UN Appoints "Alien Contact Ambassador"

joanne

joanne

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srsly? :dubious:

THE United Nations was set today to appoint an obscure Malaysian astrophysicist to act as Earth?s first contact for any aliens that may come visiting.

Mazlan Othman, the head of the UN's little-known Office for Outer Space Affairs (Unoosa), is to describe her potential new role next week at a scientific conference at the Royal Society’s Kavli conference centre in Buckinghamshire.

She is scheduled to tell delegates that the recent discovery of hundreds of planets around other stars has made the detection of extraterrestrial life more likely than ever before - and that means the UN must be ready to coordinate humanity’s response to any “first contact”.

During a talk Othman gave recently to fellow scientists, she said: “The continued search for extraterrestrial communication, by several entities, sustains the hope that some day humankind will receive signals from extraterrestrials.

...

"When we do, we should have in place a coordinated response that takes into account all the sensitivities related to the subject. The UN is a ready-made mechanism for such coordination.”

Professor Richard Crowther, an expert in space law and governance at the UK Space Agency and who leads British delegations to the UN on such matters, said: “Othman is absolutely the nearest thing we have to a ‘take me to your leader’ person.”

However, he thinks humanity’s first encounter with any intelligent aliens is more likely to be via radio or light signals from a distant planet than by beings arriving on Earth. And, he suggests, even if we do encounter aliens in the flesh, they are more likely to be microbes than anything intelligent.
Click to expand...

EDIT: forgot to link source, read more here.
 
1) The UN has an Office of Outer Space Affairs?

2) I want that job.
 
The ambassador actually is a space alien. /birther joke
 
And people say the UN is useless! psshaw
 
Mazlan Othman.
M. Othman.
Mothman.

Oh my god! Our ambassador to them is one of them!
 
I thought this was awesome. I knew there were ongoing negotiations to set up some type of protocol for ET contact. This is one of those "we'll be glad we did it, if we ever need it" type of preparations.

This way we don't have to rely on some streetwise colonel & an intrepid (though beautiful) mathematician to be our legal ambassadors, like the movies would prefer! :)
 
^ Ah, that explains it, thanks for posting:thumbsup:. At first I thought it was a joke, but everyone looked serious about it at the time. So I suppose the real mystery now is how her position in the UNOOSA got misconstrued as "Alien Ambassador" (hmmm journalistic sensationalism tsk tsk tsk :rolleyes:)

I still believe they're out there though, but I highly doubt they have/are/will be coming anytime soon
 
I couldn't see having it be anyone else than like a combo theoretical mathematician and anthropologist.
 
So, if I'm reading this thread correctly, there ISN'T an international group that's thinking about how to handle this if it happens? :eek:

Where's Carl Sagan when you need him? :hammer:
 
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