HW #7 Tim Clark

1.         There are a couple different aspects of life and evolution that could help explain the Fermi Paradox. As I allude to in the second question, I think it is a bit naïve to assume and expect other evolved races or civilizations to 1. Communicate at all outside their world, and 2. Communicate the ways we do or the ways we expect them to. We see in our modern world that there are intelligent indigenous tribes that do not and have no motivation to communicate with other planets in or outside of our galaxy. Also our race’s evolutionary process has led us to believe that radio waves, pulsating lasers, and other things are the best way to communicate with other civilizations. It is shortsighted to think that because we use these means, other completely foreign and alien races would do the same.

                Human civilizations have been traced back to 6,000 years old. Meaning the lifespan of our communicable race is not even 10,000 years old. That is a blip in the life span of the universe. That said in the 6,000 years we have existed, we have had thousands of natural disasters, plagues, and been hit by dozens of asteroids a year. These events have killed millions of people over the course of our existence. A different magnitude in some of these events or slightly bigger asteroids could have devastated the human race and potentially could have sent us into existence. I say this to say that even though we have survived we in our industrialization have increased global warming and based on prediction could have brought the survivability of Earth to 0 even in the next 1000 years. That said the life span of other intelligent life could be just as small as ours which could be 7,000 years or so. We are going to be forced to invent solutions to solve global warming and increased energy needs or will die. I feel like most civilizations will come to this breaking point and because we are (and assume they are) flawed beings, we could fail. With the possibility of the life spans being shortened it could bring on the assumption that the alien race would not be able to produce communicable data in the life span they have.

                 Lastly on this point I think the time frame of evolution is something that we have overlooked and assumed is universal throughout the universe. We live in a setting where time is determined by the astronomical occurrences of our Earth rotating on its axis and also its revolution around our star. Our concept of time is built on these variables, but it can easily be inferred that little to know habitable planets that could have life would have the same quantities for time. That said I think the evolutionary process in which intelligent life is created cannot be assumed to be the same time period because time is relative to the existence and ecosystem you live in. As we have pointed out also colder climates would inherently take a longer period of time for anything to happen just because of the fact that molecules and atoms are moving slower. That said combined with the idea that life spans of races are probably too short to establish communicable means and be able to travel to us, then it is highly improbable that intelligent life exists beyond our own and if it does then it is totally possible it is communicating in a way we cannot understand or that they can’t understand us.

2.   Based on the Drake equation, I would be considered somewhat of a pessimist, and that is ok with me because I am. I think I am being generous when I say that there  are .0037 communicable civilizations in our galaxy. By extension this would mean I am inferring that there are 740,000,000 possible communicable civilizations in the universe(.0037*200,000,000,000 [# of galaxies in the universe]). In my opinion this number should be lower. I say this because the original drake equation ne was defined as the number of planets that were in the habitable zone not what the above states “are suitable for life.” Because of this and the mission of Kepler the now known quantity for that variable is 10%. Habitable zone primarily references the temperature of the planet based on the stars luminosity, size, and distance the planet is from the star. The fact of the matter is that there are some key variables that are left out when ne is defined as planets in the habitable zone, which would decrease the quantity of ne from 10%. Some variables that are not taken into account are whether or not the planet has a magnetic field, an atmosphere, the chemical composition needed for life, and the presence of water, methane, carbon, silicon, or other necessary molecules or atomic ingredients. Because of that I believe that the quantity for ne would be drastically lower, I would say a fraction of 1% of the planets of the planets in a system would be in the solar system AND would have all these necessary characteristics. When I changed the ne quantity to .0005 the number of communicable civilization in our galaxy would be 1.9e-05. Therefore I am guessing there could be 3,800,000 potential communicable civilizations in the universe. Although I am still skeptical of that number, it seems closer to reality in my opinion.  

Another reason I believe that the number of communicable civilization in the universe is more philosophical. I think the nature of evolution for different civilizations cannot be defined as ours is. I think it is naïve to think that other civilizations that would most likely be incredibly more different than ours would have/want/desire communicibilily. We as modern humans are wired in a certain way to expand, grow, evolve, question things, and ultimately make life easier for ourselves. I do not think that we can assume the motivational makeup for other creatures would be the same and result in the same technologies and idealistics that we have. Even we as humans don’t always evolve to the same capacity. There are millions of indigenous peoples still across the world making up nearly 1/5 of the different people groups across the world and their desire and motivations are not to use and apply technology in communicating to one another or aliens. They have a different set of idealistic ideologies that are not like the modern civilization’s citizen. I am generalizing yes, but the point is that their evolutionary process did not see profit in the need to assimilate into a culture that would be able to communicate with other plants. Based on these examples we see on Earth, I think it would be easy to understand that even if there were intelligent life, their motivational makeup could have nothing to do with communicating with beings beyond their own world. We cannot say their ideologies would be the same or even close to the same as our own because their physical, chemical, and social norms would be based on an environment that is completely different from our own. That said I would decrease “fraction of planets with intelligent life that develop a technological phase during which there is capability for and interest in interstellar communication,” variable down to .0001. My number for life in the universe would decrease to 3,800. I am most comfortable with these inputs.

 3.            If I were to make a message for the stars I would base practically everything on it to what Stephen Hawking said about extraterrestrial life. His viewpoints about ET life were paralleled with those of when Europeans colonized the Americas. He said that we as humans would be as the Native Americans and would had vastly less technology to defend themselves when the Europeans conquered. Hawking said this is what it could and probably would be like if there was an alien race advanced enough to get from where they are to Earth. With that foundational belief I would design my message, and nothing I would put in the message would give 100% to our race as humans, our location in the galaxy, our ecosystem, nor even the location at which we transmit our signal.

                Firstly, instead of describing the human anatomy and the physical pros and cons, I would strategically put illustrations and characteristics of dolphins instead of humans. I would do this for two reasons. The first is that I would not want the advanced civilization interpreting and analyzing this to understand the anatomy of humans with our weaknesses being able to be extrapolated from the designs. Looking at our anatomy they could understand the fragility of our existence and understand the weakness of our soft and smooth exterior seeing we don’t have a thick outer shell. Also we look wimpy (compared even to animals on Earth like gorillas, elephants, and lions). Secondly if we gave the interpretation that we were dolphins and not humans the ET’s could extrapolate we live in and are limited to water, yet again undermining us and being underprepared if they ever came. Also I would exaggerate the size of the dolphin described for intimidation purposes.

                When describing the location of where we are in the universe, I WOULD NOT give them our direct location. I would give them coordinates to a surrounding star or galaxy that is somewhat easily observable by us. What I imagine this would do would 1. Not let them know exactly where we are (!), and 2. Would let us observe their ships or communications or weapons if that’s what they did, from safeish distance. This would potentially give us insight on the nature of the alien race, and plan accordingly for future encounters.

                Going along with this idea of misleading the alien race of our location I would transmit the signal (I was thinking we would use the pulsating laser) from a different source than Earth. We talked last lecture about sending laser equipment to Mars to fire back at Earth. What I would suggest would be similar, but much farther away. I would have a satellite or rocket launch well outside of our solar system, and them fire the signal laser at the satellite that would then transmit the information outward into the universe from its location, which is always changing, getting further and further away from us.