Search for Extraterrestrials

I was absolutely appalled to read “The Search for Extraterrestrials Could Make Monkeys Out of All of Us” by Melvin Konner (Science/Medicine, April 16).

First, Dr. Konner states that “our government just decided to spend $100 million over the next decade sending messages into space to try to contact the critters.” By “the critters” Dr. Konner means extraterrestrial intelligent beings. Unfortunately, he doesn’t understand the difference between a transmitter and a receiver. The NASA/JPL project will simply receive signals from outer space. Nothing at all will be transmitted. Therefore, even if the extraterrestrials are as uniformly aggressive as Dr. Konner argues, the NASA project will not in any way whatsoever reveal our presence to extraterrestrials. If Dr. Konner is really concerned about them learning of our existence, then he should be spending his time working to eliminate all TV, radio, and radar transmissions that are not pointed down at the Earth. However, it is already too late since the earliest radio broadcasts are already 70 light years from the Earth and spreading fast!

Second, Konner alludes to 30-year-old arguments presented by Carl Sagan and the equally distinguished Russian astrophysicist I.S. Shklovskii in their book “Intelligent Life in the Universe.” According to Konner, these arguments “prove that intelligent life must exist on many other planets, and all work since has confirmed this conclusion.” Contrary to this unsupported remark regarding recent work, certain arguments that appeared after publication of Shklovskii’s book are sufficiently compelling that Shklovskii died a few years ago believing that intelligent life may well exist only on the Earth. He published papers supporting this view. Contrary to Konner’s dogmatic remarks, answering the question--Does any intelligent life exist out there?--is a legitimate goal of modern astronomy.

BEN ZUCKERMAN

Professor of Astronomy, UCLA