Posted on 11/17/2003 12:17:14 PM PST by PatrickHenry
[Review of Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life by David Grinspoon.]
Not many scientists have the reputation of being witty or entertaining, even when their subject matter is rich with possibility. But more and more scientists are allowing their Renaissance sides to emerge and publishing books explaining complex, scientific subjects and debates in lively prose.
David Grinspoon, principal scientist in the Department of Space Studies at Boulder's Southwest Research Institute and an adjunct professor of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado, is one of those. His first book, "Venus Revealed" (1997) explored Earth's erstwhile "twin" (turns out the relationship is much more fraternal — if even that — than identical) in loving detail, making the book as poetic and awestruck as it was informed.
Now Grinspoon steps into the Cosmos-sized shoes of the late Carl Sagan with "Lonely Planets," the best, most entertaining examination of the possibility of other life in the universe since Sagan's best work. And he's got a head start: Grinspoon grew up around Sagan, a family friend.
Like Sagan, he brings a joyous, open, even boisterous enthusiasm — "billions and billions!" — to his writing. If you think a survey of "natural philosophical" history regarding the possibility of alien life might be dry, think again. There's something here for a wide audience, from scientists to dreamers to fans of UFOs.
You can tell Grinspoon is having fun early on, when he describes the delight he takes in not just hard science, but the "fringe" beliefs and tales of UFO abductions.
[Snip]
But despite coming up dry so far in our immediate spatial neighborhood (Grinspoon thinks we're spending too much time perusing Mars), like Sagan, he believes it's a near mathematical certainty that civilization exists elsewhere in the big, beautiful universe we live in.
[Snip]
"Who are we to say that our Earth is such a special place? Like parents certain that their baby is the cutest ever born, of course we think our planet is the chosen one."
(Excerpt) Read more at bouldernews.com ...
I know you weren't going there, but I sometimes enjoy speculating about the possibility of tool-using, even radio-building (or spacefaring!) lifeforms who are not, by our standards, intelligent. The "technologies" of bees and wasps give all the appearance of deliberate design. What is the practical limit of the complexity of such instinctive constructions, in the absence of abstract creativity?
What an interesting speculation! I have never truly pondered it in quite this way.
I'd love to see a remake of 2001 in which the slab lands in a herd of proto-elephants. Jumbo picks up a rock, smashes it on another one, blows on the spark with his trunk, ... and we're on the Moon, with a bunch of spacesuited pachyderems...
and for half of the history of life, they were the only life on Earth.
Not if clams have legs. They may just be keeping them in reserve.
The only one that really grabs me is Calvin's throwing theory.
IE our ancestors were selected by differential success in throwing things to get food, and the excess neurons involved were co-opted for language, music, and other things requiring fine control and sequencing.
Why should there be a limit at all, beyond the obvious limits of the laws of physics? Your DNA is a fiendishly complex molecule, but at the end of the day, it's still just a molecule, lacking any sense of "abstract creativity" whatsoever. And yet it produced you, a fiendishly complex construction yourself...
As for naturally occurring radio communication...all green plants convert light into chemical energy, and we also have insects that communicate simple messages to each other by doing the opposite, and converting their chemical energy into light impulses. Which makes me wonder if there are potential biochemical processes whereby a different sort of energy - energy in the RF band, for example ;) - can be converted to and from chemical energy useable by biological organisms. Instead of chemiluminescence, imagine an organism that incorporated small amounts of a natural semiconductor like galena or iron pyrite or silicon, in order to, say, form a simple diode...
Bet you can't outwait one.
If "abstract creativity" came into being by layering more sophisticated tropisms on top of less sophisticated trophisms, in wired up neural networks, whose to say ants or termites can't do the the same thing, "wired" up in the chemical communication networks they direct each other with? If it gets the job done--does it matter that it's not a neurally-operated meat machine?
Question is--will it ever invent a knock-knock joke?
LOL!I can outrun a clam.
Not if it has a thousand year life-span.....
Hey Skzzzbxx - pull my antenna!
OK, this brings up a question I've been pondering: Let's say an alien species exploded a 1 megaton (for instance) nuclear weapon in space within their solar system, as a "Hello World" signal. How far away could we be and still detect it, with our technology?
The only issue I have is that it is automatically assumed that life must evolve in our exact niche. When you see the diversity of the environments that life exists on this planet alone, it lends credence to life evolving elsewhere. If planets are as abundant as it is now believed, and life seemed to have started quite early (like it is a natural progression), this universe maybe teeming with life.
I've been reading Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, and in Chapter 4 he comes upon a salty lake/mudflat:
Parts of the lake seen from a short distance appeared of a reddish colour, and this perhaps was owing to some infusorial animalcula. The mud in many places was thrown up by numbers of some kind of worm, or annelidous animal. How surprising it is that any creatures should be able to exist in brine, and that they should be crawling among crystals of sulphate of soda and lime! And what becomes of these worms when, during the long summer, the surface is hardened into a solid layer of salt? Flamingoes in considerable numbers inhabit this lake, and breed here, throughout Patagonia, in Northern Chile, and at the Galapagos Islands, I met with these birds wherever there were lakes of brine. I saw them here wading about in search of food -- probably for the worms which burrow in the mud; and these latter probably feed on infusoria or confervae. Thus we have a little living world within itself adapted to these inland lakes of brine. A minute crustaceous animal (Cancer salinus) is said {4} to live in countless numbers in the brine-pans at Lymington: but only in those in which the fluid has attained, from evaporation, considerable strength -- namely, about a quarter of a pound of salt to a pint of water. Well may we affirm that every part of the world is habitable! Whether lakes of brine, or those subterranean ones hidden beneath volcanic mountains -- warm mineral springs -- the wide expanse and depths of the ocean -- the upper regions of the atmosphere, and even the surface of perpetual snow -- all support organic beings.
I've always been struck by the fact that for all of our history, we've only been using EM for communications for a century or so. The jump to what we presumptuously call high technology is one of the factors in the Drake equation, and maybe it's the biggest one. There could be millions of worlds out there, each one with its own versions of ancient Egypt, classical Athens, imperial Rome, etc. (Even Barsoomian civilization, why not?) Lots of literature, philosophy, math, etc. But no use of the EM spectrum for communications. We'd never know they exist.
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