The eternal question: why are the stars silent?

One of the most famous quotations of the English writer, scientist, futurist and inventor Arthur Charles Clarke says: "There are two possibilities: either we are alone in the Universe or not. And both are equally frightening". At the moment we know absolutely nothing about extraterrestrial intelligent life, as well as the possibility of its existence. But even among the brightest minds of science have argued, or even say confident, that sooner or later we will make first contact.

Good or bad, but we're not sitting around all these years idly by and just waiting for the aliens themselves first before we come out of hiding. We have made several attempts to cry out to the stars and, we think, have even made an effort to aliens from other planets might notice. The desire of mankind to find a "soul mate" exists much longer than you could imagine. We feel alone and so we continue to look for.

In 1820, the Austrian astronomer Joseph Johann Liters proposed to draw giant characters in the form of circles, triangles and squares in the Sands of the Sahara desert, filling the resulting recesses with kerosene and set fire to them at night. Thus the scientist wanted to make communication contact with Mars. In 1896, Nikola Tesla suggested a variant of the device, allowing to transmit electricity without wires, which could also be used for communication with Mars.

More recent attempts of humanity are space vehicles "Voyageur-1 and Voyager-2". Both are covering maps of pulsars, which can lead sentient beings to our house. The message of Arecibo, which is a coded radio message was sent into space in 1974. But despite all these attempts, Frank Drake, Creator of the most original maps of pulsars, as discussed above, once said that his work hardly ever will anyone discovered. The journey of the probes from one star to another can take half a million years, plus they are not directed towards any particular star. It is also unlikely that the Arecibo radio message ever get an answer. Nevertheless, this does not stop other to send the same radio messages into space, as did, for example, the European space Agency last year.

But still, it's just radio and unmanned spacecraft. We are separated by too large distances to expect a speedy response from possible intelligent life. For example, astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson is sure that first contact with intelligent extraterrestrial organisms we will not make the next 50 years.

"No. I believe that we (or they) may be too far apart in space and possibly time. Under the definition of "complex life forms", I think you mean something that is not single-celled organisms. That is, living organisms, hands, feet, private thoughts and so on. Everything will depend on our possibilities of travel in interstellar space. But it's not going to happen in the next 50 years. Not at the level of technology, what are we now," — commented Tyson.

There is No foolproof way to contact extraterrestrial life or at least be prepared for the fact that they'd contact us. However, to prepare so to the best of today's technology, we can. We can also continue to send signals, hoping that someone will respond. However, regarding the latter – here, everything can be much harder than it looks at first glance. How can you be sure that our messages will be perceived by intelligent extraterrestrial life as being harmless? These messages must be absolutely clear. But how to do so, even if we have no idea about how aliens represent themselves harmless message? Most likely, the map of pulsars, as discussed above, as well as the Arecibo message as a harmless example of a universal message, but the desire to be more active to face criticism, including from prominent scholars.

For Example, physicist Stephen Hawking, who in General in General not against the idea of the probability of the existence of other life in the Universe, believes that we shouldn't actively try to announce your existence to the rest of the space, as well as what we are already capable of. In his opinion, what would a reasonable civilization we've ever met, "she is likely to be much more advanced than we are. So much so that we in her eyes can look no more valuable than any bacteria." This can lead to very undesirable and unfortunate results, which may result in our extinction, or at best fall as a civilization.

Michio Kaku, another popularizer of science, also shared his thoughts about how to make contact with extraterrestrial life. In his opinion, we simply will not be able to contact them due to the low development of our technology and total understanding of the Universe. One scientist even compared us trying to make contact with aliens, ants trying to get in contact with us.

"If the ants sitting on an anthill, will see the construction of 10-lane highway next to them, will they start to understand how to communicate with building this highway workers? I assume that workers can communicate on the same frequency that they do? In fact, ants are so primitive, do not even know what a 10-lane highway. So what can we say about the methods of communication and different frequencies?"

No matter what place we occupy in this Universe, many still believe that we are not alone and are on the way for first contact. Now, perhaps most importantly — it is to prepare. Everything, no matter what happens.