. Far more likely: an indecipherable signal from space, in a language that the human race is incapable of understanding. That doesn't sound like promising material for a feature-length drama-documentary, but the BBC hit on a great idea here. The programme imagined what would happen if evidence of extra-terrestrial life was detected, following the narrative arc of a Hollywood film but grounding it with explanations from experts. Popular science is a difficult nut to crack, but this did the job admirably. The experts were engaging – in particular, US astrophysicist Dr Hakeem Oluseyi, who is such a natural communicator that I'd happily see him signed up by the BBC as a replacement for Prof Brian Cox. David Shukman, the BBC's former science editor, delivered news reports of an unidentified object travelling towards us at three million kilometres per hour, measuring 200 kilometres long. The programme imagined the ways in which social media would react: memes and TikTok videos, jokes and online conspiracy theories. Someone had great fun coming up with these and they were spot on; of course there will be a tweet that reads: 'Who had alien invasion on their apocalypse bingo?' This was an entertaining way to dress up the story. But the science was fascinating in itself. We must stop thinking of intelligent life as being anything akin to life as we know it; instead, imagine a 'technological civilisation' for which time may go much faster or slower than ours. Attempting to send this civilisation a message, said the man from Jodrell Bank, would be like ants trying to communicate with humans. The programme's fictional UFO eventually moved out of sight, beyond our solar system, which left a sense of anticlimax. But overall it offered a tantalising look at what could ha){kind=link}
The BBC science docu-drama First Contact: An Alien Encounter imagined how the world would react if we made contact with aliens
“I hope that the first signs we have of life are when aliens come knocking on our doorstep and they’re friendly, but I have to be realistic,” said one of the scientists in First Contact: An Alien Encounter (BBC Two). Far more likely: an indecipherable signal from space, in a language that the human race is incapable of understanding.
That doesn’t sound like promising material for a feature-length drama-documentary, but the BBC hit on a great idea here. The programme imagined what would happen if evidence of extra-terrestrial life was detected, following the narrative arc of a Hollywood film but grounding it with explanations from experts. Popular science is a difficult nut to crack, but this did the job admirably. The experts were engaging – in particular, US astrophysicist Dr Hakeem Oluseyi, who is such a natural communicator that I’d happily see him signed up by the BBC as a replacement for Prof Brian Cox.
David Shukman, the BBC’s former science editor, delivered news reports of an unidentified object travelling towards us at three million kilometres per hour, measuring 200 kilometres long. The programme imagined the ways in which social media would react: memes and TikTok videos, jokes and online conspiracy theories. Someone had great fun coming up with these and they were spot on; of course there will be a tweet that reads: “Who had alien invasion on their apocalypse bingo?”
This was an entertaining way to dress up the story. But the science was fascinating in itself. We must stop thinking of intelligent life as being anything akin to life as we know it; instead, imagine a “technological civilisation” for which time may go much faster or slower than ours. Attempting to send this civilisation a message, said the man from Jodrell Bank, would be like ants trying to communicate with humans.