Posted on 02/24/2002 3:53:44 PM PST by LarryLied
Is there obvious proof that we could be alone in the Galaxy? Enrico Fermi thought so -- and he was a pretty smart guy. Might he have been right?It's been a hundred years since Fermi, an icon of physics, was born (and nearly a half-century since he died). He's best remembered for building a working atomic reactor in a squash court. But in 1950, Fermi made a seemingly innocuous lunchtime remark that has caught and held the attention of every SETI researcher since. (How many luncheon quips have you made with similar consequence?)
The remark came while Fermi was discussing with his mealtime mates the possibility that many sophisticated societies populate the Galaxy. They thought it reasonable to assume that we have a lot of cosmic company. But somewhere between one sentence and the next, Fermi's supple brain realized that if this was true, it implied something profound. If there are really a lot of alien societies, then some of them might have spread out.
Fermi realized that any civilization with a modest amount of rocket technology and an immodest amount of imperial incentive could rapidly colonize the entire Galaxy. Within ten million years, every star system could be brought under the wing of empire. Ten million years may sound long, but in fact it's quite short compared with the age of the Galaxy, which is roughly ten thousand million years.
Colonization of the Milky Way should be a quick exercise.
So what Fermi immediately realized was that the aliens have had more than enough time to pepper the Galaxy with their presence. But looking around, he didn't see any clear indication that they're out and about. This prompted Fermi to ask what was (to him) an obvious question: "where is everybody?"
This sounds a bit silly at first. The fact that aliens don't seem to be walking our planet apparently implies that there are no extraterrestrials anywhere among the vast tracts of the Galaxy. Many researchers consider this to be a radical conclusion to draw from such a simple observation. Surely there is a straightforward explanation for what has become known as the Fermi Paradox. There must be some way to account for our apparent loneliness in a galaxy that we assume is filled with other clever beings.
A lot of folks have given this thought. The first thing they note is that the Fermi Paradox is a remarkably strong argument. You can quibble about the speed of alien spacecraft, and whether they can move at 1 percent of the speed of light or 10 percent of the speed of light. It doesn't matter. You can argue about how long it would take for a new star colony to spawn colonies of its own. It still doesn't matter. Any halfway reasonable assumption about how fast colonization could take place still ends up with time scales that are profoundly shorter than the age of the Galaxy. It's like having a heated discussion about whether Spanish ships of the 16th century could heave along at two knots or twenty. Either way they could speedily colonize the Americas.
Consequently, scientists in and out of the SETI community have conjured up other arguments to deal with the conflict between the idea that aliens should be everywhere and our failure (so far) to find them. In the 1980s, dozens of papers were published to address the Fermi Paradox. They considered technical and sociological arguments for why the aliens weren't hanging out nearby. Some even insisted that there was no paradox at all: the reason we don't see evidence of extraterrestrials is because there aren't any.
Theoretical physicist Paul Davies claims that people are looking to extraterrestrials as "a conduit to the Ultimate." For many, the prospect of ETI has come to meet a need once met by religion. Even the SETI scientists say they are motivated by a nobler goal than the mere search for intelligence. Imagine, they say, the boost in knowledge, in morality, and maybe even in spirituality, to be gained from a billion-year-old civilization.Robert Jastrow imagines what it might do to our present religions. "When we make contact with them, it will be a transforming event," he says. "I do not know how the Judeo-Christian tradition will react to this development, because the concept that there exist beings superior to us in this universe, not only technically, but perhaps spiritually and morally, will take some rethinking, I think, of the classic doctrines of Western religion."
Any signals we detect, according to SETI astronomer Jill Tarter, will come from long-lived civilizations. This fact, combined with the fact that religions cause so many wars on this planet, means that our first detected signals will come from beings "who either never had, or have outgrown, organized religion," she said at a recent science/religion meeting sponsored by the Templeton Foundation and held in the Bahamas.
Other scientists and theologians at the Nassau meeting thought that pantheistic religions could survive an alien encounter, but most assumed that Western religion would certainly meet its fate when meeting extraterrestrials. Science historian Steven Dick called SETI "a religious quest" that might help to reconcile science and religion. But he assumed this would occur at the expense of Christianity, which could not accommodate the implications of ETI.
It strikes me that today’s scholars may be too quick to pronounce last rites over the faith that actually engendered most early ETI enthusiasts. Throughout the Middle Ages, well-read people believed that a "plurality of worlds" was impossible, following Aristotle’s arguments. In 1277, a council of bishops in France condemned this position, officially opening the way for many to take other worlds seriously.
Whether encouraged or discouraged by their churches, prominent Christians became the most prominent ETI promoters. These included Giordano Bruno and Nicholas of Cusa (fifteenth century), Johannes Kepler (sixteenth century), American Puritan divine Cotton Mather (seventeenth century), and Yale president/minister Timothy Dwight (eighteenth century).
Whether aliens will deliver a knockout blow to any particular religion depends, of course, upon exactly what aliens have to tell us about God. Materialists have traditionally assumed that Jews, Christians, and Muslims, believing in a transcendent God, will receive bad news. And the Christian belief in Jesus’ death for human sin seems particularly problematic to them. How could we reconcile Jesus’ death for all with the existence of other intelligent creatures in the universe?
Christian ETI enthusiasts, however, have a variety of responses to the skeptics:
- Jesus’ atoning sacrifice was a one-time event that covers aliens too. Oxford cosmologist E. A. Milne suggested that missionaries will eventually be preaching the good news to far-flung galaxies.
- Other civilizations may not have fallen into sin and so don’t require salvation. Oxford don C. S. Lewis wrote science fiction fantasies about such alien societies.
- God has become incarnate in the form of alien flesh in as many places where His creatures have fallen into sin. Scholars and rock singers have taken this position. And in the words of hymn writer Sydney Carter:
Who can tell what other cradle, High above the Milky Way, Still may rock the King of Heaven On another Christmas Day?
I don't think my post was intended to go back that far. The issue I'm addressing is whether religion adds to the general tendency toward aggression by allowing leaders to say that God ordered wars and killings. I have a feeling that purily territorial wars are less ferocious than wars organized under the banner of God. Greed plus insanity is worse than pure greed.
I give Christianity credit for having as its prime spokesman, someone who said turn the other cheek, walk and extra mile, etc -- and who backed it up with his own life. But what was South America all about? How come the fine words got lost for much of history?
On the other hand, if habitable real estate (ie. you don't need a colony dome to live in or a spacesuit to walk outside) is pretty scarce in the universe, it's more likely that said civilizations, upon encountering ant hills (like us), would call pest control and take the real estate for themselves.
That said, Christians have done everything we are currently accusing Islam of doing. But Islam doesn't seem to have anything is its basic creed that says all violence is fundamentally wrong. When Christians go to war, there are always some who point out the basic contradiction.
Aliens who hate any sentient race follow all of our leaking EM (I Love Lucy and the Rosie show) and send spears (very large) of matter and anti-matter into the earth. As the spears circle down into the center we become aware that when they meet, there will be a tremendous explosion that will destroy the planet.
Another group of crusading aliens save many biological samples from the planet for re-planting (both flora and fauna). The survivors learn that other "in-the-know" races are VERY quiet EM-wise to avoid this band of destroyers, which of course, explains the great silence we hear.
Self replicating nannys were part of the eariler discussion. My point stands. You can't just define it away.
The first time in our discussion you introduced the term "replicating nannys" I immediately said the only terminology I have read is nanotechnology and replicators and that I hade read a fair amount about nanotechnology. Perhaps you could point to common usage of the terminology you use. That means links to sources where I can read for myself.
What do you claim I defined away?
The problem with self replicating nannys, is what happens should ONE fail to stop reproducing when it's supposed to? The decendants could sequester all of some critical resource (nacent oxygen for example) before it could be stopped.
But robot probes could travel at 5% (or less) of light speed. A "Von Neumann robot" is one that makes a copy of itself using local resources and dumps its database into the copy. Both then set off at random for new stars. Eventually, by random walk, one staggers home and dumps the entire data base collected by its ancestors. Thus a small initial investment yields a huge pay-off.
If we can think of such a scheme, intelligent ETs should do so as well. There has been ample time for every single star to be visited more than once. If intelligent ETs are common, there ought to be a traffic jam of probes swarming around the solar system right now.
If you can wrap your head around "Von Neumann robot" as being another way of saying "self replicating robot", and them make the leaps from "robot" to "nanorobot" to "nanny" you should be able to follow my reasoning.
Got all that? Or do you need smaller steps?
This point still stands:
The problem with self replicating nannys, is what happens should ONE fail to stop reproducing when it's supposed to? The decendants could sequester all of some critical resource (nacent oxygen for example) before it could be stopped.
Man your reading comprehension is poor. I never disagreed and gave two quotes. One showing how certain replicators could be contained and another quote showing that misuse was a concern. Read the links I posted and see for yourself.
Here's one. Foresight Guidelines for MNT Development Go read the darn thing. And try to comprehend what you're reading.
I almost forgot, what point that you claim you made stands? 230
as Boris said in post #31 on this thread:
Dude, you're losing it. You and I never discussed that and besides, that is Boris's point, not yours.
If you can wrap your head around "Von Neumann robot" as being another way of saying "self replicating robot", and them make the leaps from "robot" to "nanorobot" to "nanny" you should be able to follow my reasoning.
You really are twisted. But at least you're harmless from what I could tell by reading your profile page, so carry on. I simply don't have time for your word games and other delusions as noted in this post. You can have the last word if you want it.
;^)
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