The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Arecibo message

In 1961, the American astrophysicist Dr Frank Drake proposed an equation which now famously bears his name (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation). While primarily formulated in an effort to stimulate scientific debate on the question of extraterrestrial intelligence, it kickstarted a process which sought to estimate the number of technologically-capable civilizations in our galaxy. This work spawned the organization which became known as SETI — the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence — which has spearheaded the hunt for intelligent radio signals from space ever since. SETI has also broadcast a 1679-bit pictogram towards selected target stars with details of what the human species looks like, the chemical elements we’re made from, and where we’re located in the galaxy (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message). It was Dr Drake, with his colleague Carl Sagan, who designed the plaques which NASA sent into interstellar space on the two Pioneer craft in 1972 and 1973 — these contain all sorts of images, recorded sound, and scientific data associated with our planet and its inhabitants. For all our efforts, however, we’ve so far heard nothing back from the cosmos.

In the past few years, significant advances in telescope, satellite, and computer technology have allowed us to identify thousands of so-called “exoplanets” — planets orbiting other stars — and estimates suggest that there are billions in our galaxy alone. Of course, even the closest of these are far too small and faint to be seen directly, but we can infer their existence from the gravitational influence they exert on their parent stars … and, if the geometry is right, the minute change in the star’s brightness as the planet moves across its face. Incredibly, despite their immense distances, we’ve been able to detect the presence of water vapor, oxygen and carbon in the atmospheres of some of these planets, fueling the proposition that they may permit biochemistry, and possibly support life as we’d recognise it.

Sooner or later, I believe we will find incontrovertible evidence of life beyond the boundary of our solar system … although whether it’s the spectroscopic fingerprint of an extraterrestrial version of chlorophyll, a radio signal carrying a coded message, or a Close Encounter Of The Third Kind, remains to be seen. While any of these will be a momentous scientific discovery, I doubt that The Common Man will get too excited about the existence of an extraterrestrial lettuce. Let’s be honest: we want to discover another intelligent civilization — we want to know that We’re Not Alone. So let’s imagine that we detect a signal from outside our solar system containing an intelligent payload — how emotionally and psychologically prepared are we as a species to deal with it?

The answer, in short, is that we’re not even close. We live on a planet where all humans are the same species, yet we deliberately divide and subdivide that species into Those Who Are Like Us and Those Who Aren’t Like Us, based on whatever trivial characteristic happens to be in vogue at the time. Further than this, we exhibit a pathological need to belittle, subjugate, or preferably destroy anyone who falls outside our acceptability criteria. For example:

• Divisions based on physical characteristics such as our skin color, our sexual orientation, and our sex. Since these are generally permanent, they’re frequently used by third parties as justification for discrimination, subjugation, and genocide.

• Divisions based on physical characteristics acquired through injury. Some of these — such as facial disfigurement – can be every bit as potent a cause for discrimination as any characteristic we’re born with.

• Divisions based on our personal religious, political or social beliefs. While none of these are immutable (despite what religious leaders tell us), many people nevertheless feel that their personal beliefs are part of their core identity. Unfortunately, such belief systems — especially strongly-held ones — are highly amenable to deliberate corruptive influences such as political and religious fundamentalism, which pervert what ought to be a private matter for each of us into a justification for war and genocide against opposing belief systems.

• Divisions based on cultural characteristics, such as gender. These are strange animals: they’re defined by society, and are therefore meaningless without society’s presence; they’re also highly variable according to the time and the location, and are somewhat pliable under social pressure. Yet those who break these largely unwritten and arbitrary rules are subject to persecution and discrimination.

These are just some of the main divisions — there are many others. Why we’ve created this detailed form of classification is an interesting question — I’ll merely quote a famous man that the categorization of the universe around him into a seemingly infinite set of groups, sub-groups, and sub-sub-groups is either a supreme triumph of homo sapiens’ scientific prowess, or an indication of a colossal insecurity complex which won’t allow anything to be out of its rightful place.

E.T.?

So what happens when we eventually encounter a non-human civilization, face-to-face? Low-budget science-fiction programs have accustomed us to believe that they’ll look almost identical to humans, but there’s absolutely no reason why this should be the case. So what do we do when we’re confronted by an entity that’s not just different in human terms, but different beyond our imagination? White racists used to abusing people with brown or black skins (and vice versa in all combinations) may have to deal with an entity that’s green or blue. Homophobes may have to deal with an intelligent alien creature for whom sex has a completely different set of rules. While many ordinarily tolerant people will unconsciously stare at a person who’s very short or very tall, what will they do when they meet a humanoid creature that’s three meters high? Or just one meter? And what about a hand sprouting only three fingers with no joints or fingernails? Most significant of all, can any of us cope with a face that may have no nose, infrared or ultraviolet sensors instead of eyes, a mouth with no lips … or even a face which appears to be upside-down? And what will these creatures sound like? Will they communicate in a manner which we can even detect? These are a few of the countless variants which might arise in the independent evolutionary environment of another star system.

That’s not to even mention cultural differences. For example, it’s extremely unlikely that the narrow view of what constitutes a socially acceptable appearance for human males and females would be replicated by an alien species — even if they happened to be the same shape as us. It’s de rigueur in most human cultures (though shared by only a minority of other terrestrial species) that the female — invariably with the help of so-called “beauty products” — is the more “sexy” in terms of presentation. But there’s nothing to suggest that the male (if such exists — see above paragraph) of an extraterrestrial species would defer to the artificial beauty of his female mate; it could even be the case that, to human eyes, the sexes are indistinguishable from one another. And as for clothes, it’s probably true to say that anything goes. We’ve seen how quickly human fashions have changed over the past few centuries, and how variable they are even today from one culture to another. Who’s to say that what we in the western hemisphere in 2014 define as “female clothes” — particularly non-bifurcated garments such as skirts and dresses — shouldn’t be worn by both (or all) the sexes of an extraterrestrial species?

In fact, gender — if extraterrestrials even understand such an absurd concept — can have whatever rules one chooses to invent. And to make it more difficult still for us feeble-minded humans to comprehend, each extraterrestrial civilization we meet will almost certainly have a unique set of rules in this respect. One thing is clear, however: given the obsessive emphasis we humans place on wearing the “correct” clothes, the likelihood of a “fashion faux-pas” by our alien visitors is virtually guaranteed.

Evaluating the Drake Equation to give us a measure of the number of technologically-capable civilizations in our galaxy entails multiplying a set of probabilities such as the likelihood of a star having planets, the likelihood of a planet harboring life, the likelihood of life evolving intelligence, and so on. The one term we still can’t even begin to estimate is the length of time a technological civilization will last — will it destroy itself in a few decades as the human species has almost done (and might still do), or will it exist and prosper for millions of years? Unfortunately, the value of this single term could make the difference between intelligent life being very rare, and it being everywhere. But even assuming that an alien intelligence has evolved to the point where they know about us and are able to contact us, Drake curiously didn’t include a term in his equation to specify the likelihood that they’d actually choose to do so … it’s simply assumed that they would. But if we were in their position, looking out on an insular, bellicose, xenophobic, and hostile species such as ourselves, would we want to get to know them? Or would we keep as quiet as we could, and hope they don’t notice us?

So I’m thinking that, instead of sending detailed information to any extraterrestrial intelligence telling them where we are, that we’re carbon-based, that we’d like to meet them, and so on, perhaps we should be broadcasting something altogether more truthful and to the point:

111111111111111111111111110000011111111111100000000011111111100111011100111111110

011101110011111111001100011001111111100000100000111111111000101000111111111100000

000011111111111010101011111111111101010101111111100110000000110011100011100000111

000110000011111110000011111000011100001111111111000000011111111111111000111111111

111110000000111111111100001110000111110000011111110000011000111111111110001110011

11111111100111111111111111111111

Click here for Graham’s message decoded.

Tags: bias, featured, homophobia, opinion, others, transphobia, xenophobia

Category: Transgender Opinion