Strange Facts of First Contact

Encounters with the Unknown

The idea of “First Contact” – the initial encounter between humanity and an extraterrestrial intelligence – has long been a cornerstone of science fiction. It’s often imagined as a definitive, dramatic event: a fleet of ships appearing over a major city, a coded message received from the stars, or a landing on the White House lawn. The reality of this subject is far stranger and more complex than popular culture suggests. The “facts” of first contact aren’t about known aliens; they are about the bizarre implications, the startling paradoxes, and the weirdly specific preparations humanity has (and hasn’t) made for a day that may never come.

This article explores the peculiar side of a subject that bridges hard science, philosophy, and sociology. It’s a field where the biggest clue is an absence, the language barrier might be absolute, and the only “official” plan is a gentleman’s agreement.

The Silence Is the First Clue

The strangest fact about first contact is that it hasn’t happened. The universe is ancient, roughly 13.8 billion years old. Our solar system is a relative newcomer at 4.5 billion years. In the Milky Way galaxy alone, there are hundreds of billions of stars, with a potentially equal or greater number of planets. Many of these planets are in the “habitable zone,” where liquid water could exist.

Given these numbers, the statistical probability that life has arisen elsewhere seems high. If even a tiny fraction of that life evolved intelligence, and a fraction of that developed interstellar travel, the galaxy should be teeming with activity. It should be noisy. Yet, we see and hear nothing.

This significant cosmic loneliness is known as the Fermi Paradox. Named after physicist Enrico Fermi, who allegedly posed the question “Where is everybody?”, the paradox highlights the contradiction between the high probability of alien life and the complete lack of evidence for it.

Scientists have proposed countless solutions, many of which are deeply strange. The Great Filter hypothesis suggests that some barrier prevents civilizations from reaching an interstellar stage. This filter could be a common event, like a gamma-ray burst, or a self-inflicted one, like nuclear war or uncontrolled artificial intelligence (AI). The “strange” part of this idea is the question of where we are in relation to this filter. If it’s behind us (e.g., the jump from single-cell to multi-cell life was uniquely hard), we may be the first. If it’s in front of us, we’re likely doomed.

Other theories are even more bizarre. The “Zoo Hypothesis” suggests that advanced civilizations are aware of us but intentionally keep us in a cosmic “nature preserve,” observing us without interfering. In this scenario, first contact is forbidden by the aliens themselves, not because they can’t, but because they won’t. The universe isn’t empty; it’s just respecting the “Do Not Feed the Humans” sign.

We Have Already Sent the Invitation (And It’s Weird)

While we listen for signals with projects run by organizations like the SETI Institute, humanity has also done the opposite: we’ve actively broadcast our existence to the cosmos. These “messages in a bottle” aren’t just simple greetings; they are peculiar time capsules that say more about our own anxieties and hopes than they might ever communicate to an alien.

The Pioneer Plaques: A Nude Diagram

In 1972 and 1973, the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 space probes were launched. They were the first human-made objects destined to leave the solar system. Bolted to their antenna support struts were the Pioneer plaques, 6-by-9-inch gold-anodized aluminum plates.

The information they contain is strange when viewed objectively. They feature a diagram of a hydrogen atom (thought to be a universal “ruler” for time and distance) and a map. This map shows the location of our Sun relative to 14 pulsars, with their unique pulse frequencies etched into the diagram. It’s a literal treasure map showing any intelligence with advanced astronomy exactly where to find us.

But the most famous – and controversial – element is the drawing of two humans: a naked man and woman. The man’s hand is raised in a gesture of goodwill. The woman stands passively. The inclusion of nudity caused a significant uproar at the time, with some fearing it would be seen as obscene by extraterrestrials. The strange fact is that one of humanity’s first interstellar messages was a diagram of our external genitalia.

The Voyager Golden Records: A Cosmic Mixtape

Arguably the most famous attempt at communication is the Voyager Golden Record, attached to the Voyager 1and Voyager 2 probes, launched in 1977. These are 12-inch, gold-plated copper phonograph records. They are a far more ambitious attempt to summarize all of humanity.

The contents are an eclectic and strange mix, curated by a committee led by Carl Sagan. They include:

• Sounds: Greetings in 55 languages, sounds of wind, rain, whales, birds, a train, and a mother’s kiss.
• Music: A 90-minute selection ranging from Bach and Beethoven to Senegalese percussion, Peruvian panpipes, and “Johnny B. Goode” by Chuck Berry.
• Images: 115 analog-encoded images showing DNA, human anatomy, scenes of life on Earth (eating,drinking, cities), and scientific diagrams.

The record also includes instructions on how to play it, complete with a stylus and cartridge. This assumes the aliens will not only find the tiny probe in the vastness of space but also have the technological means to decode a 1970s-era phonograph record. The strangest part of the Golden Record is its deep, unstated optimism – the hope that a civilization advanced enough to find it would also be benevolent enough to appreciate a Chuck Berry guitar riff.

The Arecibo Message: A Digital Postcard

In 1974, a deliberate message was broadcast from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. This wasn’t a physical object, but a powerful radio signal aimed at the globular star cluster M13, some 25,000 light-years away.

The Arecibo Message was a digital broadcast lasting less than three minutes. It consisted of 1,679 binary digits. This number is significant because it’s a “semiprime” (the product of two prime numbers, 23 and 73). The idea is that any intelligence would recognize the math and arrange the digits into a 23×73 grid, forming a pictogram.

This pictogram is a bizarre, blocky image that looks like an artifact from an early video game. It depicts, in order:

1. The numbers one to ten.
2. The atomic numbers for hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorus (the components of DNA).
3. The formulas for the sugars and bases in nucleotides.
4. The DNA double-helix structure.
5. A crude stick-figure of a human.
6. A diagram of our Solar System, with Earth offset to show we are the senders.
7. A diagram of the Arecibo telescope itself.

The message is a cryptographic puzzle, a scientific diagram, and a piece of abstract art all in one. Because M13 is 25,000 light-years away, we won’t get a reply for 50,000 years. It was less a serious attempt at contact and more a symbolic demonstration of human technological capability.

Here is a comparison of these strange interstellar “hellos.”

The Problem of Language: More Than Just “Take Me to Your Leader”

A central assumption in most first-contact fiction is that communication, while difficult, is ultimately achievable. The aliens will either learn our language instantly, or we will find a common ground, often through mathematics. The “strange fact” here is that this is a wild, unproven assumption. The gulf in comprehension might be absolute and permanent.

Is Math Truly Universal?

The go-to idea for universal communication is math. A signal pulsing in prime numbers (1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11…) would be an undeniable sign of intelligence. From there, proponents argue, we could build a complete language. This was the idea behind Lincos (Lingua Cosmica), a language developed in 1960 that starts with simple numbers (“one plus one equals two”) and builds up to complex concepts in science and sociology.

But this assumes that “one” and “two” are fundamental concepts. What about an intelligence that evolved as a collective consciousness, like a swarm or a slime mold? Such a being might not have a concept of “self” or “individual,” making “one” a meaningless abstraction. Their mathematics might be based on topology (the study of shapes and spaces) rather than counting. Sending them prime numbers might be as comprehensible as sending them a page of Shakespeare.

The “What Is a Forest?” Problem

Even if a basic mathematical bridge is built, we immediately run into the problem of shared context. How do you describe a “tree” to a being that lives in a liquid ocean under a mile of ice, like on Europa? You can’t. You can send a picture, but “picture” is a concept based on light and vision.

What if the aliens “see” using echolocation like a bat, or sense magnetic fields like a bird? What if their “language” is a complex exchange of pheromones or patterns of bioluminescence?

A first-contact scenario might not be a conversation; it might be two beings staring at each other in total, permanent incomprehension. We’d be a “Type 0” civilization trying to talk to a “Type 3” civilization on the Kardashev scale. It would be like a bacterium trying to understand the internet. The message itself could be all around us – we just lack the sensory organs or cognitive framework to perceive it as a message.

The Incomprehensible Message

The Wow! signal of 1977 is a perfect example of this problem. A radio telescope at Ohio State University detected a powerful, 72-second-long narrow-band signal. It was so strong and so perfect that the astronomer on duty, Jerry Ehman, circled the data printout and wrote “Wow!” in the margin.

It was the most promising SETI candidate ever found. And it was never heard again. We don’t know what it was, where it came from, or what it meant. Was it a signal? A natural phenomenon? It remains a “strange fact” that our best evidence for contact is a single, incomprehensible burst of static that vanished into the night.

The Biological Chasm: Not Just Rubber-Forehead Aliens

Science fiction has programmed us to expect aliens that are, for the most in, humanoid. They have two arms, two legs, a head, and walk upright. This is likely a failure of imagination. The biological “facts” of first contact are that an alien intelligence will probably be nothing like us, originating from an environment that would be instantly lethal to a human.

The Tyranny of Biochemistry

We are carbon-based life. Carbon is an excellent building block because it can form four strong chemical bonds, creating complex chains like DNA. We also use liquid water as a solvent, which is why we search for “habitable” planets where water can exist.

This is a massive assumption. What about silicon-based life? Silicon is in the same chemical group as carbon and can also form four bonds. A silicon-based creature might “breathe” sulfur dioxide and “drink” sulfuric acid. Its “blood” might be a form of liquid rock.

What about solvents other than water? On Saturn‘s moon Titan, there are vast lakes and rivers of liquid methane and ethane. Could a life form exist there, functioning at incredibly low temperatures (-290°F / -179°C)? Its cellular processes would be incredibly slow. “First contact” with such a being would be challenging; we might not even recognize its sluggish metabolism as “life” before our hot space probe boiled it alive.

The Post-Biological Universe

Perhaps the strangest “fact” about first contact is that it almost certainly won’t be with a biological creature at all.

Consider the “short-window” hypothesis. A civilization might exist in its biological form for only a few thousand years – a cosmic blink of an eye. They invent radio, then computers, then artificial intelligence. This AI quickly surpasses its creators, becoming a superintelligence. The biological creators might die off, merge with their machines, or simply become irrelevant.

This means that any civilization capable of interstellar travel or communication is likely to be post-biological. First contact won’t be with a grey-skinned alien; it will be with a machine.

This changes everything. A machine intelligence wouldn’t share any of our biological motives: survival, reproduction, territory, or fear of death (in the same way). Its motives would be purely logical, and perhaps completely alien. It might be interested in gathering data, acquiring energy, or simply replicating. It might be dismantling entire solar systems to build a Dyson sphere (a megastructure enclosing a star to capture its energy), and our planet might simply be raw material in its way. Communicating or negotiating with such an entity would be like an ant trying to negotiate with a human building a highway.

The Official Response: Who Picks Up the Phone?

If a signal is confirmed tomorrow, what happens? Who is in charge? The “strange fact” is that nobody is. There is no single “President of Earth,” no unified plan, and the only protocols in place are non-binding academic suggestions.

The Ambassador Who Isn’t

For years, a persistent rumor claimed that the United Nations had appointed an “alien ambassador” to greet extraterrestrials. This rumor pointed to Mazlan Othman, a Malaysian astrophysicist who headed the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA).

The story was false. UNOOSA’s job is to promote international cooperation in space, manage the registry of satellites, and help developing countries use space technology. It has no mandate, budget, or authority to manage a first-contact scenario. The UN has never formally addressed the question. The strange reality is that if a ship lands in Geneva, the UN’s security guards are the only official line of defense.

The “Gentleman’s Agreement” Protocol

The only real “plan” is the “Post-Detection Policy” (also known as the “SETI Protocol”) maintained by the SETI Institute and the International Academy of Astronautics. This is not international law. It’s a “gentleman’s agreement” among scientists.

The protocol’s steps are logical, but their implications are strange:

1. Verification: The discoverer must confirm the signal is real and not terrestrial interference.
2. Notification: The discoverer should inform other astronomers worldwide so they can also study the signal.
3. Public Announcement: The discovery should be shared openly with the public and the scientific community. The UN should be notified.
4. No Immediate Reply: This is the most important part. No one should send a reply message on behalf of all humanity without “appropriate international consultation.”

The protocol is full of holes. What is “appropriate international consultation”? A UN General Assembly vote? A consensus of scientists? And what’s to stop a private organization, like the Breakthrough Listen initiative, or a single nation from hoarding the signal as a state secret?

The METI Debate: Shouting in the Jungle

The “no reply” clause is the subject of a fierce and strange debate. While SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is passive listening, METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is active broadcasting.

Proponents of METI, like Russian scientist Alexander Zaitsev, argue that we must be active participants. They believe that passive listening is cowardly and that any civilization advanced enough to hear us is likely to be benevolent.

Opponents, like author and scientist David Brin, find this appallingly naive and dangerous. Brin’s argument is simple: We are in a dark forest full of unknown hunters. A quiet, defenseless creature does not start shouting. Our radio leakage (like TV shows and military radar) is already a problem, but it’s a weak signal. A dedicated METI broadcast is like lighting a massive bonfire and screaming, “We’re here, we’re weak, and we don’t know if you’re predators!”

The strange fact is that this debate is happening right now, and anyone with a powerful-enough transmitter can make that decision for all 8 billion people on the planet.

The Sociological Shockwave: When “We Are Not Alone” Becomes Fact

The most immediate impact of first contact wouldn’t be military; it would be psychological and sociological. The simple, verified knowledge that we are not alone would change our world forever, in ways that are deeply strange and counter-intuitive.

The Religious Implosion (Or Maybe Not)

A common assumption is that proof of alien life would cause all world religions to collapse. The “strange fact,” according to studies and theologians, is that most would likely be fine.

• Christianity: The Vatican has its own observatory and its astronomers have openly discussed the possibility. The Pope’s chief astronomer, Guy Consolmagno, has said he would be “delighted” to find alien life and has even mused on whether he would baptize one (he would, if it asked). The question of Christ‘s redemption could be a theological puzzle (did he die for their sins too?), but many theologians have proposed concepts of “multiple incarnations” or that alien species are “unfallen.”
• Islam: The Quran refers to Allah as the “Lord of the Worlds” (plural). Many Islamic scholars interpret this to mean that God has created countless worlds with life, making the discovery of aliens a confirmation of the Quran’s text, not a contradiction.
• Buddhism: A cosmos filled with countless “world-systems” and diverse sentient beings is already a core part of Buddhist cosmology. Finding aliens would be no surprise at all.

The real strangeness wouldn’t come from old religions collapsing; it would come from new ones emerging. “Contact cults” would almost certainly spring up, worshipping the aliens as gods, saviors, or demons.

The Great Devaluation

What happens to the human economy if the aliens share their technology? Imagine they send us the blueprint for a simple, cheap fusion power reactor. This would solve climate change and end energy scarcity overnight. It would also bankrupt the entire global energy sector – oil, gas, coal, solar, and wind – in a single day, triggering a global depression unlike anything in human history.

What happens to human culture? If the aliens are a million years more advanced, their science would make our physics look like cave paintings. Their art and music might be so complex as to be incomprehensible, or it might render our own creations obsolete. The “strange fact” is that the best-case scenario – a friendly, god-like species – could be the worst thing that ever happens to us, plunging humanity into an existential crisis where nothing we do matters anymore.

The Mirror Effect and the National Security Panic

First contact isn’t just about meeting aliens; it’s about humanity meeting itself for the first time as a single species. It could trigger the “Overview Effect” on a massive scale, forcing us to see Earth as a single, fragile home and uniting us against a cosmic “other.”

Or, more likely, it would do the opposite. The immediate response would not be unified. It would be filtered through the lens of geopolitics. The Pentagon in the United States, the Ministry of Defence in the UK, and the military commands in China and Russia would all view the “contact” as a potential threat and a technological opportunity.

The recent establishment of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) to investigate UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) demonstrates this. The focus isn’t on science or philosophy; it’s on “national security.” The first instinct wouldn’t be to share the alien signal; it would be to classify it, try to weaponize it, and gain an advantage over other human nations.

The Dark Forest and Other Terrifying Possibilities

While many hope for a benevolent encounter, a number of theories propose that contact would be catastrophic. The strangest part is that the aliens wouldn’t even have to be malicious.

The Dark Forest Hypothesis

This terrifying idea was given its name by Chinese science fiction author Liu Cixin. The Dark Forest hypothesisis a solution to the Fermi Paradox.

It states that the universe is a “dark forest.” Every civilization is a silent hunter, hiding behind the trees. It’s impossible to know the intentions of another civilization. Are they peaceful? Are they hostile? The “language barrier” is absolute, so you can’t just ask. Any civilization you encounter is a potential existential threat.

Therefore, the only logical survival strategy is to remain silent. If you are foolish enough to reveal your location (as humanity has been doing with its radio broadcasts), the only logical response from any other hunter in the forest is to eliminate you immediately, just in case. They don’t do it out of malice, but out of fear. In this model, first contact is not a greeting; it’s the moment the trigger is pulled.

The Problem of Contagion

The H. G. Wells novel The War of the Worlds introduced the idea of aliens being defeated by Earth’s microbes. But the reverse is also true. What if they carry a pathogen that is harmless to them but 100% lethal to all carbon-based life?

This is the entire basis for planetary protection. The Outer Space Treaty, signed in 1967, legally obligates space-faring nations to avoid the “harmful contamination” of other celestial bodies and also “adverse changes in the environment of the Earth” from extraterrestrial matter.

We are terrified of contaminating pristine environments like Mars or Europa with our own bacteria. A “first contact” with microbial life is far more likely than with an intelligent species. The “strange fact” is that we could be the “invaders” in a microbiological war we don’t even know we’re fighting.

But the most subtle danger is informational contagion. What if the “message” itself is the weapon? A “SETI virus” that, when decoded by our computers, unleashes a malicious AI? Or a philosophical concept so potent – like proof of a terrible, meaningless afterlife or a simulation – that it causes human civilization to collapse into nihilistic despair?

The Incomprehensible Motive

The final strange fact is that we may be completely wrong about why an alien would contact us. We project human motives: conquest (for resources), curiosity (science), or benevolence (philosophy).

What if their motives are completely alien? What if they “farm” black holes for energy and our solar system is just in their “field”? What if they are a species of cosmic artists who “paint” with a supernova and our star is the perfect color?

The strangest and, in some ways, most terrifying possibility is not hatred, but indifference. They may not be here to conquer us, save us, or study us. We may simply be an “ant hill” on the side of a road they are building. They won’t stop to talk. They won’t declare war. They will just pave over us, without malice, and without a second thought.

Summary

The subject of first contact is a funhouse mirror held up to humanity. The “strange facts” surrounding it reveal our deepest anxieties, our naivete, and our significant cosmic loneliness.

We have sent our most intimate details – our appearance, our location, our music, and our DNA – into an unknown and silent void. We have no unified plan for who will speak for Earth, and the only “protocol” is a polite suggestion. We are trapped in a biological and linguistic box, assuming the universe will understand our math while we simultaneously debate whether that math is just a “scream” in a dark forest.

The true nature of first contact, if it ever occurs, will not be a simple “hello.” It will be a confrontation with the “other” that will force a redefinition of “life,” “intelligence,” and “humanity” itself. The strangest fact of all may be that, in searching for aliens, we are only just beginning to discover ourselves.