Extraterrestrial First Contact: 2022

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Welcome to the New Year!

Did I exude enough positivity in that remark? It’s tough to do. Many humans are experiencing burn-out. That doesn’t make it easy to discuss the coming year.

I’m not making any predictions about the discovery of extraterrestrial life in 2022. I do think the best possibilities will come from observations conducted by the James Webb Space Telescope, currently enroute to L2, a million-mile Lagrange orbit point. The JWST could aid in the discovery of extraterrestrial life by finding a promising chemical composition in a far-off exoplanet. Even then, such a discovery would require many more years of scientific study to determine if life could be present. Another issue for life support on exoplanets is a magnetosphere to protect life from energized particles coming from the parent star. Scientists have been using Hubble Space Telescope data for an investigation and have found the first exoplanet with a magnetosphere.

2022 will be a busy year for space exploration, especially on the moon. I look forward to watching the projects unfold.

We have many issues to consider in space. Superpowers are acting like children and that threatens the safety of astronauts. Russia blew up a satellite sending debris flying in Earth orbit. That was a threat for both the International space station and the new Chinese space station. The rules of space haven’t been updated in 50 years and as CNN reports, the UN may be getting ready to do so.

Will 2022 be the year we make First Contact with an extraterrestrial civilization? There are many ongoing SETI science projects that will continue, including Breakthrough Listen. In our Solar system, the Galileo Project will provide our first scientific effort to determine if extraterrestrial intelligence has visited Earth or our neighborhood, primarily through a search for technosignatures.

In terms of Direct Contact, who knows? There have not been any indications that such an event might occur. If it does, we are not ready to handle such contact. One could hope for better planning, but our human pants are on fire, as usual. The big challenges of 2022 will be COVID, the cultural cold war in the United States, the threat to American Democracy, and the imminent Russian invasion of the Ukraine. And, of course, that is a ridiculously American perspective, as Climate Change will be the biggest threat to humanity and continue to impact every nation on Earth.

Perhaps that is the human condition- upheaval and struggle. Unfortunately, that way of living doesn’t provide much time for any sort of proactive planning. Hell, we probably are not prepared to handle the next pandemic.

If First Contact does occur in 2022, we will have to do our do our best. I am like many humans- trying to find hope in troubling times. One thing I know for sure: we can’t solve our problems with conflict and selfishness. Cooperation is not only in our collective best interest but necessary for our survival as a civilization. Let’s get our shit together in 2022, humans.

Photo by Guillermo Ferla on Unsplash

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