Beyond Contact: Exploring Our Search for Extraterrestrial Life, a translation of the 2012 book "Comment se Comporter Face Aux Etraterrestres?" by Swiss author Philippe Barraud, delves into the age-old question of whether or not we are alone in the universe. This essay explores the human fascination with the heavens and recapitulates how scientists have framed the issue of extraterrestrial intelligence over the years. Barraud exposes the limitations of their analyses and lays out a convincing argument that the question is simply unanswerable. He concludes the book by tackling, with humor and rationality, the touchy issue of what to do should we find we're not alone out there. In this English version, translator Mary Parlange has captured the energy and intelligent wit of the original text in a highly readable, fast-paced work that will have you staring up at the nighttime sky with a new sense of wonder. Because yes, they exist. It's a simple calculation of probabilities: because there are billions and billions of planets in the Universe, the idea that not just life, but intelligent civilization has only developed on one of them, which just happens to be our planet Earth, is just logically impossible. By 2050, if not before, we will very likely have proof of the existence of living organisms on another planet. But it is unlikely that we will ever have proof of the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations, even if there are loads of them out there. Disappointing, isn't it? The reason is quite simple. In space, everything is really, really far away, farther than our brains can fathom, accustomed as we are to the distances of the physical world around us. And in space, far, far away doesn't just refer to distance, but to time as well. This is why we could never communicate with these civilizations. If, today, we intercept a signal coming from an intelligent civilization in the Andromeda galaxy, it will already be 2.5 million years old. Would there be any point in responding? The inhabitants of other planets are subject to the same laws of physics as we are. And that's why we'll never see them.
