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The Crushing Silence:
Where are the aliens?
Eerie silence or covert cosmic avatars?
Two terrifying possibilities: We are completely alone. They are already here.
| | The Crushing Silence: Where are the aliens? Part Two: Is there a covert extraterrestrial presence? |
Part One: An eerie silence?
(STARpod.org) -- Yesterday, the Royal Society in London asked the question: "Is there anybody out there?"
Assuming the answer is "yes," they are also considering the consequences of the discovery of extraterrestrial life:
"What will the aliens look like?"
"Will they be similar to humans?"
"Will they be like the monsters of science fiction?"
"How do you break the news to the public?"
In a talk titled "The eerie silence: are we alone in the universe," Professor Paul Davies, a prolific author of popular books on the nature of space, time, the universe, and extraterrestrial life, explained why we need to "think outside the box" in our quest to unearth alien life.
The talk, part of a Royal Society program "Is there anybody out there?" explored a wide range of possible alternatives to SETI: the on-going search for alien life by listening to the stars.
The Royal Society, the world's oldest academy of science, is celebrating its 350th anniversary this year.
The two-day program focused on the possibility of the discovery of the existence of extraterrestrial life and the impact it might have on society.
Davies, representing "The Beyond Center" at Arizona State University, was there among other noted explorers searching for the aliens, including Frank Drake and Jill Tarter of the SETI project.
During his talk, Davies mentioned Hollywood, and citied the movie "Contact," based upon the book by the late Carl Sagan. The book and movie were inspired by JIll Tarter's role in the search for life using radio telescopes to hunt down a signal from another world.
Recently, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen joined the search, by adding the "Allen Telescope Array" to the arsenal of technologies searching for extraterrestrial life.
Davies focused on the fact that in spite of recent "ramped up" efforts to find ET, after fifty years of looking, scientists are facing an "eerie silence" -- this in spite of calculations by Frank Drake and Enrico Fermi which suggest the aliens should already be here.
Davies took one step further into the controversy when he suggested the possibility that ET is already here.
Ignoring the vast conspiracy database of UFOs and the government, Davies offered reasoned scientific explanations for the silence.
Citing "other options," Davies told his audience of the need for a "suspension of disbelief" in the "outside the box" search for a "needle in the haystack."
After outlining possible limiting factors to explain the failure to detect an extraterrestrial signal by Frank Drake and colleagues, Davies pointed out that our galaxy, which is roughly 100,000 light years across (meaning that it takes light, the fastest signal in the universe, 100,000 years to cross from one side of the galaxy to the other) may have as many as one trillion "target planets" of interest, each capable of sustaining life.
Davies noted that time was the single biggest obstacle in the search.
Given the vast time scale involved, it is widely accepted that intelligent aliens would have spread in waves throughout the galaxy, even if they were forced to travel at conventional speeds far less than the speed of light.
One of Davies' most interesting suggestions was the possibility of an alien space probe somewhere in the vicinity of the Earth. Perhaps, Davies suggested, such a space probe might already be "logged into our Internet" in an effort to study our culture and understand our species.
Davies also mentioned an "Encyclopedia Galactica": the possibility that a lone space probe, belonging to a vastly superior intelligence from somewhere in our galaxy and created a time long ago, might carry an enormous database of information about extraterrestrial technology.
Recently, it has become possible to detect planets outside of our local solar system. The possibility that the 400 known extra-solar planets might grow to an enormous database of perhaps a trillion Earth-like worlds in our galaxy, is mind-boggling.
On the subject of whether or not "life is a cosmic imperative" -- the idea that life must come into existence elsewhere in the galaxy -- Davies suggested looking for a "2nd Genesis."
A "shadow biosphere" here on the Earth would provide evidence that life had come into existence more than once.
If life came into existence more than once on our world, it would add weight to the idea of life coming into existence on other worlds similar to our own.
The discovery of the existence of life on Mars would add little to the argument for extra-solar life.
Davies cited the fact that material blasted off the surface of Mars had been discovered on Earth, and even suggested that life on the Earth may have originated on the red planet.
Perhaps, suggested Davies, we are all descended from the Martians.
Davies also mentioned the idea of "synthetic biology" which he called "Frankenstein Life."
Although there has been "little progress" in the attempts to foster life in the laboratory, Davies opined that such a discovery would not be scientific evidence for the creation of life elsewhere in the universe.
Present day attempts to search for extraterrestrial communications might be focused on the wrong technology. For the past fifty years, SETI has been searching for radio signals.
Davies mentioned other technologies, existing and emerging, which should not be overlooked in the quest for other-worldly intelligence. The short list includes lasers, matter-penetrating neutrinos, gravity waves, and unknown fundamental quantum methods of communicating.
One idea Davies seemed partial to are "nano-probes."
Nano-probes are envisioned as small atomic scale machines, traveling in swarms, and spreading over enormous time-scales of millions or billions of years.
Waves of nano-probes may have spread throughout the galaxy, arriving at the Earth ages ago.
Noting the similarity of a nano-probe to a living virus, Davies described these hypothesized alien visitors as "complex, information packed" devices, leaving their mark on our world in hidden "general signatures of intelligence."
In the 1950s, physicist Enrico Fermi realized that extraterrestrial life had plenty of time to reach the Earth from elsewhere in our galaxy, and asked why we hadn't already encountered the extraterrestrials.
Davies suggested the answer to the "Fermi Paradox" might be found here on Earth.
If the aliens had spread and colonized the galaxy billions of years ago, we should be on the "search for something fishy" -- the alien's calling card -- imprinted upon the Earth long before the first humans arrived on the scene.
As an example, Davies suggested nuclear traces might have been left by ET and would remain detectable today.
Another idea would be to look for signs of intelligence left by the nano-probes as messages encoded into the genomes of Earth's bio-creatures.
In response to a "creeping anthropocentrism" in the search for ET -- the imposition of human-like characteristics onto our idea of alien intelligence -- Davies suggested that we should be looking for something beyond "extraterrestrial biological entities" and focus on the possibility of post-biological organisms.
Post-EBE would be something beyond our current notions of artificial life. Davies suggested the image of a planetary surface covered by a kind of artificially engineered "throbbing mega-brain."
Another idea favored by Davies, attributed to physicist Frank Wilczek, is a next-generation artificial intelligence based upon "quantum computers" with exponentially more powerful minds than biological brains: Quintelligence.
Perhaps "suitcase-sized" "quintelligent" systems might be out there -- thriving in the vast coldness of inter-galactic space -- perhaps enamored with an internally generated artificial simulation of reality.
Or, perhaps, we must go beyond the farthest "out there" ideas presented by Paul Davies, to uncover a world embedded in the simulation of a vastly more powerful "quintelligent" observer.
In part two, we'll explore the limits to the extraterrestrial problem, and introduce the alleged U.S. government's "core story" of contact with an intelligence "not of this world."
| | The Crushing Silence: Where are the aliens? Part Two: Is there a covert extraterrestrial presence? |
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