Thursday, September 23, 2004

Where have all the cool aliens gone?

That Buck Rogers Stuff

In regards to GeekLethal’s post, a necessary precursor to worrying about what to do once you’ve received a singing telegram from ET is worrying whether you have a telegraph machine to receive telegrams with.

I think that worrying about ET’s message is pointless.  It is clear that hyper-advanced aliens, wise with the knowledge of the eons, will completely endorse my worldview.  Therefore, to prepare for their arrival, attend to my words and all will be well.

The fact that reasonably thorough searches of the sky have completely failed to reveal the existence of radio broadcasting, Dan Rather in the sky aliens leads us to several potential scenarios, all of which rather undercut SETI as it currently exists.

1) The cool aliens don’t use radio.  If we are going to be accepted by our social betters, we must move beyond attempting to speak with a hick accent on the radio waves.  Quantum entanglement, even with our current, limited understanding of the laws of nature, holds open a possibility of FTL communication.  Other quantum high wierdness may also be infinitely more efficient than radio.  Some heretics even believe that relativity may be incomplete, and that gravity may propagate significantly faster than light.  We have only recently become even marginally technologically competent.  By galactic standards, we were born yesterday, and slept in late today for good measure.  Are we to imagine that radio is the ne plus ultra of communication techniques forever?

2) There are no aliens, cool or otherwise.  This would certainly explain why we haven’t gotten any dancing ape telegrams on the white house lawn.  It would be reassuring in some regards to know that we have the galaxy to ourselves.  Given the rate at which we have lately been discovering planets, its feels unlikely to me that there is no one else out there, anywhere.

3) There is some compelling reason that the aliens are not communicating at all.  Long time readers will know about the novel Killing Star, which set outs the Central Park analogy for life in the galaxy:

Imagine you’re alone and unarmed in Central Park at night.  From where you are, weapons are concealed and intentions hard to discern.  The very last thing you do is wander around shouting, “I’m here!  That could attract the attention of decidedly unsavory types.  What do you do?  You hunker down, keep quiet; and wait for a policeman to come round or for daylight and walk out of the park.  However, there are several unfortunate differences between the universe and Central Park:

  1. There’s no policeman
  2. You can’t leave the park
  3. Night never ends

If this scenario even remotely approximates reality, sending signals into space is just about the stupidest thing we could imagine doing.  It’s painting a bullseye on your chest, and screaming, “Shoot me!”

I don’t think that SETI is at all likely to detect any signals.  The energy cost to send a radio broadcast that would be coherent at distances greater than a few lightyears is absolutely enormous.  And if aliens are sending narrowcast sigals, we would only pick them up by the thinnest of chances. The only remotely plausible radio broadcast would be the nearby deathshout of a species that had been wacked a la Killing Star, and no longer had anything to lose.  At that stage, stealth is no longer a priority and having some memory of your existence better than no existence at all.

Life on this planet is scary enough.  I don’t think that life throughout the galaxy is going to be the big rock candy mountain, either.  As we develop the technology to start moving around outside the cradle, we will have to be more than a little cautious.


Posted by Buckethead on 09/23/04 at 10:03 PM
That Buck Rogers Stuff • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink