Advice from Space

Time was when all talk of communication between earthbound man and creatures on other planets seemed like a product of far-out science fiction. Today radio astronomers discuss such interplanetary conversation as a distinct possibility. In the magazine Science, German Astronomer Sebastian von Hoerner demonstrates with intricate mathematical logic that planets suitable for life may be fairly common among the stars. On some of those planets, says Von Hoerner, there may well be creatures intelligent enough to transmit radio messages across the enormous distances of interstellar space. But for all this skill, he says, such highly developed civilizations will rarely be able to communicate with each other. Intelligent societies span but a brief segment of galactic history; they take billions of years to evolve, and their flowering might well last only a few thousand years. So their brief moments of glory would seldom coincide.

According to Von Hoerner's calculators, there are perhaps only ten civilized communities within 1,000 light-years of the earth. But Von Hoerner is convinced (hat if some highly cultured creatures are actually trying to communicate across interstellar space, earth's astronomers could, by concerted effort, detect and interpret the incoming messages.

Other planets, reasons Von Hoerner, almost certainly have been through cycles of self-destruction, and would have some thing to say about their experience. On such planets, science and technology were probably encouraged by a fight for supremacy and a desire for an easy life. In many cases, says the astronomer, scientific warfare surely brought destruction, or the soft life made possible by technology led to physical or mental degeneration. As a result, some extraterrestrial civilizations may have destroyed themselves completely, while others killed off only the higher types of life, permitting new and later civilizations to evolve from the humble creatures that managed to survive.

Von Hoerner believes that the earth's young civilization is now approaching its fast great crisis because of its newfound powers of self-destruction. He feels that man's best hope of avoiding disaster is to listen hard for radioed advice. Far out in starry space, perhaps, is an old, wise civilization that has survived many crises and is trying to warn the callow earth against the mistakes of its own youth.

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