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Stephen Hawking Thinks Aliens Likely
OMNIpotusCOM writes "Noted astrophysicist Stephen Hawking thinks that alien life is likely, albeit primitive, according to a lecture delivered at George Washington University in honor of NASA's 50th anniversary. It begs the question of if we need to consider a Prime Directive before exploring or sending signals too far into the depths of space."
firstly many Scientists have came to that conclusion, Many mathematically proven that even if you call life rare, the sheer number of stars with the possibility of planets in a habitable zone means there is a crapload of civilizations out there.
Hawking has said this before earlier as well. Just because he makes the same statement again instantly makes this news??
Come on the Drake Equation has been around for a long time now guys.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
No, it doesn't. There. Got that out of the way.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
We, as a species, haven't managed to solve the problem of destroying primitive cultures *here* or a thousand other problems that suggest not corrupting alien cultures is something we shouldn't worry too much about.
I mean seriously -- if we think our technology and culture is okay for the entire planet, why should we stop here?
You're absolutely right! We should definitely set hold back on all the space exploration we've been doing. Also, we should set physical limits for our transmissions to "expire" after a certain distance, so we don't send them "too far". In fact, that would be the only responsible thing to do for Masters of the Universe such as us.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
A prime directive is a great idea. It provides the 100% certainty that it will not be followed any in instance the plot line requires it.
we should be sure of two things. one, is it friendly? and two, are they willing to share in their probably vast knowledge? if the first is no, then it would have been better to not have found life in the first place. if the second question is no, then we need to prove that we are not as violent as we really are. if the second one is yes, then we should take great care not to turn on them.
If people can get past, can they get future? Best way to confuse a stoner
But...but...the sumbitter managed to insert a spurious Star Trek reference!!! Surely that is newsworthy!
"Aliens being likely" does not mean that it's likely we will ever meet one (or be successful in either sending or receiving any communication).
...they are just waiting for us to formulate the ultimate question for which the answer is 42!
52 52'23" W 47 32'07" N
1: I too believe there's alien life. In fact, I have no doubt that there is.
2: I suspect there's no other intelligent/space faring life in our galaxy, but probably there is in other galaxies. (Fermi paradox and Tipler-Barrow arguments both are pretty convincing to me).
For me, #1 means that we should be careful to make sure our spaceships are bug free so we don't contaminate places we land on with life that could wipe out any indigenous life.
For #2, it means that it's impossible for us to ever have a meaningful conversation with other life (assuming I'm right that there's no other intelligent/spacefaring civilizations in our galaxy).
So, I don't think we need to be too concerned with sending out signals. By the time they reach any other life, we'll either be gone, or we will have colonized the entire galaxy, which means we'd likely be safe from extermination. I suspect those are the only 2 realistic probabilities.
Was there a planet that Kirk/Picard/Janeway didn't leave in a fundamentally different state after turning up?
Humans are designed to trade, travel and exploit resources. Then move on when there are too many tourists.
Frankly, I'm surprised there isn't aready a Prime Directive that reads:
"See that blue/green planet with all the space junk and EM noise? You want to leave that one well alone!"
The Prime Directive applies when an advanced culture encounters a more primitive one. While I think there is alien life out there, I seriously doubt that we'll find anyone more primitive than us.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
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Stephen Hawking is a brilliant man who once claimed to be fortunate to suffer from ALS, because it gives him far more time to think and do things that normal people would instead spend on other activities (because they can).
The only problem I have with his statements at GWU is that he is focusing too much on radio waves. He is speculating that since we haven't detected any radio waves, it is unlikely that any intelligent civilization exists close to earth (and by close, I mean in astronomical measures).
In my opinion, scientists are taking too much for granted when looking for life. We assume that it is more likely to find life wherever water exists and we constantly assume that the conditions must be earth-like. And regarding the radio waves, I don't understand why an extraterrestrial civilization would even need to use such technology. It is just as likely that they communicate in entirely different ways. After all, hearing and seeing is just one way of living, but not a necessity.
I realize that radio waves occur from more than just television shows, but this is mainly the type of signals we look for since the odds of intended communications from other planets are insanely small.
Full Tilt
"Hello Mr. Alien. Welcome to our planet. Boy, you sure are more advanced than us!"
"Why, yes, we are, thank you. By the way, I couldn't help noticing that many of you still die from cancer."
"'Still die'? You mean you don't?"
"Oh, no, we cured that a long time ago. Same for that crooked politician thing you've got going. And war. Oh, and that thing you call 'Alzheimers', too. And global warming. We don't have any of that. They all turned out to be really simple to fix, in fact."
"Really? that's wonderful. Will you teach us how to solve these things."
"What? No, no, child, your culture isn't ready for all that. Besides, you're so cute the way you are. No, we'll just stay up in our ships and watch you figure it out. It will probably take several more generations, but that's OK, with our advanced medical technology, we will live long enough to see it... unless you wipe yourselves out in the process, that is. He he. You amuse us."
"Asshole"
Insightful and funny are really the same thing, except one has a punch line.
Will they simply laugh at us earthlings; or shake their heads in frustration, wondering "when will we ever learn"?
What makes you think life forms entirely alien to earth will even have heads? Starfish have no heads, jellyfish have no heads.
I think it's a bit early to worry about TFS's "Star Trek Prime Directive". Sure, there is probably life alien to earth but face it, guys - we haven't found any. Not yet.
There are folks who think an advanced civilization from some other star has already come here to study us (Roswell), but if in fact those are aliens come to visit us, I think it more likely that it is a species descended from us come back in time to do some archaeology rather than visiting from Betelguise to work on a Wikipedia entry on us..
Travelling faster than the speed of light is, after all, just as impossible as time travel. Humans have been human for less than a million years, what will we be like in another ten million? Will we have found that time travel is as impossible as air travel was 1000 years ago?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Ahem, I suspect he is a little more tha noted. He holds the same chair as Sir Isaac Newton did at Cambridge University, worked out how black holes work and is probably the most famous scientist in the world. Even the article says:
America, Home of the Brave.
Honestly, the Prime Directive was the dumbest shit in the show. Any captain worth watching gave it the finger every three episodes. Programs of organized uplift would make much more sense. I mean we'd only hope for the same if somebody better ever finds us. Golden Rule and all that.
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I would presume any such Prime Directive would ultimately be abused/ignored like it has been on Star Trek. International Law is only arbitrarily enforced. Let's first get a grip on how we treat our own people and the other species which inhabit our planet, then maybe we could think about how we would treat extra-terrestrial life forms (if in fact there are any). The only downside to idealism is reality.
> Travelling faster than the speed of light is, after all, just as impossible as time travel
Travelling faster than the speed of light is pretty much the same thing as time travel. If you could travel faster than the speed of light, then you could time travel.
They've seen our television.
Not only are the game shows bad, the soap operas moronic, and the news hours obviously paid advertisements, but our shopping network features declasse technology.
From what they can tell, showing up on earth and saying "I am an alien" is a quick way to get a dead-end job in food service.
They're hanging out in the horsehead nebula, periodically manipulating us with botnets comprised of compromised Windows machines.
technical writing / development
The best evidence for intelligent life in the universe is that it hasn't contacted us yet
(Paraphrasing Calvin)
Now a couple of reasons why Hawking may be totally wrong.
- 1. We have no evidence that we as a species will ever be able to deploy enough energy or resources to move beyond this solar system. We can already foresee the end of cheap energy, and it is all we can do to lift a few tonnes to low earth orbit. It is quite possible that the Universe is so arranged that almost every possible life form is trapped in its own solar system.
- 2. The period in which we have emitted significant radio waves into space is barely 100 years, and more and more we are moving to very short range low power transmitters. It's quite possible that every civilisation does that and so, except for a narrow window of a hundred years or so, is effectively radio silent. You might pick up a primitive 50s and 60s AM transmitter (think Voice of America and megawatts on a narrow frequency band) but not all those Bluetooth devices.
If both of these are correct, the chance that we will detect another civilisation is extraordinarily small even if they are extremely common. In fact, the growing knowledge of carbon chemistry - graphenes and so on - and clays suggest that there are many opportunities for substrates to arise that might hold together primitive organics long enough for life to get a start. It's a subject which is getting increasingly interesting; if you take enough surface area and spread enough small molecules over it for long enough under enough variations of conditions, something is more or less bound to happen. Recent research also seems to suggest that there could be planets around smaller and so longer-lived stars which might have conditions suitable for the formation of life for much longer than the Earth will. Our own planet may be a lot less than optimal. In which case life is likely to be very common indeed, but the low energy environments in which it evolves may make it quite unsuitable for expanding from one star to another.And why should it? The belief that there is something special about the human race which justifies its long term existence is as "religious" as any theistic religion, and no more defensible.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I don't know what this Prime Dircetive actually says but if it's something along the lines of
...
1) Subjugate and conquer any species you encounter against which you can prevail with military might.
2) Use diplomacy and survelliance/espionage techinques to undermine any species against whom you are not guaranteed to prevail to bring about their downfall and leave you in control of their resources.
3) Attempt to avoid or form favourable alliances with anything you come across which is stronger than you.
4)
5) Profit
More than that, the Prime Directive was a bass-ackwards plot device to attempt to explain why neither the Vulcans nor anybody else ever openly visited Earth in the past.
"Oh, they must not wanna interfere because 'we're not ready yet'."
What crap! WTF is so damned "magical" about the state of some planet's culture when they invent interstellar travel, as opposed to 50 or 200 or 1000 years earlier?
For most of human history, the vast bulk of the population lived in misery, while a few kings lived at the top. Preserve this for century on century?
Any space culture that does that is no no friend of humanity or justice.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Consider the stability that would be established upon a society when great, great,etc, grandparents were still active and in fact dominant in that society and the excessive demands of youth were effectively restrained.
So you get rapid development as a society evolves and technological advancements occur until there is a significant change in life expectancy and then development is slowed, and high risk advancements are constrained. Risking a ten thousand year life span on typical youthful (extended out to the first hundred years or so) misadventures would be considered extremely foolhardy and as would threatening an environment required for survival, it is no longer the next generations problem, as those from many, many generations previous, would still have to deal with it.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Not even the birds would have dreamed men could take bits of the earth and cause them to soar through the air like we have. At supersonic speeds, no less.
No, the GP post was right, and the analogy is sound.
"We don't appear to have been visited by aliens... Why would they only appear to cranks and weirdoes?"
What?
First contact protocol:
Anonymous stealth mission
Objective: How do they taste?
It's possible that there is other life elsewhere, and nearly a certainty that it exists elsewhen.
We just need to work out how to get there after it exists and before it's "Best if eaten by" date.
Not to mention that there are a whole lot more reasons to ignore the "Prime Directive" - think about it. If you land on a planet that is less developed than yours, but happens to have intelligent life on it that you can communicate with in some way, you get to be freaking gods.
kaens.blogspot.com
However, because alien life might not have DNA like us, Hawking warned: "Watch out if you would meet an alien. You could be infected with a disease with which you have no resistance.
I am surprised by this quote, and maybe a bit elevated that Hawking is not perfect and doesn't know everything.
It is unlikely that any truly alien life can infect or even eat us. Viruses work because they evolved to work on earth-bound DNA structures. Few viruses can infect multiple species. Chimps are 98%~99% exactly the same as human and few viruses can infect both. A truly alien virus infecting us would be like one of our viruses infecting gasoline or some other organic compound. (Assuming aliens are organic)
Similarly, the "chain of life" where compatible proteins and compounds are consumed by predators (yes we prey on plants, they just don't defend themselves all that often.) is more narrow than you would think as many plants and parts of animals are poisonous. The notion that an alien biology would have any sort of compatibility is, on the surface, absurd.
All that being said, if an alien species was able to eat us or vice versa, or infect us, it would probably support the notion that life on earth was caused by cosmic panspermia.
Plans to recognize alien signals are all based on finding redundancies in the transmission. But from the point of view of an alien signal engineer all redundancies are opportunities to save energy and transmission time by adding compression! The more compression you add, the more your signal looks like random noise. Also the aliens might be using spread spectrum techniques which make a signal even more difficult to detect.
Think of it, the FCC is already starting to require TV signals to move to digital in order to save bandwidth that can be resold to the cell phone companies. How long will it be till the FCC requires that these signals be compressed? Our signals are already becoming more difficult to detect.
Probably in the natural technical evolution of any species there is only a very small window where the species is smart enough to use radio energy for communication but not smart enough to use enough compression to make its signals look like random noise.
Thus our SETI efforts are looking for a needle in a heystack and failure only indicates that species in a transitional phase like us is very rare.
Stephen Hawking should have thought of this.
No, we don't know any such thing.
Current life technology is based ultimately on oil- or coal-derived fuels and there is no realistic prospect that we will have enough of these to support a serious space program. Point me in the direction of a single alternative technology that will provide the kind of energy required.
Even assuming such a technology, consider the effect on the atmosphere of launching through it the quantities of stuff needed to build a base somewhere that could act as a resource centre for further advance. Even the dumbest politicians won't support a project that would probably wipe out life on Earth.
The fact is that our civilisation runs on oil and coal - still. Every improvement in utilisation has been incremental; there have been no serious technical breakthroughs for over 100 years (gas engine, gas turbine and Diesel are all over 100 years old.) Our current civilisation is dependent on using up irreplaceable fuels. All the proposed technical fixes - nuclear, wind, wave - are either heavy plant (nuclear) or low energy density (wind and wave.)
Given the relationship between star size and longevity (it's inverse) we can safely say that the more likely a civilisation is to be around long enough to develop technology, the more likely it is to run out of energy before going anywhere.
"It means that the first species capable of colonizing the galaxy, WILL colonize the galaxy before any other life can get a chance to evolve" - again untrue unless seen from hindsight. The capability to expand beyond your own planet is useless if the nearest planets do not have the resources to permit further expansion. If you don't understand that, learn some military history and you will start to understand the problems of supply logistics. As Winston Churchill once remarked in WW2, when someone criticised the Egyptian government "It takes 20 Egyptians to keep one British soldier in the front line." For space colonisation, I suspect the numbers are more like millions to one.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
because chances are that if they are more advanced than us, they will exploit us in some way.
And if we are more advanced than them, we will exploit them.
I think it's more likely that, in an evolutionary time-frame, we'll colonize our solar system (and beyond), and extra-terrestrial humans will evolve in different directions and become the "aliens".
You come really close to the answer here. The problem with your theory is 2 things: 1. Given the limitations of the speed of light, the only civilizations that would attempt star travel are ones that live a very long time (like 1000+ years). This sorta rules out biological life. I personally think that only silicon based computer life would live long enough for star travel. 2. If a computerized life were to develop, they obviously dont need to find food or space because they could get all their energy from their star. And so, if they needed to colonize another star, they would seek out planets with good solar energy prospects, whos temperature falls into a range that supports their circutry. They wouldn't necessarily be looking for an earthlike planet.
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
Rather than a "non-interference" decree, we should be broadcasting MAYDAY in all directions. Odds are disturbingly high that within the 1000 years it would take for such a message to reach an space-faring civilization, and for that civilization to in turn visit us, the human race will have managed to permanently trap itself in Earth's gravity well by destroying its industrial infrastructure, irradiating the majority of the food supply, and/or salinating its most productive croplands. Not 100%, but say... 40%. There are some kinds of Dark Ages that you don't build your way back out of. Our industrial capacity is currently built on MILLENIA of stored energy reserves left over from the Big Bang and prehistory. If we had only solar energy to rely on, we'd have a pathetically feeble spacefaring ability.
So which intelligent species is more likely to survive: one that has a "prime directive" and doesn't interfere with other civilizations or one that views other planets as ripe for the taking.
Federation Man: "Our Prime Directive instructs us not to interfere with the development of your culture."
Alien: "Good because, our culture is adequately developed already and our Prime Directive says we can assimilate you and take all of your resources.
Guess who wins. If its not obvious think about the history of Native Americans.
Nonsense. An unknown computer genius would write a virus for their vast computer system after three days of exposure to it, and then upload it by way of a MacBook, crippling their defenses and allowing a ragtag band of fighter pilots (very few of whom have actually flown the planes they've been given) to take down the invader's superweapons. Technology's got nothing on good old corporate-sponsored flag-waving feel-good heroic ingenuity.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Not so terribly long ago, it was an established scientific theory that if you travelled at more than 30mph, you would suffocate because your lungs would not be able to overcome the pressure of air on your face.
Note that this neatly misses the fact that people have gone outside and stood still while the wind blew past them at two or three times this speed without suffocating. People will always come up with creative ways to misunderstand the world around them. We're still doing it now.
But that gets really annoying, and you have to spend a whole episode explaining how you're not, and you might need to get shot with primitive weapons to prove your mortality.
I love how scientists always make the 'albeit primitive' qualifier when they talk about alien life. Given the infinite nature of the universe, I'd expect a couple of these alien life forms to be equal or even 'superior' to us. I just hope we find Endor before we find the Borg collective... I think the Ewoks would be a little easier to deal with during first contact. :D
Actually, without going too much into details, some things make so much and evolved independently so many times on Earth, that they make sense when you think of it.
Or even better explained: they make sense when you
A) want an alien at least evolved enough to hold a conversation with. Bacteria are exciting for biologists, but an alien you can actually make contact with, has damn good reasons to indeed look kinda like us.
B) take evolution and RL constraints into consideration. It's easy to imagine giant amoeba creatures, or sacs of gas floating on Jupiter, but those tend to either (I) have blatant disadvantages that natural selection would discriminate against, or (II) they're bloody impossible. E.g., a cell is really just a drop of sea water in a lipid membrane, and evolved from some aminoacid chains which originally started replicating in plain sea water without a membrane. And from there it's been baby steps towards any complex organisms. It was first just bacterial films, then some "worms" which were just a toroidal bacterial film and "sponges" which were just a bacterial colony with holes in it, and so on. Most fantasy extraterestrial forms proposed, like those giant gas sacks, it's not clear how they'd evolve in the first place.
But anyway, that in mind, I'll say that, for example:
- to start with the easy part, any creature of any complexity above "bacterial colony" will have specialized cells for specialized tasks. Simply because it's a huge advantage to. Cells on your skin need to largely insulate you from the uncontrolled outside world, while cells inside need to allow a freer flow of nutrients, for example. As an added bonus, specialization also means that each cell only needs a smaller set of proteins and reactions to do its job, which reduces its energy and nutrient needs and also the number of things that can go wrong.
So basically this rules out any ideas some may have about sentient amorphous blobs.
- almost any creature has either bilateral or radial symmetry, simply because it saves on DNA. Your left side is largely a mirrored copy of your right side. It also has advantages like that it's easier to swim or walk when your left and right legs/fins/tentacles are the same length. And having redundant organs is an advantage by itself too.
- any complex creature will have _some_ sensory organs, because again it's a great advantage to. Even some of the most primitive cells can detect changes in the environment, and react to them in one way or another. Some unicelular organisms already have light sensors. Over time some stuff will remain rather distributed, but high-bandwidth stuff like eyes, it makes sense to have a small number and complex/high-res, rather than photosensitivity all over your body. Other stuff tends to work _because_ it's a single structure instead of a widely distributed array, e.g., hearing. Etc. Basically given enough time and evolution, see the previous stuff about specialization: a lot of things will get concentrated and specialized.
- almost any complex creature will have a mouth at one end and an arse at the other end, simply because it all evolved out of some ultra-primitive worms which were just a thin tube that pushed water from one end to the other. And evolution works in baby steps, small changes to what already existed. Even the exceptions tend to be actually really built the same way. E.g., gasteropods have a funkier configuration, but start as the above described tube anyway: later a diagonal muscle twists them into an different configuration.
- neurons (or whatever the alien equivalent is), are inherently slow, compared to transistors. They're chemical things, just because they evolved out of other cells, and that's how cells work. They don't have to just transmit the signal, they actually have to produce chemicals to excite the next neuron's receptors, and then neutralize those so the next one doesn't keep firing for ever. Again, _because_ they evolved from other cells, which are just a complex chemistry run
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
And liberation? Whose fault is it that the people of the world suffer tyrants and murderers ruling them, really? If all the people go together we could overthrow them without too much difficulty. But then, we'd have to overthrow the new tyrants who led the last revolution, and so on.
I'll have you know that I, as an enlightened being, have been liberating lesser beings for years. I have personally liberated hundreds if not thousands of civilizations of ants. I've also liberated civilizations of bees, wasps and hornets. I'll tell you... the totalitarianism they were subjected to would make a civilized person weep.
They must have been captives, because once I slew their rulers and set them free, they all left and I never saw them again. But I'm sure they were singing my praises, whatever happened to them.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Oh, now I get it. Jesus didn't rise from the dead. He was just beamed back to his mother ship. And the Star of Bethlehem was that ship arriving before they got the cloaking device ironed out.
That makes so much more sense.
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
I've seen that show. The first season was good, but it went down hill after that.
I didn't know it was made by aliens. Pretty cool. I hope they think to release it on DVD.
The enemies of Democracy are
I remember a story that I read long ago in a compilation of Sci-Fi short stories where we were visited by a group of aliens that thought they were going to subjucate us, believing that they were superior because they had FTL travel. They leave their spaceship to face the primitive earthmen... with their muskets. It seems theat to them and most other races that FTL travel was so easy that they never had to develop weapons of mass destruction, tanks, and other weapons of war. The story ended with the aliens lamenting that they had just give us, a warlike planet of much superior weapons, the keys to the galexy.
If something hard to us maybe easy to them, the oppisite may be true too.
Fear the power of NTie!
Our current technology and science will look *very* medieval to any observer in a few hundred years ;)
I do not claim that we will ever get away with actually violating any laws of physics. I do, however, believe that our understanding of said laws will get better and better over time and what seemed impossible before (with the old understanding) could become possible.
More importantly, once it's reached, they can reach you. Before that they are stuck in their shithole planet, so you can ignore them, since they can't follow you home.
...And attack you.
A fallacious argument. Five year olds lack the physical capacity to handle a loaded gun in a safe way. Their brains simply aren't working well enough yet.
Which is, you know, the point of my argument. The rationale is that until they've hit a certain level of technology, their "brains" (that is, culture) aren't working well enough yet.
On the other hand, an adult of any culture is perfectly capable of handling the gun safely, assuming of course that he has been shown and explained to how it works and what the safety requirements are.
And you call my argument fallacious. Were that true, deaths from guns would be a bare fraction of what they are today.
Unless, of course, by "safely" you mean "without self injury" rather than "without endangering others".
Besides, if you try to treat said adult like a five-year old, the chances are you get either a scatching reply or said gun pointed at you - and deservedly so.
Thus proving the point. Heck, look at how angry people get about driver's licenses, despite a non-trivial chunk of them being incapable of safely operating a bicycle.
Yours is simply a new version of white man's burden [wikipedia.org], or perhaps the Noble Savage horsehit: [...]
It's nothing of the sort. If anything, it's the complete opposite (the "White Man's Burden" is about the "White Man" having to nurture and guide other culters - the "Prime Directive" is about leaving them alone).
There's also suggestions throughout Trek that the Prime Directive is as much about avoiding problems on the Federation side of the equation (eg: someone lobbing into a primitive culture with modern technology and setting themselves up as dictator). From memory, several episodes talk about earlier, failed attempts to do what you suggest.
[...] the pre-starfaring people are childlike and naive, and can't be expected to live up to civilized standards, so we better watch them from afar, even as they die by millions from diseases and starvation our advanced technology could easily fix, all for their own good of course - we wouldn't want to corrupt their "natural development".
"Advanced technology" like guns, chemical weapons and the like sure has been a runaway success in the third world, hasn't it ?
Cultures are not analogous to persons. A primitive culture doesn't mean that it's members are stupid.
Who said anything about stupidity ? This is about ignorance and immaturity.
It simply means that they have less accumulated knowledge than members of a more advanced culture.
And less accumulated wisdom, which is far, far more important.
Given this, the moral thing to do is to give them the option to learn - not forcefeeding, not witholding information. Anything else is condescending.
Yeah. For example, we should give all the religious nutters (to pick a contemporary example) full access to all the information and resources they need to make nukes. Should end just peachy.