THIS is what the first alien meeting would be like - VERY LOUD and crying for...

A study has highlighted what meeting an alien civilisation for the first time would be like. David Kipping's research article titled "The Eschatian Hypothesis" presents a hypothesis, according to which humans will most likely first encounter an "extremely loud" alien species, according to a piece in Universe Today. The analysis that will be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society puts forward past examples of cosmic discoveries to claim that the first things to be noticed in the universe have large observational signatures. Kipping says in the piece that the first exoplanets discovered in the early 1990s were orbiting pulsars, giant cosmic lighthouses. This is what makes their detection easier. However, scanning through more than 6,000 exoplanets in the NASA archives shows that merely 10 such exoplanets have been found. This means these exoplanets do not denote the larger exoplanet population.

The same is true for stars. Kipping says we can see about 2,500 stars in the night sky, and one-third of them are evolved giant stars. However, when all the stars in the universe are taken into account, the figure of giant evolved stars is nowhere near one-third. We only see them because of their strong observational signal. Applying the same logic to finding an alien species, Kipping writes, "If history is any guide, then perhaps the first signatures of extraterrestrial intelligence will too be highly atypical, 'loud' examples of their broader class."

This has led him to propose the Eschatian Hypothesis, which states the same thing: that the first confirmed detection of an extraterrestrial technological civilisation is most likely to be unusually “loud”, and it will be "plausibly in a transitory, unstable, or even terminal phase." Kipping believes the "loud signature" would be a result of the civilisation "being in decline." In fact, humans might soon generate the same signature because of climate change, which will be perceived by aliens as "loud" and birthed from our decline. It could also be seen as "a cry for help", Kipping said.