To Infinity and Beyond: Bart, Lucy and the Gang

We who live within get-the-shotgun distance of Grovers Mill, the spot in central New Jersey that Orson Welles chose for his panic-inducing “War of the Worlds” landing in 1938, are naturally reluctant to endorse the promulgation of fake alien arrivals via a broadcast medium. But there’s a darned good one in progress on the Science Channel, part of a month of programs on the theme “Are We Alone?”
The imaginary first contact is taking place on the two-part series “Alien Encounters,” which began last week and concludes on Tuesday night (preceded by a rebroadcast of Part 1). This isn’t the junk science that fills up large swaths of basic cable. It’s real scientists and other experts hypothesizing about how an encounter with visiting extraterrestrials might unfold, what technologies might get them here and enable us to see and listen to them, what their intent might be and how we humans are likely to react.

Part 1 introduced uninitiated viewers to the SETI Institute (the acronym stands for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and to an initiative it has called SETI@home that enables any computer user to help scan the avalanche of pulses, static and such, coming in from space, for a purposeful message. And it began a story line tracing what happens when one home-computer jockey picks up such a message.

As Part 2 starts, the news has gotten out, the extraterrestrials are coming for a visit, and people have begun to react: some by embracing the possibilities, others by loading their rifles. But if the space travelers are hostile, running to the gun shop will probably be futile.

“By the time they have the technology to come here, they have the technology to do anything,” notes Jill Tarter, director of the Center for SETI Research.

The experts, though, are not sold on the idea that the extraterrestrials intend us harm or want to take over our planet.

“Anything that you can find here physically on this planet they could find much closer to home,” says Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the institute. “It would save them the shipping costs.”

One reason many humans will assume malevolent intent is that it’s what we know.

“Our biggest fear is that they’ll enslave us,” the astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson notes early in Part 2. “We think this because we’ve already behaved that way. So any suggestion that an alien will treat us hostilely is not insight into the true behavior of the alien. It is a mirror revealing the true behavior of humans ourselves.”

He and others suggest that we should be thinking more broadly than simply to impose human thought processes and experiences on any beings we encounter from another world. We may fear they are coming to do battle when in reality they have not even formulated the concept of war.

For a television critic, that notion made for a thought-provoking merger with another idea voiced early in Part 1: that extraterrestrials might know about us from the TV shows we’ve been inadvertently beaming into space for more than a half-century.

“ ‘I Love Lucy’ left the Earth 50 years ago and has now gone past 10,000 stars,” Dan Werthimer, chief scientist for SETI@home, says in Part 1. “The nearby stars have seen ‘The Simpsons.’ ”

Hmm. What if we assume benevolent intent on the part of the visiting aliens but also postulate that they do not grasp the concepts of fiction and performance and humor? Anything that is seen must be real; any problem presented in our television broadcasts must need solving. So they’re coming to assist with things they think are befuddling us. Perhaps the SETI people should set their scanners to look specifically for messages along these lines:

¶“People of Earth: Good news. We have received the cry for help you broadcast via images of your beings ‘Lucy’ and ‘Ethel’ at the chocolate factory and are on our way with a technology that will enable you to keep up with the conveyor belt. Through genetic manipulation we can enable each of you to grow a third arm. The only drawback is that this will require a complete retooling of your fashion industry.”

¶“Earth Friends: We have thoroughly micro-scanned every inch of your world and believe that the seven stranded castaways are no longer physically on your planet. There is, however, a slight space wrinkle out near Pluto, where we think your naval vessels should concentrate their search, and we are coming to provide teleportation assistance.”



¶“Intergalactic Neighbors: With regard to your plea for help with the misbehavior of Dennis, we are rushing you an advanced recoding system that will enable you to change his name so that it no longer rhymes with ‘menace.’ Our research indicates that if his existing name were to be replaced with ‘Bryce,’ he would become nice.”

Just think through all those perplexing sitcoms we’ve sent skyward. “Mister Ed.” “Bosom Buddies.” “The Munsters.” “My Mother the Car.” Hoo boy. When the space visitors get here, we won’t need those rifles, but we’ll sure have some explaining to do.