Abstract
Like Marshall Savage in 1992, we can design elaborate programmes aimed at the establishment of small, high-tech, self-sufficient human communities, first on Earth, then in interplanetary space and finally throughout the Galaxy. But all such plans hinge upon a major uncertainty: what happens if we establish direct, physical contact with an extraterrestrial (ET) civilization?
Civilizations hundreds or thousands or millions of years beyond us should have sciences and technologies so far beyond our present capabilities as to be indistinguishable from magic. It’s not that what they do can violate the laws of physics; it’s that we will not understand how they are able to use the laws of physics to do what they do.
Carl Sagan, The Cosmic Connection (1973)
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Matloff, G.L. (2000). Meeting ET. In: Deep-Space Probes. Space Exploration. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-3641-5_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-3641-5_13
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