METI planning to make contact with aliens in outer space

Scientific organisation Messaging ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (METI) is planning its first ever broadcast into space, in hopes of contacting another intelligent alien species.

However, a number of futurists and renowned scientists, have a different take on the desirability of the venture. Rather, some believe, that allowing aliens of unknown intent to know of our existence might end up jeopardising life on earth.

According to The Independent, the San Fracisco-based METI planned to launch its signaling programme in 2018. METI would actually broadcast radio signals into space to make  first contact with extraterrestrial intelligence.

Still, the METI programme would not simply spray the cosmos with radio noise; the plan was to send a direct radio signal to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, rather more precisely to the planet orbiting that star, Proxima b.

Astronomers had determined that Proxima b was in the habitable zone of its parent star and could possibily support and sustain intelligent life, METI was seizing the opportunity to broadcast to the neighbouring star and planet, and hopefully, achieve alien contact.

However, there were those within the scientific community are not enthusiastic about reaching out and making first contact; especially when that first contact could be with aliens far more advanced and perhaps more aggressive than humanity.

METI researchers are planning to make the process operational by the end of 2018 with a first message "Hello." The organisation established in 2015, would be holding workshops in St Louis and Paris in 2017.

"If we want to start an exchange over the course of many generations, we want to learn and share information," said the president of the METI, Douglas Vakoch, justifying the move and calling it beautiful, techtimes.com reported.

The project would repeatedly beam messages to the same planets for months and years from earth, however the content of the message would be carefully crafted.