Making Contact. I'm Jason Horton. I'm Rebecca Leib and this is Ghost Town. If we make contact with extraterrestrials, how would we respond?

The short answer is, we don't know.

It would depend on the country, the people, the type of communication.

When it comes to space communication, there are lots of factors to consider. But a certain group of people

are trying to standardize how extraterrestrial contact would go, creating a kind of

military-like succession of events that would make these

potential encounters productive and as peaceful as possible.

Today on Ghost Town, the alien contact protocols.

From finding traces of water on Mars to the pursuit of Earth-like planets, space exploration strives

to bring us closer to the possibility of alien life. Yet despite more than a century of outreach

humans have yet to connect, at least that we know of. But like most curious space

enthusiasts and experts and hey most humans we wonder we troubleshoot we play out the idea of what might happen if we did

Enter the search for extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute also known as SETI, a nonprofit group, also known as SETI.

A nonprofit group established on February 1st, 1985, SETI is based in Silicon Valley

close to the NASA Ames Research Center.

The mission of this unorthodox research group is to quote, lead humanity's quest to

understand the origins and prevalence of life and intelligence in the universe and share that knowledge with the world.

Currently the only an alien contact protocol in place was created by SETI four years after the group's creation.

I'll read you an abbreviated version of the

tenants of their alien contact protocol whose purpose which has eight distinct

principles is to quote, declare our commitment to conduct this search in a

scientifically valid and transparent manner

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