>> When we meet aliens, it won’t be a friendly encounter nor a conquest: it will be a gold rush. Can we make sure it’s ethical? What are our moral obligations to any alien life we might meet? Which is likely to be microbes or at best tubeworms. Even though it's in our interest as a species not to trash the Earth, we still do it, so it’s hard to believe that we could bring ourselves to care about ruining the environment of another planet. By science writer Lizzie Wade in Aeon Magazine June 2015. Recommended.
>> Metalaw is a concept proposed by legal philosophers to refer to fundamental legal precepts of theoretically universal application to all intelligences, both human and extra-terrestrial. It has been described as “the entire sum of legal rules regulating relationships between different races in the universe”.
> A blog post on metalaw by American attorney Adam Korbitz.
> Wikipedia article on Metalaw
> Metalaw in Popular Culture : In Have Space Suit - Will Travel, a 1958 story by science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein and published two years after Haley's 1956 paper, one of the characters mentions “space law and meta-law."
>> Encountering Life in the Universe: Ethical Foundations and Social Implications of Astrobiology, 2013. Edited by Chris Impey and others. Examines the intersection of scientific research and society to further explore the ethics of how to behave in a universe where much is unknown.
>> The ethics of interstellar alien encounters. Report of a conference in Aug 2013 by Ian O'Neill on news.discovery.com
What are the rules? Learn all you can learn before risking anything … if it seems to be alive leave it alone? To colonize or not to colonize? Are these relevant questions? Only gives brief accounts of the contributions of the main speakers, may contain some useful links.
>> Debating the wisdom of revealing ourselves to the galaxy: active SETI - is it science, dangerous, futile? Two links:-
> Feb 2015 report of an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) session on active SETI
> July 2014 article By Leonard David, Space.com columnist
>> There's more on the "should we broadcast" theme, as well as "what if we find life in the solar system", in this overview of the issues around so-called Active SETI, and the societal implications of searching for life in the solar system, written prior to the 2015 annual meeting of the AAAS.
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