Part 5

Recently the Brookings Institution released a report on this question. The study was made for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at a cost of $96,000.

If intelligent life is discovered on other worlds, the report warned, the stability of earth’s civilization will be threatened. It recommended a psychological preparation of human beings prior to the discovery.

“While the discovery of intelligent life in other parts of the universe is not likely in the immediate future,” the report said, “it could nevertheless happen at any time.”

This is the lesson of history: When a culture is faced with a superior culture, it either disintegrates or is changed drastically.

Japan, when it was opened to the outside world, succeeded in adjusting to the new conditions. The Aztec culture collapsed.

Our beliefs, institutions and culture have been based on the premise that man is the most intelligent of creatures. Would we be able to assume a subordinate role?

Perhaps Dr. Otto Struve, the noted astronomer, was thinking about this when newsmen were interviewing him about Project Ozma. “I’m not so sure we should even answer if we did receive such signals,” he said.

Psychological preparation will certainly be needed.

Dr. Harlow Shapley, the Harvard professor emeritus of astronomy, after allowing for all elements of chance among the known stars, conservatively estimates that there should be a million planets with life-producing elements and conditions.

In all the vastness of space and eons of time, there must be intelligent life in myriad forms seeking other intelligent life for interstellar companionship.

When the signal comes, man will answer.

END