most advanced and where complex equipment exists in the greatest profusion. As for 82 Eridani, that is not too far south to be visible, but it is apt to be too near the horizon for complete comfort.
The three very best targets, then, are Epsilon Eridani, Tau Ceti, and Sigma Draconis. Project Ozma, at the suggestion of the Russian-American astronomer Otto Struve, concentrated on Epsilon Eridani and Tau Ceti.
Although these seven stars, and particularly the three northern stars, are the obvious targets for the first phase of the search, we should not quit if the results are negative. If there are seven prime targets within 23 light-years, there would be about 500,000 altogether within the 1,000-light-year reach of the Project Cyclops array.
Ideally, we should listen to all of them. In fact, before we really give up hope, we should scan the entire sky, just in case civilizations are present in the neighborhood of surprising stars—or just in case we get signals from probes or free-worlds that are fairly close to us without our being aware of it.
We should even search wavelength ranges outside the waterhole, just in case.
WHY?
Yet one must ask: Why ought humanity to engage in the task of monitoring space for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations? Why should we spend tens of billions of dollars when the chances are that we may find nothing at all?
After all, what if, despite all my reasoning in this book, there are no extraterrestrial civilizations?
—Or if there are, that there are none so close to us that we can detect their signals?
—Or if there are, that they are not signaling?
—Or if they are, that they are doing so in a way that will elude us altogether?
—Or if it doesn’t, that the signals we receive will be uninterpretable?
Any of these things is possible, so let us assume the worst and suppose that despite all our efforts, we end up with no recognizable signals at all from anywhere.
In that case, will we really have wasted much money?
Perhaps not. Suppose that the labor of building Project Cyclops and the task of searching the sky takes 20 years altogether and costs $100 billion. That is $5 billion a year in a world in which the various nations spend a total of $400 billion a year on armaments.
And whereas the money spent on armaments only stimulates hatred and fear and increases steadily the chance that the nations of the Earth will wipe out each other and, perhaps, all humanity, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is something that would surely have a uniting effect on us all. The mere thought of other civilizations advanced beyond our own, of a Galaxy full of such civilizations, can’t help but emphasize the pettiness of our own quarrels and shame us into more serious attempts at cooperation. And if the failure of the search should cause us to suspect that we are, after all, the only civilization in the Galaxy, might that not increase the sense of the preciousness of our world and ourselves and make us more reluctant to risk it all in childish quarrels?
But will the money be wasted at all if we end up with nothing?
In the first place, the very attempt to construct the equipment for Project Cyclops will succeed in teaching us a great deal about radiotelescopy and will undoubtedly advance the state of the art greatly even before so much as a single observation of the heavens is made.
Secondly, it is impossible to search the heavens with new expertise, new delicacy, new persistence, new power, and fail to discover a great many new things about the Universe that have nothing to do with advanced civilizations. Even if we fail to detect signals, we will not return from the task empty-handed.
We can’t say what discoveries we will make, or in what direction they will enlighten us, or just how they may prove useful to us, but humanity