Question: Is There A Person That Represents The World In The Case Of Contact With ETs

[turkwinif]

I swear that I've read about a person in the UN or somewhere else that would represent the world if extraterrestrials ever communicated with or visited Earth (as unlikely as that is). If such a person exists, would you guys happen to know who this person is? A Google search reveals nothing, and I can't simply remember where I read this.

Either that, or I'm going crazy or making something up that isn't. The movie Contact comes into mind when I think of this, and I could be simply be mixing up that movie with real life (somehow, thanks memory!).

Edited November 19, 2014 by turkwinif

[gmpd2000]

No. But i played enough Xenonauts to make a good contact with them if they come...

[WinkAllKerb'']

i'll pick a random 5 year old child wich is the most away from my current location gps coordinate relatively speaking ... should do the job ...

[MartGonzo]

Here, this is presumably what you are looking for:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/8025832/UN-to-appoint-space-ambassador-to-greet-alien-visitors.html

Or maybe it was the Vatican you were thinking of:

http://www.dailypaul.com/144756/ets-welcomed-by-vatican-god-is-bigger-than-just-humanity

[WinkAllKerb'']

If i could i send: so why not his spiritual father(s) (C7 studios )

[Brotoro]

I believe it's traditional for aliens to make contact with lone individuals (quite likely intoxicated) located along some remote rural road. Either that, or with a cow.

Don't ask me why they do this.

[turkwinif]

Here, this is presumably what you are looking for:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/8025832/UN-to-appoint-space-ambassador-to-greet-alien-visitors.html

Thanks, exactly what I was looking for!

[Dispatcher]

I'm confident that these folks would well represent humanity:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xot9li_qGCk

[kerbiloid]

If ET fly here and contacts us, they of course will inform us, which person they decided to chose as their representative.

[Geneborg]

Ok, to give a serious answer to this:

There is no PROTOCOL yet, but there are suggestions. There is no world leader either, but there are only 2 possibities: the aliens contact the one they deem worthy themselves, or they give us the chance to bring them before a council of mankind (like UN, but including even isolated nations).

The US Military in the 50s has formulated the "seven steps of contact" protocol. Its obviously kinda militaristic, but it depicts how first you assess the thread level, then make "covert contact", then take samples and finally make open contact (interestingly the first UFO contact report 57 reports aliens doing exactly that, too, like the protocol formulated...well well).

Seti Institute has a plan also, if they ever recieve a signal they will confirm it and then make it public as fast as possible so to not give one organization advantage over another.

[kerbiloid]

I guess, the first ET concern is anyway would be to supress/avoid any force action against their persons.

So, UN represenatives, SETI nerds as Shaolin monks will not be in the hot ten.

Military tops are more probable to be contacted.

[KerbMav]

As I am quite sure ETs would gather information about a new species first, and as they were most likely technologically more advanced than us and therefore even more capable of filtering our every communication, this is as good a place to appoint myself first contact ambassador of the earth as any.

So, if you form now on ever read/hear me talking about them existing and visiting us, it is probably true.

[Streetwind]

I'm fairly sure a first contact wouldn't come face-to-face. There would be a language barrier of a magnitude never seen before to overcome - this would likely take the combined efforts of both us and our visitors for a decent amount of time, during which they'd presumably hang out in a lagrange point orbit somewhere (so as to not get in the way of our satellites and orbital debris cloud) and get bombarded with messages from literally every human being in possession of a transmitter of sufficient output power.

It is extremely unlikely that an alien species visiting us would do this covertly without us noticing their presence; the enormous amount of energy required to capture a manned vessel into our solar system from "useful" interstellar velocities would make science instruments around the world light up like a christmas tree the very moment the visitors begin their braking maneuver. Even a hypothetical warpdrive (or ratehr, especially a warpdrive) would emit a giant radiation front dwarfing the largest solar flares ever recorded, and even then they would still need to match velocities. A flyby would be harder to detect, but also kind of useless for establishing contact (and problematic from a standpoint of "how do we get back home after our flyby concludes").

No, far more likely, a first contact will happen in the extremely boring way of us noticing evidence of sentient life hundreds of lightyears away and then spending the next twenty generations figuring out how to surmount that distance for communication in a more useful manner than relying on lightspeed communication with a millenium roundtrip time for a single message. Or, summarily, being noticed and contacted this way by another civilization hundreds of lightyears away and having to rely on that single message to try and reconstruct their entire language.

Edited November 20, 2014 by Streetwind

[kerbiloid]

Or catch a pack of smart and fine-looking humans, like Morden and his collegues in Babylon-5, solve all these problems with these several persons and send them as ET representatives, allowing them to talk with humans in their language. That's much faster.

[turkwinif]

Ok, to give a serious answer to this:

There is no PROTOCOL yet, but there are suggestions. There is no world leader either, but there are only 2 possibities: the aliens contact the one they deem worthy themselves, or they give us the chance to bring them before a council of mankind (like UN, but including even isolated nations).

The US Military in the 50s has formulated the "seven steps of contact" protocol. Its obviously kinda militaristic, but it depicts how first you assess the thread level, then make "covert contact", then take samples and finally make open contact (interestingly the first UFO contact report 57 reports aliens doing exactly that, too, like the protocol formulated...well well).

Seti Institute has a plan also, if they ever recieve a signal they will confirm it and then make it public as fast as possible so to not give one organization advantage over another.

Thanks for clarifying, Geneborg. It's a little difficult to find information on this kind of stuff when there are a ton of conspiracy theories to sift through (from what my searches resulted in).

[Deadpangod3]

first the world learns aliens exist,

the next day the world erupts into chaos and everyone kills each other.

[megatiger78]

protocol involves killing aliens

[Vallius]

According to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, astronauts are to be

...envoys of mankind in outer space

. This says to me that if astronauts meet aliens, they're our default ambassadors. If the aliens come to earth, I'd assume the UN Secretary General would be the least controversial choice to represent us.

http://www.state.gov/www/global/arms/treaties/space1.html

Edited November 20, 2014 by Vallius

[Capt.Joseph Kerbertson]

I don't think any one person should be the representative for the whole of humanity. It should be a group, representing the wide variation of the human species. While the military has our interests at heart, I don't think we should display our clubs to someone so advanced that they have traveled the great expanse of space to visit the smallest of worlds. Musicians, artists, poets, engineers, mathematicians, geneticists these are the people that should show them who humanity really is.

[megatiger78]

I don't think any one person should be the representative for the whole of humanity. It should be a group, representing the wide variation of the human species. While the military has our interests at heart, I don't think we should display our clubs to someone so advanced that they have traveled the great expanse of space to visit the smallest of worlds. Musicians, artists, poets, engineers, mathematicians, geneticists these are the people that should show them who humanity really is.

well we have done a lot of wars.....

[Kryten]

first the world learns aliens exist,

the next day the world erupts into chaos and everyone kills each other.

Why do people think things like this? A significant portion of the world's population already believes in aliens, they're not murdering each other over it.

[megatiger78]

we send sun. hopefully that will push the aliens away

[problemecium]

Inform us? Make contact with cows? No no no.

They're clearly just going to land here in some huge robot probe, drill holes in all our stuff, and start building a base as if they own the place. And if any humans get in they'll just spray pesticide on us.

[NASAFanboy]

Depends on how much they advanced. Considering that a species with moderate amounts of rocket technology would already be able to move throughout massive distances (74,000 years is a short time on the cosmic scale), I truly doubt a alien species would see us as pests or be so advanced that our weapons would be like big clubs. If a bunch of redcoats timewarped from the 18th century and started to attack society today, they would cause a lot of trouble and put up a pretty substantial resistance despite being bombed from the air (Orbital bombardment) or attacked on the ground.

The best option would be radio contact through the leaders of the world. Have the Joint Chiefs of Staff formulate a war plan and defense. Have the UN Secretary General and the leaders of the Great Powers of Earth prepare an official message from the governments of Earth; then have radio transmissions from other unauthorized sources be banned. Then prepare a space mission for first contact.

Edited November 21, 2014 by NASAFanboy

[WinkAllKerb'']

if we ever meet alien ... the best is to fight them, win a loss and slave them to feel like the true ruler of the universe. ... that's the first idea that come to mind when thinking about it seriously ... so lets just send rambot. because rambot can't lose ...