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Lonely Planets
Grinspoon, though, never falls victim to the temptation to proclaim that intelligent aliens are a scientific certainty, nor does he ridicule those who come to a belief in aliens by a less-than-scientific route.
The book begins with a historical perspective, telling the old stories of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Lowell in fresh and surprising ways. This makes even these chapters recommended reading for experts as well as newcomers to astronomy. Grinspoon is not content to repeat the usual pieties about these scientific "saints." For instance, he reveals that Galileo did much to intentionally antagonize the pope in his writings about the solar system. He also discusses the more off-the-wall beliefs that many early luminaries of science have held. He explores the link between the end of the earth-centered view of the universe and the beginning of a centuries-long popular craze for the idea of planets around every sun, and intelligent beings on every planet.
The second section of the book deals with the science of suns, planets, moons, and the potential life in, on and around them. All of the popular candidates, including Mars, Europa, and Titan, are discussed in nonscientist-friendly detail. Unearthly life is a broad subject, and Grinspoon does not cover it with perfect evenness. His chapters on cosmology, the early Earth, chemical evolution, and the cambrian explosion are great stuff; but after a quality discussion of DNA, he builds up the idea that RNA most likely evolved first, with ever quite saying what RNA is or explaining its role in our cells today.
But this is a rare omission. The science in the book is sound, and the footnotes and asides consistently entertaining. No song reference or movie quote is left unquoted, always to good effect. Throughout, Grinspoon maintains an almost unheard-of humility, always careful to point out how much we simply don't know about life on Earth, let alone life elsewhere.
The third and final section of the book could never have been written by a less honest or more egotistical scientist. It may also help that he plays in a reggae band. Titled "Belief," part three begins with a discussion of the development and present state of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, as nearly anyone with a screensaver knows. Grinspoon explores Fermi's paradox -- if they exist, why haven't they arrived on Earth, or at least said hello by radio? He doesn't duck the hard questions, and he brings us the human story of the SETI pioneers on both sides of the Iron Curtain. He acknowledges that the strong desire to believe in aliens is as something almost religious for many people, including scientists. And he gives the UFOlogists their due, taking a fascinating journey to the San Luis Valley of Colorado. If something really hasn't been adequately explained, he acknowledges that: "there are mysteries. Are we unfaithful to the church of Science if we admit that there are mysteries?" But he does point the finger at a few flimflam artists, and doesn't hide his disappointment with certain alien-visitation true believers who should probably know better.
Maybe the temptation to believe is not so hard to forgive. Where our knowledge is imperfect, our beliefs and hopes always become entwined. Grinspoon ends the book with a meditative chapter on "astrotheology," pulling together the threads of science and faith, exploring the moral implications of intelligent life elsewhere and sharing his own beliefs in the matter.
I recommend this book both for space buffs and for less "scientific," less skeptical readers on their gift lists. The book is worth reading for many reasons -- engaging writing, a friendly introduction to the science involved, eye-opening history, and a chance to learn a skilled planetologist's best guesses at what we may discover living or not living on, in or around Mars, Europa, and yes, Venus. Not since Sagan and Asimov passed away has there been a science writer with such a voice.
Will anyone hate this book? Maybe -- new agers, pot-haters, and supporters of the Bush administration could get their noses out of joint... but only if they read every footnote, and completely fail to take a joke. Most will be as entertained and informed as the rest of us.
You can purchase Lonely Planets from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
I always believed in aliens. Looking forward to this book!
Sign the FSF's Anti-DMCA petit
There are ferengis klingons and vulcans to name few
Question: What impact will space junk have on interplaneary travel? Why aren't the rovers rercycling old parts? Seems to me that if they could, the total cost would be much cheaper.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
the chances are simply too great for other life to _not_ exist somewhere.
--- any post that takes longer than 20 seconds to write, isn't worth writing
after all, we are all lonely and most of us are the size of planets...
Since you've read the book, and you claim he covers the origin of DNA, how does he postulate solving the equilibrium constant and other thermodynamic problems of DNA origin?
It's incredibly frustrating to me to think that there may be hundreds or even thousands of other species out there that are just too far away from us or technologically displaced from us (we're too primitive or they're too primitive) for us to ever make meaningful contact.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Either we are truly alone in the universe. There are zero other 'intelligent' lifeforms out there. Anywhere. We are absolutely alone.
Or, there are others. If there are >0 other 'intelligent' lifeforms, then presumably there should be many others. And some of those will not be very friendly. Or even if not friendly, we might be so far below their notice as to be paved over for a new bypass, without them noticing. Does the bulldozer driver notice the anthill he just smoothed over?
You're in the planet business, which has a sample size of under a dozen. And most of those remain mysteries. It would be foolish to believe we know anything. Most conclusions have to be educated guesses. This guy seems to have a proper sense of a field that is still mostly mystery.
This has been done for some missions, but you can't just slap on something you've got in the storage room and then bet $400 million on it.
The MER rovers have been done, they are what they are, the burden is on you to show they could have been done cheaper. It's always more complicated than you imagine.
Helium balloons want to be free.
Has this been put into Gentoo portage yet?
"new agers, pot-haters, and supporters of the Bush administration could get their noses out of joint"
So, you have to be a pothead to enjoy this book? And isn't that the same as a new ager?
btw, it's pronounced po-thead, not pot-head.
David Grinspoon: I agree that, given the time and energy constraints, any intelligent creatures would have to be nuts to attempt interstellar travel. But you would also have to be nuts to attempt to cross the ocean in a rowboat, and people have done that. Why do we need to go one-tenth the speed of light? What's the hurry? So what if travel times are thousands of years? From the perspective of an individual human life at this stage in our evolution, this seems like a long time. But will the galaxy never, ever, anywhere, produce a creature or cultural entity that doesn't find this span of time daunting? Even at these slow speeds, if someone decided to start spreading across the galaxy they would be able to spread across the whole Milky Way in a few hundred million years, tops, which is still short compared to the life of the galaxy.
(This was ripped straight from here for those who wish to read more.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
'Pot-haters' get their 'noses out of joint'
Lonely Planet is a registered trademark of Lonely Planet Publications.
I wonder if we'll be reading about a trademark infringement lawsuit?
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
This is why we need to take better care of our own planet - its probably where we as a species are going to stay...unless you think living on Mars is somehow preferrable to living on Earth.
I actually really do hope that we're alone, at least in our neck of the galaxy. I look at it this way, is there any species that is more "advanced" than another that doesn't prey on the weaker species? In nature, it seems that the strong always dominate the weak. If there is advanced life out there, how long do you think it would be before they dominated us? If the natural history of our particular planet is any indicator, I'm hoping that we don't run into any more "advanced" species in my lifetime!
A recent article on space.com discusses a study that concludes that conditions are ripe for complex life at 10% of stars in our galaxy.
Life may be common throughout the universe. But I highly doubt there is another intelligent lifeform out there. And since the burden of proof lies with you let's see what you got.
Either intelligent life is so rare to be nearly impossible, or it's common seem to be the two default positions. Allow me to suggest a third: We have no idea how common intelligent life is Out There, as we lack ANY data whatsoever. So likelyhood is SHEER SPECULATION at this point. And getting the information to make a well-founded projection will require some significant interstellar capability on our part. . . .
Even the statement that LIFE is common has yet to be proven. . .
Whether or not there are other forms of intelligent life in the universe is an interesting exercise, and we may someday hear from them via radio waves, but it's not likely that we'll ever actually meet them. The distances are just too far. The fastest objects mankind has ever created are the Voyager crafts, which are cruising at a mere 35,000 mph. Having just past the outer-most planets, they have something like 50,000 years until they'll make their way past the Ort Cloud, which is the hypothetical edge of our solar system, at which point our Sun wouldn't even be the brightest star in the sky from that vantage point.
Science Fiction aside, we're not going anywhere and anywhere's not coming here. Our species hasn't been around, heck, mammals haven't been around as long as it would take us to reach a star system that could possibly support life.
If we don't score some info on Mars or Europa, we are for all intents and purposes, alone.
Absolutely NO rovers have landed on Mars. Our defenses have shot it right out of the sky. The wreckage fell to the ground and was torn apart by patriots defending our planet from the Infidel spacecraft. It did not have a chance. If you would like to see the wreckage of the Mars Rover, I will take you there in ONE HOUR!
No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.-Ronald Reagan
If you like this book by Grinspoon, you may also like Rare Earth by Ward and Brownlee. Rare Earth presents arguments to show why intelligent life elsewhere in the universe may be very rare indeed. Life may exist elsewhere, but complex and intelligent life? If you consider all the variables needed on Earth (distance from star, size and effect of moon, evolution, climate, etc.), the possibility that another planet with the exact same conditions exists is very rare.
Ward and Brownlee don't come right out and say that other intelligent life doesn't exist (there is always hope). They just show that the chances that intelligent life does exist on other planets is low. A great read, although more serious in tone and its science than Grinspoon. And for those of you that love all the footnotes in Grinspoon's Lonely Planets, you may want to check out his Venus book, Venus Revealed , as well. Another great read. Grinspoon definitely knows his stuff.
(void) signal(SIGALRM, (alarm_fired=1)); if (alarm_fired) printf("Revoke is clueless!\n");
I am alone in the universe, you insensitive clod!
Bush has been caught!
Interesting timing considering the Mars exposition that will be going on for 3 months. I can't wait for the day that we discover that we're truely not alone in the universe. The shockwaves that it would send through religion would be huge; would we as humans finally band together as a planet, or continue our destructive separtist ways? Something to think about.
Oh, and is the universe finite, or infinite? That is always a fun mental exercise for me to ponder.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
Current question: Are we alone in the universe?
Next question: Are we alone in the $next_step_up?
Seriously, the conversation could go like this:
Us: Horray! You found us! We're not alone!
Aliens: Sorry, but we're are actually terribly alone. As far as we can tell, all other dimensions are totally lifeless.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
The book discusses 50 possible answers grouped into 3 broad categories:
1. 'They Are Here' (e.g., '...and They Are Meddling in Human Affairs', '...and They Are Called Hungarians'),
2. 'They Exist But Have Not Yet Communicated' (e.g., 'Everyone Is Listening, No One Is Transmitting'),
3. 'They Do Not Exist' (e.g. 'Continuously Habitable Zones Are Narrow').
Semi-related quote: "The aliens will contact us when they can make money by doing so." -- David Byrne
Semi-related problem: I know of a 7m parabolic dish (so that I can listen, too) I can get for free but have no place to put it. :(
Has anyone ever thought the reason no lifeforms have made contact is some sort of Lex Galactica?t ware,transportation all become obselete instantly, making millions unemployed and destroying our economies.
If they did make contact they would destroy all our high-tech industries overnight (by introducing us to their higher-technologies)
Pharmacuticals,hardware,sof
Let's examine your bulldozer/anthill analogy a little closer:
If the fear is that that we might encounter beings who are so far above us that we are beneath notice, this is unlikely to happen, mostly because of the physics of scale.
There is a minimum amount of matter in which one can develop intelligence like our own. We don't know what that amount is, but from observing the world around us we can get a ballpark figure.
It seems unlikely that something as small as an ant could develop human-level intelligence and with it, human-level technology. The scale is too small. Try sustaining an ant-scale fire for an ant-scale blacksmith, for example.
Similarily, there is a maximum end to the scale as well. One might be able to imagine dinosaur-sized intelligences, but it's hard to imagine beings and the associated technical societies that are on the scale of kilometres in size. The loads scale faster than the energy output and material strengths.
So while there's quite a bit of room for variation, it's probably safe to say that for the most likely examples of intelligent, technical societies, objects the size of planets are likely to be signifigant, energy levels involved with intersteller travel are likely to be signifigant, and quite possibly, lifespans are going to be of a similar order (an intelligent, technical creature needs a "timesense" at least as fast as a human's in order to be able to react to physical processes, and I wouldn't be at all suprised to find that the percieved duration of time is closely coupled to the strength of the gravitational field in which one evolved - where stronger gravity equals higher time resolution)
That's not to say that a sufficiantly advanced civilization couldn't wield vastly more powerful energy levels than what we currently manipulate, but scale dictates that dealing with masses on the order of planets or energy levels on the order of stars is ever likely to become TRIVIAL.
Put another way, I don't need a bulldozer to crush an ant - I get that ability by virtue of scale and physics. Those same physics makes it unlikely that anything is going to be of scale large enough to unknowingly crush planets.
Not impossible, but unlikely.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
On that point there is a proposed project for an optical version of SETI. It could be that an advanced species would communicate at different wavelengths of the light spectrum rather than radio. Even in our own civilization Radio will become extinct over the next century.
And no one else to talk to?
my favorite explanation for the lack of ET contact is that Earth is the ghetto of the universe. if you were an upper-middle-class space-faring advanced lifeform, would you really want to take a cruise to such a violent and polluted place?
"You want a toe? I can get you a toe by three o'clock... with nail polish."
With no observations and no tests, any hypothesis rings kind of hollow.
We have plenty of observations - no (convincing) signs of alien artifacts on Earth, or (so far) anywhere else in the solar system. There are no signs of any intelligent modifications of stars or other astronomical objects in our galaxy or any of those nearby (for a civilisation tens or hundreds of millions of years old, this should be trivial). Its like the galaxy is a forest, and we can see no signs of chopped trees or fires.
Either we are alone, or all technological species are stay-at-homers with no desire for exploration or expansion.
The argument that the galaxy is too big for travel is meaningless - even slower-than light colony ships or robotic probes could fill the galaxy in a few million years, and the galaxy is billions of years old.
One line of speculation that has actually given me a little extra paranoia over the last few years, is the Bastard Aliens From Hell :) I first ran across this in an old Analog, the idea being that a competitive species might think it quite rational to, ahh, remove any potential competition before they develop sufficient technology to become a threat. In the story, this was done with relativistic speed kinetic energy weapons - notoriously difficult to defend against because the speed would significantly cut down on the warning time.
So, a young species like our own that has just recently begun emitting detectable amounts of electromagnetic radiation is greeted by a Microsoft-like neigbor with some near light speed "cease and desist" planet busters. We've been emitting since roughly the 1940's - so if one of these is within 30 light years (and expanding, of course), the weapons should be arriving any day now...
Another good one is that there are significant technological dangers along the usual species development path that might cause civilizational level extermination in a large percentage of the cases. Our tech has just started to be powerful enough to do this - global thermonuclear or biological war, nanotech accidents (read up on "grey goo" for some bonus worry), self replicating weapons...
Or, maybe there's something like Vernor Vinge's "singularity" that generally happens to species not much more advanced than we are currently...
It seems pretty obvious why ETs wouldn't say hello, at least to me.
:P ). The evidence points to the contrary, yet faith tells him the devil is making the movements in his dog to sway his faith. Jehovah's Witnesses use the same reasoning for the earth only being 6000 years old - the devil created the fossils to sway the faithful (trust me, I had a long discussion about this... mainly because the discussee was very attractive and I had several hours to blow trying to sway her to convert to a life of hedonism).
:)
First off, you have distance. If they said "hello" today, how many thousand or million of years would it take for the signal to reach here? The signal would need to travel the speed of light or less - we don't have tachyon communications yet (if such things exist), so we can't listen to signals that are faster than the speed of light.
Second, in the billions of years the earth has existed, we've been listening for what, thirty, maybe forty years? We don't even know what we're listening for. Who knows - maybe radio became passe for aliens 100 years ago (actually probably more like several thousand because of relativity and distance) and we just missed our chance. Maybe our own radio signals are swamping their faint ones.
Third, maybe they don't care or have a religion that tells them nothing else exists in the universe (like we have several of), so they don't even try. For instance, I know a devout Catholic who believes, as conservative Catholic doctrine preaches, that dogs (technically animals) don't dream, yet his dog is barking and moving while it sleeps - just like a dreaming human would do in REM sleep (well, probably more like talking and moving than barking
Lastly, every planet close to us in the Universe is probably not significantly more technological than we are, so they're probably starting to listen and broadcast themselves and the signals haven't reached us yet. Then again, one good asteroid hit could put alien evolution back millions of years, or one extended prosperous era may have a million years more of a low evolution dinosaur age (ETosaur?). On the average, our tech levels would be about the same (unless we're above or below average, but I have only one society to base observations on, so I my error margin is +-100
Well, we really only have a couple of possibilities: I believe that we are not alone, but none have made it here (physically) nor have they found a method to communicate that is more advanced that perhaps we have now (radio, light beam communications, etc.) But my belief is based on very little fact and a lot of hope. One can construct models of the Universe with simple questions to support any hypothesis you want, but the real Universe isn't a simple construct. It's vast, and difficult terrain to traverse. The laws of physics seem both for and against us at every turn.
I don't think we'll see little green men on the lawn of the White House anytime soon, but they very well may be out there, unable to reach us...and we all know radio's limitations. Also, life could be no more than fungus and bacteria on some alien worlds--hardly known to communicate with anything at all. But this alone raises the question that my father keeps raising: is the expenditure of money, time, and resources to find something or someone out there worth it when we have barely plumbed the depths of our own world?
I think it is worth it. Every little step we take, we learn something. We went to the Moon--we learned that we could go there, and that it wasn't made of cheese, nor was there any life we could detect. We sent probes to Mars, proving that the slightly larger distances could be successfully navigated by remote proxy; and we learned that so far there's nothing on Mars except dust and rock. We've sent probes that only recently have gone past the furthest planet in our system, proving that we can make a device that can live longer on limited power than we had even hoped possible, and its journey continues.
So far, we're 0 for 3 (at least), and SETI hasn't given us any good leads yet; but the struggle, the search, is worth it.
Perhaps, just perhaps, one morning we'll wake up, look to the horizon, and know that there are beings out there--they may not be much like us--but the're intelligent and want to know about us, just as we want to know about them. And when that day comes, the nay-sayers will be made silent. Along the road to that great day, I hope we manage to eliminate fear, hate, and paranoia amongst our own kind--making it all the better to be worthy of the day of contact with beings that, for lack of a better term, are our most distant relatives, and I hope they've done the same. But if the final tally comes in, and we find ourselves alone in the void of space, we still will have learned something--something about ourselves, the nature of the universe, and the massive odds we overcame just to get to the point of being able to ask the very question that launched the search in the first place.
There have been many arguments against the likelihood of life on other planets that have been disproven. For example, we now know with certainty that planets outside of our solar system exist and primitive life can indeed be created spontaneously from environmental conditions present on other planets.
If the conditions are similar, I believe that there would see some of the same convergence of traits that we see with Earth's inhabitants. Yet, how far do we have to look to see the miraculous diversity of life, the amazing phenomenons such as endosymbiosis, and so on? In recent times, many old myths about the unique capabilities of human intelligence have also been disproven. Our definitions of intelligence would really need to be carefully considered in light of life from a different lineage -- indeed, our very definitions of life would probably need to be revisited!
However, I think the pursuit of extraterrestrials tends towards anthropomorphization to the extreme. I don't think people realize how differently technology (culture) and 'science' can be interpreted. Any presumption that aliens would have encountered a similar 'age' of near-nuclear war, development of radios, etc really needs to be checked. We are just looking for ourselves! I also think that the likelihood that we are going to pick up and understand a legible, life-generated radio signal from outside of our solar system is exceedingly remote.
On the other hand, I think exploring the possibility of historical life on mars with Spirit, etc is an excellent measure!
Hacking articles at http://www.geocities.com/chroo
How does one measure intelligent?
Do we qualify? (do we qualify as life?)
I can think of certain samples of people on earth that would not prove to be intelligent....
If an IQ of 100 is par, then certain leaders would fall short...(90 is 10 short of 100....)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Radio won't become extinct for the simple reason it works--it's a relatively low-power, low-bandwidth transmission mechanism that is long-range and reliable.
For that matter, all unwired comm systems are technically the same, since they vary only in frequency, really. =P
"America has done some terrible things. But I know that Americans don't cheer when innocents die." -Dave Barry
...would be complete without links to the Brunching Shuttlecocks' interviews with the planet Pluto?
According to some popular theories, relating to the distrbution and formation of matter, there is actually strong scientific evidence that supports the notion of identical duplicates of ourselves existing two or three parallel universes away. More and more scientists are starting to accept the notion that we are not the only universe, but rather that we are one of infinite universes.
So, if identical living beings exist in other parallel universes, then it stands to reason that other living organisms exist in our own universe. We probably will never be able to reach other life forms within this universe, but it probably is there.
A few months ago in Scientific American, there was a fabulous article on parallel universes and the distribution of matter. It really is worth checking out.
Reading that article, it makes you feel good because you feel like you aren't alone. But on the other hand, it makes you feel smaller and more alone than ever.
Good comment. There's one thing I'd like to correct though:
Diameter of our Galaxy = 90,000 light years or 5,865,696,000,000 (almost 6 trillion) miles across
It's a bit more than that: 90,000 light years is 5.29e+17 miles, or if you allow me to put it in a scientifically incorrect way, 529,064,983,000,000,000 miles. (Or better: 8.51e+20 m).
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If they want their drugs, they would.
So all we need to do is coax just a few here with some sort of alien crack, get them hooked, and the rest will be easy.
Alien money will pour into the Earth, and we'll be able to buy and sell all sorts of galactic bling-bling in no time.
--- Ban humanity.
Lions do not prey on ants or cranes. Orangutans don't catch the rabbits that live in their enclosure with them at one of my local zoos. Why aren't they attacking each other? Which of those species is most "advanced"?
You don't know what you mean by that word, even as it applies to nature.
In nature, it seems that the strong always dominate the weak.
Not so. The natural world is way the heck more complex, and far more likely to result in peaceful coexistence or symbiotic relationships, than you're imagining. I notice the chickadees and nuthatches and wrens in my back yard aren't engaged in anything but a sort of indirect competition for the resources that they all need. I notice that some species of bird choose to "mob" birds of prey when it's mating season, whereas others do it all year round, and others don't at all. Which species is "stronger" than the others, please?
In this case, anyway, what you're saying amounts to a variation on social Darwinism, so let's take an example: Columbus landed in the new world, and one of the things his crew noticed immediately was that people lived much longer among the "Indians" than they did in Europe. Everyone was struck by all the elderly people around. So, which society was "more advanced"? Were the Europeans 'superior models' because they'd been exposed to diseases that American populations had never seen? (Does that make Africans superior to Europeans who never could truly colonize the malarial latitudes there?)
Life as a hierarchy of "advanced" and "less advanced" creatures is a misrepresentation of nature (and Darwinism), and applied to social interactions among intelligent beings, it's even more ridiculously oversimplified.
(In my book you'd be more justifiably nervous based on the way invasive, non-native species have devastated native populations. The equivalents of Chestnut Blight should keep you up at night, if you're really worried about aliens. Eurasian House Sparrows are much closer to the real worry - unintended and indirect consequences being far more likely than little green men with Napoleon complexes.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Your friend may be encouraged to learn that whether or not animals dream is not actually an issue of orthodox Catholic doctrine. I might suggest he consult his parish priest in the matter, and/or the Catechism.
(Granted, by "conservative" he might mean something other than "orthodox"; by "orthodox" I mean in line with the official teaching of the Church.)
DNA just wants to be free...
If we were the size of ants our mouths would not be able to break the surface tension of water, and we would die. Hence many insects have sharp pointed mouths/beaks. If we were as big as a whale, the rate of increase in the mass of muscle vs bone would crush us. Hence whales live in the ocean where the water can support their weight.
The first thing we have to determine is whether there is intelligent life on earth. Only after that can we start speculating about the rest of the universe.
Now, complex life, that's hard, again given our single sample point. Earliest nucleated cell fossils are only ~2.1 billion years old, although some chemical data indicates it may have come around a few hundred million years earlier. Virtually no time for life, but at least a billion years to just get a cell nucleus.
Complex multicelluar? Way, way longer. Discounting stromatolites and a few sponges, you've got to wait to the early Cambrian before we see anything even remotely recognizable. (I'm not really familiar with Vendian life.) That's only about 550 million years ago, so anywhere from 1.5-2 billion years to start getting "real" critters.
As far as the balances needed to sustain life, remember that conditions on this planet were in large part shaped by life. For example, the atmosphere would be totally different without it. (Oxygen was toxic to early life) Life's also a lot more durable than you give it credit: look at deep sea thermal vents, various boiling hot springs and deep crust microbes.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
I still haven't seen the main other reason why we (H.Sap) seems so alone in this universe - specifically, that we might be one of the first intelligent species to evolve.
It's not that hard to imagine. Given the currently accepted age of the universe (~15 billion years), and the age of the solar system (5 billion years), we very well might be the "old ones" you read about in scifi novels.
Makes you think.
"Hello! My name is Peni-S Ize, from the planet V-Igra. . . "
The anthill just proves my point, as they serve us no real purpose, more often then not we just poision them. Would you prefer to be exploited, or exterminated?
The first thing we have to determine is whether there is intelligent life on earth. Only after that can we start speculating about the rest of the universe.
I've been wondering about IF there was intelligent life on Earth ever since seeing a Howard Dean speech
Take the probability of the arrangement of atoms in a grain of sand arranging the way they do by chance (i.e. the probability that in a randomized volume of any given mass density, an identical grain of sand will form). This will be a very small number (but not zero).
Repeat for a human body (with whatever mods you like - maybe short & green) - a very very small number (but still not zero).
Repeat for a civilization of same (with whatever mods you like) - a very very very small number (but still not zero).
If the universe is flat & infinite -> a very very very small number (but still not zero) times infinity gives certainty.
Not anything you can imagine, but everything you can imagine is out there somewhere (albeit very far away).
How long do we have until they come and bulldoze the Earth in order to make way for a new interstellar highway?
I am as big a science fiction fan as everybody else here on slashdot, and have recently read some alternate history novels, one of them on the dinosaurs surviving. I find the question of the dinosaur extinction a fascinating one, because, if the asteroid had not hit the planet (assuming that's why they died out of course) what would the chances be of our being here today. From what we can tell the dinosaurs reigned over the earth for an improbably long time and it was only their extinction that enabled mammals to rise to the position they did.
I recently also saw that at there was at least one type of dinosaur that was developing an opposing claw and had the largest brain of all known dinos, which, apparently were quite dumb on the whole. Perhaps those dinos would have evolved into an intelligent species in another 20 or 40 million years.
I think that illustrates one of the problems with analogies based on the here and now: We at simply lucky that we even made it this far. Any other planet that had evolved life would almost certainly have been hit by a number of asteroids in its time (Look at all our planets in this system and the craters on them). Some of them might well have made it far earlier than we have, many millions of years ago, but from what I can see the chances of life developing in any system face a big problem of getting hit by life extinguishing asteroids and comets, which, if they don't kill everything completely, throw the whole thing back a few dozen million years.
Frustrating for life in general, and very probably making the chances of local concentrations of life minimal (neighbouring systems) added to which the problems of us only having listened for the last few decades, relativity and the huge distances invloved make the chances of listening at the right time, at the right frequency, in the right direction, even smaller.
However, this in no way shuts out the very good chances that there is a lot of life in the universe (organic compounds in comets etc) and it also doesn't shut out the chance that we simply haven't the right method of either listening or traveling yet. Imagine our ancestors 1000 years ago, sitting on the shores of a continent, putting messages into bottles in the ocean, shouting into the wind and listening for someone on another continent to shout back.
Things like the Alcubierre drive etc may one day become fact, as well as methods of FTL communication, whereupon some life form somewhere may ask, "Why didn't you use this technology long ago?".
On the other hand imagine us being the most advanced being in the universe: In that case God must have a supreme sense of irony.
All of our unwired comm systems are about the same. Maybe the one other race out there does their communication by varying the spin of separated subatomic particles, and would consider our use of varied radio waves to be a novel application of a technology that had not even occurred to them. "Wow," they would say, "it seems so simple, it should have been obvious. On the other hand, you're communication method is limited by the speed of EM transmission, which makes it kind of useless for long-range chat like what we have. If only we knew you existed 14,000 years ago when you were sending this signal out. What an interesting species you were. Alas."
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
More often than not we do nothing to them and ignore them. With the amount of ants on the planet verses the amount of humans, we don't even bother with a fraction of their population. It does not prove your point. Neither is there a planned extermination of all the ants and neither is there planned exploitation on a large scale. Thinking otherwise only shows you don't know how many ants there are on this planet.
IMHO, for a race to discover the spin of subatomic particles (and moreover, how to manipulate and use it), that race would have already necessarily discovered radio transmission (and probably used it extensively at some point in their development).
The good thing about these "Universal Laws of Physics" that we use is that they are the same pretty much everywhere (with a few exceptions, such as the immediate surrounding area of a black hole, etc.).
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
I'm always disturbed by the jump people make from the discussion of extra-terrestrial life to a discussion of extra-terrestrial "intelligence," as if one follows from the other. Look,no one even knows what "intelligence" is. Doesn't anyone read Steven J Gould anymore? He discussed this so well.
I fear that what most people mean when the say "intelligent" is "like us." Dolphins are intelligent (but not like us), cats are intelligent (bnlu), ant hills are intelligent, etc. etc.
Life on other planets? - almost certainly.
"Intelligent" life on other planets? - dumb question.
Physics don't change for anybody, and it makes perfect sense that Calculus was realized by two people at once (even though there's evidence that archemedes beat them both to it by centuries), but how we have chosen to harness the forces around us is a matter of creativity, and choices made about which ideas to pursue, and which to abandon. I still say that, if there are aliens out there, there is every chance that converting sound and/or data into EM fluxuations might be something that never even occurred to them, and they solved their need to talk to each other some other way.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Excuse me?
"... and primitive life can indeed be created spontaneously from environmental conditions present on other planets."
Did I miss something in the news? When / where did this happen?
Can you give me a link so I can read up on this? It sounds very interesting.
-- C.
any claims to the contrary are sheer speculation
Actually there have been a huge number of alien sightings and abductions. For various reasons, most of these events are usually considered dubious (i.e. the victim is either lying or mistaken). However, there have been a few well documented sightings which seem very believable; it is also eminently believable that our governments would go to lengths to cover up such evidence. Additionally, the similarity between stories of abductees leads to two theories: either they suffer from some mental disease that causes such a specific imagined experience; or they really were abducted and tested.
Certainly there are valid reasons to doubt this evidence. But it is important to remember that it abounds, and therefore talk of the existence of aliens is more than speculation. It is based on evidence.
Carl Sagan defined intelligent life as a species that can develop an advanced technology. He defined an advanced technology as a technology that can communicate with other intelligent life in other solar systems. As a species, we just barely qualify. However, individually most of us couldn't invent a spear.
Lets look at the conditions needed to support life, then look at the number of systems that meet these conditions. Right kind of Galaxy to support life? About One in a Thousand. Right Kind of star? One in a billion in acceptable galaxies. Right kind of solar system? 1 in a billion in acceptable stars Right kind of planet? 1 in 10 quadrillion quadrillion in the universe (10^31) likely number of actual planets? 10 billion trillion (10^22) in the universe Probability of one good planet? 1 in a billion in the universe. It is more likely given the data we do have that there isn't intelligent life, or life for that matter elsewhere in the universe. Granted there isn't an exact science for computing these probabilities, but the 1 in a billion number given for acceptable planets is a very conservative estimate. I think it's safe to say we are alone.
...I'd say humans are the most important creatures on the most important planet in the universe.
:-P
Let me guess - you're in the US?
And I'm saying that Marconi did his work before Oppenheimer, and that an understanding of physics is a ladder, where you need to stand on the rung placed there before you in order to attach your own rung, which will in turn be stood upon by the next contributor.
Now, undoubtedly, a civilization advanced enough for interstellar travel would have a completely different method of communication (to overcome to the delay inherent in long range radio). However, what we are looking for in SETI and other projects is EM "leakage" from another civilization.
There is a very high likelihood (near certainty) that a technologically advanced culture would begin using some EM method for mass wireless communication before they were able to efficiently harness other methods.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
It's not a biochemistry text. If you read it on that level you're going to be disappointed, I guess. It is a very good layman-friendly introduction to the topic. Regarding DNA, he suggests that RNA evolved first because it doesn't require the simultaneous evolution of supporting proteins, or something to that effect, and this created an environment in which DNA was one step away -- but if you really want to know what he said, so you can critique it in detail, read the book.
Check out the Apostrophe open-source CMS: http://www.apostrophenow.com/
Not according to this book I read:
Now if I could only remember where I left my towel at...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Parrots out-think primates at almost everything...
Well, the first signs were from quite a while ago:s /do53a m.html
2 002/02_33AR .htmlr alscien ce/neogenesis_scitues_010501-1.html
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w ith_Jay_L eno/headlines/H_2571/13.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entrie
But, there have been many advances:
http://amesnews.arc.nasa.gov/releases/
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/gene
Now biotechnologist are synthesizing life without ancestory:
http://www.nature.com/nsu/031110/0311
Further clues come from the deep sea vents, which also display how chemosynthesis may allow life in unusual places:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/abyss/life/
I think the evidence is quite good! Much of what we know about Earth's historical evolution can't be empirically tested; I think we can be more certain that life can spontaneously arise than many other commonly held beliefs.
It is interesting to me, also, that life is so tenacious. It has adapted to complete atmospheric chemical changes, periods of mass extinctions, severe temperature fluxuations, etc. I think once genetic life occurs, it tends to stick around -- kind of like invisible stains:
http://www.nbc.com/nbc/The_Tonight_Show_
Hacking articles at http://www.geocities.com/chroo
Maybe they should sign up for the OSDN singles...
If any species in Earth's past developed what we would recognise as intelligence it didn't help them in the long run, and there are species that could be arguably considered 'intelligent' here right now that we not only can't communicate with with beyond the most very basic issuing of orders via pain/reward systems, but which some of us will happily eat if it suits us...
Competition is a standard part of the food chain - and if the top of the food chain also has the ability to develop weapons that can wipe out whatever other bits of the ecosystem it feels like as part of this competition, then maybe there's a reason we don't hear from too many aliens. They're all dead!
You must think in Russian.
The Drake Equation: N = N* fp ne fl fi fc fL The equation can really be looked at as a number of questions: N* represents the number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy Question: How many stars are in the Milky Way Galaxy? Answer: Current estimates are 100 billion. fp is the fraction of stars that have planets around them Question: What percentage of stars have planetary systems? Answer: Current estimates range from 20% to 50%. ne is the number of planets per star that are capable of sustaining life Question: For each star that does have a planetary system, how many planets are capable of sustaining life? Answer: Current estimates range from 1 to 5. fl is the fraction of planets in ne where life evolves Question: On what percentage of the planets that are capable of sustaining life does life actually evolve? Answer: Current estimates range from 100% (where life can evolve it will) down to close to 0%. fi is the fraction of fl where intelligent life evolves Question: On the planets where life does evolve, what percentage evolves intelligent life? Answer: Estimates range from 100% (intelligence is such a survival advantage that it will certainly evolve) down to near 0%. fc is the fraction of fi that communicate Question: What percentage of intelligent races have the means and the desire to communicate? Answer: 10% to 20% fL is fraction of the planet's life during which the communicating civilizations live Question: For each civilization that does communicate, for what fraction of the planet's life does the civilization survive? Answer: This is the toughest of the questions. If we take Earth as an example, the expected lifetime of our Sun and the Earth is roughly 10 billion years. So far we've been communicating with radio waves for less than 100 years. How long will our civilization survive? Will we destroy ourselves in a few years like some predict or will we overcome our problems and survive for millennia? If we were destroyed tomorrow the answer to this question would be 1/100,000,000th. If we survive for 10,000 years the answer will be 1/1,000,000th. When all of these variables are multiplied together we come up with: N, the number of communicating civilizations in the galaxy.
It is true that observing one of a pair of paired waveforms would collapse the other to the opposite spin, instantly; but no information is transferred faster than light in this way. The uncollapsed particle waveforms cannot be moved faster than light, and there's no way to tell by observing the waveform whether or not the conjugate pair had already been observed, so no information is passed. The same job could be done by putting opposite random results on pieces of paper and putting them in envelopes, and transporting them away from each other.
Faster than light communication is equivalent to time travel in a different relativistic reference frame, and as such its existence in the general case would violate causality.
We don't really have proof that causality holds true, but a lot of problems(and paradoxes) arise if it doesn't.
For the true believer, aliens are always around the corner. We need just bigger this or more of that. But it's not science, because it's based on nothing. Just believe that one day we will find them or they will find us.
Mr Toad, if someone build a shell around a star, we sure would notice it disappear. We also could notices stars we don't see (because they had a shell) by the gravitational effects they would have on other stars we can see. We don't need galaxy cluster sized projects (the Xelee).
If I had a sig, I would put it here.
One more thing: note that Fermi's Paradox is not a single datum. If we see star 100,000 light years away, we look back in time. We can see a lot of history around us: 13.7 billion years according to some scientists.
If I had a sig, I would put it here.
and dont forget... there could be an infinite number of stable universes out there...
Can anyone recommend a good therapist for me.. er.. my schizophrenic network card?
Life is persistant. Life is vindictive.
I don't mean this like the saying "life sucks" - I mean this like "Living things are like Rocky Balboa - you can knock them down, but they'll get back up. You might win the first fight, but they'll train, they'll get better, and they'll challenge you to a rematch."
Sure - plenty of the places in the universe - hell, MOST of the universe by a HUGE margin - are very poor places for a human to exist...and not just a human, but all the life that's evolved on this little planet.
but what about the life that could have evolved THERE?
We see places in the universe where the radiation and poisonous elements would kill and sicken us in mere moments - but what about living things that evolved to that environment? Things we would barely recognize as being "alive"? silicon based life that uses mercury as a "skin pigment" to protect it from the radiation of it's sun; iron in place of calcium for it's support structure...etc. etc. etc.
There are wild enough looking and behaving organisms here on this earth using our model of life (take the deep ocean volcanic bacteria for example).
nay sayers in these replies I've read keep saying "but the conditions here on earth are rare!" and to that I say: FUCK earth! We are one example. Maybe there are other examples of life out there that follows the rules of it's environment, not the rules of ours.
As far as intelligence goes - we can't even define that in HUMANS very well, let alone other animals here on earth.
Is smart being able to do math? No - that would mean computers are smart (smarter than quite a few people, I think...)
Is smart being able to read? No, but it helps.
Is smart being able to do well on a test? no - some smart people have test anxiety and don't test well.
Smart, like pornography, is something that's hard to define, but you know it when you see it. Or do you?
Robert T. Bakker came to my university for a lecture a few years back, and I was there, with my son, in the fifth row. Part of his lecture was on a theory he called "The Line of Equal Smarts" where he showed different animals plotted on a graph where y=brain mass and x=body mass. He showed that all the "smartest" animals tended to be towards the center of the graph, along a diagnal line. On this line were animals like humans, apes, chimps, dolphins, squid and parrots. Near to the line were dogs, pigs, rats and horses. far from the line were animals like cats, giraffes, and pandas. dead center on the line was the "Utah Raptor". His point was that "smart" can show up in unlikely places. (he did go on to explain that to finish the theory, he'd have to more in depth than just plotting "brain mass" on a graph, because some brain mass is more important that others - for example, most of a dog's brain is designed to decode smell sensory data, not engage in abstract thought)
Some scientists are re-evaluating whether apes or parrots are "smarter" - parrots have recently shown to actually understand the noises they make (meaning when it says "polly want a cracker" he really means he wants a fucking cracker, knows what a cracker is, and knows you are the one to get it for him!)
the scarriest ramification of the whole Robert Bakker talk was the fact that squid were on that line... Their ratio of brain mass to body mass was almost the same as humans, meaning they could potentially be as "smart" as dolphins, chimps, parrots and apes....
Sweet JEEEEEEZUZ! Ia Ia! Cthulhu F'taghn!
One thing that's already been happening as technologies mature is that many 'obvious signals' are one-by-one being either silenced (e.g. the push to end broadcast TV) or, more commonly, compressed.
Compare the sounds of a 300 baud modem to the sounds of a modern-day modem - the former is incredibly artificial; the latter, if it weren't for the training signals in it, you'd hardly be able to tell it from static.
There are a considerable number of clear signals yet (though how many have the strength to be easily detectable at any distance outside of the solar system?), but this move to compression, and current/future moves to security, will in all likelihood make the future Earth show up even less on the interstellar scale of things.
The other thing to note is how precious little of the communication is intended for interpretation by extraterrestrials. If we were going to be "nice", even with television signals, we might strengthen and slow them down (maybe to 1-4 fps, about the rate that Half-Life 2 will display on a two-year-old box :)
If there are intelligent aliens already out there, they've doubtless gone through this narrow 50-150 year "clear transmission" window. The chances of us managing to "catch" it would be infinitesimal.
Back to SETI@Home for a second - it's not geared to be able to pick up interstellar TV signals - they're too weak and we don't have the computing power to sort any such thing out from the general noise (on all frequencies to boot); they're geared for what we can conceivably calculate - an unambiguous "YO!" signal directed more or less in our direction.
Who's to say that we aren't awash in interstellar communication as we sit here? My Linux box churns through several SETI@Home work units per day (I also run Folding@Home to keep the other foot in more 'practical' pursuits :), and every now and again, you'll look and see a nifty collection of spikes around a triplet it's discovered. Who's to say that's not "hello"? It's a narrow window, they can only process so much on their algorithms (if the 3 points aren't evenly spaced, nothing is detected), and it takes a long while before Arecibo makes a reobservation of any point in the sky.
For the record, I conjecture that life per se is common, but that intelligent life could be unique to us in the entire galaxy, or even local group. It took a long time (billions of years) for even multicellular life to evolve on Earth, and that's under some pretty ideal conditions, as the cosmos goes.
Binary geeks can count to 1,023 on their fingers
1% is low.
0.0001% is low.
But knowing there are billions of planets out there, this is of no importance.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
As somebody raised as a Catholic I can categorically say that if dogs dream or not is competely irrelevant to Catholic dogma.
...
Frankly, I don't know where do US people get some ideas from
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Lonely Planet is devoted to publish travel guides and related products and services.
Lonely PLanets is a book (one) devoted to scientific divulgation.
Confussed? Not me.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If there are intelligent aliens already out there, they've doubtless gone through this narrow 50-150 year "clear transmission" window. The chances of us managing to "catch" it would be infinitesimal.
Indeed. There are good, physics-based reasons to believe that any industrial culture will only use broadcast when no viable alternative exists. Physics constrains EM bandwidth; it is logical to reuse the same bit of spectrum in small low-power cells with short range transmitters rather than to tie up that entire chunk of spectrum with broadcasts. Similarly, two-way communication works badly in a broadcast model. Broadcasting wastes bandwidth and power needlessly - in fact, even if power was "free" there's no way around the waste of bandwidth.
There are also bulk EM emissions for other purposes such as radar. The frequencies and regularity of such signals ought to make them obviously artificial (or maybe they're explained away by alien astronomers as "quasars" or somesuch). For reasons of efficiency, civilians have already moved to a transponder model, the military haven't yet, but stealth is becoming ever-more valuable, so massive radar installations may soon be obsolete also. That's more cultural than physics-based, tho'. Altho' I suppose it would be possible for a culture to exist where all mass communication was one-way (i.e. broadcasting) but what're the chances of such a culture becoming technologically sophisticated?
verygeekybooks has more reviews.
For all we know, they found a bizarre method of using refracted light (or something) to communicate across distances during their Iron Age that was good enough to suppress demand for a radio innovation. Why go through the expense of developing the crystal radio when a vast infrastructure of communication mirrors is already laid out all over the civilized world?
To say it is a "near certainty" that their civilization developped utilizing the same methods as us ignores the many directions are own development almost took, but didn't. (Ask any Nikola Tesla geek about abandoned technologies. They'll talk your ear off.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I can see you have a problem with generalizations... so let me try to clear up my point; based on what I've observed, species that are more technically advanced have a tendency to either a) exploit and or dominate other species or b) consider other species "pests". Neither of these options makes me feel comfortable with the idea of an extraterrestrial species (that is more technologically advanced than we are) discovering we exist.
Altho' I suppose it would be possible for a culture to exist where all mass communication was one-way (i.e. broadcasting) but what're the chances of such a culture becoming technologically sophisticated?
*laugh* You raise a good point. Such a culture would have to be mired in a "couch potato" phase, and be happy about it, for... how long? What sort of cultural circumstances would ever let that happen?
Perhaps Max Headroom's version of the future came to pass somewhere out there :)
Binary geeks can count to 1,023 on their fingers
Well, the animals having no soul bit is certainly correct.
As for the no dreams bit, I'll certainly take your word on your own experiences. It's not inconceivable to me that it might have been taught, though it seems a little inconsistent with the general strain of the current Pope's thought.
Realize, though, that the notion of papal infallibility extends only to teachings issued "ex cathedra", which is a pretty rare and noteworthy event.
Sadly, my google-fu is proving ineffective here. I keep either finding books by Joyce Pope or "The Pope and the Homeless Cats". So, if you do find anything more, feel free to drop me a line at mental at rydia dot net.
DNA just wants to be free...
Nice review Thomas.
/ releases/1996/01/ ...can say there exists a finite number of suitable planets which can sustain life.
It baffles me how anyone who has seen the Hubble Deep Field image... http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive
As you might have guessed, I'm one of the believers. The discussion on probability in my college statistics class, coupled with that Hubble image, has more than convinced me. Call it faith. Call it hope. I think it's a sure bet. Will I live to collect? Probably not.
I am not disagreeing, but hopefully this adds to the discussiom.
There is a minimum amount of matter in which one can develop intelligence like our own.
There are theories that intelligence is generated by the number of connections. (See "When H.A.R.L.I.E. Was One" or "Speaker for the Dead", both good sci-fi.) With our carbon-based brains, we have acheived that number of connections. If also helps that we have general-purpose bodies that require our brains to "discover" how things can be done. The dinosaurs bodies were much better at doing what they required, so they did not need large brains.
Could a larger carbon-based lifeform develop intelligence? I believe it is quite likely, but the first instance would be the smallest that meets the other requirements. That would be us. And we are doing a good job of making certain that no other intelligence will develop here. It may just be a matter of competition: the smallest will be first, then no others can develop.
Termites with their building do show some traits of intelligence. Maybe the hive as a whole has enough connections to meet the minimum standards.
Of course our sample size is still unusable.
What if there is a planet with higher gravity (requiring larger lifeforms before reaching the general purpose bodies) that is closer to the sun (more energy)? Could there be a 12' intelligent species that looks much like humans? Could they be 24' tall?
What if you add another set of limbs so they can have 4 feet, but still have the 2 arms needed for extra functions? Then they could be larger without being taller.
What if you use a different base than carbon? Many stories are based on intelligence rising in silicon-based life. Again, the minimum standard is probably carbon, so the definitive planet for silicon life would be one that lacks much carbon. The world would probably be different than ours in other ways or silicon life would exist here. Silicon is larger than carbon, so the lifeforms should be larger and more rare. Or the carbon-based life keeps killing it, but we might notice evidence of that. Or life requires such a rare event to start that it has not happened for silicon-based life here, but might somewhere else.
A common plot is that carbon-based life builds machine-based intelligence which then colonizes the galaxy. No pesky "maximum life before destruction" allows them to learn more and accomplish more as individuals. Travelling to the next star just requires a battery, and maybe the ability to shutdown all processes except a monitor during the trip. Of course there is still the issue that innovation or evolution will make you obsolete while you are on the voyage.
Innovation: Faster-than-lightspeed travel.
Innovation: Control of very remote objects so you can build a body there and just send your brain pattern.
Evolution: The others keep learning/growing. Your technology is static for the trip. Will the future shock about improvements cause you to suicide? Will you never be upgraded again?
it's hard to imagine beings and the associated technical societies that are on the scale of kilometres in size
Lack of imagination does not prove impossibility. Lack of evidence does not prove impossibility. Again, our sample size is too small for ANY generalities.
To argue the other side, humans are probably the smallest and easiest technology for intelligence. It is possible that all life in a given area fits some standards that require a shape and size close to ours. Is that area the size of this galaxy, or even the entire universe? We will not know for a while, if ever. But making any assumptions is useless at this point.
That's not to say that a sufficiantly advanced civilization couldn't wield vastly more powerful energy levels than what we currently manipulate, but scale dictates that dealing with masses on the order of planets or energy levels on the order of stars is ever likely to become TRIVIAL.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.