{"id":2528,"date":"2011-12-31T17:20:44","date_gmt":"2011-12-31T22:20:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=2528"},"modified":"2011-12-31T17:26:35","modified_gmt":"2011-12-31T22:26:35","slug":"et-are-you-there-are-you-ok","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=2528","title":{"rendered":"ET, Are You There? Are You OK?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On this final day of 2011, I wanted to share some things I read recently on the topic of whether there are life-forms in the universe beyond planet earth (i.e., \u201cextraterrestrial life<\/a>\u201d), and if so, whether there is intelligent, sentient life akin to what we homo sapiens believe that we experience. And finally, what might this mean for our life together here on earth, i.e. on whether we (and any other possible civilization in the Universe) are truly intelligent and sentient, or just a disaster waiting to happen. <\/p>\n

As to the first question, the astrophysicists seem quite confident that there are other living things out there. Continued studies regarding the adaptability of microbes to extreme conditions on earth indicate that there could even be some kind of bacteria or fungus fairly close by, on a moon of Saturn or Jupiter, or perhaps even on Mars, buried somewhere under the red soil. Given the recent success of the Kepler \u201cexoplanet observer\u201d satellite in finding far-away planets that are relatively earth-like in size, composition and distance from their own sun, it’s a good bet that there’s plenty of slime mold out there.<\/p>\n

The question gets a bit more tricky when you ask whether there are intelligent, self-conscious life forms which communicate and organize themselves into social structures, out on these exoplanets. Various scientists have taken a shot at estimating the odds of there being intelligent civilizations somewhere out there. The famous Drake Equation<\/a> derived by Dr. Francis Drake indicates that there should be about 10,000 planets in the Milky Way Galaxy having intelligent life, and over 6 billion in the observable Universe. However, many people have been disappointed in the inability thus far of the SETI project<\/a> (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) to pick up any signals from space that seem organized enough to indicate some intentional form of communication. The SETI people have been scanning the heavens since the early 1960s, and still haven’t come up with anything much. <\/p>\n

But then again, the sky is a very big place and SETI has been run on a shoestring budget, so you can understand their calls for patience. With the accelerating discoveries of potentially habitable planets from the Kepler satellite and better ground-based telescopes, however, the SETI program should now be getting clues as to where to point their antennas. In 10 years, if say 1,000 earth-like exoplanets are discovered within a few hundred light years of our sun (most found to date lie within 500 light years), and if no signals can be heard from any of them, a lot of people might lose faith in the notion of extraterrestrial intelligence. <\/p>\n

In fact, many people are already losing faith. Earlier in the year, a paper published<\/a> by astrophysicist David Spiegel at Princeton University and physicist Edwin Turner at the University of Tokyo argued that the Drake Equation (and the input factors usually used with it) could be too optimistic, and that the evolution of human civilization on earth depended on a lot of rare flukes in the history of our solar system and planet, flukes that would be an extremely long shot to occur in the necessary fashion somewhere else. Also this year, a book was published by science writer John Gribbin entitled \u201cAlone in the Universe<\/a>\u201d, detailing the many fluke factors that made the earth hospitable to the long evolutionary process needed for intelligent life to emerge. Gribbin also reminds us that our little bubble of habitability in the cosmos is indeed a frail one, and can be burst quite quickly by events that have occurred in the past \u2013 e.g., a huge comet crashes into the earth, or the climate suddenly goes into a \u201cphase shift\u201d and the earth becomes entirely encrusted with thick ice. (That doesn’t seem likely with global warming, but the earth’s atmosphere is a complex system subject to unpredictable responses and sudden re-arrangements.)<\/p>\n

Then there was a recent column<\/a> by conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer pondering the \u201calone in the universe\u201d topic, whereby Krauthhammer cited experts (including Carl Sagan) who agree that we probably will not come into contact with extraterrestrial civilization because intelligent civilizations have a fatal flaw. I.e., they kill themselves off, through war and environmental degradation. They are short-term phenomenon, flashes in the cosmic pan.<\/p>\n

Hmm, not a very optimistic thought to end the year on. But then again, Krauthammer is rock-ribbed conservative, and optimists usually don’t become conservatives. I.e., Krauthammer was probably born a pessimist. He is an intelligent one, though, and he does end his article with a valid and almost hopeful point, i.e. that being an increasingly interdependent social species, humankind’s ultimate fate is in the hands of our politics. And throughout recorded history, our politics, especially on the highest level (national and international), have not been very inspiring. But Krauthammer obviously hasn’t given all hope up yet, he still thinks it worthwhile to warn the public that we need to get our act together or face extinction.<\/p>\n

Well, the Milky Way is about 100,000 light years across, with a surface area of roughly 8 billion square light years; if there are 10,000 civilizations as per Drake, then on average there should be one civilized planet every 800,000 square light years. But the interior of the Milky Way is probably not hospitable to life, given the huge black hole in there and the high star density, causing lots of heavy radiation events. So, the average space is maybe 500,000 square light years per civilized planet, given that the habitable area of the universe is 2\/3 or less of the whole. If our scanners are good out to about 565 light years, we should be covering enough space so that there are an average of two civilized planets in that zone \u2013 us and one other (if the Drake Equation holds up). If we can push out to 1000 light years, then the number goes up to 6. Hopefully at least one of the other 5 got started a bit earlier than we did here on earth, i.e. started playing with electromagnet waves while we were still in the Middle Ages or shortly thereafter. <\/p>\n

And hopefully they are still in business. If only SETI could find another \u201cWOW signal<\/a>\u201d, one that really means something this time, it could bolster our faith that Krauthammer is wrong and that human intelligence will finally do the right thing, i.e. find peace in our time. People might even start trusting government again! As Krauthammer says, \u201cpolitics is the driver of history \u201c. If our politics are driven by an ultimate distrust and pessimism, as conservatives like Krauthammer feed us, that pessimism will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. (It seems well on its way, given the Tea Party and the improving prospects for a GOP President and Congress by early 2013.) Barack Obama ultimately failed to sell his \u201cyes we can\u201d philosophy to our nation. Let’s hope that a SETI press release will soon inform us that another civilization comprised of sentient beings is thriving somewhere out there in the blue; and perhaps yes, yes we can too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On this final day of 2011, I wanted to share some things I read recently on the topic of whether there are life-forms in the universe beyond planet earth (i.e., \u201cextraterrestrial life\u201d), and if so, whether there is intelligent, sentient life akin to what we homo sapiens believe that we experience. And finally, what might […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2528"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2528"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2531,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2528\/revisions\/2531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}