The program for the search for extraterrestrial civilizations will soon be 50 years old
- Transfer
This is NOT an anti-scientific article! Read a little further than the first three paragraphs.
We have not heard of aliens. Is it time to take a different approach to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence?
Are we alone in the universe? It is precisely this question that the program for the search for extraterrestrial civilizations is trying to answer, and by now it seems that the answer to this question is affirmative. During the half century that passed since the first use of the radio telescope by Frank Drake to search for extraterrestrial radio signals, we did not receive messages from aliens and did not find any artificial radio signals.
Researchers at SETI argue that the project was not a failure, focusing on what they were looking for only in an insignificant part of space, and also that the project was just beginning. Of course, the computer revolution significantly increased our ability to 1) simultaneously search on a large number of different frequencies, and 2) filter out signals of Earthly origin, which theoretically increases the chances of successful detection (extraterrestrial signal).
But in the forthcoming book The Dark Silence (The Eerie Silence, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), British physicist / cosmologist / anthropologist Paul Davis is the director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science and the second The Director (Co-Director) of the Cosmology Initiative, located in Arizona, as well as the chairman of the SETI working group on actions after signal detection (Post-Detection Taskgroup) - states that SETI scientists should expand the search. According to it, you should look outside the "Classic SETI" (ie, radio signals), and include in the search "any signs of rationality, wherever they are in the universe. To do this, we need the means (tools) of all sciences, and not just radio astronomy, ”he writes.
I went to the Beyond Center in Tempe, Arizona to discuss the topics he talks about in Dark Silence. In the first part (of two) of the Failure magazine interview, we examined the following questions: What has SETI achieved in 50 years? And how does Davis suggest expanding your search?
Meanwhile, researchers at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, are holding champagne ready for a day to discover the aliens.
Let's start with the definition of SETI ?
50 years ago, in the famous pilot experiment (at the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Green Bank, West Virginia), Frank Drake first used a radio telescope to search for extraterrestrial radio signals. A radio telescope is not the only way to search for intelligent life in the universe, but the most obvious one is due to the possibility of radio communications at interstellar distances. So usually, SETI is understood as a search using radio telescopes.
What has been achieved in 50 years ?
Everything is said in the title of my book “Silent Silence”. There were no reports from extraterrestrial civilizations and no artificial radio signals. There were several mysterious short-term events that are difficult to evaluate after the fact: the Wow signal recorded on August 15, 1977, a 72-second pulse, as well as a half-millisecond burst, known as the Lorimer pulse. But nothing can be said: if you direct the radio telescope to a specific area of the sky, you can hear something that looks like an artificial signal.
However, the Drake experiment was done on Stone Age technology. Since then, the computer revolution has incredibly increased the ability to simultaneously search at different frequencies and filter out signals of terrestrial origin. Now the operator does not need to sit at the remote control, turn the plate and listen to the speaker. Everything is done by computers, and astronomers can sit with their legs on the table.
How do researchers at SETI manage not to lose heart?
They are unstoppable, aren't they? I think that most of them in any case produce good astronomical research. They use the latest equipment and develop signal search algorithms that are useful in any case. And they always have the hope that improvements (in technology) and increased funding will ultimately allow them to find something.
Who is funding the SETI study?
Research is almost entirely paid from private donations. And the cost is very low in comparison with any other modern scientific research. Compared with the funds spent on other studies, this is a drop in the ocean.
In your book you write that the classic SETI cannot get out of its rut (and try something new).
Everyone is still enthusiastic about the idea of Karl Sagan that somewhere there is a civilization, guessed that we are here, which sends us a message using a narrow-band signal, and we can only determine the frequency, receive the signal and enjoy what happens next . I do not think this is likely. We need to look for signs of rationality wherever we can. And when it comes to radio, I think we should look for beacons, not narrowband signals. The SETI community is beginning to gradually agree with this, but most of it is still looking for a narrowband signal.
What is the area in which the signal was searched?
They searched in a small area in our vicinity, which is why the title of my book is so annoying to them. They say, “What did you expect? We are only looking for 50 years. ”
However, if you look optimistically and apply Moore's law to these studies, it is likely that within a few decades they will be able to explore the entire galaxy and their contribution to science will increase. It's too early to call the classic SETI a waste of time. I think she’s great, but after 50 years, people may think, “Can I try something else?” And I think you need to try. We must think much more about the signs of intelligent life. Forget the messages, all we need to know is: Is there anybody there? Their presence can be determined in many ways.
People suggest that extraterrestrial life, if it exists, is similar to Earth. But biologists have recently discovered microbes that can live in extreme conditions. Why do we assume that extraterrestrial life cannot live in extreme conditions?
Here we are dealing with assumptions. The first assumption: perhaps there is an extraterrestrial life, and it is similar to ours. We will be careful and suppose that any life develops similarly to Earth. Based on carbon, liquid water is needed, evolution takes billions of years, etc. Then any life will have similar features. We can easily make assumptions about fundamentally different forms of life. Whether a fundamentally different life form can become rational is another matter.
And if we encounter alien technology, we may not notice it. Some go very far and suggest that the whole universe was created using extraterrestrial technology, and it looks and works so amazingly because it was designed that way. However, leaving such wild assumptions aside, it is difficult to imagine how a truly advanced technology will manifest itself. How to notice it without saying “This is a miracle!” This is difficult because it requires us to think outside the current level of technology. You need to somehow keep your feet on Earth, looking up at the sky.
In the book, you discuss how advances in technology have changed our thoughts - or will change our thoughts - in relation to SETI. Can you develop this theme?
First, the most significant is the laser. I think that people [now] believe that aliens will use a laser instead of a radio. Recently, people have suggested more unusual methods of communication, one of them is neutrino. I still think radio is the best way. But we can find evidence of the existence of aliens, which will not be a message, but a trace of their life.
There is another option that has nothing to do with the transmission of information using electromagnetic waves or neutrinos. In it, aliens use biological organisms as a means to transmit information. Genomes are packed with information. If somehow it is possible to send a message to the cell, it will multiply and multiply. If you do this in a way that does not affect the functioning of the medium, then information can be stored for millions of years. So instead of sending radio messages, I would prefer, for example, the spread of viruses - retroviruses - that would insert their DNA into any DNA-containing organisms. Exploring the genome is worthless, because people are already researching it. Why don't we explore as many genomes as we can, not necessarily human ones, just to make sure. This is a crazy idea but the whole SETI is a little crazy. I believe that we must do what we can do easily and cheaply, even if the chances of success are illusory.
What about the idea that aliens went through the biological stage of evolution?
I believe that biological consciousness is a transitional stage of evolution. If we, for example, successfully overcome the next few decades - solve the problems associated with energy and the environment - we will see a greater and greater transition to human-machine systems, as well as to completely artificial intelligent systems. The most intelligent entities on the planet will not be of flesh and blood. And I am sure that this consideration is true for any civilization.
We need to get out of our heads the image of [alien life] created by Hollywood. I saw an Avatar with great effects and a miserable story, which contains all the possible misconceptions.
Explain the consequence of the limited speed of light on SETI that often seems to be forgotten.
Yes, they shrug it off, and many science fiction buffs forget it. But if you believe in the theory of relativity - and almost all scientists believe in it - this is the highest speed in the universe. Any type of physical interaction is limited by the speed of light. Although this speed is high from the usual point of view, from an astronomical point of view it is slow. Light takes eight and a half minutes to reach us from the sun, over 4 years to reach us from the nearest star and hundreds of thousands of years to reach us from the other side of the galaxy. Therefore, our existence, in principle, cannot be detected beyond a certain distance. For example, at a distance of one hundred light-years, an observer will see the earth as it was a hundred years ago. So about the existence of a technologically advanced civilization on Earth - at least civilization, using radio - even in principle it is impossible to detect at a distance of more than several tens of light years from Earth. If there is an advanced technological civilization at this distance, there is a chance that they received our signal and answered it. But even the optimists at SETI do not think that civilization exists at such close range. I think a thousand light-years away would be a good guess.
If you say this to the people who work in SETI, they will go astray a bit, and then they will say that we can deal with altruistic civilization so much that it has prepared us messages based on the simple assumption that there is intelligent life on Earth in the next several hundred or thousands of years. But it would be much more reasonable to wait for our first signals. They can also wait for our messages and only then begin to transmit. I think the best we can hope for is a beacon that broadcasts to everyone in a row, or stumbles on other people's messages, like wiretapping on a telephone line. Of course, for this you need to be very lucky.
Is SETI science or pseudoscience?
When SETI just started, I think a lot of people thought it was pseudoscience. With the same success, frankly, one could say about one's faith in fairies. But over the years, SETI has earned more respect, and now the SETI Institute has many collaborative projects with NASA. Many of these projects are astrobiology [as opposed to SETI]. So I think SETI deserves the title of science, but in the end, we need the usual standards for testing science and they are obviously very speculative. They are speculative even by the standards of modern physics, in which there are many strange and unusual things.
So I would like to distinguish between SETI research and its conceptual framework. SETI research is completely scientific. The astronomers working in it are professional scientists who do highly professional work day after day. There is no doubt that they are doing their work in a scientific way. But the whole idea of SETI is marginal. It is located on the very border of what can be considered scientific.
Why search for aliens - scientifically, but ghosts - no?
The difference is very subtle, to understand it you need to understand the system of concepts. The best example is physics. When physicists look for the Higgs boson - as it is now, at the Large Hadron Collider - they have a lot of theoretical research, with accurate predictions, although the boson itself may not be. The same is true for neutrinos, the famous ghost particle that was announced in the 1930s, but was discovered only in the mid-1950s. Why do people spend time on this ghost particle? Because she has a well-defined place in physical theory.
So when it comes to finding extraterrestrial civilizations, we need to convince ourselves that it makes sense. Some people may think that this is a crazy and useless activity, but at least in the case of extraterrestrial life, we can understand it and explain how it will develop. When it comes to ghosts, we have no sane theory. We cannot make any predictions about where to look, or how to look. We cannot find ghosts a place in the structure of modern scientific knowledge. This does not mean that ghosts do not exist. When it comes to searching in the dark, the search for something that fits into well-formulated, plausible theories and experiments is very different from taking something that is not relevant to science, and the statement "we will look for that too."
Obviously, you think SETI - including the classic SETI - is still meaningful, even though the chances of success are small.
Although the chances of success are very small, the consequences would be enormous. If the scientists at SETI succeed, it will probably be the most important scientific event in history. So to spend a small part of the world's resources on the study of such an important issue is certainly justified. And even if SETI fails, it’s very useful to pay attention to the following questions: What is nature? What is humanity? What do we mean by life? What do we mean by rationality? What is our place in the universe? These are good topics to think about, even if we never receive a signal.
Paul Davies' Web page
The Beyond Center
The SETI Institute
We have not heard of aliens. Is it time to take a different approach to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence?
Are we alone in the universe? It is precisely this question that the program for the search for extraterrestrial civilizations is trying to answer, and by now it seems that the answer to this question is affirmative. During the half century that passed since the first use of the radio telescope by Frank Drake to search for extraterrestrial radio signals, we did not receive messages from aliens and did not find any artificial radio signals.
Researchers at SETI argue that the project was not a failure, focusing on what they were looking for only in an insignificant part of space, and also that the project was just beginning. Of course, the computer revolution significantly increased our ability to 1) simultaneously search on a large number of different frequencies, and 2) filter out signals of Earthly origin, which theoretically increases the chances of successful detection (extraterrestrial signal).
But in the forthcoming book The Dark Silence (The Eerie Silence, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), British physicist / cosmologist / anthropologist Paul Davis is the director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science and the second The Director (Co-Director) of the Cosmology Initiative, located in Arizona, as well as the chairman of the SETI working group on actions after signal detection (Post-Detection Taskgroup) - states that SETI scientists should expand the search. According to it, you should look outside the "Classic SETI" (ie, radio signals), and include in the search "any signs of rationality, wherever they are in the universe. To do this, we need the means (tools) of all sciences, and not just radio astronomy, ”he writes.
I went to the Beyond Center in Tempe, Arizona to discuss the topics he talks about in Dark Silence. In the first part (of two) of the Failure magazine interview, we examined the following questions: What has SETI achieved in 50 years? And how does Davis suggest expanding your search?
Meanwhile, researchers at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, are holding champagne ready for a day to discover the aliens.
Let's start with the definition of SETI ?
50 years ago, in the famous pilot experiment (at the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Green Bank, West Virginia), Frank Drake first used a radio telescope to search for extraterrestrial radio signals. A radio telescope is not the only way to search for intelligent life in the universe, but the most obvious one is due to the possibility of radio communications at interstellar distances. So usually, SETI is understood as a search using radio telescopes.
What has been achieved in 50 years ?
Everything is said in the title of my book “Silent Silence”. There were no reports from extraterrestrial civilizations and no artificial radio signals. There were several mysterious short-term events that are difficult to evaluate after the fact: the Wow signal recorded on August 15, 1977, a 72-second pulse, as well as a half-millisecond burst, known as the Lorimer pulse. But nothing can be said: if you direct the radio telescope to a specific area of the sky, you can hear something that looks like an artificial signal.
However, the Drake experiment was done on Stone Age technology. Since then, the computer revolution has incredibly increased the ability to simultaneously search at different frequencies and filter out signals of terrestrial origin. Now the operator does not need to sit at the remote control, turn the plate and listen to the speaker. Everything is done by computers, and astronomers can sit with their legs on the table.
How do researchers at SETI manage not to lose heart?
They are unstoppable, aren't they? I think that most of them in any case produce good astronomical research. They use the latest equipment and develop signal search algorithms that are useful in any case. And they always have the hope that improvements (in technology) and increased funding will ultimately allow them to find something.
Who is funding the SETI study?
Research is almost entirely paid from private donations. And the cost is very low in comparison with any other modern scientific research. Compared with the funds spent on other studies, this is a drop in the ocean.
In your book you write that the classic SETI cannot get out of its rut (and try something new).
Everyone is still enthusiastic about the idea of Karl Sagan that somewhere there is a civilization, guessed that we are here, which sends us a message using a narrow-band signal, and we can only determine the frequency, receive the signal and enjoy what happens next . I do not think this is likely. We need to look for signs of rationality wherever we can. And when it comes to radio, I think we should look for beacons, not narrowband signals. The SETI community is beginning to gradually agree with this, but most of it is still looking for a narrowband signal.
What is the area in which the signal was searched?
They searched in a small area in our vicinity, which is why the title of my book is so annoying to them. They say, “What did you expect? We are only looking for 50 years. ”
However, if you look optimistically and apply Moore's law to these studies, it is likely that within a few decades they will be able to explore the entire galaxy and their contribution to science will increase. It's too early to call the classic SETI a waste of time. I think she’s great, but after 50 years, people may think, “Can I try something else?” And I think you need to try. We must think much more about the signs of intelligent life. Forget the messages, all we need to know is: Is there anybody there? Their presence can be determined in many ways.
People suggest that extraterrestrial life, if it exists, is similar to Earth. But biologists have recently discovered microbes that can live in extreme conditions. Why do we assume that extraterrestrial life cannot live in extreme conditions?
Here we are dealing with assumptions. The first assumption: perhaps there is an extraterrestrial life, and it is similar to ours. We will be careful and suppose that any life develops similarly to Earth. Based on carbon, liquid water is needed, evolution takes billions of years, etc. Then any life will have similar features. We can easily make assumptions about fundamentally different forms of life. Whether a fundamentally different life form can become rational is another matter.
And if we encounter alien technology, we may not notice it. Some go very far and suggest that the whole universe was created using extraterrestrial technology, and it looks and works so amazingly because it was designed that way. However, leaving such wild assumptions aside, it is difficult to imagine how a truly advanced technology will manifest itself. How to notice it without saying “This is a miracle!” This is difficult because it requires us to think outside the current level of technology. You need to somehow keep your feet on Earth, looking up at the sky.
In the book, you discuss how advances in technology have changed our thoughts - or will change our thoughts - in relation to SETI. Can you develop this theme?
First, the most significant is the laser. I think that people [now] believe that aliens will use a laser instead of a radio. Recently, people have suggested more unusual methods of communication, one of them is neutrino. I still think radio is the best way. But we can find evidence of the existence of aliens, which will not be a message, but a trace of their life.
There is another option that has nothing to do with the transmission of information using electromagnetic waves or neutrinos. In it, aliens use biological organisms as a means to transmit information. Genomes are packed with information. If somehow it is possible to send a message to the cell, it will multiply and multiply. If you do this in a way that does not affect the functioning of the medium, then information can be stored for millions of years. So instead of sending radio messages, I would prefer, for example, the spread of viruses - retroviruses - that would insert their DNA into any DNA-containing organisms. Exploring the genome is worthless, because people are already researching it. Why don't we explore as many genomes as we can, not necessarily human ones, just to make sure. This is a crazy idea but the whole SETI is a little crazy. I believe that we must do what we can do easily and cheaply, even if the chances of success are illusory.
What about the idea that aliens went through the biological stage of evolution?
I believe that biological consciousness is a transitional stage of evolution. If we, for example, successfully overcome the next few decades - solve the problems associated with energy and the environment - we will see a greater and greater transition to human-machine systems, as well as to completely artificial intelligent systems. The most intelligent entities on the planet will not be of flesh and blood. And I am sure that this consideration is true for any civilization.
We need to get out of our heads the image of [alien life] created by Hollywood. I saw an Avatar with great effects and a miserable story, which contains all the possible misconceptions.
Explain the consequence of the limited speed of light on SETI that often seems to be forgotten.
Yes, they shrug it off, and many science fiction buffs forget it. But if you believe in the theory of relativity - and almost all scientists believe in it - this is the highest speed in the universe. Any type of physical interaction is limited by the speed of light. Although this speed is high from the usual point of view, from an astronomical point of view it is slow. Light takes eight and a half minutes to reach us from the sun, over 4 years to reach us from the nearest star and hundreds of thousands of years to reach us from the other side of the galaxy. Therefore, our existence, in principle, cannot be detected beyond a certain distance. For example, at a distance of one hundred light-years, an observer will see the earth as it was a hundred years ago. So about the existence of a technologically advanced civilization on Earth - at least civilization, using radio - even in principle it is impossible to detect at a distance of more than several tens of light years from Earth. If there is an advanced technological civilization at this distance, there is a chance that they received our signal and answered it. But even the optimists at SETI do not think that civilization exists at such close range. I think a thousand light-years away would be a good guess.
If you say this to the people who work in SETI, they will go astray a bit, and then they will say that we can deal with altruistic civilization so much that it has prepared us messages based on the simple assumption that there is intelligent life on Earth in the next several hundred or thousands of years. But it would be much more reasonable to wait for our first signals. They can also wait for our messages and only then begin to transmit. I think the best we can hope for is a beacon that broadcasts to everyone in a row, or stumbles on other people's messages, like wiretapping on a telephone line. Of course, for this you need to be very lucky.
Is SETI science or pseudoscience?
When SETI just started, I think a lot of people thought it was pseudoscience. With the same success, frankly, one could say about one's faith in fairies. But over the years, SETI has earned more respect, and now the SETI Institute has many collaborative projects with NASA. Many of these projects are astrobiology [as opposed to SETI]. So I think SETI deserves the title of science, but in the end, we need the usual standards for testing science and they are obviously very speculative. They are speculative even by the standards of modern physics, in which there are many strange and unusual things.
So I would like to distinguish between SETI research and its conceptual framework. SETI research is completely scientific. The astronomers working in it are professional scientists who do highly professional work day after day. There is no doubt that they are doing their work in a scientific way. But the whole idea of SETI is marginal. It is located on the very border of what can be considered scientific.
Why search for aliens - scientifically, but ghosts - no?
The difference is very subtle, to understand it you need to understand the system of concepts. The best example is physics. When physicists look for the Higgs boson - as it is now, at the Large Hadron Collider - they have a lot of theoretical research, with accurate predictions, although the boson itself may not be. The same is true for neutrinos, the famous ghost particle that was announced in the 1930s, but was discovered only in the mid-1950s. Why do people spend time on this ghost particle? Because she has a well-defined place in physical theory.
So when it comes to finding extraterrestrial civilizations, we need to convince ourselves that it makes sense. Some people may think that this is a crazy and useless activity, but at least in the case of extraterrestrial life, we can understand it and explain how it will develop. When it comes to ghosts, we have no sane theory. We cannot make any predictions about where to look, or how to look. We cannot find ghosts a place in the structure of modern scientific knowledge. This does not mean that ghosts do not exist. When it comes to searching in the dark, the search for something that fits into well-formulated, plausible theories and experiments is very different from taking something that is not relevant to science, and the statement "we will look for that too."
Obviously, you think SETI - including the classic SETI - is still meaningful, even though the chances of success are small.
Although the chances of success are very small, the consequences would be enormous. If the scientists at SETI succeed, it will probably be the most important scientific event in history. So to spend a small part of the world's resources on the study of such an important issue is certainly justified. And even if SETI fails, it’s very useful to pay attention to the following questions: What is nature? What is humanity? What do we mean by life? What do we mean by rationality? What is our place in the universe? These are good topics to think about, even if we never receive a signal.
Paul Davies' Web page
The Beyond Center
The SETI Institute