The Einstein Circle “Exploring otherness on Earth and beyond: Integrating perspectives from natural sciences, social sciences and humanities” aims to understand otherness from the perspective of the natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. The aim is to integrate these different perspectives on otherness into a multidisciplinary approach. The collaborative research is intended to lay the foundations for understanding and dealing with the otherness which we will encounter in the future in the form of natural disasters, the colonization of other planets, and extraterrestrial life, addressing questions such as: How will these kinds of events affect our lives and how we see ourselves as human beings? And what role does media communication play in this? The hopes and well-founded expectations of the earth and planetary sciences disciplines that extraterrestrial life and habitats will be discovered in the very near future, along with the threat of natural disasters, pose huge challenges to humanity. Decades of research in the social sciences and humanities on the psychological, social, political, and religious dimensions involved in encountering otherness offer insights that can help us prepare for these scenarios.
