"The METI Controversy" -Is the Effort to Send Messages to an Alien Civilization a Threat to Earth?

"The METI Controversy" -Is the Effort to Send Messages to an Alien Civilization a Threat to Earth?: "If we should pick up signals from alien civilizations, Stephen Hawking, our century's Einstein, warns: 'we should have be wary of answering back, until we have evolved' a bit further. Meeting a more advanced civilization, at our present stage,' Hawking says 'might be a bit like the original inhabitants of America meeting Columbus. I don't think they were better off for it.'

Earth's attempts to contact intelligent, extraterrestrial life could be too disorganised or cryptic for non-human beings to decode, US physicists have reported. In a submission to the international journal, Space Policy, astrophysicists Dimitra Atri, Julia DeMarines and Jacob Haqq-Misra suggested that a protocol be developed to improve the likelihood that messages would be understood."