Coffee!! I get more mail: Extraterrestrials and the super-rich

A friend reminds me of cosmologist Paul Davies' essay, "Is Anybody Out There?" (April 10, 2010), which provides some interesting information on funding patterns for SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence:

Most of the funding today comes from private donations through the SETI Institute, a private nonprofit founded in 1984 in Mountain View, Calif. The jewel in its crown is the Allen Telescope Array, a $35 million dedicated network of 42 small dishes in northern California, with about $30 million of the funding contributed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The goal is to ultimately increase the network to 350 dishes. Donors on other projects have included David Packard and Bill Hewlett (co-founders of Hewlett-Packard) and Gordon Moore (co-founder of Intel).

The US government hasn't funded SETI since 1993. Davies offers imaginative ways for the super-rich to look for aliens:

On purely statistical grounds any visitation is likely to have been a very long time ago. To pluck a figure out of midair, imagine that an alien expedition passed our way 100 million years ago. Would any traces remain?

Not many. However, some remnants might still persist. Buried nuclear waste could be detectable even after billions of years. Large-scale mineral exploitation such as quarrying leaves distinctive scars that, in the case of Earth, would eventually become obscured by overlying strata but would still show up in geological surveys. Space probes parked in orbit round the sun might lie dormant yet intact for an immense period of time. Scientists could look for such hallmarks of alien technology on Earth and the moon, in near space, on Mars and among the asteroids.

Davies' (not entirely serious, I suspect) suggestions, intriguing as they are, still remind me - I must admit - of a woman doing Internet searches on an ex-boyfriend and turning up accidentally at gatherings and restaurants he has sometimes frequented. And the reality is that, if he had died in the meantime, she might not even be one of the people that anyone would think to notify. So she could be haunting a ghost, to say nothing of haunting her own real life.

I get mail: Wallace on Mars's canals

Wallace

Lowell

A friend writes to say that Darwin's co-theorist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) argued strongly for a theistic version of the anthropic principle in his Man's Place in the Universe (1904) anticipating the excellent book by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards The Privileged Planet by precisely 100 years. Interestingly, Wallace argued vehemently in 1907 against Percival Lowell (1855-1916). Wallace insisted that the "canals" [on Mars] were the product of fissures created over long periods of time.

But then, Lowell was seeing science fiction and Wallace was seeing nature. It matters.

Lowell's canals concept, Wikimedia Commons

Paul Davies on avoiding a hullabaloo when the flying saucers land

In “Newsmaker Interview: Imponderables Complicate Hunt For Intelligent Life Beyond Earth”, Science (23 April 2010), Yudhijit Bhattacharjee asks cosmologist Paul Davies some questions about the SETI search, in aid of his Eerie Silence book. Two stand out:

Q: Why is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence any different from the search for goblins or unicorns?

P.D.: Good point. Well, when it started out 50 years ago, it was considered a very quixotic enterprise. The pendulum has swung during my career. I often ask around why it is now okay to talk about ET when it wasn't 40 years ago. And people will often cite irrelevant factors like—oh, we've discovered all these planets, and we've discovered that life can exist in a wide array of conditions. But the truth is that we still don't have an acceptable theory of life's origins, we really have no idea whether it was a stupendous fluke that happened only once or whether it pops up all over the place. It's now fashionable to say that the universe is teeming with life, but there is not a shred of evidence.

[ ... ]

Q: You devote a chapter in the book to how governments, the media, and societies need to handle news of the detection of extraterrestrial intelligence, if and when that happens. What are the outlines of the plan?

P.D.: If there's a signal, the scientists should be allowed to evaluate it before there's a hullabaloo. In practice, that will be very hard to achieve without a cloak of secrecy, which I am usually against. But there's one thing on which we are all agreed, which is that we should not disclose the coordinates in the sky of a transmitting source. Because otherwise, any self-appointed spokesperson of humanity could get hold of a radio telescope and start beaming crackpot messages, and present themselves as a spokesperson for mankind, when it is not at all clear whether we should respond. (Paywall)

Okay, but how would the crackpot messages differ from stuff we hear all the time? Presumably, ET has noticed that and is used to it.

Recalling 2010: And we thought this sort of thing only happened in science fiction ...

Tim Radford told us, in The Guardian:

Paul Davies is a cosmologist who turned to the problem of life in the cosmos at least 15 years ago: this is, on my count, his fourth book on the theme. He is chairman of the Seti post-detection task group, a little committee of rationalists prepared to confront one of the most intoxicating and terrifying challenges of all time: if we do hear from ET, Davies and colleagues will be the first to know. This improbable burden could explain why The Eerie Silence may not be his most thrilling book, but is certainly one of his most thoughtful: there is hardly an aspect of the great Seti puzzle that he does not address, in clear, almost laconic vernacular.


- review of The Eerie Silence: Are We Alone in the Universe? and James Kasting’s How to Find a Habitable Planet (27 March, 2010)

Well, what if Davies did get The Call. What would one say? “What kept you?” doesn’t quite cut it.

Radford sensibly wonders,

Is there silence because extraterrestrials simply do not exist? Are the conditions for the emergence of life so far-fetched, so ludicrously improbable that it happened only once, on one planet orbiting one star in just one galaxy during the whole 13.7-billion-year lifetime of the universe? Or is the universe humming with life, but humming so quietly that we cannot hear it?

and a number of interesting speculations orbit these.

Then we hear,

The scientist in him, says Davies, suspects that humans may be the only intelligent beings in the universe. The philosopher in him hates the idea. "Frankly, it makes me uneasy. I wonder what all that stuff out there is for, when only lowly Homo sapiens gets to see it."

Hmmm. Maybe to provide a work opportunity for otherwise unemployed astronomers? Well, the least they could do then is go for it.

Do you have to be an American liberal to believe in extraterrestrials?

Yes, folks, I thought this was Hoax News at work too.

But Michael Medved reports,

These clashing opinions on extraterrestrials amount to more than a trivial split on an arcane topic; they connect, in fact, both logically and emotionally to big conflicts over worldview, culture, politics and America’s role in history.


In Colorado, these conflicts erupted in a recent battle over a proposed Denver commission to investigate visitations from alien life forms. Initiative 300 won enough signatures to qualify for the ballot in November 2010 but lost in a landslide, with conservatives leading the derision of the “ET Initiative,” as a loony waste of taxpayer money. The chief support for “greater transparency” regarding sightings and encounters came from the city’s Bohemian left, with advocates proudly citing the interest in flying saucers from liberal icons like Jimmy Carter and John Podesta, Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff.


Polls show that Americans remain closely divided on attitudes toward extraterrestrials, with a 2008 Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll reporting 56% who believe it is “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that intelligent life has developed in other worlds. Self-described Democrats (according to the same survey) are far more likely to say they have personally seen “visitors from another world” than are their Republican counterparts, who remain distinctly skeptical.


For more, go here.

A most interesting discussion follows.

Of course the Initiative is a waste of money! If the ETs really wanted to talk to us ... well, like I always advise, in matters of the heart: If he’s there and if he cares, he’ll phone. He knows you want to hear from him. So, if you don’t ...

By the way, I hope it’s not true that Jimmy Carter spent a lot of time thinking about ... flying saucers?? ... when he was president. Didn’t he have, like, “issues” to address? I recall something about the Ayatollah Khomeini holding American hostages back then ... Ring a bell?

For more stories on extraterrestrials, go here.

Note: This sounds kind of preachy,but it is important to distinguish between "space aliens" as above, and the possibility of primitive life on other planets. The latter is a question on which information from science has  a bearing; the former an article of faith, based on other beliefs.

Coffee!!: Favourite local quote from yesterday, on ETs

By Gleaner here at Rob Sheldon’s story on extraterrestrials:

If for some reasons the aliens are actually interested in us, I think they are probably already here, and given a certain level of technology, if would probably be easy to hide from us, even on a daily basis.

Yes, I should think so. Termites do it all the time. So do the rats at a nearby dumpster. (That’s why the rule of thumb is, for every rat you happen to spot, there are a dozen.)

Now, what I’d be interested to know is, the ETs never phone, they never write. Why do we assume they exist?

Most of the reasons I have heard are based on attitudes, values, and beliefs, not science.

For example, why can’t we be alone in the universe? Maybe we just are. One can interpret that fact in various ways.

The least plausible explanation I hear is that we can’t be alone because that would imply we are special. Why? If we don’t know why there isn’t anyone else out there, it’s a meaningless assumption, unless our tradition of thought offers other lines of reasoning as well.

Suppose I am out hiking in the far north, and the proposition is put to me that I cannot be the only human being within a hundred kilometre radius. I protest that that is impossible. “They” must be out there.

As a matter of fact, in Canada’s far north, it is quite possible that I am indeed the only human being currently within a hundred kilometre radius, and there is no They there.

Of course, it would be boring if there are no ETs. But we can’t rule it out. There are no other high intellect creatures on our own planet, despite overblown claims made for great apes.

Well, to riff off Marlene Dietrich, I don’t want to be alone, but must be prepared to get used to it, if it is true.

Extraterrestrials: Several million UFO reports later ... the state of the question

Recently, I have been reading Hugh Ross's Why the Universe Is the Way It Is (Baker, 2008) (which I will review). Ross heads up Reasons to Believe, an Christian apologetics ministry aimed at scientists, based in Pasadena, California. He notes,

After 60 years of investigation into several million UFO reports, researchers have concluded that 90 to 99 percent of all UFO sightings are, in fact, IFOs. Identifiable flying objects include natural phenomena, human-made (often experimental) aircraft, pranksters' hoaxes, and psychological phenomena. Of the remaining 1 to 10 percent, scientists have found no credible evidence (such as crash debris or physical artifacts) indicating that these sightings involve physical craft, with or without beings on board.

The publication of the Condon Report on Project Blue Book in 1969 did little, if anything, to quell public speculation about alien visitors, which continues unabated. However, subsequent rigorous interdisciplinary studies yave yielded sufficient data to demonstrate that at least some of the residual (still unidentified 1-10 percent) UFOs are real and yet not tangible, or physical, in nature. They may be categorized as occult or nonphysical manifestations. (P. 59)

In other words, we have no idea what they are, but we don't know a reason to think they are Drake and Sagan's extraterrestrial intelligences.

One thing I find really interesting is that, contrary to a carefuly cultivated stereotype, it is the theists and non-materialists who are the skeptics, while materialists indulge in theories that erase space and time, and multiply universes ad lib.

See also:

Younger astronomers less likely to believe than older ones?

So what if fossil bacteria are found on Mars? Polls show many Americans expect Star Trek!

Some scientists hope that the aliens are NOT out there!

Increase in UFO sitings in Canada - what's behind that?

Extraterrestrials: Younger astronomers less likely to believe than older ones?

Science writer Fred Heeren noted in "Home Alone in the Universe" (First Things, March 2002) that there may be a generation gap between astronomers in terms of their expectations of finding advanced alien civilizations - and the gap is growing in the wrong directn for ET believers.

Recalling Robert Jastrow's optimism in the 1990s,

“I think that mankind is on the threshold of entering a larger, cosmic community,” he told me during a visit to his home and then to California’s Mt. Wilson Observatories, where he serves as Director. His words carried a kind of ecclesiastical authority, seeming to reverberate from the seven-story dome above him, the observatory he calls a “cathedral dedicated to mankind’s quest for understanding of the Cosmos.” Less loftily, he added, simply, “We’ll be hearing from those guys soon.”

he contrasts it with today's more sobered view:

Other astronomers belonging to Robert Jastrow’s generation recall the same kind of enthusiasm, but new concerns have since dampened it. “I used to rather enjoy thinking that the early civilizations would have set up an intercommunicating system,” said Senior Astronomer Emeritus Eric Carlson of Chicago’s Adler Planetarium. “Maybe laser beams or something full of information about all the other civilizations in the past history of the galaxy, and that this is all circulating around from star to star around the galaxy, and all we have to do is tap into it.”

The actual likelihood that we’ll hear back from anyone that close, of course, depends upon just how densely packed our galaxy is with civilizations—and upon how long those civilizations last. Today Eric Carlson frets about what might happen to any civilization in the course of a 10-billion-year-old galaxy. What will be left of human culture in a billion years, or even a million? “I tend to get this sense of a galaxy as being sort of like a garden,” says Carlson. “You have the early spring flowers, and then you have the late spring flowers and so on, and you have life with consciousness springing up here and there for a while. And whether it’s ever in contact at the same time, I just don’t know.”

The next generation of cosmologists might still say that the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations is “extremely likely,” as cosmologist George Smoot (Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories) told me. “But I think the chances of there being life near to us is pretty low,” he cautioned, “and whether there’s life in our own galaxy, besides ourselves, I don’t know.”

He also points out something I mentioned in an earlier post - popular culture is impervious to the reduced expectations:

Incredibly, infatuation with extraterrestrials actually increased in the last decade. The Rockford Files became The X-Files. Mob-fighting “Untouchables” turned into alien-fighting “Men in Black,” also spun into a children’s cartoon series. The biggest hit in late night radio is a national show frequently featuring firsthand witnesses talking about their close encounters with aliens or their spacecraft.

For some people, real life is apparently taking too long to catch up to their media-led expectations—and they aren’t going to wait any longer. During the 1990s, psychologists estimated that 900,000 people claimed to have been abducted by aliens in the U.S. alone, and the trend was increasing.

I think Heeren is right about the aliens being an ersatz religion, one that makes no demands and rewards any amount of gullibility. He also quotes Jastrow as saying, oddly,

“When we make contact with them, it will be a transforming event,” he says. “I do not know how the Judeo-Christian tradition will react to this development, because the concept that there exist beings superior to us in this universe, not only technically, but perhaps spiritually and morally, will take some rethinking, I think, of the classic doctrines of western religion.”

Huh? What does Jastrow think angels are supposed to be in the traditional culture?

See also:

So what if fossil bacteria are found on Mars? Polls show many Americans expect Star Trek!

Some scientists hope that the aliens are NOT out there!

Increase in UFO sitings in Canada - what's behind that?

Some scientists hope that the aliens are NOT out there!

Enrico Fermi's "napkin" question is "Why do they never write? Never phone?"

In Technology Review (May/June 2008), Where Are They? [freewall], troubled genius Nick Bostrom offers a fretful hope, "Why I hope the search for extraterrestrial life finds nothing":

... it seems unlikely that the galaxy is teeming with intelligent life and that the reason we haven’t seen any of them is that they all confine themselves to their home planets. Now, it is possible to concoct scenarios in which the universe is swarming with advanced civilizations every one of which chooses to keep itself well hidden from our view. Maybe there is a secret society of advanced civilizations that know about us but have decided not to contact us until we’re mature enough to be admitted into their club. Perhaps they’re observing us, like animals in a zoo. I don’t see how we can conclusively rule out this possibility. But I will set it aside for the remainder of this essay in order to concentrate what to me appears to be more plausible answers to Fermi’s question.

Look, many women have asked Fermi's question in a variety of much humbler circumstances. If you exist, you may be a part of the solution in a given case. So go do that and decrease the number of such questions.



The rest of us would like to concentrate on questions where existence rather than decency is in doubt.

So what if fossil bacteria are found on Mars? Polls show many Americans expect Star Trek!

Marc Kaufman informs us in "Search for Alien Life Gains New Impetus" (Washington Post, July 20, 2008) that

Few believe that the discovery of extraterrestrial life is imminent. However, just as scientists long theorized that there were planets orbiting other stars -- but could not prove it until new technologies and insights broke the field wide open -- many astrobiologists now see their job as to develop new ways to search for the life they are sure is out there.

The most intensive effort at the moment is focused on Mars, where NASA's robotic lander Phoenix is digging up soil and ice in search of organic material. The automated lab has excited scientists by finding many of the nutrients needed for life, although it has not found anything that was, or is, living. Also, photos and other data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter produced dramatic new evidence this month that the planet was once home to vast lakes, flowing rivers and a variety of other wet environments that had the potential to support life.

Of course, there is much talk of the implications of finding life on other planets but

To some, debating the implications of discovering extraterrestrial life is premature at best, because -- all UFO "sightings" aside -- none has ever been found.

"Premature?" No, it's passe!

For one thing, as Kaufman's reference to UFOs points up, many people already believe that advanced ET civilizations exist and are even trying to contact us.

In a 2005 poll, two-thirds of Americans believe life exists on other planets and of these, eight out of ten think that alien civilizations are more advanced than ours. In other words, whatever the effect on public attitudes of finding life on other planets would be, that effect has already happened.

Why does that matter? Because the oft-heard claim that finding extraterrestrial life would be a world-changing science discovery is off side.

In reality, it would only confirm what people already believe - in the absence of any actual evidence - that They are out there.

The photo, from NASA, shows ancient fossil bacteria.

Outlaw journalist David Warren disparages Extraterrestrials- and WHERE is the Canadian Human Rights Commission?

Where, I ask you?

What do we pay taxes for if not to watch our neighbours destroyed if someone, somewhere is offended by their ideas?

All the Canadian Commission needs to do is classify aliens as humans (just as Spain has granted "human" rights to apes), and they can sure go after Warren, usually of the Ottawa Citizen, but here writing in the Sunday Spectator ("Abducted by aliens", May 18, 2008) words that are "likely" to expose the extraterrestrials to hatred and contempt (that's the word the law uses):

The group I intend to slur today are the Extraterrestrials. I’m not sure how the courts will interpret “hate-speech” and “hate-thought” towards this group, which is not yet specifically protected under any of Canada’s awkwardly-worded “rights” codes. Arguably, any attack on Extraterrestrials could be taken as personal attacks on members, former members, outriders and hangers-on of the HRCs themselves, and therefore provoke the next round of vexatious lawsuits.

Still, if Canada is to recover free speech and freedom of the press, journalists will have to be brave and bold, and I’m prepared, like a Boy Scout, to do my bit. I don’t care what the personal consequences to me -- they can sue me, they can throw me in prison (I’ve already been hauled before the Ontario Press Council by one of these trolls, for writing disparagingly about Islamist terrorists) -- but I’m going to speak out. I’m going to tell you exactly what I think about Extraterrestrials.

I think they don’t exist. (And what could be more demeaning!)

While I acknowledge the belief that highly intelligent, super-evolved beings must inhabit other planets -- if not in this galaxy, then surely in some others -- is dear to the post-Christian “liberal” mind, my own views are old-fashioned, sceptical, and Catholic.

These are dangerous views, as I discovered this week, when I lapsed into email exchanges first with a fairly sane, sensible, Darwinian atheist in Texas, and then with several more strident correspondents from the Darwinian camp. I had no idea, until I provoked them, just how powerfully the desire to believe in “little green men” can animate the thinking of minds bereft of sound religion, and/or common sense.

But while their arguments struck me as simpleton, and ludicrous, I could nevertheless reformulate them into something vaguely plausible. Consider:

[ ... ]

And pray for me, that I don’t get abducted by the aliens up here in Canada.

We can but hope.

The image, from Wiki COmmons, shows extraterrestrials looking really, really in need of a big bureaucracy to come to their rescue.

Design vs. chance: If extra-terrestrials designed a planet, could we know it was intelligently designed?

In The Design Matrix: A Consilience of Clues, Mike Gene discusses a 2005 paper by Luc Arnold of the Observatory of Haute-Provence in France, in The Astrophysical Journal.

p. 194 Arnold explains his idea thus:

... considering that artificial planet-size bodies may exist around other stars, and that such objects always transit in front of their parent star for a given remote observer, we may thus have an opportunity to detect and even characterize them by the transit method, assuming these transits are distinguishable from a simple planetary transit. These objects could be planet-size structures built by advanced civilizations, like very lightweight solar sails or giant very low density structures may be specially built for the purpose of interstellar communication by transit. (P. 194)

Arnold argues that non-spherical artificial objects such as triangles and other exotic shapes each have a specific transit lightcurve, so alien design would be detectible in principle.

Gene is a bit dubious about how soon to expect this revelation, pointing out that "we are still looking for evidence that microbes exist on other planets," never mind aliens capable of designing, say, a planetary bundt pan.*

Mike Gene's basic point, of course, is that one need not know "who" a designer is in order to detect design, and he cites Arnold because Arnold apparently doesn't think so either.

Gene also observes in the Chapter Notes (Note 3) that France is the home of the Raelians. Mi-i-ike! Do keep in mind, if you are an American, that the United States is the home of Roswell.

Here is Arnold's citation and abstract:

"Transit Lightcurve Signatures of Artificial Objects." Astrophysical Journal, 627:534-539.)

The forthcoming space missions, able to detect Earth-like planets by the transit method, will a fortiori also be able to detect the transit of artificial planet-size objects. Multiple artificial objects would produce lightcurves easily distinguishable from natural transits. If only one artificial object transits, detecting its artificial nature becomes more difficult. We discuss the case of three different objects (triangle, 2-screen, louver-like 6-screen) and show that they have a transit lightcurve distinguishable from the transit of natural planets, either spherical or oblate, although an ambiguity with the transit of a ringed planet exists in some cases. We show that transits, especially in the case of multiple artificial objects, could be used for the emission of attention-getting signals, with a sky coverage comparable to the laser pulse method. The large number of expected planets (several hundreds) to be discovered by the transit method by next space missions will allow to test these ideas.

*Yes, the bundt-pan design would so be handy, when you need your planet to section easily into structures with flat sides and curved tops ....

(Note: The image is an artifcial planet concept from The Infinity Society.)

Coffee break question: Why are the space aliens always supposed to have superior technology?

Here is Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence's (SETI's) explanation for why any civilization we do encounter should be more advanced than ours, by Douglas Vacoch, director of SETI's Interstellar Message Composition:

Before we answer that question, we must acknowledge that any extraterrestrials we make contact with may well be thousands or millions of years more advanced than we are. Why do SETI scientists assume this? Because for our search to succeed, it needs to be true.

If the galaxy is populated only by young civilizations that have the capacity for interstellar communication for only a few decades before they destroy themselves or simply lose interest in making contact with other worlds, then we will effectively be isolated, alone in the universe. If other civilizations transmit evidence of their existence for only a few decades – the length of time that humans have been capable of interstellar communication – and then they lose the interest or ability to make contact, it's extremely unlikely that the precise time they are transmitting and the time that we are listening will coincide. On a galactic scale, where time is measured in billions of years, it is extremely unlikely that these two "blips" would happen at the same time. This would be as unlikely as two fireflies each lighting up once, at exactly the same time, during the course of a long, dark night. The chance that both would flash on simultaneously is virtually zero; it's more likely their flashes would be separated by minutes or hours. So too is it unlikely that two short-lived civilizations that had evolved independently of one another would come into being at almost precisely the same time in the fourteen billion year history of our galaxy.

If we hear from a distant civilization, on purely statistical grounds it's very likely they will be our elders.

But is this a leftover memory of the European invasion of North America? The Europeans had guns and exotic diseases and the Native Americans didn't. Hence history.

But what if SETI's extraterrestrials eventually crash land on Earth because of a mixup between two rival groups of scientists, one of which was using Imperialoid measurements and the other was using Metricosis measurements?

Hey, don't tell me it never happens.