By Larry Klaes
One result of the biennial Astrobiology Science Conference (AbSciCon) held the last week of April in 2010 was to gather SETI specialists from around the world to look at everything from search strategies and signal processing to the best ways of creating an interstellar message. Tau Zero’s Larry Klaes has been reading the collected papers from the meeting’s SETI sessions, which have inspired him to ponder SETI’s place in the scheme of things and how our reaction to the search tells us something about who we are and who we are becoming. Readers with a long memory may recall that the first major conference on interstellar communications, held in Soviet Armenia in 1971, produced a volume of proceedings titled Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, a title editor Douglas Vakoch deliberately echoes in the current work, partly as a nod to the field’s past and partly as a measure of how far it has come.
I love anthologies. There is nothing like having a collection of information or stories on a particular subject in one easy-to-find spot, particularly in book form.
Among the more prized books in my personal library are the ones which contain the presentation papers and posters of scientific gatherings about the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and astrobiology. It is always interesting to see not only how the technology designed for discovering and understanding life beyond our planet Earth has developed and changed over the years through these special publications, but also how the prevailing attitudes about alien life and how humanity should deal with it has evolved.
One of the latest such collections to follow in this tradition is titled Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SUNY Press, New York, 2011), edited by Douglas A. Vakoch, Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute and Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies.
To quote from the summary on the publisher’s Web page for this book:
“In April 2010, fifty years to the month after the first experiment in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), scholars from a range of disciplines—including astronomy, mathematics, anthropology, history, and cognitive science—gathered at NASA’s biennial Astrobiology Science Conference (AbSciCon) for a series of sessions on the search for intelligent life. This book highlights the most recent developments in SETI discussed at that conference, emphasizing the ways that SETI has grown since its inception.
“The volume covers three broad themes: First, leading researchers examine the latest developments in observational SETI programs, as well as innovative proposals for new search strategies and novel approaches to signal processing. Second, both proponents and opponents of “Active SETI” debate whether humankind should be transmitting intentional signals to other possible civilizations, rather than only listening. Third, constructive proposals for interstellar messages are juxtaposed with critiques that ask whether any meaningful exchange is possible with an independently evolved civilization, given the constraints of contact at interstellar distances, where a round-trip exchange could take centuries or millennia.
“As we reflect on a half-century of SETI research, we are reminded of the expansion of search programs made possible by technological and conceptual advances. In this spirit of ongoing exploration, the contributors to this book advocate a diverse range of approaches to make SETI increasingly more powerful and effective, as we embark on the next half-century of searching for intelligence beyond Earth.”
The Dangers of Analogy
As pleased as I was to see one of these professional conference collections finally get past focusing primarily on the technical aspects of mainstream SETI and do more than just a token nod to other search concepts and the philosophical implications of contacting an alien civilization, I think there are two major points still being largely missed here. They are ones that must be addressed if humanity ever wants to actually find and talk with another set of intelligent minds.
My first issue is that we keep using the same terrestrial analogies and examples when attempting to figure out how an alien being might function and respond to the Universe and to us. Now one’s natural first reaction to this statement would be “Of *course* we use the same examples over and over! If we could ever find an actual alien life form, we would not need to keep dipping into the same wells!”
I know this appears to be a Catch-22 situation, but a large part of it stems from the fact that five decades after Frank Drake scanned two nearby star systems for a couple of months with a radio telescope, we may have increased the quantity, quality, and even the variety of methods for conducting SETI to a degree, but we have not made nearly the amount of progress in this field that we should have and could have by now.
In many respects, SETI is still stuck in the paradigm famously set in 1959, when Guiseppe Coconni and Philip Morrison wrote that landmark paper published in Nature which stated the most efficient way for a technological intelligence to communicate between the stars is by radio waves – after considering and rejecting the possibility of using gamma rays as an interstellar transmission method.
Image: Philip Morrison (1915-2005), whose paper on radio methods for SETI established early parameters for the field. Credit: MIT.
Radio telescopes were the hot, new instruments for exploring the celestial heavens in the 1950s, being perhaps one of the biggest innovations since the development of the optical telescope for astronomy four centuries earlier. Combining this field with the equally new and even daring scientific acceptance of advanced extraterrestrial intelligences as a plausible reality was nothing less than cutting edge for its day.
If one asked a typical scientist in 1959 how they envisioned the kind of alien beings they might be able to detect using radio technology, the majority of them would give the answer one would find going back to the earliest days of science fiction: As dwellers of an Earthlike planet circling a Sol-type star. The assumed beings themselves may not be exactly human-looking or behaving, but most would probably not deviate too far from the one head and four major appendages attached to a torso model. Of course there were a few notable exceptions in the fictional and factual literature of that era, but the standard ETI did not stray too far from what was found in the Sol system.
Now some other ideas for conducting SETI did arise about the same time, most notably the idea that powerful optical or infrared lasers might be used to signal with light from one world to another. While lasers did have the advantage over radio waves of being able to carry a lot of information and be much easier to detect than sifting through literally millions of radio frequencies, Radio SETI had already developed a strong following by the early 1960s and Optical SETI would not see any serious participation by observatories until the late 1990s.
Radio Silence
It has now been over fifty years since Project Ozma and there has yet to be one verified detection (meaning repeatable) of an artificial signal from an alien civilization. While I know that half a century is a proverbial drop in the bucket of cosmic time when it comes to the age of the Milky Way (ten billion years) and the whole Universe (13.7 billion years), one thing that must be recognized by now is that there is not a lot of strong or at least obvious interstellar chatter on the radio portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, at least in our part of the galaxy right now. This reduces the theory by some of the SETI pioneers that sophisticated alien societies had a vast and probably ancient interstellar communications system which we primitive humans were missing out on.
Now of course one can say that maybe there is the equivalent of the Galactic Internet and we have just not tuned into the right frequencies, or that its extraterrestrial participants purposely do not want humans and species like us among its utilizers. However, even these possibilities add up to the fact that we should be seriously conducting other types of SETI in addition to radio.
Yes, we have been doing some Optical SETI for just over a decade now and there have been a few other efforts outside the mainstream of the field, but if one looks closely at the history of SETI, they will see that the majority of projects were focused on the radio realm and until recent years were largely temporary efforts in both scope and time. There have been a few long-term SETI projects such as the one conducted at OSU from 1973 to 1998, SETI@home, and the recent Allen Telescope Array (ATA). However, these too had and have their own set of limitations; in the case of the ATA, it is under the continued threat of losing its funding. Whole realms of space and time have been neglected by our limited and limiting efforts to find other minds in the Universe due to being mired in specific paradigms as much as limits to money, resources, desire, and imagination.
Image: The radio telescope at Green Bank, WV used by Frank Drake for Project Ozma. Credit: Cosmic Search/Frank Drake.
The other hampering point for SETI is our collectively fundamental lack of appreciating the very strong possibility, even probability, that beings which evolve on other worlds – and by worlds I do not mean just Earthlike planets – are NOT going to be like humans or even other forms of terrestrial organisms.
Imagining Alien Life
Part of the blame for this is our relative lack of extensive knowledge about the cosmic realm in which we live. Take, for example, the broad layout of the known Universe: Scientists did not generally accept the fact that our Milky Way galaxy was not the only stellar island in all of reality but just one of billions until the 1920s! This was a cognitive step comparable to the realization just a few centuries earlier that Earth was but one planet circling the Sun, which in turn was just one of many billions of stars in a Universe far vaster and more complex than ever dreamed of before by the human race.
Only a matter of decades ago did we start to reveal the true natures of the worlds in our celestial backyard known as the Sol system, thanks to the development of robotic space probes capable of traveling the many millions of miles across the interplanetary void to these alien places. As often happens when one journeys to new lands, many new facts appeared and old paradigms were washed away, especially when it came to learning what worlds might make good abodes for life.
Our knowledge of worlds beyond our Sol system came even later, with astronomers proving their existence only in the last decade of the previous century. Before these discoveries, most scientists and even science fiction writers assumed that other solar systems would generally resemble our own, with small, rocky planets near their star and the giant gas worlds much farther out.
The reality of the first exoplanets found was something virtually unexpected: Massive worlds larger than Jupiter were orbiting their suns not in wide orbits taking decades to complete, but so close that these planets could circle their star in a matter of days! Granted, these early discoveries were among the easiest to detect due to the indirect methods performed to find them.
Nevertheless, as we have come to confirm thousands of these alien places so far, the vast majority are still super Jovians that practically hug the photospheres of their parent suns, with few resembling our solar system. We have even confirmed that a number of exoworlds are residents of multiple star systems, something thought improbable not very long ago due to presumed gravitational instabilities. This should provide an intellectual caution and guide as to what we may actually find out there when it comes to alien life, as opposed to what we have been thinking for centuries concerning what lives in our galaxy and beyond.
Extraterrestrials and the Media
The other culprit in our assumptions about alien life, intelligent and otherwise, is how our entertainment and media outlets have portrayed beings from other worlds, especially since the late Nineteenth Century.
Granted, due to a severe lack of actual evidence, humans have always projected their assumptions, hopes, and fears on alien life forms going back to ancient Greece, when the concept was first seriously formulated – as opposed to making all extraterrestrial beings supernatural deities and spirits from some mystical planes of existence. However, in those days there was almost no expectation of humanity ever meeting or even conversing with their cosmic brethren, at least not until people began to seriously consider such possibilities as our science and technology advanced.
Ask a typical person, even educated professionals, what they think beings from beyond Earth might be like, and one will more often than not be given a picture that mirrors what is generally predicted in our science fiction literature and films. What one finds are beings that resemble monstrosities, either of the mindless destructive and consuming variety, or ones that desire the conquest and enslavement of humanity and every other species in the galaxy.
At the other extreme, aliens have also been envisioned as our wise and angelic saviors, saving us from our pitiful, primitive selves so that we may one day join a Federation or Galactic Brother/Sisterhood of other civilizations throughout the galaxy.
Image: From 1951’s The Day the Earth Stood Still, Michael Rennie as a humanoid alien with a message for Earthlings. Credit: Twentieth Century Fox.
All these attempts to wrestle with habitats and visualize aliens might be called part of the intellectual growing pains of a species that is literally trying to find its place and way in the vast Universe. While we have many questions left to answer, human civilization is now at a technological and knowledge stage where we can start to move beyond a number of our initial ideas and interpretations that ushered in the early days of SETI. Otherwise the field will continue to return only negative results, which may lead to conclusions that will not only derail our efforts to find ETI but even bring harm to our species and society down the road.
Searching on a Shoestring Budget
First is the need to change the fundamental elements of SETI as established over fifty years ago. While there is no logical reason to abandon the search for alien intelligences in the radio spectrum – radio still remains an easy and inexpensive way to communicate across the interstellar distances – one thing we have learned after five decades of scanning those frequencies (even longer if you include the earlier efforts to listen for any messages from Mars) is that this part of the Milky Way at the least is not currently brimming with transmissions between civilizations as the early SETI pioneers conjectured and hoped.
There is of course always the possibility that a radio transmission, either deliberate or as part of the electromagnetic leakage of a technological society, may be heading our way at any time, or perhaps already has arrived: The Wow! signal detected by the Ohio State University (OSU) SETI program in August of 1977 certainly had many of the characteristics of an artificial interstellar signal. Unfortunately, the signal was not found until hours later when a team member discovered it on a recording printout, and the signal has never repeated since, a major criterion for science.
Now there has been some expansion to the SETI paradigm in the last few decades. Most SETI programs in the United States no longer rely on government funding, which proved itself unreliable when the funding for NASA’s SETI program was abruptly cut in 1993 after one year of operation due largely to Congressional ignorance. While this has allowed a degree of freedom and latitude when it comes to expanding SETI’s parameters and techniques, these private efforts have also been subject to the whims of the economy. Ironically, the ATA depicted on the cover of Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence has been hit by funding problems and is so far remaining alive with public donations and the support of the United States Air Force – which is using the vast field of radio telescopes to track artificial debris in Earth orbit.
Optical SETI finally entered the mainstream in the late 1990s after decades of neglect and resistance by radio SETI advocates. It too, however, has yet to find a laser or infrared transmission from the stars.
There have been other searches for alien technologies such as the Fermi search for Dyson Shells in 2005. In reality, though, most SETI projects of all stripes have been largely sporadic, even token in the number of cases. For most of its history, SETI has been placed on the sidelines, begging and scraping for time on telescopes and suffering from misunderstandings, ridicule, and being lumped in with pseudoscience.
Image: A Deep Space Network station near Madrid. Credit: NASA.
This attitude can be blamed primarily on the following:
- A sincere yet misguided old school view that solar systems are rare (and thus life) due to the pre-nebular hypothesis of how planetary systems form, which involves one star passing by another and pulling material from its photosphere into nearby space to form a debris ring around that sun, which eventually becomes the various worlds of a solar system.
- Antiquated views going back to Aristotle and Plato and reinforced by various religious, political, and psychological factors in later centuries that hold we and Earth are the spiritual and literal focus of existence and as a result no other beings exist in the Universe, which until the most recent era was considered to be relatively small compared to what we know now.
- The popular (read general public) take on aliens, which between their portrayal in most science fiction has created a virtual belief system in beings who can be either our destroyers or saviors. Aliens in our culture are also often used as substitutes for various human groups in science fiction and as comic relief. Seldom do these images add much to the scientific database of ideas on how and what our cosmic neighbors may truly be – though they do have something to say about human attitudes and thoughts on this subject. The results are a misinformed public and politic and a scientific community that is more embarrassed and dismissive than encouraged to pursue the search for any real ETI.
This comes to the second point: Making the human race truly aware and appreciative of our place in the real Universe, beyond the confines of our pale blue dot, as Carl Sagan so famously referred to the planet Earth.
Public Perception of the Cosmos
I know that on an intellectual level we have come a long way from the time of Nicholas Copernicus when he cautiously introduced in 1543 the idea that Earth circled the Sun and not everything orbiting our planet or otherwise focused upon it and us. Nevertheless, there are plenty of people living now who, despite access to vast amounts of information as never before, either do not know/appreciate that we live on a rotating planet orbiting a star or just do not care due to their education level, the quality or lack thereof of their everyday lives, and the fact that the vast majority of us have never been into space and in many cases cannot even see the stars and most other celestial bodies from the surface of Earth due to light pollution.
Which leads to my third and key point: Are we as a species and a society truly capable of finding, understanding, interacting, and dealing with an intelligence which evolved on an alien world? Or is this the ultimate reason as to why our current SETI efforts have so far found no definite signs of anyone else in the Universe? If the answers to these questions show that we are still too immature for such an endeavor, should we just give up and hope that some day natural evolution will make us a bit more cosmically oriented? Or should we strive to build something that will complete our goals for SETI, METI, and CETI?
As pointed out previously, our combination of cultural ignorance, apathy, paranoia, and misdirection due to the depictions of aliens in most science fiction has left us in numerous fundamental ways little advanced from the perceptions and theories about ETI going back centuries.
For a prominent example of what I am referring to, read up on the history of the astronomical study of Mars in the late Nineteenth through the early Twentieth Century, from the time when Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli first noted the (in)famous canals crisscrossing the face of the Red Planet in 1877 to the era when the first robotic space probes finally began to reveal the true nature of Mars in the first decades of the Space Age.
Even though the stories refer to a world we now know is not inhabited by an intelligent alien race, advanced, dying, or otherwise, if one removed the location of the planet in question from the literature of the day on the subject – especially those works by Percival Lowell – the topics of conversation would be remarkably similar to the ideas and debates going on to this day regarding ETI, even with over a century of hindsight in our favor.
Accepting the idea that our seeming lack of success with SETI and METI is due to limitations with our experience and technology with these fields, could it be that we are ultimately just not capable of dealing with a species not from this planet due to the state of our biological evolution? Humanity certainly has enough issues and misunderstandings with members of its own species, to say nothing of other high minds on Earth such as the cetaceans. So how can we expect to grasp the truly alien?
Moving Past Biological Evolution
Will the beings that eventually come form this planet which can find, understand, and interact with ETI not be humanity but minds that we created? Hugo de Garis calls them Artilects, which is short for Artificial Intellect. We have the potential to build beings which would have intellectual capacities that dwarf ours with ease, ones that could easily handle intelligences from other worlds. It has been speculated that if there are other advanced minds out there, they will be the alien versions of Artilects, the natural and ultimate step in the process of biological evolution across the Universe. Of course this could all be short-sighted too, but it does offer one explanation as to the seeming silence out there: Current humanity just is not on the same playing field when it comes to cosmic correspondence compared to a mind unfettered by relatively slow biological evolution.
So what do we do? Do we just become overwhelmed by the Cosmos and give up trying to understand and explore it? Besides the fact that such an action will not happen at least collectively so long as we are alive and have a civilization (even during the European Dark Ages there were still groups of people who strove to record and comprehend the world around them, limited as their capabilities were), the short answer is no – though a few caveats, improved resources, and better attempts to appreciate the Universe as it really is and not as we wish it to be are in order.
Limited as our SETI and METI efforts may be, they have been of benefit to our species. Look at the number of sections in the CETI book devoted to our attempts at communicating and understanding an alien mind. Such exercises not only help us for the day when we do detect an ETI at least at some levels, but they are very good at helping us deal with each other.
Take note of the Pioneer Plaques and Voyager Interstellar Records now wending their ways into the wider Milky Way galaxy. Even if an interstellar species finds them one day in the far future, even if the ETI cannot understand what is on these golden objects or miss their purpose and presence entirely, the plaques and records have done much to make us see ourselves as members of one species on a planet in space. I have read that the music on the Voyager Interstellar Records was one of the first collections of world music ever put together.
Perhaps most importantly, these pioneering attempts at METI justify their existence by the very fact that a collection of humans had the desire and ability to be aware to the possibility of other beings in the Universe and make an effort based on the higher scientific and technological ideas and tools of the day to reach out to them in a way designed to benefit both parties.
So let us keep the radio on and tuning through the static for whoever may be out there. The beauty of radio is that you can work on other things while listening to it.
I found the website of someone who has written extensively on many topics, including contacting ETs.
His name is Anthony Judge, have you heard of him? According to Wikipedia, he has been at the Union of International Associations. He has been Director of Communications and Research, and Assistant Secretary-General.
I’d never heard of him or that Union, have you? But he has some interesting ideas.
I did a site search for “extraterrestrial” and got over a hundred hits.
Here’s his main site, and the page with one of his essays on ETs.
http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/
http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs/alien.php
Has anyone done analysis on the WOW! signal? Having a non-repeating signal burst is interesting all to itself. What ETI activity could cause such a thing? Nozzle emission from a nuclear rocket, wormhole collapse, Planetary scale processing of material, nuclear war? If there are folks out there, they should be making some racket. Maybe analyzing the signal we have is a good place to start.
I think that we ought to be skeptical of the explanation that we simply don’t know what channel they are talking on. Given how old ET civilizations are assumed to be, they should have had plenty of time to send inexpensive probes at nearly the speed of light to all parts or our galaxy. Those probes would be intelligent enough to communicate with us in a manner that we could recognize as not natural. Since this is well within the technical abilities of a highly intelligent ET, then it should be concluded that the silence is due either to:
A) they don’t exist or
B) they exist but don’t care to communicate with us.
A Prime Directive explanation is problematic in that it means that they would be able to end our suffering (poverty, illness, death) but are compelled by their own principles to not intervene despite our obvious wishes to not suffer and die. This implies a complete lack of empathy for those less fortunate like they used to be in their own past.
But explanation A still remains. If they don’t exist because intelligence is less frequent than two per local cluster, then his might be good news. We can proceed and likely we’ll eventually inhabit all parts of the galaxy.
But we are rapidly developing self-replicating technologies along four lines likely to mature within this century. So self-extinction due to our own technology reliably before interstellar travel remains a real possibility. This is about the only explanation that we can do anything about to change though it would still be a long shot but one worth taking because everything may depend upon it.
A very interesting article…
I think you are right to suggest that after 50 years we need to seriously consider the probability that radio communication between stars doesn’t seem to be commonplace. Not withstanding the various technical challenges that supporters of radio SETI would point out, quite rightly, it does seem to rather suggest that either there are very few worlds in communication out there or that they have found a better way of doing it. Except in the limit of no one else being out there, these are not mutually exclusive possibilities of course.
I sometimes wonder about the various, more or less speculative, models for exploiting possible ‘loopholes’ in relativity to create a de facto FTL drive, without breaking the laws of relativity. Whilst it is obviously premature to be too specific as these ideas are all quite immature I wonder, in a moment of idle speculation, if something along those line might offer an advanced form of ‘pony express’. It would certainly cut down on the time lag in communications. With that, admittedly ultra speculative possibility in mind, I wonder if any such technology would have some tell tale signature on the environment (excluding extremely destructive consequences such as the blue shift effect described recently for the Alcubierre metric which would hopefully preclude the use of such an approach!). This is well outside my area of expertise but the thought did occurr that if such technologies would leave some signal of their passing in the environment they might be detectable – no idea how far such effects might propagate or how long they may persist, if at all.
Any thoughts…?
Really nice article, Larry. It sums everything about SETI quite concisely.
As I was reading, I was thinking that there is a positive side to all this radio silence and isolation: a point you touched on in some aspects.
Discovery of an advanced alien intelligence, subsequent communication with it, could psychologically depress or even damage our species as a whole and prevent us from advancing “naturally” to whatever endpoint we are capable of potentially achieving.
This was a theme (not the main one) in Clarke’s Childhood’s End. Why bother struggling when human technology, science, language, arts, and knowledge are so inferior to what the friendly aliens have? We can just ask them how it should be done, follow the same path, etcetera.
It’s possible that we’re currently the only intelligence in our galaxy to have reached a level where we can communicate with other stars. Or we could be the only extant civilization.
We could be the first creatures in our galaxy to reach intelligence (somebody has to be first). Even though the Galaxy is 14 BY old, stellar evolution probably didn’t generate enough elements to support life (any life) until 6-8 BY ago. We could be the first.
The distance to the next intelligence is far greater than the ability to detect a radio signal (about 10K LY for an Arecibo-like dish). Optical and other methods (gamma? neutrino? holographic surface FTL?) would probably be better.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of ETIs (if they exist) are machine intelligences and have been so for millions of years. I don’t know how or what we would have to communicate. “My, those are huge registers you’re sporting there! What are they? 32768 bits wide?”
We don’t need to worry about ET’s biology or anything except ‘Can it make modulated radio signals?’
Why does anybody assume our interstellar probes will ever be found? A million of them could be drifting through our solar system right now and we wouldn’t notice anything beyond a million miles. They’ll drift forever unvisited, because they’re undetectable.
In the bigger picture, this will not really change anything. If we do not go, our successors will (yes, possibly the very same that did us in…). We’d have to find a way to exterminate ourselves without leaving behind: 1) any of ourselves to recover eventually, or 2) other self-replicating entities that will pick up where we left off.
One thing that is also often not given enough thought is the possibility that any message that is not broadcasted with the purpose to reach *any* civilization (like our METI effort), but messages that are part of a deliberate communication effort between civilizations or within an interstellar culture, could very well be heavily encrypted.
We ourselves are slowly realizing that sending data packets around openly and in “plain text” is not always a good idea and encrypted transmissions are becoming more widespread. It is possible that most advanced civilizations come to the realization that it is better to encrypt a message when you intend it for a specific recipient.
It is now also the case that a sufficiently heavily encrypted message may be almost indistinguishable from random noise* for an eavesdropper who has no idea about the encryption method and strength.
The hypothetical perfect encryption would make messages appear exactly as random bits of data, so that it becomes even impossible to know whether a transmission is taking place at all. Two parties could be continuously sending noise in between messages in order to obfuscate the very fact that communication is going on.
For this to happen it is not necessary that “they” want to deliberately isolate us humans (or any specific civilization). It could very well be the established standard method of data transmission, just like it is sensible to always encrypt wireless network connections and many routers now already do it by default.
This also means it is very well possible that at some point in the future, when we might let a computer sift through old SETI data, that we may suddenly find artificial signals that had been there all the time, but undetectable with the methods we have at the moment.
The “obvious” answer is that They’re already here, but watch us like a natural-history team – to a super-civilization we’d be an ideal naturalistic observational experiment in historical studies.
Interesting essay, one serious flaw: “(…) the vast majority are still super Jovians that practically hug the photospheres of their parent suns”.
Not so, outdated information: in fact the hot (super)Jupiters have long since appeared to be a small minority only (maybe a few percent of all planetary systems), but were just the easiest and first to be detected.
I would rather say, on the basis of recent Kepler results, that the majority of planets are super-earths and Neptune class, and the majority of planetary systems are compact (inner) systems consisting of those two classes.
JoeP, you touch an important point indeed: the encounter of two very different civilizations leading to the demise of the weaker one, something which we have often witnessed on earth.
However, on the positive side, the cultural inferiority complex could rather soon be followed by a technological leap-frogging to a much higher level, combined with an interesting assimilation of different cultural elmenents, something which we also see in various cultures. It isn’t all doom and gloom.
@Mephane
Wouldn’t the signal strength of transmissions be indicative, even if we couldn’t decrypt the signal?
Humanity the first civilization to colonize the galaxy? Maybe so…..
Thanks to Elon Musk, Robert Bigalow, and Alan Bond, we’re on our way….
See ya all on the Moon….I’ve bought my ticket aboard Skylon 6…..
Mr. Bond hasn’t built Skylon 6 yet, but he will….
JDS
I would think that planet earth in this current time frame would be very interesting for study (for either natural or artificial intelligences). The incredibly rapid rise from stone-age to technological ascendancy (10kyrs) that is occurring with us would interest anyone paying attention. And, I expect this doesn’t happen very often. Sufficiently advanced Intelligences would likely not expire (die) so 10,000 years to them may be the space of time between breakfast and lunch. Look at the humans go! Our planet has been giving off bio signatures for several billion yrs. If I were them, I would place a sensory capability close by to keep tabs on what’s going. I think we should assume we are being observed. If we are not being observed then we are probably alone in this galaxy.
As long ago as 1919, some people were envisioning communications with other worlds using concentrated sunlight reflected by giant mirrors or using huge grids of electric lights in the Sahara Desert to “wink” signals into space – namely at the perceived intelligences on the planet Mars.
See here in this fascinating piece:
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/paleofuture/2012/07/hello-mars-this-is-the-earth/
Even Albert Einstein commented on doing something similar with concentrated light back in 1937. Perhaps he had seen that issue of Popular Science?
Other early plans to let the Martians know there were smart beings on Earth included making huge trenches resembling geometric patterns in the Sahara Desert and then filling them with oil and setting them ablaze. A similar idea was to grow different and light-colored species of trees in the deep and dark Siberian forests in the shape of various geometric designs.
Clearly these folks were siding with Percival Lowell on the nature of the Martians, ones who are intellectually superior yet have no plans to leave their dying world and perhaps permanently colonize Earth or Venus, which is what H. G. Wells envisioned in his 1896 novel The War of the Worlds.
Around the same time (1899), Nikola Tesla thought he had detected radio signals from Mars, which you can read about here:
http://www.teslasociety.com/mars.pdf
Greg Parris said on July 31, 2012 at 10:10:
“Has anyone done analysis on the WOW! signal? Having a non-repeating signal burst is interesting all to itself. What ETI activity could cause such a thing? Nozzle emission from a nuclear rocket, wormhole collapse, Planetary scale processing of material, nuclear war? If there are folks out there, they should be making some racket. Maybe analyzing the signal we have is a good place to start.”
LJK replies:
A book dedicated to the Wow! Signal was recently authored by Bob Gray, who went around the world to various facilities in an attempt to locate the signal again:
https://centauri-dreams.org/?p=21628
As for the Wow! Signal itself, the new research director of The SETI Institute, Gerry Harp (he took over from Dr. Jill Tarter), said something very interesting on that subject in this interview linked below, which I will quote right after the URL:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/astrophysics/new-frontiers-in-seti-research
IEEE Spectrum: “Do you find it at all surprising that we haven’t seen any promising signals since that “Wow!” signal found by Ohio State University in 1977?”
Gerry Harp: “The Wow! signal has never been seen again. It turns out that we see signals like [that] all the time—spurious signals that are detected only once and then they disappear. We’ve pretty much figured out these have to be human signals. I think the reason we haven’t heard a lot of excitement in the last 35 years is because we made the correct decision to get the humans out of the loop and let the computers do their work with algorithms that are scientifically valid.”
Another quote from this same IEEE interview with Harp has me thinking that as a new generation takes over SETI, we may finally start to get away more fully from the old paradigms I lamented about in my article:
“It’s always been, from the very start, a guessing game. At the very beginning, Frank Drake made the guess that they would be sending us a very narrow band signal. That was a good guess, and it turns out that subsequent science supported that guess. But more recent developments in technology have called that guess into question, and now we have to ask, “Well, what other ways might they be sending us signals, and how shall we look for them?” We have to develop algorithms to find that stuff, and it’s a very challenging problem.”
Guys like Robert Bradbury, Milan Cirkovic, and Hugo de Garis would and should feel vindicated. While it is true that our best bet for finding ETI with our current methods would be beings not too different or too advanced from us, more diverse and sophiticated versions could at last detect the kinds of beings that turn whole solar systems into massive solar energy collectors or artificial intellects that dwarf our minds like we do with ameobas.
At the very least, attempting search methods beyond radio will certainly do wonders for finding ETI, or otherwise show where they are not in the Universe.
JoeP said on July 31, 2012 at 13:21:
“Really nice article, Larry. It sums everything about SETI quite concisely.”
Thank you, Joe. I think a refresher on the origins of SETI and how things got to be where they are now and what we need to do next is important. This is especially the case for those who did not grow up during those early days when hardly anyone was doing real SETI and some scientists thought there was a big radio party going on in the galaxy ar0und the cosmic water hole (1420 MHz) and we were just becoming smart enough to tune in.
In addition, people need to know that SETI is no longer just about a bunch of scientists using radio telescopes hoping to receive the first 100 prime numbers from deep space, with all due respect to Carl Sagan’s Contact. And yes I recognize that this is exactly what could happen, which is why I am not dismissing radio SETI, just asking that we expand our search parameters to take in the improvements of our speculative and actual knowledge since 1960.
JoeP then said:
“As I was reading, I was thinking that there is a positive side to all this radio silence and isolation: a point you touched on in some aspects.
“Discovery of an advanced alien intelligence, subsequent communication with it, could psychologically depress or even damage our species as a whole and prevent us from advancing “naturally” to whatever endpoint we are capable of potentially achieving.”
LJK replies:
Personally I have had my doubts that the human race would be crushed to discover a superior species in the galaxy. Now this may have an effect on the political leaders of Earth, who are very paranoid about losing their positions to bigger alpha dogs, as well as some of the more fundamental religions who think that the entire Universe is all about them and their deity.
However, as for most everyone else, would it really be a cultural blow to find advanced ETI? I see most people wanting to encounter a superior alien race, if for no other reason than to save us from our primitive and warlike selves. And speaking of war, I know the various militaries and other technological/bioengineering industries of Earth would love to get their hands on superior machinery and biology.
The general public tends to assume that any ETI we contact or who come to visit would be superior to us anyway, and other than the possibility of being conquered or destroyed, I don’t see a lot of them wanting to throw the towel in at the prospect of an alien ship arrival and even less so from a distant signal.
Think about how “primitive” and isolated human tribes have often responded to encounters with more sophisticated societies throughout history: If they aren’t trying to chase away or kill the strangers, they clamor for the technological goodies the visitors bring with them. That is what I see happening with most humans when the day comes that an ETI does show up.
Speaking of being overwhelmed and depressed by superior forces, what about the fact that for a number of centuries now we have known – intellectually at least – that the Universe is utterly vast in space, time, and objects, and we humans and our planet do not even register past a few light years?
I have met people who are momentarily scared of such immensities, but otherwise they go on with their daily lives. So for them, do you see the discovery of a Dyson Shell encompassing a distant star derailing their lives? Especially once the news media moves on to something else, as it always does.
Maybe once our descendants start really moving out into space, the full reality of their surroundings will grip them in ways that their Earthbound ancestors could never appreciate. The vastness may intimidate them, or they may be used to the deep black of space and the endless stars and feel compelled to learn what else is out there. In any case, going back to Earth would not be a viable option for them. They may not be able to physically handle Earth’s higher gravity and it would not be home to them in any event.
Good comments all. I think it likely that there were once some near’ish ETs prospering during various ancient epochs before ours. But nowadays all that remains of them are disinterested machine offspring and scattered frozen dead artifacts and ghostly quiet old worlds.
So we may be alone in this regions for a few millennium. Our worst enemy will likely be of our own creation. As the titans were replaced by their children – the gods, so too will we go.
ljk: “The general public tends to assume that any ETI we contact or who come to visit would be superior to us…”
Seems like a reasonable assumption, if true. Our ability to contact or visit others (or to even discover their existence!) is so poor as to be arguably negligible. Therefore an ETI that can detect our contact attempts and (especially) visit us is likely to have superior technology.
I think that the lack of evidence of radio communication from ET for the last 50 years may be enough to make some real conclusions about them. Of course anyone who reads SF knows that possibilities about this subject are ridiculuosly numerous and any certainty about it is hard to achieve.
The original concept of ET that the first SETI scientists used were similar to Human society and technology. I see those scientists thinking about ET similar to what Star Trek thought of them – as variations on a theme. You can imagine that in a galaxy crowded with civilizations like Star Trek’s that as soon as a race gets the technology to listen in they would be bombarded with interstellar chatter. You can say that many of them uses more advanced communcations methods but Is radio going to be discontinued for absolutely everything? Is radar not going to be used? As an example for this, it seems that despite today’s technology some people believe that it is a good idea to learn how to make fires using a couple of stones or sticks the same way as our ancestors did possibly as far back as 400000 years ago.
You can say also that all advanced races delibarately discontinues all use of radio for the sake of some sort of prime directive philosophy. But that sort of philosophy, I think, still makes them similar to us as a society which in turn depends on a similar biology and that means they would have gone through a period using radio tech and that there were still a lot of civilizations at our tech level. But the lack of radio evidence indicates our kind is scarce in this part of the galaxy.
It occured to me while I was writing this that the prime directive in Star trek doesn’t make practical sense. That directive says that civilzations can’t be contacted untill they develop warp drive. But with the civilzations broadcasting in the star trek world every civilazation is going to know about the others as soon as they start listening for them.
There is the possibility that there are few or just one civilization like ours in the near galaxy. But it probably isn’t going to be a starfaring race no matter how advanced it is. There has been simulations done for a long time that shows it doesn’t take long for a civilization to inhabit a galaxy even if limited to a fraction of the speed of light. I think it is on the order of a million years. So a galaxy with one civilization like ours is a galaxy with a sky full of civilizations like ours.
I argue that SETI has failed because it searches for artifacts from an intelligence just like ours – which biologists believe is unlikely to have evolved elsewhere – and does not search for artifacts from the increasing number of plausible non-humanoid intelligences scientists and other thought-leaders have been positing. (The “artilects” mentioned are, I would note, still humanoid intelligences. Indeed, the whole AI initiative sprang up from the same military roots and at the same time as the radio telescopy on which SETI is based.) What we need is a meeting of open-minded mathematicians, neuroscientists, linguists, etc to imagine non-humanoid intelligences and the kinds of messages they might send … and then tweak SETI’s search algorithms to look for them, too.
Gory details in my dissertation, published on David Darling’s (excellent) website: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/S/SETI_critical_history_cover.html
Looking for Alien ‘Bubbles’ in Other Galaxies Analysis by Ray Villard
Tue Jul 31, 2012 02:18 AM ET
When I was under the velvet black skies of western Texas a few months ago I had a magnificent view of the star-studded bulge of our galaxy, in the direction of the summer constellation Sagittarius.
How many advanced civilizations might be in this hub of the Milky Way? I pondered. After all, this is the direction where the mysterious “WOW” radio signal that was detected three decades ago came from.
The problem is that we are embedded in a thick forest of stars, and identifying the location of an extraterrestrial civilization — one that’s attempting to contact us — is the proverbial needle-in-haystack search as the SETI scientists always say.
Therefore, it would make sense to go looking at a neighboring “forest,” or rather nearby galaxy, for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence.
Full article here:
http://news.discovery.com/space/looking-for-alien-bubbles-in-other-galaxies-120731.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1
@Alex Tolley:
That depends on the circumstances.
For example, we might be much further away from the sender than the intended recipient, and they would certainly have a signal only as strong as required to reach that one, and not someone who happens to tune in a few hundred (or more) light years in the same direction.
Also, there are strong radio sources out there, which we all identified as natural. I consider it a possibility that some of them could be artificial, and the signals so heavily encrypted that to us they appear random.
And even if we find a strong signal – that does not prove it to be artificial, and it would be much more sound to assume a natural phenomenon; just like when pulsars were discovered and some speculated they might be something artifial, but turned out to be completely natural objects. For a signal to be considered artificial, just standing out in intensity is not remotely sufficient.
Greg Parris : “If we are not being observed then we are probably alone in this galaxy”.
Great statement. I have always been annoyed by the unjustified inferiority complex of so many people stating that an advanced civilizatin would probably not be interested at all in primitive savages like us and just ignore us.
In any case intelligence and civilization must be exceedingly rare. And even we ourselves will most likely be able to conduct (automated) telescopic planetary surveys of almost our entire galaxy within this century or the next. Unless we do something really stupid and destroy our civilization, we will most probably have an almost complete overview of planetary systems of (most of) our MW galaxy and a few neighboring galaxies (such as Andromeda) within a few centuries, which is nothing in cosmic timeframes. Within this millennium we will be telescopically observing any living planet in our galaxy or a neighboring galaxy.
So, I dare state with near-certainty that any advanced technological civilization, if it exists in our MW galaxy or a neighboring galaxy will:
a) know that we are here (meaning at least knowing that we are a living planet, probably also one with advanced life and one that has shown noticable changes in recent short time periods);
b) be highly interested in us, at least as a living planet to study.
So, summarizing and mirroring Greg’s statement: if we are not alone, we are under observation.
Astrocartician: “So a galaxy with one civilization like ours is a galaxy with a sky full of civilizations like ours.”
Another great statement, because it implies the promise that within a relatively short time period from now (a million years or so) our MW galaxy will be “full of civilizations like ours”.
ljk August 1, 2012 at 13:38: “Personally I have had my doubts that the human race would be crushed to discover a superior species in the galaxy”, and all your comments after that.
Yes, I fully agree and that is also what I meant in my previous comments.
It is already amazing what we have been mentally assimilating and adjusting to over the past couple of centuries, both our world view (shape and orbit of the earth, our place in the universe, etc.) and all new inventions. My own grand parents, who grew very old (highest ’90s in good health without any special life style, I hope I have their genes) and were of conservative religious conviction, witnessed and used so many new developments and inventions, such as television and air plane, and had no psychological problems with those at all, even seemed to like it after getting used to.
We humans possess amazing mental resilience and adaptative ability.
After the initial shock and awe resulting from the discovery of an alien civilization (at a great and safe distance), people will continue with their lives, even religions will cope, some will say “you see, I told you so” and Joe Sixpack will grab another beer.
Gerry Harp, who has taken over Jill Tarter’s job as research director at the SETI Institute, gave and interview to BY Rachel Courtland with IEEE in July of 2012.
In this interview, Gerry says that SETI sees the equivalent of the WOW! Signal all the time. And that SETI has “pretty much figured out that these have to be human signals”.
Just because these signals don’t have information content doesn’t mean they are not telling us something. A lack of red shift indicates that these signals are local. But, is this not what would be expected if a local probe was periodically doing a hydrogen plasma discharge for some operational purpose? Saying these signals “must be” human in origin without an explanation does not seem rigorous. Why are we fixated on someone sending us a communication signal? If there is a local probe, they are learning everything they need to know without communicating.
@Greg and Ronald
‘if we are not alone we are under observation’ (and vice versa!)
Tend to agree with you both although this does raise a bit of a catch-22 problem. Imagine someone reporting some evidence of such an occurrance…say relativistic distortions such as apparent ‘suction’ effects or time dilation or inverted doppler shifts near apparently structural craft displaying some indications of intelligent activity. They would be immediately labelled a nut…Any such events must be few and far between, if any at all, to fit our overall observations to date, which don’t confirm any such event.
Even assuming such observations are occurring they may be undetectable due to our own society’s prejudices as much as (or perhaps more than) due to any technical challenges presented, problems of replication etc. Doubt there is any way out of that particular conundrum for the forseeable future…?
Greg Parris, I commented on and linked to Gerry Harp’s interview with IEEE in this thread above, in particular for his comments on the OSU Wow! Signal of 1977.
The full interview is here:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/astrophysics/new-frontiers-in-seti-research
There have been serious discussions and even some searches for ETI probes in our Sol system. One logical place for such alien monitors is the Main Planetoid Belt between Mars and Jupiter. Though of course an advanced vessel could hide just about anywhere from us at this point.
The main sticking point with this idea is trying not to get it mixed up with the UFO elements, which are very good at making professional do their own disappearing act and cause non-scientists to go to the other extreme.
You may find this Web site of interest too:
http://www.ieti.org/
Ronald said “And even we ourselves will most likely be able to conduct (automated) telescopic planetary surveys of almost our entire galaxy within this century or the next.”
And that is such an interesting prediction that I wonder what the perspective of others is on this. Personally, I am so amazed that the spectra of faint stars can be broken up an analysed to the existing degree, that I would believe that all detections so far have been scams, – were it not for the extensive evidence to the contrary. Could they really do very much better? or is Ronald’s prediction based on extrapolation of astrometry technologies?
I think there is confusion here. Data encryption is no problem for us because we are only looking for an artificial looking signal. Data compression is a killer because (if they had lots to say) ETI’s would take this process to its logical extreme. Here they would not narrow-cast it but spread it across the spectrum with optimal information given per energy expended. This happens to look identical to black body radiation unless you know how to decode it (so I am informed).
And that is the problem.
Rob Henry:”Could they really do very much better? or is Ronald’s prediction based on extrapolation of astrometry technologies?”
Rob, although of course very tentative, my assumption is based on the fact that we already have available or near-term technologies on the drawing board for very large space-based interferometers and solar gravitational lensing (FOCAL) which could theoretically detect (by means of RV and astrometry) and even directly image and spectro-analyze planets as far away as the Andromeda galaxy. Given sustained economic and technological growth, such endeavors should be entirely feasible within the next (22nd) century. In view of galactic civilization(s) one or a few centuries are irrelevant, so this brought me to the conviction that, since telescopic detection is so vastly easier and cheaper than interstellar space travel, any, even slightly advanced, civilization in the MW galaxy will have a more or less complete encyclopedic overview of its planetary systems, as far as they are not hidden behind other objects.
Ronald said on August 3, 2012 at 4:08:
“In view of galactic civilization(s) one or a few centuries are irrelevant, so this brought me to the conviction that, since telescopic detection is so vastly easier and cheaper than interstellar space travel, any, even slightly advanced, civilization in the MW galaxy will have a more or less complete encyclopedic overview of its planetary systems, as far as they are not hidden behind other objects.”
The late great Robert Bradbury, who envisioned artificial minds/beings the size of worlds (see link below) and was a success relatively early SETI paradigm breaker (certainly for me at least), said that if you have beings who are turning whole solar systems into artificial structures, they would also endeavor to use some of those worlds as giant space telescopes.
If we humans can envision and plan for space telescopes that could imagine continents on Earthlike exoworlds, just imagine what an advanced technological intelligence could accomplish. Space telescopes the size of planets might be just one branch of their overall abilities. This also avoids the “messy” business of having to travel to other worlds and interacting with the residents and their dirty planets.
http://www.gwern.net/docs/1999-bradbury-matrioshkabrains.pdf
Rob: “Data compression is a killer because (if they had lots to say) ETI’s would take this process to its logical extreme. Here they would not narrow-cast it but spread it across the spectrum with optimal information given per energy expended.”
It depends on the specific details of the communication circuit. For a transmission to maximize information within a channel you need a very high SNR and flawless receivers and transmitters. This is rarely the case, and for a variety of reasons is especially true for space communications. This means the data rate must often be reduced to far below the theoretical maximum, either by slowing the data rate or including lots of FEC (forward error correction).
In the case of ET, one factor to consider is whether their transmission is directed at us or by chance we are detecting a signal aimed elsewhere. In the latter case, if the actual circuit is designed to maximize channel usage, it is virtually certain we would not be able to decode the signal and possibly not event detect that it is a signal.
I’m surprised no-one’s mentioned Stanis?aw Lem yet, who wrote several works that addressed just this theme, notably Fiasco, Solaris and (perhaps most relevant to radio SETI) His Master’s Voice.
LJK commented “The main sticking point with this idea is trying not to get it mixed up with the UFO elements, which are very good at making professional do their own disappearing act and cause non-scientists to go to the other extreme.”
I agree. If we are being observed, then the observer not being seen would be an important operational requirement. We would only see the observers if they wanted it that way. And, I can’t think of a compelling reason why they would want to do that. I think the UFO craze is a visceral response to the feeling we shouldn’t be alone in the Universe and we want to know the answer NOW! It should be no surprise to see opportunists feeding at the UFO trough, bathing the general public in what they so desperately want to hear.
Thank you for the IETI link. It is an interesting idea.
I agree with FrankH. Before the age of Population I stars with a high metallicity I doubt complex life was possible. FWIW my guess would be that there are no other technological civilizations (yet), at least not in the observable parts of our Milky Way. If we ever communicate (or even met) with aliens I think they will consider us an ancient race.
That said I still support the efforts of SETI and hope the search will go on.
Just my two cents.
Securis, you are asking much more than you think. The most complex life on Earth graduallyand randomly increased that complexity for 3 billion years. The most complex animal forms suddenly arose in a burst of evolutionary activity 600 million years ago. It looks as if this explosion could have just as easily happened a billion years ago, yet estimates of the maximum time that in would take any one expansionist ETI to colonise the galaxy are seldom greater than 10 million years.
For your idea to have any purchash you need to add a powerful mechanism to synchronise the emergence of intelligent life across the whole galaxy!!
I agree that telescopy might reach enormous capabilities in the future that we hardly dare dream about today. I do not agree that this will somehow make it less desirable to send probes or go visit. I would strongly argue the contrary, that the more we see the more we will want to go.
No matter how large the telescopes, we will not be able to use them to see microbes, or analyze their genomes and metabolisms. We will not be able to crack open a rock, or drill into the ground, or do any number of things that yield enormously more information than the few photons that come our way.
andy said on August 3, 2012 at 12:15:
“’m surprised no-one’s mentioned Stanis?aw Lem yet, who wrote several works that addressed just this theme, notably Fiasco, Solaris and (perhaps most relevant to radio SETI) His Master’s Voice.”
Actually I mention Lem and those works all the time in my other relevant posts on Centauri Dreams. I was concerned that folks might be getting tired of hearing those examples again. Apparently not. :^)
Greg Parris said on August 3, 2012 at 12:30:
LJK commented “The main sticking point with this idea is trying not to get it mixed up with the UFO elements, which are very good at making professionals do their own disappearing act and cause non-scientists to go to the other extreme.”
“I agree. If we are being observed, then the observer not being seen would be an important operational requirement. We would only see the observers if they wanted it that way. And, I can’t think of a compelling reason why they would want to do that. I think the UFO craze is a visceral response to the feeling we shouldn’t be alone in the Universe and we want to know the answer NOW! It should be no surprise to see opportunists feeding at the UFO trough, bathing the general public in what they so desperately want to hear.”
LJK replies:
UFOs are the “People’s SETI”. The general populace, most of whom are not scientists and are not familiar with or interested in the scientific method but who still want to know if anyone else is out there, want answers to this admittedly major question and – as you said – they want them NOW!
Fifty years later and SETI having only a few one-time blips to show for its efforts does not sit well with a public that is fed a continual entertainment and media diet of Instant Aliens arriving in giant spaceships, be they friendly ala Close Encounters or marauding conquerers ala just about every other SF film with aliens in them.
Even Carl Sagan’s Contact had to bow to some form of this physical satisfaction by having its ETI send the instructions for building a giant cosmic wormhole transportation device. In reality, if SETI did get an alien signal, it would probably be some kind of simple attention getter like the prime numbers sent via a Benford Beacon and then a long back-and-forth dialogue across the stars. This assumes it was not a random signal we happened to catch and that the ETI want to talk with us for altruistic reasons.
In one way you can’t blame the public for wanting more than just a bunch of scientists staring up into the heavens are telling them every so many years that they’re still waiting for The Signal. But sadly, their eagerness combined with a lack of scientific knowledge and technique has lead to more than just a convoluted mess but has kept most scientists far away from the possibility of encountering an actual alien probe monitoring humanity. This and other factors is why if we don’t start opening our minds more and expanding our search parameters is why will we go another fifty years and more still wondering if we are alone on a cosmic scale.
Eniac said on August 3, 2012 at 23:07:
[LJK] “This also avoids the “messy” business of having to travel to other worlds and interacting with the residents and their dirty planets.”
“I agree that telescopy might reach enormous capabilities in the future that we hardly dare dream about today. I do not agree that this will somehow make it less desirable to send probes or go visit. I would strongly argue the contrary, that the more we see the more we will want to go.
“No matter how large the telescopes, we will not be able to use them to see microbes, or analyze their genomes and metabolisms. We will not be able to crack open a rock, or drill into the ground, or do any number of things that yield enormously more information than the few photons that come our way.”
LJK replies:
Here are my thoughts on why an advanced ETI which can observe us remotely won’t bother sending physical probes to Earth – in addition to the already established idea that their home-based instruments are *really* good at collecting data and sending a robot probe across the galaxy is just plain showing off. Take them as you will.
1. There is some kind of rule against physically invading a star system inhabited with beings who aren’t quite ready to deal with ETI and other higher cosmic matter. This has been agreed upon by all the really advanced ETI in the galaxy and enforced by them as well upon the lower intelligences who aren’t good enough to join the Elite Galactic Club or attempt to defy the Cosmic Upper Crust just because they are p*ssed at being told what to do by them.
2. Sending actual probes to other solar systems, especially those inhabited by creatures who can’t even be bothered to colonize their neighboring worlds and who think reality shows are the height of intellectual entertainment, would be just SO gauche! No self-respecting Galactic Elite ETI would be caught dead wasting their efforts or being caught in such a seedy neighborhood as the Sol system.
3. Their probes ARE here monitoring us, but as I said before in this thread, hiding from humans when you are hi-tech is rather easy. Besides, even if a few humans did find an alien probe, their primitive culture already has a built-in failsafe feature called most of the rest of their species would not believe the observers and their government would either dismiss them or take them away. :^)
There are few but some conclusions we can draw from the 50 years of SETI…
1. There is likely no civ within our receiving distances, probably 10s of thousands of LY, broadcasting Encyclopedia Galactica contact messages targeted to emerging civilizations. We didn’t know this in the 60s.
2. There are no very advanced galaxy re-engineering civs within a few hundred million LY. Hubble, Keck, etc. have not shown anomalies in their excellent hi-res galaxy photos.
3. Nobody has left a easily detectable monument on the moon to attract an emerging Earth technical civ.
Interestingly we still don’t know if a galaxy full of technical civs or just some nearby haven’t after eons of mistakes simply decided that the best policy for the last few eons is to let the newbies develop on their own and then later greet them at the Crab nebula or whatever.
Or if we’re the first or only technical civ or the only complex “animal” life in the entire galaxy.
Sobering.
But we’ve just started.
philw1776 said on August 5, 2012 at 16:44:
“There are few but some conclusions we can draw from the 50 years of SETI…
“1. There is likely no civ within our receiving distances, probably 10s of thousands of LY, broadcasting Encyclopedia Galactica contact messages targeted to emerging civilizations. We didn’t know this in the 60s.”
LJK replies:
I have never bought into the whole Encyclopaedia Galactica bit, at least in the sense of an advanced ETI spraying their knowledge and secrets all over the galaxy in some kind of altruistic effort to uplift the species that still think digital watches are really neat things.
Certainly the rich and powerful nations, organizations, and individuals on this planet do not share any more than they have to, otherwise their property and resources would be stripped in record time and already fierce competition would become jungle warfare.
There may be a lot more space and resources in the Milky Way compared to Earth or even our Sol system, but it would not surprise me if those aliens who have the awareness and ability aren’t already out there securing the best bits for themselves and woe to any interlopers who want a share.
As for ETI civilizations being tens of thousands of light years distant or more, I wonder about that simply because picking up more electromagnetic transmissions, especially those which are not meant for us, are quite difficult from distances much shorter than your parameters. And relatively few people and groups on this planet are doing much in terms of real SETI right now, just ask the ATA folks. Fifty years later and the sporadic and limited nature of the endeavor continues.
Philw1776 then says:
“2. There are no very advanced galaxy re-engineering civs within a few hundred million LY. Hubble, Keck, etc. have not shown anomalies in their excellent hi-res galaxy photos.”
LJK replies:
Are you or anyone else on this planet really sure about this? How many actual searches for extragalactic ETI have been conducted by the human race since the modern era of SETI began in 1960? Have you looked at NGC 5907 lately? Why do I have the feeling that ETI could be turning whole galaxies into flashing neon signs and most humans would still be scratching their primate skulls over what they were seeing.
Philw1776 then says:
“3. Nobody has left a easily detectable monument on the moon to attract an emerging Earth technical civ.”
LJK replies:
That’s because it’s buried way under Tycho Crater and NASA cancelled its permanent lunar colony plans, so it is going to take ages for us to find the big black monolith and expose it to sunlight to activate the Humans Just Got Smart Enough signal to the home quadrant.
How much of the Sol system have we really explored, and how much of that exploration involved looking for life? And of that fraction, how much involved searching for alien artifacts? Of that last part, the answer is virtually zero as far as NASA is concerned. There are groups looking for alien monoliths, monuments, spent rocket stages, the ruins of ancient civilizations and the like on neighboring worlds, but they are primarily fringe groups akin to the UFO cults. Their actions are akin to a religion and they only serve to bring ridicule to the concept and flight to the professional scientists.
Philw1776 then said:
“But we’ve just started.”
Exactly.
Exactly.
Exactly.
I have been thinking about what is actionable for us (humanity) at this point in time. I do think there is utility in finding artifacts of non-domestic origin. These discoveries could help us determine our place in the Universe and likely paths for development as well as firing the imaginations of us all. So, I think there is adequate motivation for continued good thinking and efforts toward finding archeological remains (where ever they may be found) with consideration for what we can afford to do.
As far as I can tell the only purpose of radio SETI is to find another civilization that is near to us both in space and in technological development. I think this is also very important. One could make a good case that a civilization in this group is the only one that is likely to pose a threat to our well being (that we could do anything about).
I expect we will follow both paths in the fullness of time.
If we are being observed then IETI should be the most cost effective approach.
http://philosophyofscienceportal.blogspot.com/2012/08/radio-transmissions-into-space-and.html
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Radio transmissions into space and alien life
Deliberate and unintentional radio transmissions from Earth propagate into space. These transmissions could be detected by extraterrestrial watchers over interstellar distances.
Here, we analyze the harms and benefits of deliberate and unintentional transmissions relevant to Earth and humanity. Comparing the magnitude of deliberate radio broadcasts intended for messaging to extraterrestrial intelligence (METI) with the background radio spectrum of Earth, we find that METI attempts to date have much lower detectability than emissions from current radio communication technologies on Earth. METI broadcasts are usually transient and several orders of magnitude less powerful than other terrestrial sources such as astronomical and military radars, which provide the strongest detectable signals.
The benefits of radio communication on Earth likely outweigh the potential harms of detection by extraterrestrial watchers; however, the uncertainty regarding the outcome of contact with extraterrestrial beings creates difficulty in assessing whether or not to engage in long-term and large-scale METI.
“The Benefits and Harms of Transmitting Into Space” by Jacob Haqq-Misra, Michael Busch, Sanjoy Som, and Seth Baum
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1207/1207.5540.pdf
When Joe Davis tried his METI project at Arecibo in 2009, he had so many roadblocks thrown in his path by the administrator at the time that without a combination of ingenuity, the right equipment at the right time, and just plain luck, his broadcast into the galaxy might never have happened, at least at that observatory.
Judging by what I have posted below, Arecibo seems to have relaxed their restrictions regarding METI, at least in this case. I also have the feeling that some currency thrown their way didn’t hurt either, along with the publicity.
Though I am surprised they agreed to this with the endeavor being mixed in with the Nat Geo Channel’s cheesy UFO program; then again, economic hardships do create unusual situations. For those who are concerned about what we beam into the Milky Way, this is just the latest incident which shows that no one seems to be seriously in charge of policing METI.
The article:
http://www.naic.edu/science/wow_signal_reply2012.html
National Geographic Channel (NatGeo) sends a WOW! Signal reply using the Arecibo Observatory
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August 15, 2012
Today, August 15, 2012, 35 years after the detection of the WOW! Signal, the Arecibo Observatory and NatGeo (National Geographic Channel), will be encoding, and transmitting a Reply to the Wow! signal using Arecibo Observatory’s 1-megawatt (MW) continuous-wave (CW) S-band transmitter, at 2380 MHz (12.6 cm wavelength) to send a global tweet into space.
On Aug. 15, 1977, as part of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, Ohio State University’s Big Ear radio observatory detected a strong 72-second radio signal from the direction of the Sagittarius constellation. When astronomer Jerry Ehman noticed the unusual spike — consisting of six letters and numbers — on the computer printout, he wrote the word “Wow!” in the margin of the sheet. Scientists tried to find this Wow signal again but it never reappeared.
Even though, the debate continues as to whether or not this was an actual alien contact, the Arecibo Observatory and National Geographic Channel (NatGeo) joined in a bold plan so that the the world’s largest ground-based radio telescope administered by SRI International, Universities Space Research Association and Universidad Metropolitana would decide how the tweets could be encoded and transmitted to finally send a reply back into the final frontier of space.
NatGeo spokeswoman Courteney Monroe said, “We wanted to come up with some sort of social experiment where we would galvanize people to tap into the curiosity about whether there is life and intelligence elsewhere..” After all the global tweets were collected, NatGeo and Arecibo Observatory sent out one big intergalactic tweet.
As part of this project, National Geographic Channel (NatGeo) has posted a special edition of the program Chasing UFO’s that was filmed on location at the Arecibo Observatory in commemoration of the 35 anniversary of the WOW signal.
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/chasing-ufos/the-wow-reply/
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* First picture: NatGeoTV web site
* Second picture: Transmission of WOW Reply in progress at the Arecibo Observatory
* Third Picture: Arecibo Observatory Director, Robert Kerr and Erin Ryder from Chasing UFO’
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Contact:
Tony Acevedo Ivonne Rosario Bermúdez
Communications Officer Directora de Medios
Arecibo Observatory Sistema Universitario Ana G. Mendez
787-878-2612, ext.228 787-751-0178, ext. 7181
jacevedo@naic.edu ivrosario@suagm.edu
29 August 2012
Text and Images:
http://www.prlog.org/11961386-uwingu-begins-funding-research-ahead-of-schedule-via-crowd-funding-seti-allen-telecope-array-chosen.html
UWINGU TO BEGIN FUNDING RESEARCH AHEAD OF SCHEDULE: FUNDING RESEARCHERS AT SETI INSTITUTE’S ALLEN TELESCOPE ARRAY WITH BONUS CROWD FUNDING FUNDS
UwinguTM, LLC and the SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array (ATA) designed to search out extraterrestrial life, together announced today that the SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array’s science team will be the first project funded by Uwingu, via its crowd-sourcing IndieGoGo campaign. Uwingu will donate half of all “bonus” funds above its $75K business launch target to the ATA.
“We don’t have to wait to begin helping space research until we launch our first product, we’re starting now!” said Uwingu CEO, Dr. Alan Stern. “And I can’t overstate how proud Uwingu is to have the SETI Institute’s ATA as a beneficiary of our IndieGoGo crowd-funding campaign. SETI is one of the noblest and most important space research enterprises. We hope this will be a double-win — generating more funds available to launch our own commercial products, and more funds available to the ATA’s research teams.”
Added the ATA’s Dr. Jill Tarter, “Even without the looming specter of federal budget ‘sequestration’, available governmental budgets for space science, space research, and programs encouraging STEM education are shrinking fast. Our ideas and opportunities are bigger and better than ever, but they are all competing for a smaller resource pool. Alternative funding in the form of entrepreneurship is an absolute necessity if we are to continue exploring and solving grand challenges. All of us can participate in the IndieGoGo campaign and the launch of Uwingu, and purchase its products to generate revenues to fund the best ideas from scientists today and into tomorrow. Make it so!”
Contact:
Alan Stern
astern2010@aol.com
#####
Uwingu is a space-themed, for profit start up seeking crowd-sourced funding to launch an ongoing series of public engagement projects. In specific, Uwingu will employ novel software applications to “game-ify “space, and targeting up to half of the proceeds going toward space research and education. Uwingu’s mission is to use proceeds from its projects to generate new funding for space exploration, research, and education efforts around the world.
Uwingu (which means “sky” in Swahili, and is pronounced “oo-wing-oo”) was formed by a team of leading astronomers, planetary scientists, former space program executives, and educators. Included in the company’s portfolio of space heavyweights are space historian and author Andrew Chaikin, space educator Dr. Emily CoBabe-Ammann, citizen science leader Dr. Pamela Gay, author and museum science director Dr. David Grinspoon, planet hunter Dr. Geoff Marcy, planetary scientist and aerospace executive Dr. Teresa Segura, planetary scientist and former NASA science boss Dr. Alan Stern, and planetary scientist and CEO of the Planetary Science Institute, Dr. Mark Sykes.
The ATA is a unique array of 42 radio telescopes in Northern California to study the exoplanetary systems being discovered on the ground and with the Kepler mission. Says the ATA’s Dr. Tarter, “We know where exoplanets planets are located, and the ATA is systematically exploring them to try to uncover evidence that one of these systems is generating radio signals. We hope that Uwingu will accelerate this process and bring us closer to answering the question of whether we share this cosmos with others.
Uwingu’s crowd-sourcing campaign will last until September 14, 2012. Uwingu’s crowd funding agent is IndieGoGo, a leader in the field. Uwingu now has almost 300 sponsors of its upcoming launch, and is nearing half way in meeting its crowd-funding goal.
Participate in Uwingu’s crowd-sourcing campaign and support SETI in doing so at:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/180221.
Follow Uwingu on Twitter at UwinguSky; and friend Uwingu on Facebook, visit Uwingu at http://www.uwingu.com
http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2012/09/setis-first-artist-in-residence-transports-viewers-to-alien-worlds/
SETI’s First Artist-in-Residence Transports Viewers to Alien Worlds
By Jakob Schiller
09.06.12 6:30 AM
Charles Lindsay’s gigantic, sometimes 60-foot-long, black-and-white and color prints from his CARBON photo series are enigmatically provocative. Are they high-resolution scans from an electron microscope? Manipulated images of far-off planets captured by the Hubble telescope?
The photos are actually created through a special process Linsday invented that involves spreading a carbon-based emulsion onto plastic negatives. The resulting images are then digitally scanned and printed in several ways.
It’s an approach that has yielded unusual results and stuck a strong chord with audiences, earning him not only a Guggenheim fellowship, but also the first-ever spot as an artist-in-residence at the SETI Institute.
“A photograph normally suggests reality, our initial read is that its protracting something real,” says Lindsay. “But in these photos there is a lot of ambiguity and that’s one of the things that I respond to strongly in art; it’s a necessity.”
For two years now Charles Lindsay and scientists at the SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) have been collaborating and finding new ways to mix art and science in an effort to help stretch the public’s mind about the possibilities of the world and space around us.
“Here at the SETI Institute we are trying to get people to put themselves in a different frame of reference, to step back,” says astronomer Dr. Jill Tarter, who holds the Bernard M. Oliver chair at the Institute. “And Charlie’s art encourages us to think in those terms.”
For nearly three decades the SETI Institute (Tarter points out that SETI is a verb, the SETI Institute is a noun) has been exploring the cosmos in search of other life forms. As part of their work they’ve had to ask a lot of big questions and have proposed some radically new ways of thinking about life. In the process they’ve had to try and translate that approach to a sometimes skeptical public and Tarter sees Lindsay’s work as one more way to help deliver the message.
For example, she says, even though Hollywood has created thousands of alien prototypes, probability and evolution point to the fact that they’ve only skimmed the surface of what an extraterrestrial being might actually look like.
“So far we haven’t gone very far afield,” she says. “Mostly what we’ve been doing is just projecting ourselves and our fears [onto our alien creations] and the real thing is likely to be significantly different.”
In Lindsay’s photography, Tarter says she sees a playfulness between reality and imagination that breaks out of these narrow barriers and allows us to think more freely about the nearly infinite shapes aliens might take on.
“He didn’t set out to portray alien beings but he is providing us with images that are sort of familiar but kind of not, and I think that tension is a helpful exercise in conceiving of something that is utterly different,” she says.
Lindsay says he purposely wants his work to pose questions instead of provide answers.
“Disassociate is a word that comes to mind,” he says. “In certain ways I’m trying to take you out of one world and into another.”
The ambiguous scale in Lindsay’s work also parallels space exploration’s tension between the very small and the very large. When viewers stand in front of his photographs they are often unsure of whether they are looking at something microscopic or enormous. This re-thinking of scale is important for the SETI Institute because their canvas is the universe, an unimaginably large expanse that necessitates some creativity to put into perspective.
Based on statistical equations, for example, Tarter says it is going to be difficult for our technology to detect another society. Space is so big that it makes the odds relatively small. But, on the chance that a signal is indeed detected, she says, that proves that whoever, or whatever, sent the signal had enough staying power to send it for a long enough period that it beat the odds and founds its way into our detectors.
“Unless technological societies have staying power, they are never going to be two technological civilizations close enough in space and lined up in time so that they overlap,” she says.
Tarter says she hopes these same odds might motivate us to find a way to make our technology, and our social relations, more sustainable. At the current pace she says human civilization might disappear — be it from war, ecological disaster or some kind of other global problem — before our signals and our receptors have been on long enough to have a fighting chance within the equations that currently define our view of the universe.
She hopes just the possibility of contacting another civilization — even if it doesn’t happen for another thousand years — will help us figure out a better way to live with and harness the advances we’ve already made.
“If we detect a signal it would provide us with the knowledge that there is a solution because someone else did it,” she says. “And even in the absence of the signal we want the world to get involved with the SETI Institute because it helps us internalize this cosmic perspective.”
For Lindsay, that perspective has become important during his time at the SETI Institute and in many ways represents a kind of full-circle in the evolution of his art. During his career he’s spent time in some of the most remote places on the globe, including a 10-year period where he spent several months of each year living with a stone-age tribe in Indonesia. Now, with the SETI Institute he does things like broadcasting the sounds of a Costa Rican rain forest through a NASA wind tunnel to observe its effect.
In addition to the CARBON prints, Lindsay has gone on to create entire multimedia installations that bring in sound and sculpture. The point, he says, is to enhance the experience of disassociation and exploration that he’s become known for.
At the SETI Institute he’s had the opportunity to partner with scientists, who like Tarter, are trying to push conceptual boundaries and he’s taken full advantage of the environment that the institute creates.
“All the scientist at the SETI Institute are engaging unique forms of exploration and it’s been wonderful to be under the same roof with them because exploration will always be at the heart of what I do,” he says.
Charles Lindsay will be speaking and performing in San Francisco on Sept. 18 at Swissnex as part of the ZERO1 ‘Seeking Silicon Valley’ arts biennial. Lindsay will also debut CARBON-X, a new dome formatted surround audio visual work, Sept. 22 and 25 at Getting off the Planet and ISEA2012 in New Mexico.