Stop the Lone Signal Project

Story here. There are in fact already protocols established in the event of alien contact, the most important part is that the discoverer must not unilaterally assume they can make decisions for the entire Earth. Here are some reckless, naive, selfish jerks are now sending messages (Gliese 526). This isn't the first time signals have been sent, but usually those signals aren't target at nearby star systems. Gliese 26 is 18 light years away.

If you think I'm being alarmist, then let me just quote Stephen Hawking:

[Hawking states] that intelligent alien life forms almost certainly exist — but warns that communicating with them could be "too risky."

"We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet."

Astronomer Zdenek Kopal may have put it even better when he said "Should we ever hear the space-phone ringing, for God’s sake let us not answer, but rather make ourselves as inconspicuous as possible to avoid attracting attention!" Robert Rood said, "The civilization that blurts out its existence on interstellar beacons at first opportunity might be like some early hominid descending from the trees and calling 'Here, kitty' to a sabre-toothed tiger." (More on this here.)

Imagine Native Americans building signal fires along the coast to make sure that the first Europeans knew where they were. And what resulted was a chain of events between members of the same species. It is absolutely stupid and absurd to assume the outcome could possibly be any better if we're detected and visited by aliens more advanced than ourselves. This team is either not serious about their project, or willing to endanger the whole Earth. This is a classic low probability, extremely high consequence event. Any consequence to our ecosystem from such signals being sent is going to be unimaginably worse than global warming. After all, we may have so much trouble detecting "loud" civilizations out there because they don't last long; maybe a predation factor is missing from the Drake equation.

The Lone Signal project really seems to be about charging people to put text messages in their little beamings to other stars. We're taking these risks so someone can make a few dollars from a novelty project.

Dr. Jacob Haqq-Misra and the Lone Signal team, stop this project. I would support legal action to stop you as well, and readers, if you care about the continuance of life on Earth, you should too.