The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence
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- ISBN13: 9780547133249
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Are we alone in the universe? This is surely one of the largest questions of human being, yet it remains frustratingly unanswered. In this provocative book, one of the world’s leading scientists clarifies why the search for intelligent life beyond Planet should be expanded, and how it can be done.
A Q&A with Paul Davies, Leader of The Eerie Silence
A: SETI is 50 years ancient this year. It was in 1960 that the astronomer Frank Drake (to whom I dedicate the book) took up the challenge and ongoing sweeping the skies with a radio telescope in the hope of alternative up a signal from an alien civilization. Whether the anniversary is the trigger, or whether it is simply that the study of extraterrestrial life is an thought whose time has come, the last few months have witnessed a surge of media and scientific interest, in astrobiology in all-purpose, and SETI in particular. For example, I am involved in at least five separate television series on ET. I have also attended SETI meetings in The Vatican, at Britain’s head of state scientific college, The Royal Society, and at more than one major NASA congress. Gone are the days when scientists pooh-poohed the whole thought. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the pendulum has swung too far the additional way, so that many scientists and commentators are overly credulous about the prospect for intelligent aliens. Statements like “the galaxy is teeming with life, and intelligent life must surely have arisen somewhere” routinely trip off the tongue of many a scientific spokesman, lacking the slightest hard scientific evidence in favor of it. I hope they are right, but there are vital issues that get glossed over–issues that I engage in the book.
I have written both a celebration and a critique of SETI. The title gives away the principal result: so far, so terrible. Not a whisper of an alien message has been received (although there are some intriguing mystery signals). But the word “eerie” is a teaser, because I for one don’t accept no as an answer. Nor do the SETI folk at the sharp end of the research–the astronomers who patiently sit at the controls of the radio telescopes with the champagne waiting on ice. They argue that they have searched only a tiny fraction of target stars so far, and they look forwards to a spanking new system called the Allen Telescope Array that will momentously expand their reach. Nevertheless, traditional radio SETI is a needle-in-a-haystack search with no guarantee that a needle even exists.
Q: What’s incorrect with existing SETI?
A: A fundamental flaw lies at the core of most existing SETI strategies. Carl Sagan popularized the appealing thought that an altruistic alien community might be obligingly beaming radio messages at us, perhaps carefully crafted to give mankind a welcome technological and sociological fillip. But that scenario will no longer wash. Even SETI optimists concede that a radio-savvy civilization within a few hundred light years is extremely unlikely (and systematic searches have spotted nothing). Suppose there is an alien community 1,000 light years away. That is still in our galactic neighborhood–the Milky Way is some 100,000 light years across. The aliens belonging to this putative community cannot know of our being–they cannot know that Planet has radio equipment and the means to detect their signals. The reason concerns the restricted speed of light. At 1,000 light years away, the aliens see Planet today as it was 1,000 years ago. Because nothing can go quicker than light (it is a basic law of physics), there is no way they can know about the manufacturing revolution and terrestrial radio telescopes. So why would they have ongoing beaming messages to us 1,000 years ago, when their view of Planet at that time would have been the year A.D. 10? They might detect signs of agriculture and large scale building (such as the pyramids), and they may of course surmise that some millennium soon humans would renovate radio equipment. But it would make no sense for them to start transmitting powerful and expensive radio messages at us until they know we are on the air. When will that be? In about 900 years time, when our first feeble radio transmissions, leaking into space at the speed of light, finally reach them.
I do not oppose traditional SETI. The astronomers are doing a fantastic job, and they have refined their techniques splendidly. The Allen Telescope Array currently under construction will help a lot. They have my full backing. But their methodology is well adapted to searching for narrow-band (sharp frequency) continuous signals. They stick to this because they have built up a lot of expertise in that area and that is what their financial backers are paying them to do. Their systems are less well adapted, but, to what I regard as the more promising approach to radio SETI, which is to look for beacons, for example, towards the center of the galaxy, where the oldest and wealthiest civilizations are likely to be located. The problem about detecting a beacon is that it would show up as just “something that went bleep in the night,” and may not recur for months or even years. You’d have to stare at the same patch of sky for a very long time. SETI is not geared to that kind of observation and is not funded to do it. But the huge advantage of beacons as opposed to directed narrow-band signals is that the beacon-builders need have no knowledge of our being. A beacon is made for all-purpose consumption, and serves only as a beckoning signal; it is not a message deliberately aimed at us. So the chances of finding a beacon are much privileged.
Q: How can we do better?
A: My book advocates a massive expansion in SETI, not by doing more of the same (though that is excellent too) but by shifting the focus toward the search for all-purpose signatures of intelligence. All equipment leaves a trace; for example, human equipment is producing global warming. Alien equipment might place a larger trace, with telltale signs. But, these signs might be very devious and require our best scientific analysis to detect. Discovery in science favors the prepared mind, so this book is a wake-up call to all scientists to start thinking about how a signature of alien equipment might impact on their meadow of research. I’m also hinting that a signature of alien equipment might already lurk in an unexplored database in fields as diverse as astrophysics, geology and microbiology.
One thing I chose to do in the book was to tackle the thorny issue of alien visitation–what the physicist Enrico Fermi alluded to in his legendary “Where is everybody?” quip six decades ago. But–and this is crucial–I want to draw a huge honor between tales of ET visiting Planet in past times, abducting people, re-engineering humans, being drawn on cave walls and so on, and what I regard as legitimate speculation, namely, that some time in its four billion plus year history, the solar system may have been visited or passed through by an expedition or colonization wave. It need not have been alien beings in the flesh, but their robotic surrogates. Anyway, the point is that the time scale is vast–they could have come at any time in 4.5 billion years! Let’s be optimistic and suppose it happened a mere 100 million years ago. Would we know? Would any traces of alien equipment survive for 100 million years? Not the plastic cups and rocket parts, I reflect. It turns out that there are some possibilities, though. Nuclear waste is one, genomic detritus is another. We could look for these things. It wouldn’t cost much, and who knows what we might find?
Q: Are there any new scientific thoughts unveiled in this book?
A: Yes! SETI is predicated on the belief that life arises quickly and easily on earthlike planets, an thought sometimes called the cosmic imperative (after Christian de Duve, the biologist who coined the term). Astronomers reflect there are billions of earthlike planets in our galaxy alone, so if the cosmic imperative is right, there is a excellent chance of finding intelligent aliens out there. But how do we know the likelihood that life will arise quickly and easily? Suppose life is a freak phenomenon, the outcome of an incredibly unlikely compound fluke, unique in the observable universe? Then we will indeed be alone. That view was the prevailing opinion when SETI started 50 years ago, and is still widely held by biologists.
One way to test the all-vital cosmic imperative thought is to look for a second sample of life on Planet. If life does form readily in earthlike conditions then perhaps its ongoing many times right here on our home planet. Amazingly, nobody has thought to look until recently. I’ve been developing a research theme at Arizona State University evocatively called the shadow biosphere. That’s not my term–it was introduced by Shelly Copley and Carol Cleland at the University of Colorado. Basically, we are devising strategies to find life on Planet, but not as we know it. Looking for a radically different form of life is restricted to microbes, and it consists of building guesses for how life might be done differently, and then looking to see whether it’s out there in the environment. We have a lot of thoughts, and I’m pleased to say that some of them are being funded. If we find that there are two forms of life on Planet (more would be better), then we can be pretty certain that life will pop up on most earthlike planets around the universe. It would be too much of a stretch for it to have formed more than once on one earthlike planet but never on all the others.
Q: Do you dismiss all the UFO tales?
A: I am not casually dismissive of the UFO tales. Most reports are not made by crackpots or liars, but by people who have had a genuinely puzzling or frightening experience. I have studied the theme very closely over many years. My conclusion is that although the experiences are real enough (in the minds of the witnesses at least), they have nothing to do with alien intelligence. There is no reason that aliens should be visiting Planet now, as opposed to at any additional time over the last few billion years, and none of the tales I hear about today differ much from persons I personally investigated 40 years ago. Ufology is stuck in a rut too!
Q: What is the SETI Post-Detection Taskgroup?
A: It was set up by the International College of Astronautics (IAA), and I am the current chair. It consists of about 20 journalists and scientists, two lawyers and a priest. Our job is to reflect on the implications for society as a whole should we suddenly take incontrovertible evidence that we are not alone. Obviously our deliberations are highly hypothetical. Also, we have no teeth–we are an advisory body only. Nevertheless, it makes sense to reflect through some of the issues yet to be of time, so humanity is not caught on the hop. The sort of things we worry about is how to ensure that the scientists who make the discovery can retain control over events for long enough for its significance to be properly evaluated, how we can prevent half-baked attempts by individuals to get in on the act, or even to start transmitting self-styled messages off their own bat, which organizations should be informed and in what order. I like to tell people at persons proverbial dinner parties that if ET calls on my watch, I should be among the first to know!
(Photo © Dave Tevis/Tevis Photographic)
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THERE GOES AN OPPORTUNITY TO BE AN AUDIBLE VOICE IN THE LITTERARY WORLD.
Over the past few decades , the official US governmet policy towards extraterrestrials visiting Planet , was that they are not coming to the planet. Therefore , all countries of the world can be safe about their airspace. What utter nonsense. Billions of countless signals were sent from Planet to space and no marvel people’re seeing alien spacecraft all over the place and that it is being documented everywhere , except by people who are simply too stupid to be willing to keep their hearts open as a replacement for of their minds. I’m done with all the open – mindedness about this whole situation. I mean let’s face it. There’s so much evidence that the US government itself has lost control over the UFO – ET coverup and every agency and group involved has lost control as well and if there are any extraterrestrials supposedly still wanting to be in the cahoots with somebody over the UFO – ET coverup , they’ve lost control too. So the bottom line is as one of the leading actors of the V re-establish series said; there’s just too much evidence. So how’s the situation gonna evolve from now on? I have told it before on amazon.com – somebody’s gonna beat somebody up pretty terrible. Somebody is going to say in a classroom somewhere that aliens haven’t landed , and get a chair thrown at. Goodness knows if a person in that kind of a situation is EVER going to be willing to say out loud , that extraterrestrials haven’t visited the planet. People don’t react to repeat – they react to physical violence. I’m talking about that it’s only a matter of time before somebody looses control and nobody’ll be able to predict how he or she will be behaving for the few minutes and regain control. I mean if somebody were told that their mum and dad don’t exist for over 70 years , it would drive anyone mad. And the best physical violence they react , is one that’s justifiable under all circumnstances. I am not accusing the leader of impact fake witness against persons who have seen something or who know what’s going on – I can know the leader’s remarks – he wants my money so that I can join his cult , and no thanks. I’m already part of a clan whose knowledge system and beliefs suit me just perfectly. Also , in that clan can be establish lots of folks who uphoald some weird beliefs and customs that belong to the 20th century , like the theories of B.F.Skinner , or that people can’t visit additional people. If I told somebody on Planet that they can’t visit somebody in Afghanistan because you have to criss cross some oceans and it’s ’scientifically impossible’, they’d dismiss me as easily as it is for me to dismiss this cult figure. I mean I like cults but I find it to be just unadorned stupid when certain organizations like NASA pass laws that deny people the right to talk to dolphins or to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligence , and people like some of the SETI people aren’t even talking about it. It was Lea Haley who authorized the now legendary classic of world litterature – Lost was the Key , who famously remarked that it is the abductees themselves that are the reason for the coverup. So I tend to dismiss most skeptics and debunkers as crackpots who’ve probably been on something or been payed by somebody or just happened to stumble accross a perspective that’s obsolete and is no longer effective whenever I am in the mood to let them know that they’ve made oulandish claims that don’t work for this century. SETI know that if they’re going to have to admit that extraterrestrials have been visiting the Planet all the time they’ll be in the same shoes as the leaders of most of the religious organizations , not to mention all the nihilists. But unlike most of the others , all SETI needs to do , is change it’s name from SETI to DETI , Discovery of Extraterrestrial Intelligence. There , sorted. I am not attempting to accuse the leader who seems to me to care more about the money in my pockets rather than my opinions or beliefs about extraterrestrials or what makes a really excellent book kick , of being part of this UFO – ET coverup. Why? Because in my estimate , it’s over and exists only in the minds of persons who want to judge it. The rest of it belongs to persons who will have so much more than enough next time somebody tells them that there are no aliens here and so on , that it’s going to be impossible to determine or predict how they’ll react. After over 70 years , it’ll be pretty understandeable , but. How stupid it was that people really kidded themselves in the first place , that nobody out there likes to visit Planet? Who am I to tell the Cosmic Being how it’s creations are to behave? Like stupid Belgian developers did with scenery? I ‘ve heard this nonsense that people can’t visit additional people so regularly that I won’t even want to consider going back to the Stone Age laws of 20th century classical mechanis.Lol!
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Another future “classic” from Paul Davies, based on real experience on the meadow. The reason for four stars rating is because of problems with Kindle edition: all pictures in section “PLATES” are missing, for example “Europa, a moon of Jupiter (courtesy NASA)” is a link to a caption. Amazon should add some notes or warnings in the description of the electronic format of the book, especially when you have to spend 18$…
Nevertheless a very pleasant reading.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
This is another brilliant book by Davies, but the Kindle edition lacks a linked table of contents and contains none of the plates. These are indefensible oversights by a major publisher.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
SETI: The search for extra terrestrial intelligence was inaugurated back in 1960 when a young(er) Frank Drake pointed a radio telescope at the sky and hoped.
Amazingly, in the fifty years since that fledging effort, we’ve only managed to examine stars within a one hundred light year radius around Planet and primarily by means of radio equipment.
It’s a small like a group of beavers searching their stream for evidence of additional dams, finding none and then deeming it an “eerie silence” about the prospects of additional intelligent beaver-like life.
In additional words, to the extent that this book says we should intensify the search for extra terrestrial life…I agree. The methods and proposals outlined by the University of Adeliade’s estimatable Professor Davies are worth carrying out.
But, to the extent that this book waxes pessimistic about our essential prospects of success (as he does in his closing section), I heartily disagree. Just like I said when I reviewed Peter Ward’s otherwise brilliant Rare Planet, I reflect we are woefully early in our search for extra terrestrial life to be able to make any meaningful or searching observations about what we’ve establish.
Let’s take the opening paragraph of this review for example. As I indicated, we’ve only reached out to a radius of one hundred light years. Of the 400 odd extra solar planets we’ve learned, most of them reside outside that radius (to a distance of about one thousand light years according to National Geographic’s recent article on the matter). That means we mostly failed to link our search for signs of extra terrestrial communication with extra solar planets so far.
It also gets me back to my earlier observation about where I heartily agree with Professor Davies. We need to do more and more varied searching. We need to free ourselves of the original conceptions that governed our search for extra terrestrials in the first place.
While the methods recomended by Davies are part of the answer, another part is dispatching any preconcieved bias based on what our all too limited research has so far shown.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Gosh, how far can the pendulum swing in a lifetime?
From the thrill of flying saucers to the Star Trek galaxy teeming with new life and new civilizations, to being the only life/intelligence in the “observable universe”? Sheesh.
Here I was ready for “Contact” which was inevitable in a galaxy containing “billions and billions” of stars. What the, uh, heck?! But hey, no one appreciates the glum implications of the situation more than I. No UFOs. No messages in a bottle, no beacons, no Dyson Spheres. Worst of all, the Fermi Paradox. In a galaxy billions of years ancient, no evidence of visitation. Where the, uh, heck IS everybody? Why would they be coy? Why would they hide?
But Davies drinks the hemlock to the dregs. Not only does the scientist in him despair of life beyond us in the Milky Way, he goes yet to be and extends the dead zone to the entire “observable universe”. Holy Cow! The observable universe covers a lot of real estate. Do we really need to make it that dark in here?
I hear the scientist in him talking. But like him, the philosopher in me wonders what all that out there “is for”. I am nowhere near ready to pull the plug on SETI. My personal PC at home spends more time analyzing signals from Arecibo than it does on Facebook.
I will just say this. I am holding out for the small green guys. The porch light must stay on for them. Lassie come home.
But…if time goes by and there is every effort but no doorbell…
Then, the weight of the universe is truly on our shoulders. We have to MOVE, out and set up a firm and SAFE presence in the galaxy. We need to be safely on 100 worlds under 100 additional stars. A thousand would be better. If there is no one else, then WE must carry the fire of life into the universe, or it could be snuffed out here at any moment at the whim of chance and a stray asteroid.
Mr. Davies brings home the point to us. Lacking a small help and companionship from the stars, there is a clear and present danger Will Robinson.
One more thing. How really IRONIC would it be if, after digesting the lessons of the Copenican Revolution and understanding that we occupy “no special place”, no privileged perspective, it turns out that we are after all THE most special, unique, THE most privileged beings in all CREATION??? Who’d a thunk it??
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5