The Contact Paradox: Challenging our Assumptions in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

What will happen if (perhaps when) humanity makes contact with another civilisation on a different planet?

In 1974 a message was beamed towards the stars by the giant Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico, a brief blast of radio waves designed to alert extraterrestrial civilisations to our existence. Of course, we don't know if such civilisations really exist. For the past six decades a small cadre of researchers have been on a quest to find out, as part of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial i...