e-Pulsar - Dec 99

e-Pulsar Dec 99 - Jan 00

IS Anyone Out There?

A Listserver Discussion

A couple of issues ago, the Pulsar featured an article about the Drake equation and the question about life in our galaxy. The topic always brings out great discussions so when Doug Macary brought it back up on the listserver, I thought the discussions would make for an interesting article....

Doug started it with:

"With the absence (so far) of any intelligible radio signals from other civilizations, has anyone here ever considered the idea that we're the first to get to this point technologically? The idea intrigues, saddens, and frightens me, all for different reasons. Could it be our destiny (not that I believe in that) to bring Terrestrial life into the Universe?"

This got a lot of replies, first from Bob Eggleton.

"Interestingly, a lot of SF authors have started proposing the same thing. There's been a dearth of any novels that have classic ‘alien contact’ in them and a proliferation of books/stories about Artificial Intelligence,alternate history and near future, earth based SF. Many authors claim ‘we would have heard something by now’ and have given up at least on alien contact stuff. James Cameron (Director, TITANIC) gave a speech at some space symposium basically damning things like STAR TREK and STAR WARS for ‘making it look too easy’ (space travel, alien contacts) and thinks SF media should depict the hardships and ‘reality’ of space travel and the fact that even if there are other intelligent races, we'll probably never meet them."

James Smith said:

"I suppose it's possible, but given the fact that our sun is much younger than many others, it would seem unlikely that we're the first to evolve intelligence and technology. As far as radio astronomy, it is possible that this invention is a uniquely human invention, and that even if there are other intelligences in the universe, they are not transmitting or scanning the sky. Of course, in this discussion we have to say almost anything is possible, since it is all speculation. The only thing in life that really, REALLY scares me is the thought that we might be the only intelligent beings that ever have or ever will inhabit the universe. ‘What an awful waste of space’, to borrow from the movie adaptation of Contact."

I had to wade in with some comments too:

"I don't think we're the first. The universe is (by current best estimates) about 12.5 billion years old. Our solar system is only 4.5 billion. That leaves EIGHT BILLION YEARS for others to have risen and fallen. Now count the TRILLIONS of galaxies with billions of stars and factor in how many planets we are finding with the meager tech-level we have today. I personally think the life - intelligent life - is out there in droves and watching us closely without us knowing. The difference is that the others have technology we probably would call magic, so we really don't see them watching. They don't have to really, we're sending out so many radio signals anyway. They do not interact with us for the same reasons that we don't waltz into the middle of a pride of lions or group of gorillas, the native animals would freak out and immediately turn violent. And mankind has some pretty destructive playtoys."

Don Davis came back with this:

"We could very well be alone, or virtually alone. Maybe we are the first ones, although this instinctively seems unlikely. If there's one lesson we have pried from the Universe it is the statistical unlikelyhood of being at the center or beginning or the end of anything profound. We're just somewhere in the stream of things. I doubt we are in the 'cosmic zoo' scenario, looked over by invisible civilizations, but I wonder if our Solar System has ever been visited by probes over the billions of years. If something like a self replicating probe can indeed be built at all they should be filling the galaxy fairly quickly in terms of geologic time. if one percent of light speed is all they can muster then you have at least one branch of the 'tree' of travelling probe paths crossing the galaxy in not much more than 20 million years, even allowing for generous 'regeneration' times. But how would all this data be collected? Maybe..there are no widely traveled civilizations which overwrite their environments like we do, (roads, lights, noise etc.) Perhaps such 'signatures' of intelligent manipulation of the environment are all over the place but we will not know until some resolution threshold is reached in future all sky surveys. I think that current SETI efforts are valuable and at the moment are the best hope for finding radio chatter from beyond. Somehow I think only a small fraction of civilizations use anything like radio we would recognize as such."

Sorry folks, but I have to reply to Don!

Didn’t mean to imply I think Earth was an exhibit in some ‘Cosmic Zoo’ - or that aliens have ‘duck blinds’ set up on Earth to watch us - I don’t. I mean that I feel the universe is filled with life, including intelligent life that is quite aware of humanity’s first steps down the road of sophisticated technology. It is a step that had occurred in billions of civilizations across the universe, but it is a tiny step and we have only just made it. I think the societies of the galaxy simply leave emerging civilizations alone until they acknowledge to themselves that life DOES exist on other worlds. They know we are here, it’s up to us to demonstrate we are civilized enough for them to come say ‘Hi.’"

BJ Johnson said this:

"Scientifically speaking, there is always a first for everything, and we just might be it. This must be considered in any discussion of the existence of life in the Universe. The laws of probability, however, would state that we are not. My take on the search as it stands is that, if we are going to be successful, we are looking with the wrong tools and in the wrong place. Using the systems that we have we may find some serendipitous indirect evidence, but the chances are slim at best. Negative results may not be the data you wanted or expected but, it is good data just the same. As in any scientific experiment, it will at least eliminate that area of endeavor so that we may move on to others."

Gary Harwood summed it up beautifully:

"My own speculation is that while absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, the number of long-lived intelligent civilizations is probably very small and the number of spacefaring civilizations smaller still. No matter how we slice or dice it, we face the tyranny of space and time. Perhaps we are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. We presuppose that despite the awesome difficulties presented by interstellar travel there may be spacefaring civilizations. Why? I believe we are hampered in our speculation because we are tied to a purely human perspective. Though we’ve come a long way in a short time, I think our urge to expand and explore could be considered the hallmark of a race still struggling to come to terms with itself, plus the ever present specter of diminishing resources - and a couple of million years or so of instinct.