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Looking For Intelligence
Calgacus writes "We've all read stories about extra-solar planets being found by gravitational wobbles. The Scotsman has a story here about a planet in the Fomalhaut system being discovered because of its wake through a dust cloud. It's further out than other recently discovered planets and astronomers are saying it means there's an odds-on chance of intelligent life being out there. If only there was more on Earth..."
I think Hobbes said it best: "The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us."
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
As far as I can tell, the article has nothing specifically to do with the search for life, much less the search for intelligent life. All it is really about is the detection of a planet with a much larger orbital radius than previous extrasolar planets. According to the team in the article, this makes it "much more likely that other solar systems exist." Well, duh. The only bearing this has on life is as more confirmation that there are indeed extrasolar planets. Which I think we already knew. So, yes, it's an interesting detection technique, but life? Intelligence? Including these references is sensationalistic and dumb.
This may be a stupid question, but how can they say there's a likely chance, when they haven't actually proved there's any life anywhere off-earth yet? Is this more astronomers trying to fund their projects again by mentioning the L-word?
"We've all read stories about extra-solar planets being found by gravitational wobbles...
I think that's why I keep coming back to SlashDot; only here does a story begin like that and nobody blinks an eye...
God luv yuz...
Bigger, dumber human says: "And now, for the severe beating of an intelligent human..."
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So in other words, don't believe the hype?
Let me get this straight -- now that we've found conclusive (?) evidence of another planet that most likely wouldn't support life, this increases the chance of finding intelligent life in outer space. Makes sense.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
i thought that space was absolute zero for temperature, or at least something remarkably close. how in the world are they able to get something colder on earth than they can in space?
You thought wrong. "Space" doesn't have a temperature in any very meaningful sense, but if it did it would be 3K, from the cosmic microwave background radiation. In the vicinity of a star, however, objects will reach a thermal equilibrium where the energy they absorb from solar radiation matches the infrared they radiate away. This is a lot higher in the neighbourhood of Earth orbit -- the Earth, for example, has reached a thermal equilibrium of around 285K (complicated slightly by extra heat produced by radioactive decay).
You might want to visit the STI website then ?
They're planning to use the 90% unused brain power in every person out there, with the STI@Home project, but their Antartica station is still under construction...
Ok. Now reread the article for what it actually says.
,who led the team,] said there was little chance of finding life on the planet because it was under constant bombardment from a surrounding belt of comets. "
"However, [Dr Holland
before that his unrelated comment to the finding was...
"Personally speaking, I think it must be odds-on that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, and I think one day we will find it - or they will find us."
Please read the article all the way through before you jump to conclusions.
This space intentionally left blank.
Dr Mark Wyatt, another team member, said the dust showed evidence of comet activity.
Something tells me my wife won't be excited by this and I'll still get yelled at for not doing a better job of cleaning up the living room.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.
-- The last lines from The Galaxy Song - Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
Man, if you ever get *any* negative 'K' readings, you're either in for a nobel prize or a Nelson-like 'Haa-Ha!'....
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
One of the large problems in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is the preconception that any "intelligent lifeforms" would conform to the human concept of what qualifies:
.5 or 3.5 times the size of humans, and life in subterranean caves and achieved energy/sustainence from lava-flows or something similar as opposed to a solar source.
a) Life
b) Intelligence
he said there was little chance of finding life on the planet because it was under constant bombardment from a surrounding belt of comets.
In the case of (a), for the most-part we are looking for carbon-based lifeforms that function in a similar way to human beings. This isn't to say that were looking for a bipedal species with human characteristics, but that we ignore other possiblities. There could be lifeforms that are not carbon-based, as is life on earth. Indeed, a planet that is completely inhospitable to earthly life may provide what another race/species needs to exist, but is overlooked due to the fact that "we" couldn't live on it.
If that is the case, then why shouldn't there be planetary systems like our own that contain Earth-like planets?
In the case of (b), we qualify intelligence as matching a particular set of humanistic functions. Among these would be the ability to manufacture tools, buildings, monuments, etc that are recognisable to us as such.
There's no reason why (possible) life on other planets should conform to these classifications. Indeed, there could be lifeforms that are not x-pedal (have feet, etc) in nature, are
Outworldly life is greatly unknown. There's nothing to say that such life would be in any way similar to our own, and to us may resemble a rock more than a human being.
We're all limited by our own sense of being - phorm
The answers to your questions are there in the article, really...it's just that the language the authors use is imprecise and hence confusing.
In simplest terms, Hubble can't "see" it because it's too dark. Optical telescopes just scoop up light in the visible spectrum; if the object you're interested in doesn't produce enough such light, then you won't see it.
SCUBA isn't looking for visible light, though; it's looking for electromagnetic radiation in a different area of the spectrum (different frequencies/wavelengths) than visible light. Since the object produces significant radiation at these frequencies, SCUBA can "see" it.
Regarding temperature: yes, it's cold where Hubble is (in the shade; it's very hot if you're in the sun), but that doesn't affect its ability to detect visible light. What matters is whether there's other visible light to interfere with the visible light it's interested in. In other words, if you're an optical telescope, you want it to be DARK around you...in an ideal world, the only source of light would be from the object you're trying to observe. Optical telescopes are looking for the difference between "absolutely dark" and "not quite absolutely dark". SCUBA, on the other hand, doesn't care about darkness, because it's not interested in visible light, but it does care very much about temperature, because at the wavelengths it deals with, heat energy affects its ability to "see", so it wants it to be COLD all around it; it's looking for the difference between "absolute zero" temperature and "not quite absolute zero".
It might help to: instead of "see", think "detect"; instead of "light", think "electromagnetic radiation"; and, consider temperature, wavelength, and frequency to all be ways of describing which part of the spectrum you're interested in.
Please donate your spare CPU cycles to help fight cancer and other diseases
Isn't it more likely that they would be fantasically interested in us given the apparent dirth of intelligent life in the universe?
This whole "evil" alien thing is ridiculous. To make an analogy- imagine you are an explorer and scientist in a vast sandy desert. You have traveled thousands of miles on foot only to stumble on a TINY oasis. In that oasis is a fantastic looking insect that you are the first to discover in the universe. Would you smash it and move on? or study it and attempt to disturb it as little as possible?
People forget the any alien species sufficently advanced to contact us will have implicitly passed the test of its adolesence. What is the test of adolesence? It occurs when a species technology is sufficently advanced that it can easily destroy itself and the millions of years of evolutionary and cultural development it took to reach the test. Humans began there adolesence with the development of the atomic bomb (more so with fusion based bombs) and probably won't emerge from that adolesence for generations to come.
Interstellar travel and communication is a level of technolgy that is reached after adolesence (atleast the way we understand the universe). First you split the atom then you develop faster than light communication, etc. This is an assumption based on one data point (ourselves) but seems reasonable. How could an alien species exit the gravity well of its own solar system without understanding the process that fuels that star, ie fusion.
Therefore, any alien contact will be a member of a self selected group from the universe of intelligent alien beings that have existed in the universe - the ones that did not destroy themselves.
This post is already getting kind of long be the other thing we know about aliens willing to contact us is that implicitly they want to conact other beings in the universe. Once agin implicitly they are explorers and scientists with respect for other beings.
The last point I'd like to make is that aliens aren't going to mine the earth for its resources or enslave the human race. That is the dumbest idea I have ever heard. Why would an alien species come all this way for matter that is spread all over the universe? Why would they need it anyhow? They will have fusion reactors that can make any element. Their ship will use anti-matter or something we haven't dreamed of yet. Why do they need slaves? Won't they have robots 100 times smarter than humans to do everything?
Aliens that can contact us MUST be peaceful. It would be disruptive but not violent. These aliens would likely have practice making contact. Read some Carl Sagan books and turn off the 50s B movies please!
I work for the organisation that operates SCUBA and the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope.
No - you're thinking of interferometer arrays. In this case SCUBA stands for Submillimetre Common-User Bolometer Array:
This post is strictly my own opinion and not necessarily that of my employer.
If you think the Drake equation is about "predict[ing] anything from a sample of 1", you don't understand it. The Drake equation lets us estimate the probability that we will run into intelligent life based on several other numbers that are easier to estimate well. That's the whole point: right now, we have only one world that we've explored thoroughly, so we want to figure out what else besides that sample of 1 we can use to predict things.
Low temperature physicists make things colder than this all the time - the same way that we can make things colder than the ambient temperature on Earth.
From memory, so might be wrong: In SCUBA's case, we use a vacuum jacket, then liquid nitrogen, then liquid helium, and then what's known as a dilution refrigerator (which I won't even pretend to understand!). It involves a mixture of liquid He3 and He4 I think. Gets us down to under 100mK.
Although experiments do go quite a bit colder, in terms of its size and the fact that it runs for extended periods at this temperature, SCUBA is one of the coldest fridges in the world.
(I work for the Joint Astronomy Centre who operate SCUBA and the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope.)
This post is strictly my own opinion and not necessarily that of my employer.
of the Fomalhaut system and planet is today's Astronomy Picture of the Day.
It's right up there with the (earlier) idea that because we were finding supergiant planets so close to stars, it must mean there aren't many Jupiter-sized planets out there in mid-range orbits to suck up comets in their gravity wells -- so there must be less chance of life, right, 'cause all those comets would scour inner planets clean? That one got floated when they were first finding the big whoppers that caused stars' images to wobble. 'Course, it was based on assumptions about the fundamental role of comets in planetary life -- the whole dinosaur thing was in the news then -- and about how every star system must look like ours, and so on.
We're still in the data collection stage of figuring out extrasolar planets. Our means of seeing them are dependent on flaky situations -- planets that travel through dust trails, planets that are so huge they cause stars to spin funny, stuff like that. We can't say anything really solid about the frequency of different types of planets, because our methods of looking for them are still picking around the edges, seeing the outliers rather than getting any sense of the norm.
(Personally I think some of the outrageously adaptive bacterial life on earth argues pretty strongly for life wherever there's the slightest opening. If you wanna argue the likelihood of extraterrestrial forms, take a look at the conditions bacteria can get by in. Life can get by.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
its impossible to estimate at least 4 of the numbers in the equation-
Fl = The fraction of hospitable planets on which life actually arises
Fi = The fraction of arisen life where intelligence develops
Fc = The fraction of intelligent life which develops communications technology
L = The 'lifetime' of intelligent life possessing such technology
The Drake equation doesn't give us a probability of anything. It just kind of states what we would need to know before we could take a guess.