Estimated prevalence of toxic extraterrestrial civilizations – what are our chances of encountering them?
Currently, there are only a limited number of attempts to contact extraterrestrial civilization. A recent paper published on arXiv.org attempts to estimate the potential risk that such a civilization has malicious intentions and poses a threat to humanity.
The researcher relies on the frequency distribution of countries that have invaded other countries. It is shown that there is a negative correlation between the probability of invasion and the energy consumption of the world. The Kardashev scale allows extrapolating the possibility that a more advanced civilization will invade us.
The probability that the planet we are texting has a civilization with bad intentions is estimated to be 0.0000000552%. For comparison, the collision probability of the planetary killer asteroid is two orders of magnitude higher. The researcher concludes that more international debate is needed to decide the conditions under which messages will be delivered to potentially habitable planets.
This paper attempts to make an estimate of the prevalence of hostile extraterrestrial civilizations through extrapolation of the probability that we, as human civilizations, will attack or invade. an inhabited alien planet when we become a Type 1 civilization on the Kardashev Scale likely to be near interstellar travel. Estimates are based on the history of world invasions in the last century, the military capabilities of the countries involved, and the growth rate of global energy consumption. The upper limit of standard deviation is used to obtain an estimated probability of extraterrestrial invasion by a civilization whose planet we are sending the message to. The results show that such a probability is two orders of magnitude lower than the probability of a killer asteroid impact. The findings could be the starting point for an international debate about sending the first serious interstellar radio messages to potentially habitable planets nearby.
Research articles: Caballero, A., “Estimating the prevalence of toxic extraterrestrial civilizations”, 2022. Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.11618
