Tau Zero journalist Larry Klaes has been fascinated by SETI — and its offshoot METI (Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligence) — for a long time now. Here he steps back to look at METI in context, offering up an examination of the advantages of sending signals to the stars and the offsetting risks. We’ve looked at many viewpoints on the subject in these pages since Centauri Dreams came online in 2004. But has Larry hit upon a key fact that may trump the arguments of both sides? Is there something about human nature that makes METI more or less inevitable?
By Larry Klaes
SETI, or the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has been conducted by a variety of professional and amateur scientists since 1960 (or 1924 if you want to count a campaign that year which listened for any radio messages from the presumed natives of Mars). SETI primarily involves the passive listening or looking for transmissions from alien civilizations. More recent SETI projects have also attempted to detect the massive technological activities of really advanced societies in our galaxy and beyond or any probes that might be lurking in our Solar System quietly monitoring humanity.
Our present level of space technology does not allow us to directly explore even the nearest star systems. As for the numerous if often sporadic SETI programs that have been operating around and even beyond our globe for the last fifty years, they rely heavily on either an alien society deliberately signaling us or our own luck in picking up a stray transmission from one of them. Throwing in the fact that our Milky Way galaxy holds hundreds of billions of star systems has some scientists advocating a less passive approach to learning if Earth is the only planet with intelligent life or not in the Cosmos.
Image: The Evpatoria RT-70 radio telescope and planetary radar at the Center for Deep Space Communications in Ukraine. Credit: S Korotkiy.
Dubbed METI, for Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligences, this concept involves transmitting our own messages and beacons into the galaxy to alert alien societies to humanity’s presence to make it easier for them to find us and respond in kind. As might be imagined, there has been plenty of debate over whether METI is the right way for humanity to find alien intelligences or if it will only make a malevolent species aware of Earth as a target of conquest and destruction.
In order to make some determination whether METI is humanity’s path to becoming a productive and progressive part of the galactic community or the route to our doom, let us look at the pros and cons of what also goes by the name of Active SETI.
The Nature of the Universe
The Milky Way is a huge spiral galaxy containing 400 billion star systems spread across 100,000 light years, with most stellar residents of this cosmic island averaging several light years apart. To give the reader an idea just how vast the Milky Way is, if our entire galaxy were shrunk down in scale to where a person could hold the entire Sol system in the palm of their hand, the Milky Way would still be the size of the North American continent.
In addition to the great number of stars and the incredible distances between them, SETI researchers also have to contend with the natural cosmic radio background which drowns out all but the strongest of artificial signals. Interstellar dust, which weaves its way throughout our galaxy, also blocks out many electromagnetic signals and whole regions of the Milky Way from our view.
Image: The galactic centre itself is totally hidden at visible wavelengths by the band of dust which divides the Milky Way along much of its length. The dust lane is only visible because it blots out background stars. Embedded in the dust are many star-forming regions, seen as bright red emission nebulae. Credit: Anglo-Australian Observatory.
Humanity also has no real interstellar capabilities at present. The few deep space probes that have been sent on courses outside our Sol system would take 77,000 years to travel the distance to Earth’s nearest stellar neighbors, the Alpha Centauri star system.
None of the currently active robotic explorers will function more than a mere fraction of that time before expiring. Now it is true that our civilization has been producing a “bubble” of electromagnetic signals for over one century which has formed a 200 light year wide sphere of artificial signals in the galaxy, with Earth at its center. However, most of these transmissions were only meant for residents of our planet and thus were most often unintentionally aimed but briefly at random areas of the sky. They also tend to be rather weak signals, requiring a very large and sophisticated receiver to detect them even just a few light years from Earth. In short, humanity is hardly a standout in the grander cosmic scheme of things.
Why METI Will Benefit Humanity
To combat these odds to make SETI a success, humanity needs to start broadcasting our presence into space, deliberately targeting particular systems and other places in the Milky Way we think may be good places for finding our celestial neighbors. The transmissions could be as simple as a signal that clearly distinguishes itself to be artificial or a detailed introduction about ourselves and our world. Another suggestion is to have interstellar beacons continuously broadcast across the heavens for long periods of time to cover as much of the sky as possible, since we do not exactly know where alien societies may exist or how often they may be conducting their own SETI programs.
Any extraterrestrial intelligences which can find us by our METI programs and respond will likely be more advanced than humanity. This means these ETI will know more and be able to undertake activities which our species cannot do at present. We may therefore learn new things across many disciplines and improve ourselves both socially and technologically. Alien civilizations may also benefit in turn from information we share with them.
Image: Aleksandr Leonidovich Zaitsev, METI advocate and radio astronomer, whose messages to the cosmos include the 1999 and 2003 ‘Cosmic Calls’ from Evpatoria. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
In regards to concerns about alerting to our presence any species that may want to harm humanity, Carl Sagan once postulated that hostile societies will probably either destroy or degenerate themselves before they can ever achieve interstellar flight. This would mean that any ETI who can detect and contact us would be benevolent or at least impartial, with the extra security of being very far away.
Even if some ETI are a threat to our existence and can also move between the suns, we may learn of this danger through the evidence of their own activities and transmissions or from other ETI who know of the threat they pose and are warning those societies they are aware of to beware of this or any other galactic danger. Being forewarned, we may have a chance to defend ourselves or perhaps form an escape plan working with our newfound allies to combat the immediate threat and form a mutual relationship between our worlds later on.
Interstellar travel, especially the kind which can achieve relativistic speeds, may be even more difficult than we currently realize. Certainly it is not obvious from Earth that large numbers of great starships are zipping about the galaxy on a regular basis. At the least this should give us some protection thanks to the incredible distances between star systems. METI would be the way that the sophisticated cultures of the Milky Way communicate, learn about, explore, and trade with each other, all from the relative safety of their home worlds.
Why METI May Doom Humanity
The biggest negative for METI is one that even members of the general public who do not study this subject are aware of through the popular media: Alerting an advanced alien intelligence to our presence in the galaxy could cause them to interact with us in ways that might harm or destroy our society and our species.
Historians and others cite the many examples in human history where the encounter between two different cultures with disparate technological levels often led to either the reduction or destruction of the less sophisticated society, even if the losers outnumbered the superior culture in population size.
Even if the historical encounter had not been one involving conquest or extermination, other factors often contributed to the demise of the native population. As just one example, unfamiliar diseases introduced into the native populations have killed more people than outright warfare in many cases. Missionary ventures and casual introductions have altered target societies so that if they do not disappear altogether, they become assimilated into the dominant culture until their bear little resemblance to their original selves.
Image: Science fiction author David Brin, one of METI’s most persistent critics. His 1983 paper “The Great Silence” offered an early look at the Fermi paradox and its implications for SETI. Credit: Contrary Brin.
All these scenarios and more have been suggested and feared in regards to making the galaxy take notice of humanity. Claims that any ETI who possess sufficient astronomical instruments may already know of Earth and its occupants through our electromagnetic leakage and even biological signatures have been countered by evidence that most of our radio and television signals are too weak on an interstellar scale to be detected by all but the most powerful devices. Even military and planetary radar beams, which are much stronger signals, are not aimed at specific points in space beyond our Sol system, reducing their chances of being noticed by ETI.
While we fret over a potentially dangerous response from the Universe, there is also the possibility that our METI efforts might cause similar harm to alien intelligences that may not be ready to deal with what we might have to say or even that we exist at all. We hope that an ETI will recognize that we are a relatively young society still struggling with our own issues and will leave us alone until we mature enough to properly interact with other galactic residents. However, there is also the possibility that an alien mind may not recognize us as developing and naive and could just as easily either take advantage of our weaknesses or complicate our lives by attempting to “help” us.
The Futility of Fighting Human Nature
One thing is certain, something that has already been happening for a while now: Though it may be prudent to think twice before sending any kind of information about ourselves into the Milky Way, there will always be those who defy the rules even if it is just for the sake of committing the act for itself.
There are now five deep space probes (and their last rocket stages) heading out of our Sol system into the wider galaxy. Four of these automatic vessels have suitable information packages aboard, while the newest member of this exclusive club, New Horizons, is carrying less sophisticated offerings to the Universe, with the exception of some of the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, the man who discovered Pluto in 1930, the dwarf planet that New Horizons is on its way to briefly explore in 2015. The engraved plaques and golden records aboard the twin Pioneer and Voyager probes, respectively, were constructed and placed there largely by people outside the space institutions which made the probes possible, making up for a lack of foresight by the vessels’ creators. The New Horizons team eschewed any such project altogether, treating items for the probe like they were storing them into a small town’s time capsule.
As for METI in the radio realm, deliberate messages have been sent into the galaxy starting in 1962 with a brief Morse code transmission by the Soviet Union and then in 1974 with the more famous Arecibo Message to the globular star cluster Messier 13. There have been a number of other such METI efforts since then. A fair number, such as a series of transmissions from the Evpatoria facility in the Crimea, are serious, but others have been largely publicity stunts, such as hawking science fiction films and snacks. Most of those involved in these projects have not shown any great concern for the potential consequences of revealing ourselves to the Cosmos. This attitude is even stronger when it comes to the electromagnetic leakage our civilization has been producing for over one century now, celestially weak as most of it is.
A number of individuals and groups feel they have been underrepresented or not represented at all by the messages and offerings from past METI efforts, so they have sent their own broadcasts into the galaxy despite protests by others. Aleksandr Zaitsev is among the better known of these individuals who has utilized his position as chief scientist at the Russian Academy of Science’s Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics to send detailed transmissions to a number of nearby star systems using the Evpatoria radio telescope. Zaitsev continues to perform and advocate these METI despite protests by others in various fields. Zaitsev counters that this is just what humanity needs to do if it ever wants to survive and mature as a species.
The fact is that while we must be careful how and if we should represent ourselves to the vast unknown that is the rest of the Universe, there will always be those people who defy the rules and regulations, be it out of a sense of duty to all humanity or just for the sake of rebellion against society. The next question is, do at least some other minds in the galaxy also think and act this way? Is just such a transmission on its way to Earth? What will be the consequences then? Will it make us finally grow up as a species, or will there be panic and doom? I welcome your thoughts on this important matter.
“Zaitsev continues to perform and advocate these METI despite protests by others in various fields”
Can you share with us what are the METI activities that Zaitsev is performing today ? I thougth the last Epvatoria message initiative has been a few years ago. Is Dr. Zaitsev still actively broadcasting through other means ?
So we should do METI because… we will do it anyway?
If we assume that ETI is limited to technologies that operate within c, then any signals we send will take centuries, if not ten’s of millenia to be heard. What use is that unless we are just signaling the cosmic equivalent of “Kilroy was here”? Conversely, if we want to know if life and intelligence exists or has existed, we should focus on receiving data, especially looking for various signatures of life and intelligent life. It may turn out that we could observe civilizations thousands of years old that subsequently die before we could communicate with them. As a concept, METI is analogous to going out on a dark night with a pen flashlight or a clicker, hoping that our signals will be reciprocated by organisms that are awake. That isn’t how zoologists
work, and it shouldn’t be our default mode either.
If advanced intelligences are out in the galaxy it seems more likely that they would have advanced technology to observe us remotely or locally.
So they may know of our existence already, whether of not we signal them. Like our zoologist, they will already have set their hides or traps.
An intelligent animal, would try to look for those hides and traps as evidence that they are being studied.
I’ve always found it odd that, while no one seems opposed to having international consultations about transmitting after we detect a message by standard SETI, some who agree on that want no restrictions on transmitting before we detect them. Surely, this is a blatant inconsistency.
John Billingham and I agree with Hawking that it may be unwise to transmit, at least unless and until the international debate generates consensus findings on the issue. We also advocate a moratorium on METI until an international consensus is reached.
We should be mindful also of the future possibilities for increased leakage from Earth due to beaming power for space industrial purposes, such as power transfer. Examples are transferring energy from Earth-to-space, space-to-Earth, and space-to-space using high power microwave transmitters at power levels ~GW with high directivity, so that isotropic radiated power ~1017 watts, would dwarf by orders of magnitude anything yet emitted into space.
Larry, you quote Saint Carl Sagan as declaring ex cathedra that all aliens capable of interstellar contact will have pacified themselves in order to survive. I remember when he first broached this notion. Not only did his original statement contain a myriad flaws…
… but I can counter your Saganism with one of my own – his declaration that aliens should “do the heavy lifting” when it came to contact, and that humanity would be foolish to beam messages before we knew a lot more. Yes, Sagan said that.
“Interstellar travel, especially the kind which can achieve relativistic speeds, may be even more difficult than we currently realize.”
Well well. The standard position of folks in the SETI/METI community is to assert that stellar travel is hard, and even downright impossible. The reasons for this bias are obvious, if ironic. But notice in your sentence how you disguise your pre-bias on this issue while weighting the platonic “of course” answer to provoke a specific answer from the reader.
In fact, we don’t know anything about relativistic interstellar travel, except that the actual physical equations show it ought to be very much possible… and even cheap/easy, if a species develops Von Neuman self-replicating probes.
In fact, the failure to detect starships or colonies comes right back to Fermi… it is evidence in favor of the notion that something may be very wrong out there. And if something might be wrong, we may be better off listening and learning, than hollering our heads off.
The SETI field seems to bring out the very most immature behavior by very smart people. From Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku to Paul Davies and many others, the tendency is for bright guys to make sweeping declarations about what aliens would… or would not … be like, contemptuously dismissing those who might hold different views. As a result, this “discussion” has consisted of people largely waving their assertions and unbased assumptions around, while sneering at those of others.
For more on one set of assumptions: that advanced extraterrestrials will be “altruistic” – see: http://www.setileague.org/iaaseti/brin.pdf
In this immaturity festival, the METI people are by far the worst. They consider the reasonable concerns expressed by others, to safeguard human destiny with a little precautionary analysis, to be unworthy of their attention. Their motto is that of a geeky punk band:
“LOOK AT MEEEEE!!!!”
My final and most important point, though, is this. I have never opposed METI per-se… so much has I oppose the utter, unbelievable arrogance of individuals who arrogate to shout into the cosmos on behalf of all humanity, without ever submitting their assumptions (or the message content) to discussion by humanity’s best minds, our sages and the general public.
It is this refusal to talk about it first with the rest of us, but rushing to “talk to” fantasized aliens, based on a raft of unexamined assertions, that is dismal, deceitful and borderline neurotic.
For a decade, many of us tried to get Zaitsev and others to present this proposal before commissions of historians, biologists, sociologists physicists, ethicists and representatives of the media and public. The writhing efforts of not only the METI zealots, but their defenders at the SETI Institute, to avoid such open discussion, have been shameful, unscientific and downright rude.
Let’s be plain here. No discussion of “the pros and cons of METI” is honest in that context. The issue, the only issue, is “why are these people skulking around, using taxpayer dollars to perform ego-stunts, while refusing to discuss it openly, in advance.”
That refusal to face peer-review and open appraisal by humanity’s best sages is what seals the nail in the coffin of these fools’ scientific credibility. It is the issue. It is (let me repeat) the only issue on the table.
For more, see: http://lifeboat.com/ex/shouting.at.the.cosmos
It *is* human nature to seek contact, absolutely. Does that mean though that we should press ahead without giving it due consideration?
I don’t think any of those who are critical of METI are saying we should never ever transmit in the future. All they’re asking for is discussion and debate, to make sure we understand what the consequences of METI could be before we embark on a programme of transmitting. In the meantime, we have to increase our search for signs of intelligence amongst the stars – not just radio SETI, but optical SETI, searches for Dyson spheres, studies of black holes where advanced civilisations may be hanging out (see Clement Vidal’s recent paper, http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.4362) and anything else we can think of. Let’s see if we can find a few of these civilisations first, and then consider whether we should contact them.
I also find the argument that “people are going to do it anyway, it’s impossible to stop them” kinda weak. We don’t know if a moratorium will work until we at least try. And the moratorium isn’t intended to silence the debate, just to call off the transmissions until we as a civilisation agree we are ready. We want to encourage the discussion, and a lot of people may not even realise the nuances of the debate, so let’s try and bring it more into the public eye. Educating people about the issues, the pros and cons, may be the best deterrence, and also the best way to move forward together.
One day I want humankind to reach out into the Galaxy and make contact with whoever, if anyone, is out there. But only when we’re ready. I think one of the questions we should be asking is, how will we know when we’re ready? How do we get from where we are now, to a position where we feel confident to announce ourselves officially to the Galaxy? Currently, there’s no kind of roadmap, no plan to make sure we do it properly, no unified direction. Perhaps there should be. Maybe the debate over METI could help set a new, wider, more inclusive cross-discipline SETI agenda to take us forward and overcome recent troubles, such as those that have hit the ATA recently, the complete absence of SETI on the NSF’s decadal review, and the lack of young researchers coming into SETI.
I’m afraid I find this debate quite unrealistic. Communicating over an interstellar distance requires either enormous transmitter power, or extremely precise pointing. The first is ruled out by economics, the second by the fact that we have no idea of the location of a possible receiver.
The way to make progress is to continue to do what we are already doing: Kepler, New Horizons, Icarus. Explore, and see what we find. And, as Alex Tolley says above, if the aliens are out there and have any interest in us whatever, the overwhelming probability is that they’ll know about us before we know about them. But that surely won’t come by signalling, but by their version of Icarus arriving in our Solar System and observing us relatively close-up.
A question, please: what is the transmitter power of the Yevpatoria antenna, what is the angular beam width, and what therefore the range to which it could transmit a signal (to a receiver tuned to the correct frequency and pointing at the Solar System) before that signal is lost in the galactic and cosmic background noise?
Yes, let Zaitsev broadcast to his heart’s content. The chance of his message attracting cosmic conquistadors to Earth is about in line with the chance that the Large Hadron Collider will generate a black hole that swallows up the entire Earth, or that computers will grow so clever that they’ll turn around and exterminate the human species, or any of the other things we love to worry about.
david said on May 6, 2011 at 10:54:
“Zaitsev continues to perform and advocate these METI despite protests by others in various fields”
Can you share with us what are the METI activities that Zaitsev is performing today ? I thougth the last Epvatoria message initiative has been a few years ago. Is Dr. Zaitsev still actively broadcasting through other means ?
See the Active SETI page on Wikipedia for a list of all known METI projects, including the ones by Dr. Zaitsev:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_SETI
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Alex Tolley said on May 6, 2011 at 11:05:
“So we should do METI because… we will do it anyway?”
The intention of how you are interpreting my words is not quite what I meant. As an example, while criminal activity is not acceptable in modern society and many laws and police systems have been set up to deal with such behavior, the fact is that a large segment of people in almost every society continue to commit crimes despite these acts being immoral, unethical, made illegal by the state, and enforced by uniformed and armed officers of the law.
The same goes for METI. While there is no actual, enforcable law at present against signalling into the galaxy, many do oppose it on the grounds that it may be dangerous for humanity. However, as you have already read, there is a segment of society that not only does not see it as spelling doom for us, but the best way to get humanity to mature as a species by finding other intelligences in the Cosmos.
It is simply not possible to stop everyone from doing whatever they want. Even the strictest dictatorships always have their share of dissenters despite the risks. The same goes for METI and some day actual groups who will not want to be confined to the Sol system.
I personally find it quite amusing that those who seem to be most desperate to contact other species are so resistant to talk to their own about whether it might be a good idea or not.
Ljk I think that the whole point that Alex Tolley was trying to convey was the fundamental difference in jurisdiction between international law and national law. To that purpose I would like to define a country in an atypical way to make his point even plainer.
A country is the smallest unit that is legally entitled to kill combatants from another group for purely political reasons. Thus to understand the nature of human society is to understand how simple problem like bringing peace to the Middle East are in comparison to establishing what some nations and populaces might see as an planetary Thought Police.
David Brin, don’t you find it a little bit strange that most of us disparage a METI group simply because it implicitly adopts the motto “LOOK AT MEEEEE!!!!”? Could this be because we have had an exaggerated respect for diplomats from antiquity to modern times? Diplomats are backed by the potential of being able to dramatically impact on our mortality and wealth, others who purport to offer our embassy do not.
Would then our disgust at special interest groups transmitting messages be shared by many other ETIs, or might they typically laud such efforts, and isn’t the mindset of alien intelligences more applicable than our own here.
Will we ever lay to rest the hoary fallacy
that any of our interstellar probes will ever be found
by anyone but our descendents?
Their radar cross-section makes them totally undetectable
from even puny distances (what, a few AU?)
let alone telling one from an ordinary rock.
Unless we go after them, they will be alone forever:
so vast is interstellar space that their accidental discovery is impossible,
even after ten billion years.
Instead imagine an artifact that could definitely get radar-detected:
Large corner-cube reflectors
(such as a set of 8 trihedrals formed by 3 mutually perpendicular flat squares)
will have immense cross-sections (4th power of the aperture)
that are limited only by the flatness of their surfaces.
With a one kilometer aperture and a 1-cm wavelength,
its cross section would be planet-sized,
with a gentle chaotic tumbling to ensure detection from any direction.
At 1% c it would cross the Galaxy in only ten million years,
its velocity vector advertising our location to any exo-astronomer.
At least this won’t be done by amateurs on a low budget.
Hi All
There’s always the 3rd Option – that ETIs already know we exist and are studying us, in our natural pre-Contact state, because that’s the most information rich approach to take. David B. mentions vNMs spreading across the Galaxy, which indicates at least in my mind, the relative ease of spying on the Galaxy at large, especially if a network using gravitational lensing can be successfully developed to allow massive bandwidth for tiny power requirements.
As for cosmic skid-marks and similar techno-clumsiness, that’s technology we understand NOW, but is surely not the limits of the possible. Subtlety surely is more what we can expect from ETIs billennia ahead of us.
ljk: I’m not sure that analogy to criminal activity really works. For a start, there is always discussion about our laws. What should the speed limit be? Which, if any, drugs should be legalised? Should euthanasia be legal? And so on and so forth. And yes, people try to bend or break the rules, but we still try to stop them. And sometimes they might have a point and we change the law. But with regards to METI it’s like if someone decided that the highway speed limit should be 150mph and then was free to go ahead and drive at that speed, despite protestations from road safety groups, simply because they wanted to. Maybe one day car travel will be safe enough to drive at that speed , with computer navigators or whatever, but now. Same goes for METI. If we allow everybody to simply do what they want, then you’ve got anarchy. In reality in a democratic land we aim to make laws, make rules, through the medium of discussion, consensus and the consideration of people’s well being. Any decision made about METI should be conducted in a similar fashion, but at present there seems to be an impasse to discussion. Simply saying “people are going to do it anyway” is not a reason to avoid the debate.
“The same goes for METI and some day actual groups who will not want to be confined to the Sol system.”
I don’t want us to be confined to the Sol system and neither, I suspect, does David Brin, Michael Michaud and others concerned about METI. Surely the whole point of Centauri Dreams and the Tau Zero Foundation is to look to a future where we do expand to other stars – none of us would be posting on here if we thought otherwise.
I suppose you could lump me in with the anti-METI people, but just as David Brin said above, I’m not anti-METI per se, I’m anti-METI at this time; I don’t think we’re ready. Seth Shostak argued at the Royal Society last year that those who want METI shut down are advocating a policy by which we can never announce ourselves to the Galaxy, that we must shut down all our radar, never explore beyond the Solar System, never build Dyson swarms that could be detectable from afar, and that this state of affairs must remain in place forever. But to me that’s a false argument – the point of those critical of METI is that we should have discussion first, learn what we can about contact from our own history, and try and find out a little bit more about what’s out there before making a democratic decision whether to transmit or not. And i fwe decide ‘no’ to METI, it doesn’t mean we can’t review our decision on a regular basis as new information comes to light, and when we find ourselves ready. Exactly how we reach that decision is still uncertain, I admit, and it’s something I think we need to discuss. But to argue that those critical of METI are advocating we should never expand beyond our Solar System, that we should never ever transmit in the future, is a strawman’s argument.
I’m concerned about METI but my views may change as I learn more. I’m trying to be open-minded to this possibility (indeed, something Dr Zaitsev said on these pages a few months ago struck a chord with me – in the Middle Ages sailors thought that monsters lurked in the oceans beyond what was on their maps; it was the fear of the unknown, and we have to be careful not to make that mistake). I’m going to be trying to talk to historians, anthropologists, philosophers, astronomers, evolutionary biologists and anyone else who may have a useful viewpoint. Maybe what they can tell us will change my mind, or maybe they will cement my views, but the point is I’m open to a fair and honest debate, and I want to bring that debate as much into the public consciousness as I can. We can learn so much from it, not just about ET but about ourselves. To bury our heads in the sand and try and avoid the discussion would be a crying shame.
METI could be the bravest and ultimately most rewarding thing we as a species could do, or it could lead to disaster, or myriad other consequences sandwiched between those two extreme ends of the spectrum. We don’t know, but at the very least it deserves discussion to see if we can make an educated decision before transmitting.
To answer my own post above as best I can. Consider the “Message From Earth”, broadcast from Yevpatoria in October 2008 and targeted at Gliese 581, a red dwarf with a possibly Earth-like planet, situated 20.5 light-years from the Sun.
What was the power of the transmission? Not stated in any of the references I’ve checked. The cost is given (Wikipedia) as $40,000. If all this was spent on electricity at 10 cents/kWhr, then Madgett, Zaitsev and company could have used up to 400,000 kWhr, which over the 4.5 hours given for the transmission would have required a power (ignoring losses) of about 90 MW.
The effective area of the Yevpatoria dish is given (Wikipedia again) as 2500 m^2. The beamwidth would then be 0.22 degrees, or 1.16 x 10^-5 sr of solid angle.
What was the bandwidth? Again, I cannot find a reference for this. Assume it was the 2.5 kHz required for voice transmission. Then the minimum detectable signal at the receiver would need to be about 5 x 10^-19 W (assuming an irreducible noise temperature of 15K).
The distance targeted was 20.5 x 9.46 x 10^15 metres. Then the minimum area of the receiving antenna works out at 2425 m^2, so effectively another Yevpatoria dish with the same beamwidth — a psychologically plausible solution which justifies the assumptions made above.
Thus the message was sent on the assumption that an astronomer (or a cosmic conquistador — sorry, a peaceful alien philosopher) on one of the planets of the Gliese 581 system would have a twin of the Yevpatoria antenna pointed within one tenth of a degree at the Sun (and monitoring the correct frequency and bandwidth) at some point during a 4.5-hour period in early 2029. No doubt highly plausible.
But for us not yet to have received a visit from Gliesian interstellar probes, but their radio astronomy to be at least as good as ours, their civilisation would have to be in the same roughly thousand-year developmental bracket as ours is now after 7 to 11 bn years (Wikipedia datum re age of star) of evolution totally independent of Earth.
I claim that Oli Madgett and Aleksandr Zaitsev would have got better odds on the jackpot had they spent their $40,000 on national lottery tickets.
Caveat: my understanding of the physics is quite wobbly here (it is based on George W. Swenson, “Intragalactically Speaking”, Scientific American, July 2000, p.34-37). I would greatly appreciate correction of the above calculation from people with better physics than mine.
The usual snore-worthy talking points by the usual parties… but the analogy of alien contact to its human equivalents is false (which makes most pro- and anti-METI arguments equally irrelevant).
To Keith Cooper specifically: what would constitute “being ready”? And how do you find out “a little bit more about what’s out there first” except by looking? As in, you know, sending probes of various kinds — which are obvious telltale signs of a sentient technological species?
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And how do you find out “a little bit more about what’s out there first” except by looking? As in, you know, sending probes of various kinds — which are obvious telltale signs of a sentient technological species?
——–
Looking does not necessarily involve physically going there or sending messages and getting a reply back. That is like saying we can’t find planets around other star systems without first going to those star system. Yet we know of several hundred such exoplanets and have yet to visit any of those systems. We can find, and study, ETI, assuming any exist, the same way. Then, equipped with knowledge, we can make decisions.
Although I’ve stated that we want to be the higher tech culture when we make contact, I agree with Stephen Ashworth, Astronist and others that anything METI is doing, or planning to do, is highly unlikely to be noticed. This changes, I believe, if we can consider faster than light communication.
I would be interested in hearing what the current thinking is on instantaneous communication.
@ David Brin
The issue, the only issue, is “why are these people skulking around, using taxpayer dollars to perform ego-stunts, while refusing to discuss it openly, in advance.”
Every day people all over the planet do this with their prayers to their respective gods. We don’t worry about this in the METI discussion because we assume that without technology, those prayers cannot possibly be heard. Now suppose a church in the US funds their own transmitter to beam their prayers to the galaxy. Are you seriously suggesting that the US would ignore the free speech and religious freedom guarantees in the constitution? Half of Congress might even applaud them and block the FCC from shutting them down. Now how do maintain our silence?
Any advanced ETI out there is not going to be fooled by us doing the equivalent of animals remaining stationary to avoid attracting a predator’s attention.
Astronist would do well to read my complete analysis of Zaitsev’s ‘messages’, in ‘Costs and Difficulties of Large-Scale ‘Messaging’, and the Need for International Debate on Potential Risks’. It’s at arXiv:1102.1938.
I concluded that Gliese 581 (20.5 light years) will not hear it, if they have our level of radio telescopes, even at a low data rate of 100bits/sec. The range for reception is 3 light years for S/N=10.
The content of Zaitsev’s messages will not be recoverable as messages by ETI if their radio telescopes are comparable to ours. To be observable, the receiving area must be greater than the SKA we’re contemplating building, and then only at low data rates.
All other messages are weaker in EIRP than Cosmic Call 1, in many cases much less powerful, so are less observable.
Part of the mis-estimate by Astronist is his guess that the Yevpatoria radio telescope transmits at 90 MW power. The peak power it has is actually 600 times lower, 0.15 MW, and typically doesn’t operate at that level. The assumed bandwidth is also way off.
As I have said before, to make it easier for the scientific community to ascertain the range and other properties of broadcasts from Earth, I suggest that all those radiating provide clear documentation. All such radiations should be described completely enough to determine their delectability as a function of assumed ETI technologies. Such descriptions should be required to meet peer-reviewed publication standards. None of the ‘message’ senders have done so.
Mark: “I would be interested in hearing what the current thinking is on instantaneous communication.”
First you’ll have to explain what you mean by “instantaneous communication” since there is no absolute definition of simultaneity in spacetime physics. However, I expect that no matter which definition you propose the answer will be “can’t be done” or, if you’re especially optimistic, you can wildly speculate about what we don’t know yet.
I have often wondered if a large solar sail in orbit around our sun, held in its orbit by pressure and gravity of the sun, would be visible to alien Kepler’s.
Further follow ups should show the “planet” to in fact be a solar sail. For example the “planet” should be invisible to the Doppler techniques of detecting planets. The high albedo of the sun facing side could also be a hint.
The sail could also be made to go transparent altering its orbit and the frequency with which the alien Kepler would view the “planet” thus allowing simple messages to be sent.
Something I thought of as I read this article.
” they become assimilated into the dominant culture until their bear little resemblance to their original selves.”
I don’t understand why this is considered a negative?
“Claims that any ETI who possess sufficient astronomical instruments may already know of Earth and its occupants through our electromagnetic leakage and even biological signatures have been countered by evidence that most of our radio and television signals are too weak on an interstellar scale to be detected by all but the most powerful devices.”
Ok, that may* explain our radio signals, what about the light? Lowly Earthlings are detecting distant atmosphere’s. Aliens would be doing the same. Especially any aliens who might detect METI, their devices already pointed here.
* I say may, because any ETI you fear, would have such advanced technology to appears as magical to us, therefore you couldn’t actually rule out that they could detect our TV/radio. Remember these aliens are so advanced, they will somehow kill us from 1,000 light years away.
Wouldn’t von Neumann machines be razing villages in every solar system already given the age of the universe? Chaotic evil aliens will be sending relavistic rockets here as soon as they detect oxygen or industry. Those signals are already 200 light years out.
Those of you mortally afraid of METI now, will probably never change your mind, because you will always have phantom magicians thousands of years ahead of you. Time doesn’t change their advantage, they will always be ahead of us. (Remember if you don’t detect them, they must be using cloaking devices.) So there will never be consensus. Perhaps a simple majority to end this? (Until the debate comes back up.)
Personally I think METI in it’s current form (too small) is pointless. Where was the worldwide democratic concensus vote on the dangers of CERN? Or sending humans to the Moon? Return missions from Mars or any other object (hey an Antarctic core sample could unleash prehistoric doom!) You might as well forbid the rest of the world from industry or breathing while you’re at it, but you’re already 200 years too late.
@Ron S;
Instantaneous communication evolves quantum entanglement, or what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance”. Here is one description :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem
Like most explanations it concludes that no actual information can be transmitted because of the uncertainly principle.
However, many years ago I read an article in Scientific American that argued that photons are emitted in pairs and if one is annihilated so is the other, instantaneously. This seems to get around the uncertainly of a simple measurement. So an observer slightly father away from a star than someone annihilating photons emitted from that star can instantly get that information.
This is way beyond me, so before I invest too much verbiage looking like an idiot, I was wondering if more work has been done in this area.
James, thanks very much for ref to your article — exactly the sort of help I was hoping for. I’ve got a copy now, and will enjoy wrestling with your equations!
Athena, I do love to hear your cutting tone of voice. But all the same I’d like to hear more about why you think the analogy of human-alien contact with European-indigenous-peoples contact is false. Maybe you’ve written about it on Starship Reckless before now?
Mark Presco and Ron S: I think Mark may be referring to using tachyons for communication. An interesting possibility, if they exist: theoretically a tachyon could cross arbitrarily large distances instantaneously in a given observer’s frame of reference.
I’ve been following the thread of the discussion concerning the possibility of contact with alien life. Recently I came across an article in the magazine titled “Reptiles”. Reptiles by its name is obviously concerned with snakes, etc. In this month’s issue it discusses an animal called the “Amazon Milk Frog”.
Allow me if you will to quote a short portion from the magazine; ” … humidity should be maintained above 70 percent. This can be accomplished by daily misting of the terrarium using a hand mister. Use distilled or reverse-osmosis water in your mister to avoid deposits of lime scale, but do not use distilled water in water bowls because it can be harmful for a frog to sit in such pure water (it puts osmotic pressure on the outer layers of the frog’s skin). ”
Why, you may ask, am I speaking about such matters in an astronomy forum ? The reason is quite simple, as you can see by the above short paragraph – life is extraordinarily delicate phenomenon. While the article dealt with a particular type of amphibian, the true import is that life on Earth exist in the very fragile band. A little too hot a little too cold, are what ever is the situation and its goodbye life form. I was struck by the fact that this seems to be true across the spectrum of known life.
Given these constraints (and I’m sure that others will argue against my position) in strikes me that life in general much less intelligent life will be only extremely small part if not actually zero in our known universe. This extraordinary balance of all conditions required to set up a life giving planet makes me feel that the answer to the Fermi paradox is that there’s no one to come a calling or to listen in to us. That’s why I believe our searches have come up to empty handed.
To anyone who wants to read more: Larry Klaes also has a series of three articles on this subject hosted on Athena Andreadis’s site:
http://www.starshipnivan.com/blog/?p=3134#comments
Together with a great deal of absorbing comment, merging into discussions about movie aliens and plots, such as they are.
This whole debate is pretty comical imo. We literally don’t know what we’re talking about – in these matters we’re as ignorant as pre-Copernicans trying to understand the motions of planets — but of course that doesn’t stop people from having strong opinions and arguing as if the fate of humanity depends on them.
Anyway, since everyone else is giving their (essentially random) opinions, I’ll give mine. There’s nobody out there! There’s no sign of intelligence life because we’re the first, in one particular instance of a multiverse in which the probability of intelligent life is essentially zero. We’re a total cosmic fluke. Look for signals, send signals, it doesn’t matter, so you can stop worrying! This seems far closer to an Occam’s razor solution to Fermi’s paradox than thinking there are some invisible interstellar Nazis waiting to annihilate uppity species.
In any case, it’s not clear that non-existence is worse than existence, so I for one am wiling to gamble with the survival of earth-based life just for the chance that I or my descendants might get to meet these awesome cosmic villains. Like the old saying goes, nothing ventured, nothing lost!
I think our fear of broadcasting our presence to the galaxy can partially be explained by the analogy of shouting in the middle of a jungle — undoubtedly you’d have a strong innate hesitation to do so (unless you’re doomed anyway) because you don’t know what (if anything) else is out there or how it may react to you (the possibilities being: ignore, help, or hurt).
That said, my view of METI is that we (the scientific community) should go ahead and announce ourselves to the galactic neighborhood. I say this because (and in agreement with certain points made in the article) as technology improves and becomes more affordable, there are inevitably going to be certain individuals that take the matter into their own hands and broadcast THEIR OWN messages into space. So, the scientific community has but two choices, (1) let a few renegade individuals become the spokes-people of Earth or (2) take control of the message and let the scientific community dictate what humanity sends to the stars. Besides, I don’t know about you guys, but I REALLY REALLY want to know if anyone else is out there — and just silently listening may not be the quickest path to finding out.
Hi Folks;
I am in favor of METI programs.
Another way of looking for ETI would envolve trying to detect the signature of thermodynamic processes with regard to space craft propulsion systems. A space craft that could general relativistically distort space time to its advantage might give off some tell tale signs.
For extreme gamma factor translationally inertial space craft, the occasional collision of the craft with asteroids or interstellar space rocks and bolders would result in the flood of gamma rays jetting out in one direction due to momentum conservation.
At Electroweak Unification space craft nucleon energies, heavier generations of quarks would be produced and perhaps even strangelets, some species of the latter of which might be stable, or at least meta stable.
Studying the energy and species spectra of the decay products of jets so formed might result in a discernment of space craft collisions.
One thing to watch for in particular is the production of gamma ray and neutrino jets matching profiles of high gamma factor space craft collision.
Any stable forms of bottomonium, charmonium, and Higgsinium that might occasionally show up un-announced might imply such high gamma factor collisions.
We as the civilization of humanity are explorers by nature and as evidenced by the very fact that each one of us of mature age has wondered in awe at the clear midnight star lit sky, we are naturally inclined to be open to the infinite. We seek ever to climb the next hill.
However, I agree that caution is in order when doing METI. In my own opinion, there should be established a low key and quiet program to study methods of defense against any hostile ETI civilizations. The program should be quiet without much external visible noise so as not to draw attention to itself from any ETI that might be listening to our electromagnetic emmissions.
Ironically, such a defense program migth garner respect from any ETI civilizations that might pose a threat. However, when doing METI, we should likely braodcast, not just scientific and technological information about our selves, but also love stories, romance stories, family stories, and the like so that any ETI can see that we are sensitive and bondable creatures with a sense of interdependence. In showing our emotional vulnerability, we may engender nurturing interaction from ETI civilizations that might otherwise be hostile.
I feel that any ETI civilization would react strongly in a positive way to such displays of inter-personal vulnerability as they would likely have adopted such cultural, religious,philosophical, social, and political paradigms. Otherwise, they would likely have done themselves in by their own technology.
I am not saying that we should portray ourselves as emasculated wimps, but rather we should demonstate the good side of our humanity in METI programs.
To Athena Andreadis:
To answer the question ‘how do we find out what’s out there’, we need to fall back onto astronomy. Radio SETI is just the start. Some commentators have described the shutdown of the Allen Telescope Array as shutting down SETI altogether, but there is so much more we can be doing.
So, this is what I think we should do (others might have other/better ideas, it would be great to hear different viewpoints on this): let’s expand SETI beyond the radio, into the optical and infrared regimes, searching for laser pulses, Dyson spheres and whatnot. At the moment a great deal of astronomy with big telescopes is focusing on surveys; there’s the SDSS, WISE has just completed a one-year mission with much of the data still to be analysed, there’s the VISTA infrared survey telescope at ESO, the ATA when it starts running again, planet-finding telescopes such as SuperWASP and Kepler, the likes of Herschel and Hubble conduct surveys often in collaboration with ground-based observatories, and in the next decade or so we’ll hopefully see the Gaia astrometry mission, the WFIRST infrared and microlensing space telescope, JWST, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, ALMA and the SKA, and probably more I’ve missed out. Together these will produce immense amounts of data (the SKA alone, when constructed and fully operational, is expected to produce on the order of 10^15 bits of data per second). While none of them are dedicated SETI instruments the data can still be analysed for SETI purposes, looking for anomalies, just like Richard Carrigan has done searching the IRAS data for evidence of Dyson spheres. For instance, perhaps evidence of astro-engineering, or terraforming, or artificial planetary transits or unnatural activity around black holes could be uncovered by an army of PhD students going through all that data.
Furthermore, our search for habitable exoplanets will step up. Kepler is just the beginning. JWST, if it ever gets launched, and ESO’s planned European-Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) in Chile, as well as the Thirty Metre Telescope to be built in Hawaii, may be able to detect biosignatures in planetary atmospheres, and image the planets themselves. It has been estimated that JWST could detect carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an Earth-like planet from 85 hours of observations, out to a distance of 22 parsecs. And of course, Spitzer has already detected some of the chemistry occurring in the atmospheres of hot jupiters from studying secondary eclipses. The Terrestrial Planet Finder space mission is still on pause for probably at least the next decade until the requisite technologies are developed, according to the NSF’s Decadal review, but that might finally happen in the 2020s.
So we have, or will have within 10-20 years, many powerful tools at our disposal to search the Galaxy without having to build interstellar probes (which isn’t likely to happen for a long time anyway). If we put our minds to it, if we are willing to finance it, it is possible to have a really good search of the Galaxy. Now imagine the following scenario: biosignatures are discovered on a terrestrial planet a few dozen light years away; further observations also show evidence of industrial pollution in the atmosphere too. Perhaps SETI detects radio leakage from the planet. Then we find other planets with atmospheres containing the same spectral fingerprints, perhaps in the same planetary system, perhaps around nearby stars. Evidence of colonisation and terraforming perhaps? Paul wrote a few days ago about binary star systems being a great incentive for advanced civilisations to make that journey to another star; if we found very similar biosignatures and atmospheric pollution on planets orbiting stars within proximity of one another, it could be evidence that a civillisation there has access to interstellar flight, and is interested in colonisation. That could factor into whether we want to signal them and alert them to our presence. On the other hand we might just find life on a single planet, with no evidence of space travel. But just from making those observations – all feasible in the next few decades – we would have learnt a huge amount about who we would be dealing with if we were to transmit to them.
This is all speculation of course, I’m just saying there are things we can learn about life in the Galaxy just by staying right here on Earth, and watching silently and patiently.
As for the second part, when will we know it is right to open communication? If we can gather information about who else is out there we can make an informed judgement; that obviously helps. Having an open-minded debate about it here on Earth will also help inform us. But also, there will be a general maturing of the field, we’ll slowly but surely grow more confident about talking about the possibilities, and instinctively we may just agree that the time is right. But maybe there are other steps we have to take first, that we haven’t broached in this discussion yet?
One other point, you suggest that the analogy of alien contact to human equivalents is false, but you don’t back this up with any evidence. You may be right – it is this kind of thing that needs discussing – so I’d be interested in your thoughts as to why you think our past history of contact cannot help us.
Finally, I disagree with you about the discussion being snore-worthy, but you may have a point when you say that we’re all making the same arguments over and over again – and I’m conscious that in my own posts I end up repeating myself. Unfortunately it is the nature of the discussion. People’s views are entrenched, no one is budging, and the debate tends to go around and around in circles. But articles like Larry Klaes’ article, and the subsequent discussion, are important to at least try to get people thinking about this issue and perhaps, maybe for someone to come up with new insights to advance the debate. I think the METI articles on Centauri Dreams are helping to do that.
Apologies for the long-windedness of this post.
I think the biggest argument for METI, is that the more we do METI and think about METI the better our SETI will get.
Keith Cooper: I’d like you to be more specific about “evidence of industrial pollution” in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. What particular molecular species might we be able to detect at a multi-light-year distance that has no conceivable geological or biological explanation and must therefore be an industrial product? Certainly not CO2.
I think you’re making a highly improbable speculation. Firstly, the proportion of the Galaxy we can examine in that sort of detail from Earth is minuscule – you’re talking of looking out 22 parsecs into a disk of stars that’s a thousand times larger. Secondly, you’re thinking of finding within that range a civilisation which is about at our own stage of development: old enough to have large-scale industry and interplanetary spaceflight, still too young to have any kind of probes or colonisation ships in our own Solar System. I would suggest that this is a window of one or a few thousand years or so in the life of a developing civilisation, and that such a short window is extremely unlikely to coincide with the same window in our own development, particularly when restricting our view to relatively nearby stars.
In order to make SETI / METI work, you have to assume that civilisations reach our own level of development or go just a little further, and then switch to a zero-growth, zero-innovation mode of society, and stay in that mode for a substantial period of time, say on the order of millions of years. Given the vast resources available for industrial growth in our own Solar System, and given the historical fact that industrialism and growth are intimately linked, I don’t believe this view is credible.
There could be someone out there within detection range. But when you consider the vastness of both space and time, it is incredibly unlikely. Let’s get on with our own development (that will get us to the stars in due course, with Icarus and its successors) and not worry too much about looking for aliens.
Mark, I think you didn’t really understand my point. What you are doing is conflated two different things: simultaneity and X, where X is some unproven or speculative phenomenon or technology that could enable so-called instantaneous communications. You may want to read up more on special relativity to better understand this, but for the present let me try a very simple hypothetical situation to illustrate the issue.
Consider communicators A and B separated by 1 light year. By “light year” we mean that if A emits a photon and B detects it and then immediately emits a photon, that photon will be detected by A two years after emitting its photon.
Keep in mind that the photons themselves, were they able to experience time (which they cannot) would experience instantaneous transmission; that is, no interval between emission and absorption. The passage of time is only noticed by massive slow pokes like us. Actually, talking about proper time for a photon is a real no-no so we could equivalently consider protons emitted from a high-energy particle accelerator, since the arrival time in comparison to a photon is nearly the same.
So here is the first item: you have to keep separate in your mind the measure of the round-trip propagation delay from the proper time experienced by the carrier of the signal.
The second item is that there is no concept of a universal clock that measures events at A and B to be simultaneous. In fact we don’t even care about this because — third item — we aren’t really interested in how much proper time the signal carrier experiences but rather the time that A and B experience in their respective reference frames between transmission of a message and a response to that message.
With that stuff out of the way let’s consider a simple communications scenario between A and B. A transmits a message using radio (photons). B receives the message. Don’t think about clocks at this point! Now the trick for B is to transmit a message in a way that A receives it, according to A’s clock, that is immediately about A’s transmission ended.
What B needs is for some unspecified or magical transmission system that will enable this, and allow A to detect the message with a suitable receiver. Except that we have a problem with causality. If B were to transmit a message via convention radio (as A did), the propagation delay experienced by A is two years. That won’t do. So what B needs is some time of time machine that will send that message on a space-like world line that will arrive at just the right point in spacetime for A to experience a real-time conversation.
Unfortunately we have no such magic, and we don’t know if it is in concept even possible. The interesting thing here is that even with this one-way magic communications leg it is possible for A and B to have a real-time conversation. It also does not matter in the slightest how much proper time is experienced by the signal carrier traveling from B to A. You could use a carrier pigeon (wearing a very small space suit) if you could, say, have it fly through a worm hole.
Talking about entangled photons, tachyons, worm holes or whatever is a bit of distraction until you properly characterize this return path communications problem, and therefore what criteria need to be met to enable real-time, two-way communications. One-way communications doesn’t really count since there is nothing real-time about in any meaningful sense.
Of course once you’ve hit on a way to violate causality you can in principle establish communication between any two points in spacetime no matter far apart in space and time they are. Just be sure to precisely tune the time-traveling signal so that it arrives at the correct time on A’s clock. It really wouldn’t do to have the reply arrive an hour early!
Sorry for the long reply. Hope this helps. If anyone wants to correct or elaborate on any point, please do.
To Phil:
>I think the biggest argument for METI,
>is that the more we do METI and think
>about METI the better our SETI will get.
Please read
http://arxiv.org/abs/0711.2368
about “…close interrelation between Searching for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI)…”
>Zaitsev counters that this is just what humanity needs
>to do if it ever wants to survive and mature as a species
in this arxiv.org paper:
Rationale for METI
http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.0910
While I personally would prefer that any messages and such sent into the Universe from humanity have a combination of usefulness about them plus a sense of dignity – after all, we wouldn’t want any cosmic neighbors to think we might be biological creatures who have only recently become somewhat civilized – how exactly is this going to be enforced? I ask this question both literally and rhetorically.
Whether Dr. Zaitsev’s actions are ultimately right or wrong, how would one actually stop him from conducting more METI programs? Send a military force into Evpatoria and shut down the radio telescope? What will anyone seriously do if China decides to do METI with the giant radio telescopes they plan on building in their western desert region? Those instruments will be bigger and more powerful than Arecibo.
With the current geopolitical atmosphere, if a group of foreigners (especially Americans) push the Russian government to constrain Dr. Zaitsev, a citizen of Mother Russia, it doesn’t take too much imagination to see them respond with “How many more radio telescopes do you need, Alex?”
Who will be qualified to handle the necessary delicate negotiations to regulate METI so that they don’t end up creating even more broadcasts into the galaxy out of sheer national pride and spite? Will they be any more effective than the United Nation treaties on Outer Space, which state among other things that no one nation or group can own the celestial bodies of the Sol system. Should China and Russia place manned bases on the Moon, for example, what will be done if they claim those regions for their own? And what about when corporations finally wake up and realize the potential megawealth out there? I can see the years of wrangling lawyers and miles of red tape already.
Physical deep space probes seem even less urgent when it comes to what they carry on board. No one outside of a few people (including myself) seemed very phased when the New Horizons team decided not to seriously bother with any kind of real information package for their probe, even though that vessel will probably survive for many millions of years drifting in the galaxy. You can say that no one will likely ever find such little machines in the vast void of space, but since the odds are not impossible, any more than a radio message into that same realm, why shouldn’t they be just as regulated and raise no less concern?
I am also bothered by the deeper implications of controlling METI. Such rules may be ineffective when it comes to big totalitarian nations, but if others can be stopped, where will it end? Will everyone with a transmitter have to be licensed and monitored so that they never even inadvertently leak a signal into space? These things definitely require a lot more debate and serious research; they especially need to be weighed against the realities of trying to control potentially billions of people with access to increasingly powerful technologies without resorting to draconian methods of enforcement.
This is why I am not trying to be casual about the likelihood that in the end more METI will happen for the foreseeable future. I am simply trying to be realistic in terms of human nature when it comes to expressions of freedom and individuality; it only gets worse when someone says something is bad or tries to enforce it (perhaps some of you need to raise teenagers to get a real feel for what I am saying here).
What people really need is to be better educated on the subjects surrounding METI and SETI first. Efforts have been made, but they could be a lot better, otherwise why do we continue to go over these subjects?
I must admit I can’t really decide on this question! On the one hand, I can’t think that “shouting in the jungle” as Scott G puts it, is a good idea. David Brin put this well -one of the few credible explanations of the Fermi paradox is that “something is very wrong out there”.
On the other hand, if there ARE advanced civilisations out there, and remembering the first civs should’ve evolved billions of years ago, I can’t think that they do not know about us already. So it is irrelevant whether we announce ourselves or not.
One thing I can decide on: because it’s so important and difficult, the question should not be left to fringe groups to decide unilaterally.
Review: Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) suffered a recent funding setback, but work continues to try and find evidence of other civilizations in the universe. Jeff Foust reviews a book that looks at the current state of SETI and the potential to not just listen but also transmit.
Monday, May 9, 2011
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1837/1
Interesting discussion but lots of retread ground. We’re profoundly ignorant about the issues and will remain so until we get better theoretical models (perhaps from evolutionary biology and or complexity studies) and better data about life in the universe.
I think any aliens out there would already know about us, or at least the Earth has life, simply because our atmosphere has been out of chemical equilibrium for giga-years. Perhaps radio broadcasts from Earth, or perhaps industrial pollutants of the past 200 years now makes us somewhat more noteworthy, and I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the idea of being “note-worthy” to a alien civilizations that may be billions of years old. But there’s really nothing we can do about it, and METI or no METI, I’m not sure we can hide from even a passing glance of entities with millions of billions of years of experience in detecting critters like us.
But, here’s another possibility. Perhaps we’ve already been colonized by aliens long ago, maybe giga-years, and maybe the Earth has long since been disassembled and used in some alien engineering project like constructing more self-replicating probes. Or maybe our solar system never really existed in the first place. The point is, our histories maybe just the unfolding of a big alien simulation. Nick Boston at Oxford University seems to think there are some pretty strong reasons for considering that possibility or even worse, strong likelihood. http://www.simulation-argument.com/
The whole thing about talking about aliens, simulations, etc. gets very metaphysical very quickly. It’s not to say the conversation is useless, since I think there could be some interesting thought experiments here. But, if we’re worried about METI, the Fermi Paradox, etc., we need to consider lots of seemingly off-the-wall ideas, since nothing about these issues really make much sense right now.
Speaking of SETI funding,
I find it unbelievable that all those Microsoft and Facebook billionaires
couldn’t cut back enough on their yachts and mansions to fund the Allen array.
Isn’t it true that Allen himself owns a billion-dollar personal submarine-yacht?
How big a SETI program could be run on the maintenance tab for such a useless toy ?
Even more infuriating as how Gates and Buffet spend a lot of time and lobbying-funds to make already confiscatory taxes even more ruinous for the productive (but NOT for ‘the rich’, since there’s no wealth tax).
Meanwhile the Allen array sits deaf. Go figure.
James M Essig-
I feel that any ETI civilization would react strongly in a positive way to such displays of inter-personal vulnerability as they would likely have adopted such cultural, religious,philosophical, social, and political paradigms. Otherwise, they would likely have done themselves in by their own technology.
This is the altruism argument; the problem is, like every other argument, it is not based on any information we possess. We would like to think they are, but we simply don’t know (and there are risks even in the case of altruistic aliens) and cannot assume anything.
The thing is, we don’t need METI to learn if there are other civilizations. Keith Cooper nicely summarized all of the ways we are progressing to being able to actively look.
I definitely think it’s unwise.
Berserker probes aren’t my favored explanation of the Fermi paradox (I lean towards ‘technology-type intelligence is REALLY rare’ and/or ‘most intelligent species don’t develop civilizations that can go interstellar’), but we certainly can’t rule them out, and it doesn’t strike me as worth the risk.
@James Benford the idea of trying to enforce peer review on METI before sending, seems to me like trying to enforce peer review over the wording and consequences of legislation passed in parliament so it can be sent back for endorsement before it is enforced. It might be a good plan for other ETIs yet it clashes so badly with the natural command structure of humans that in each case we would perceive it as impinging on our self determination.
@ Astronist, you bring up a point that you don’t see mentioned much any more. Do uncharged tachyons still seem consistent with the rest of our knowledge of physics, and is it just our illogical belief in freewill that is the only thing that stops much further interest these days?
@all, at the risk of sounding like a broken record I must point out one uniquely human characteristic among all life on Earth that should divide us from all other sentient species within the Milky Way. Occasionally (male) humans enter a different phase of mindset that bonds them to other unrelated members of our species so tightly that we are prepared to spontaneously and without hesitation lay down their lives for them. This phenomena is war and during it stress related illness can be shown to plummet as we nearly forget about self-centred goals. This phase, and the knowledge that we could enter it at any moment dominates our thinking on the international stage. Alien cultures may or may not have a single despotic leader who they all adore and be genocidal of other sentience, but one thing we can know for certain – they would never lay down their life at their leaders arbitrary whim. To me this is, in itself, proof that colonisation of the New World offers few clues to the potential nature of contact.
>What will anyone seriously do if China decides to do METI
> with the giant radio telescopes they plan on building in their
>western desert region? Those instruments will be bigger and
>more powerful than Arecibo.
Oh, ljk !
There are two different things – a radio telescope and RADAR telescope.
To send METI messages we need RADAR telescope, while China built an ordinary radio telescope…
I’m with Alpha Omega and Astronist….
@ Chris T, I have to agree with your assessment on altruism in ETIs. Only limited cases such as reciprocal altruism seem to be able to be explained as natural outcomes of evolution in social animals. True altruism as seen in some humans seems as if it is a perversion of these principles, and so, given our current knowledge on the subject, should be considered to be unlikely to be replicated in many other ETIs.
Would we be having this conversation had we colonized the Solar system already? A civilisation entrenched on dozens of worlds is a lot harder to wipe out than one confined to a single planet, partly because it has a lot more experience at space travel.
We’re going to detect any invasion fleet several years out, at the least. That’s enough time to put Terra on a warfooting. And if it turns out to be a false alarm? At least we’re out of the cradle. The best defence against aliens is to not crowd in together where they can easily kill us.
If there’s Xeno’s out there, they will know we’re here, even if they’re only a few years ahead of us in development, using telecscopes. Once a potential colony has been found, it’s not unreasonable to expect them to fund large radio telescopes to search for radio leakage…
Interstellar Bill:
“Speaking of SETI funding, I find it unbelievable that all those Microsoft and Facebook billionaires couldn’t cut back enough on their yachts and mansions to fund the Allen array”
True, but first things first: I find it even sadder and more infuriating that these people and even more so governments willing to spend hundreds of billions per year on defense budgets, military adventures and bank-bailouts eliminate the very modest required budgets for terrestrial planet finding and biosignature analyzing efforts like SIM and TPF. It seems that even the European equivalent Darwin mission has now been postponed indefinitely.
My previous two-cents post also brings me to my modest opinion about SETI and METI like efforts: I am neither a strong opponent, nor proponent, I do not see a great risk, nor a great benefit, but consider this whole issue rather irrelevant or at least vastly premature.
Again: first things first, let’s first get a good picture (literally and figuratively) of relatively nearby planetary systems and their characteristics (biosignatures!), plus a more general idea about commonness of (earthlike/terrestrial and other types of) planets, before occupying ourselves too much with a directed search for advanced intelligence. This more logical and incremental pathway could lead to a more directed search or even a sobering realization that our investments be better placed somewhere else.