Food for Thought
The new Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) array of interstellar listening devices located near Mt. Lassen should have caught humankind’s attention and imagination. With the special radio telescopes coming online, the Mountain View-based private nonprofit organization is greatly improving its ability to detect evidence of life elsewhere in the universe. SETI’s efforts and the work at the Lick Observatory in discovering planets outside our solar system make Santa Clara County the center of our planet’s search for alien life forms and worlds that can sustain them.
The popularity of science fiction films and novels and widespread interest in UFO phenomena are testimony to the fact that many human beings are captivated by the possible existence of advanced alien civilizations somewhere in the universe. Our own march from primitive stone and bone tools to our current state of rapidly developing technological advancement has largely been driven by curiosity about our place in the universe and how we came to be here. Our great success in exploring our own solar system in the past 50 years with manned missions to the moon and unmanned probes into our planetary neighborhood is unprecedented in human history.
You could be forgiven for looking at the numbers available on the search for intelligent life in the universe and wondering why SETI is doing it. The chances of communicating with aliens elsewhere in the universe are low in the extreme, to say the least. Any radio beams received on earth from locations in our own Milky Way galaxy would have taken tens of thousands of years to reach us, and from the nearest neighbor galaxy, Andromeda, 2.52 million years. A radio message emanating now from the edge of the universe would take more than 12 billion years and arrive long after our sun has burned out.
However, even with those long odds, and taking into consideration that we probably wouldn’t be able to exchange a message with distant aliens before our own extinction, I do believe the search is worthwhile—even though it is like finding a needle in a trillion haystacks. It is exciting that this is going on in our back yard. I wonder what intercepting a radio signal from across the universe would mean for human beings. Would it further inspire us to continue our technological advancements and explore deeper into the space?
Even more important, perhaps we should consider the possibility that, given the context of our existence and the enormity of the universe, we may, for all practical purposes, be alone and there will never be a message from the stars. Life may be the exception rather than the rule. Indeed, Earth, in all its fragility, may be the home of all the living organisms in the universe. After a lifetime of believing otherwise, I have only recently begun to contemplate this notion and now see it as distinctly possible, even probable.
Unless SETI receives a signal proving otherwise, is it not best to assume that the living beings on our planet constitute the entirety of life, period? And given that scenario, don’t we Homo sapiens, as the repositories of all knowledge, have an awesome responsibility, and, furthermore, shouldn’t we begin to act accordingly?
2: Credibility to creationists? You sound a bit hopeful. Think about how much effort we expend just going into orbit around Earth, and yet you wonder why we haven’t discovered life on extrasolar planets? It’s apparently quite common for people to think they live at the pinnacle of civilization. If we can’t find aliens, nobody ever will, right?
Reminds me of friends living in Coyote Creek. Thousands of neighbors, but they live so far away that you can only wonder what they look like and whether they think like you.
#2 John
Thanks for your thoughtful comment.
If it’s Christian “creationists” you speak of, the possible absence of alien life won’t impact their mythology one way or the other. Like the insistence that the Earth was a flat object floating at the center of the solar system, physical theory based on primitive religions has been overtaken by the facts of human discovery. Oh, there is overwhelming, irrefutable evidence of a creator/god that predates human existence. Her name is Mother Nature and everything in the universe bends to Her omnipotent will, enforced by Her prime minister, Physical Chemistry. These are no mere mythological white-haired mangods who ride around on flaming chariots impregnating virgins with bolts of lightning. They are clearly visible in everything from the quantum to the universal.
It will be interesting when intelligent extra-terrestrial life is discovered. One of the first things I would ask is what are their mythological beliefs. Unless they are exactly the same as Earth’s mythological beliefs then that is definitive proof there is no Supreme Being.
Jack/John:
Yahoo had a piece on the Vatican’s astronomer (didn’t know they had one) who advised the faithful that it is permissable to believe in the possibility of life elsewhere…as long as you believe that God created it. (do they have some insider information?)
Pete Campbell
I personally can wait. Anyone smart enough to get here will only see us as less inteligent.
We see animals as less intelligent; thus they are food, toys to experiment on, and toys to hunt.
Would the aliens view us as food, specimens or something to chase around?
“I Think We’re Alone Now” was released by Tommy James and The Shondells in 1967 and reached number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. In 1987 Tiffany released a version and it reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Girls Aloud released their version in December 2006.
Jack,
Your post today has come at a time when I too have been asking my self those very same questions and having doubts.
What if we are the only ones? Sending our signals into outer space will a least give us the hope, that in a million years, long after we have depleted our selves and our planet, some one will know that we existed. Are we wanting to find others as us, or are we reaching out for help.
As I look inside and around me,I have a sense that change is the only alturnative to save our planet.
Just last Saturday, I and my fellow Directors at Sempervirens Fund celebrated our 108th year of saving Redwood Forests in our Santa Cruz mountains. We held our celebration at Little Big Basin, which we bought along with POST, from HP. I have been on board for 20 years. How time flys.
In the early 80’s I had visitors at my foundry office, with a request to cast a bronze plaque. The plaque was simply Drake’s Law. The individual requesting this plaque, was Barney Oliver. I had cast his prototype HP personal computer some years prior.
He visited often and would tell me about his life and his thoughts of SETI. I listened and his thoughts seemed to me to be very different from many men I have known in my life time. What I kept in my mind from Barney was his kindness and his encouraging manner. Just last week I found the lost second SETI plaque. almost at the same time the Mercury News ran their story on SETI.
At a time when any one thinking of alien beings would be called strange. Drakes Law sered as a useful equation that focused on that life here on earth was unique, was unlikely.
It’s a reminder now of how depleted we have become, with only 5 % of our native forests still existing. Our ozone layers in need of study.
It goes back to that warm conversation I had with Barney, “What is your responcibility”.
The Village Black Smith
Each year that passes without any discovery of extra-terrestrial life gives just a bit more credibility to the creationists.
The Fermi Paradox sounds innocuous but is really very profound; If there are other intelligent beings then “Where are they?”
Logical analysis suggests that if there is other intelligent life, particularly here in our own galaxy, we would be able to detect it. But so far, we don’t. If this is still the situation in, say, 50 years, then we secular, scientifically oriented people might need to rethink our basic assumptions about our place in the universe.
#8-“We see animals as less intelligent; thus they are food, toys to experiment on, and toys to hunt.
Would the aliens view us as food, specimens or something to chase around?”
As an animal rights advocate, I’d love to see that kind of Karma happen in my life time!
Kathleen #10,
Agreed!
FF