Why Would ET Destroy Humans? Hint: Pollution

Aug. 20, 2011 — -- There's no subject more fertile for debate than hypothesizing about the nature of extraterrestrial beings.

So, in a study carried out by researchers affiliated with NASA and Pennsylvania State University ("Would contact with extraterrestrials benefit or harm humanity? A scenario analysis"), several intelligent extraterrestrial encounter scenarios are examined. One of the scenarios is a sci-fi favorite: what if we encounter an alien race hell bent on destroying us?

But this isn't mindless thuggery on behalf of the aliens, and they're not killing us to get at our natural resources, they have a cause. They want to exterminate us for the greater good of the Milky Way.

Yes, they consider us cockroaches. Cockroaches left in charge of increasingly advanced and destructive technology.

Let's face it, with ecosystem destruction on a global scale and greenhouse gases being belched out into the atmosphere at record rates, to a distant alien observer we may look like a destructive civilization spiraling out of control -- and they wouldn't be far wrong.

Therefore, as the ET logic may go, if we're making such a mess of our own back yard, if we venture deeper into space and become a true interstellar civilization, what hope is there that we'll treat the rest of the galaxy (and the other beings in it) with any respect?

"A preemptive strike would be particularly likely in the early phases of our expansion because a civilization may become increasingly difficult to destroy as it continues to expand," the study says. "Humanity may just now be entering the period in which its rapid civilizational expansion could be detected by an ETI (extraterrestrial intelligence) because our expansion is changing the composition of the Earth's atmosphere, via greenhouse gas emissions."

Of course, ETI might just be an aggressive race, so like Stephen Hawking's recent warning, the authors of the study suggest that perhaps we shouldn't transmit too much information into space.