Astronomers On E.T.

The bulk of books, articles, documentaries, written and presented on the subject of life in the universe are by professional astronomers. However, much of the subtopics that make up the broad-brush picture have nothing to do with professional astronomy. As such, readers interested in the subject need to be highly critical when astronomers wax lyrical about extraterrestrial life as most what they pontificate about is personal, not professionally based opinion.

When it comes to the subject of extraterrestrial life, exobiology or astrobiology, the profession most oft associated is that of the astronomer*. That should be nonsense as the focus should be on the word “life” or “biology” not on the word “extraterrestrial”, “exo” or “astro”. I’ve often said that when it comes to UFOs, for example, astronomers are out of their league because the subject of UFOs is not a proper astronomical subject for astronomers to professionally study and thus comment upon in a professional capacity. Astronomers, being human and all that entails, do not always draw a line in the sand between what they believe professionally through academic study and research and what they believe personally, without benefit of academic study and research.  

The only astronomer who ended up making a serious professional study of UFOs, in fact employed as a consultant to the USAF on UFOs – astronomical at first, hence all facets – was the late J. Allen Hynek, so he’s qualified to wax lyrical. What’s interesting is he started off sceptical on the bona-fides of the field, but came around to the opinion that UFOs were serious scientific business. 

The turf of astronomers starts at the top of Earth’s atmosphere and goes outward bound from there, although I’d maintain that things like meteorites are the realm of mineralogists; Transient Lunar Phenomena (TLP) and the ‘Face’ on Mars and other dynamic visible features on planetary and satellite ‘surfaces’ are more the turf of meteorologists, geologists, and maybe even oceanographers (i.e. – Jupiter’s moon, Europa).

WHAT ASTRONOMERS CAN, SHOULD, CANNOT AND SHOULD NOT COMMENT ON REGARDING EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE

Probability of Extraterrestrial Life: Astronomers can tell us roughly how many stars there are per galaxy and what kind of stars they are and how many galaxies there are in the visible universe and roughly what the average solar system might be like, it’s components and constituents, but that’s as far as it goes. When it comes down to whether life arises and evolves on any of these extra-solar planets up through and including intelligence and technologies is an exercise better left to biologists and anthropologists.

Extra-Solar Planets and Planetary Systems: Astronomers are doing an outstanding job in discovering planets orbiting around other stars than just our Sun. They can pretty much estimate, maybe guesstimate, their size and orbital characteristics. They can also determine what the atmospheric constituents are – if any. However, what precisely that composition signifies – constituents perhaps in chemical disequilibrium suggestive of biomarkers – is an analysis best left to chemists and biochemists.

Origin of Life and Panspermia: Astronomers have no academic bona-fides that enables them to wax lyrical on these topics. Maybe terrestrial life originated on Earth; maybe it came via spores (or some such) from outer space (panspermia), but that’s not a subject that’s part and parcel of astronomy, even if extrapolated to abodes somewhere out there.

Transition from Simple (Unicellular) to Complex (Multicellular) Life: Any pontificating on this subject by astronomers is pure and simply their personal opinion. Astronomers would be pissed if evolutionary biologists got press coverage for commenting on the astrophysics of Black Holes, yet astronomers seem to feel capable of practicing biology, as long as it’s called extraterrestrial biology, astrobiology or biology in outer space.

Evolutionary Rise of Intelligence, Technology and the Longevity of Civilizations: Any such speculations are best left to anthropologists as these topic fall way, way, way outside of the realm of academic astronomy.  

Life Not As We Know It: Any speculation on alternative biochemistries (substitute silicon for carbon; ammonia for water; etc.), in fact the entire definition of what life itself is, is best left to biochemists and related disciplines.

Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI): Professionally, astronomers seek out photons – visible light photons; radio photons, microwave photons, gamma-ray photons, infrared photons, ultraviolet photons, etc. Astronomers have a good handle on what naturally originating photons are like and what they can tell us about astronomical objects. Thus, astronomers should be able to spot anomalous photons – artificially originating photons with the accent on the artificiality. If astronomers spot unnaturally emitted photons then the odds are rather good that they have found an extraterrestrial intelligence, an intelligence that has the ability to emit artificially produced photons – like radio signals, optical (laser) signals, etc. Of course there have been false alarms. Pulsars were first thought to be artificial signals; ditto some quasars; and there were those who thought they had picked up radio broadcasts from Mars in the early years of the 20^th Century. However, once astronomers have detected anomalous photons and unanimously concluded they came from an extraterrestrial technological civilization, then any extrapolation from that is out of their bailiwick and resides more with anthropologists, linguistics experts, and other social science academics. 

First Contact: While there are lots of terrestrial examples of first contact, astronomers aren’t historians, sociologists or anthropologists and thus shouldn’t professionally speculate as being all-knowing on the subject of extraterrestrial first contact.

AREAS WHERE ASTRONOMERS NEED TO REALLY BUTT OUT

Visitors from Outer Space: Astronomers are qualified to tell us about the vastness of the cosmos and the immense distances between stars and our neck of the woods. But, the ability of advanced technological extraterrestrial civilizations to transverse those distances is a matter for engineers not astronomers.

Unidentified Flying Objects: UFO crashes in general and Roswell (July 1947) in particular falls way outside the province of professional astronomy (unless such a ‘crash’ can be positively identified as an impacting meteorite). Yet astronomers feel quite capable to wax lyrical on the subject. However, any opinions expressed by astronomers are really personal, not professional ones, and have no more validity than comments by Joe and Josephine Citizen.

UFO abductions, or abductions by ufonauts (the ‘greys’), fall outside the province of professional astronomy and are more properly the province of mental health professionals.

Government programs associated with investigating UFOs, UFO censorship or cover-ups fall outside the province of professional astronomy. Astronomers aren’t experts in national security matters, defence protocols, political science and other associated areas that deals with intelligence operations.

Close Encounters of any kind including geophysical, physiological, electromagnetic, ground trace cases, fall outside the province of professional astronomy.

Analysis and commentary on UFO films and photographs fall outside the province of professional astronomy.

Analysis of radar returns from UFOs, a rather technical and complex matter, tends to fall outside the province of professional astronomy even though radar has been used to probe some of the planets and satellites of our solar system, and thus their ground topography which puts such data in the realm of the geologist in any event.

Alien motivations (i.e. – why don’t they land on the White House lawn, etc.) fall outside the province of professional astronomy. At best this is a matter for psychologists and anthropologists and sociologists, though when it comes to what motivates an alien or alien culture neither is anyone else really qualified for that matter.

The only intersection between astronomy and UFOs is where assistance is required in ruling in or out astronomical bodies (the moon, planets, stars, meteors, etc.) as the cause or unlikely cause of a UFO sighting event. Or, perhaps where statements by so-called ‘contactees’ contradict known astronomical data. Otherwise, UFOs are the province of meteorologists, experts in optics and atmospheric optical phenomena, psychologists, etc.  Yet astronomers wax lyrical on all facets of the UFO phenomena as if all things UFO were exclusively part and parcel of their turf.

So 99% of what astronomers do (like Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Seth Shostak, and Donald Menzel) when pontificating about UFOs, are in reality spouting off personal opinions, not professional or professionally related (i.e. – astronomical related) factual knowledge.

Ancient Astronauts: Astronomers are not archaeologists, anthropologists, historians or usually conversant with mythologies, and thus should steer clear of anything to do with the subject of “ancient astronauts”.

Associated Facets:

Crop circles fall outside the province of professional astronomy, even though IMHO crop circles have probably nothing to do with ETI.

The animal (wildlife and livestock) mutilation phenomena fall outside the province of professional astronomy.

Ball lightning and other associated anomalous lights (like the Australian Min-Min Lights) fall outside the province of professional astronomy or astronomers who are not geophysicists.

Again, any commentaries by astronomers on these issues quasi-associated with ETI are, when all is said and done, when crunch comes crunch, are personal, not professional commentaries.

* And if not the astronomer then physicists. In fact the bulk of material dealing with life in the universe is penned by physical scientists, not biological or life scientists or naturalists. When I did a course in the subject of life in the universe, SUNY @ Stony Brook, it was of course taught by an astronomer, Tobias C. Owen, who has since co-authored along with Donald Goldsmith an entire textbook on the subject “The Search for Life in the Universe” (third edition - 2001).



Are We the Proverbial “It”? Part One

Every one and their great grandmother has apparently had a go at, and calculated a value for the Drake Equation (named after radio astronomer and SETI scientist Frank D. Drake). The Drake Equation estimates (guesstimates is actually more accurate) the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy that could in theory say “Hi” to us and receive our “Hello” in return by examining all the factors that are part and parcel of that scenario. Seeing as how the Universe is some 13.7 billion years old, and seeing as how the current human species has been around for only some 200,000 years (give or take), then I have to ask, is it logical to assume that we’re the proverbial “It”? Here’s my two cents worth.

Are we alone in the Universe? That’s a question that’s been asked by millions over the eons, without, to date resolution. Of course the word ‘alone’ implies alone in the sense of whether or not there exists elsewhere our rough equals, more likely as not betters. We want to get to know our neighbours across the street, not their pets, or their plants. The standard gut-feeling answer to the question usually revolves around how vast the Universe is, and surely, given the billions of stars in our galaxy and the existence of billions of galaxies each with billions of stars, etc. and the vastness of time, surely we can’t be the proverbial “It”. There’s unfortunately one slight flaw in that statistical approach. There’s a rather long chain of events that have to happen, hurdles to be jumped, in order to get from the elements of star-stuff to biological cosmic neighbours. Depending on whom you talk to, that chain can be extremely long indeed. The point is, if any one factor in that chain of causality has a very low probability of coming to pass, it matters not one jot whether or not all the other factors are extremely probable, the overall result is going to be low. If any one factor is as close to zero as makes no odds, then the overall answer will also be a close to zero as makes no odds. Certainty multiplied by certainty multiplied by certainty multiplied by certainty multiplied by zero multiplied by certainty multiplied by certainty multiplied by certainty ultimately equals zero!

Rather than give an exhaustive list of all those factors required to give us cosmic neighbours, I’ll focus on six essentials.

Firstly, one has to have the right kinds of matter and energy that can produce beings like us, and a solid surface to stand on. That’s no problem. The Universe has lots of kinds of energy on tap; stars can manufacture and disperse the required kinds of matter, like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, silicon, etc. There’s lots of solid bodies (planets) out there. That’s one vote for certainty. 

Secondly, one has to have a solid planetary body turn into a habitable world; a suitable environment for physics, chemistry, biochemistry and biology to do their evolutionary thing. Fortunately, that shouldn’t be a problem. There’s a lot of real estate out there and it comes in all sizes and flavours. While there’s only ever going to be one Planet Earth (I’ll avoid discussions of the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics, the notion of parallel worlds, and the Multiverse here which could argue the contrary), there has been, is, and will be, lots and lots of earth-like abodes, just letter perfect for life-as-we-know-it to survive, even thrive. If one wants to throw in life-not-as-we-know-it, there will be lots of worlds suitable for those possibilities as well. So, that’s another vote for certainty.

Thirdly, physics has to become chemistry, and chemistry has to become biology. We need biology to have had origins, or an origin, an origin(s) of life that’s an inevitable outcome of the everyday ordinary interactions between physics and chemistry. Well, many will argue that the origin of life is as nearly predictable as death and taxes, given a suitable habitat. Many will also argue that the origin of life is a fluke! In my point of view, the origin of life need only happen once, and that clearly has been a certainty – we exist and we are life. Once there’s one origin of life, the rest is just distribution. Panspermia provides the ways and means of distributing (microbial) life throughout the cosmos. So, I’ll have to cast another vote for certainty again!

Fourthly – well, now we hit the proverbial brick wall.  You and your neighbours aren’t microbes – you’re a colony of microbes. In short, you’re a multicellular life form. We seek, in the cosmos, other multicellular life forms, on the grounds that the odds that a microbe or unicellular life form isn’t going to prove to be much of a companion or drinking buddy is a near given. So, we need to get from unicellular to multicellular, and therein lays the rub. And it’s here that we have to rely for guidance on a sample of one – Earth. Note: It’s dangerous to extrapolate from a sample of one, but what choice do we have? 

There’s no ecological niche on Earth occupied by multicellular critters that’s not also occupied by unicellular critters (microbes). The reverse isn’t true. You may think the world is totally dominated by multicellular critters – you, your partner, your family, your pets, your garden, your food, all the life you see around you is multicellular. There’s millions of species of insects – all multicellular. What’s more common than bugs? Yet, if you did a biological census, even in your home and your garden, you’d find that apparently common multicellular life forms are out-common-ed, vastly outnumbered, by unicellular life forms by a ratio of trillions to one. What you don’t see does matter!

So, are multicellular critters an evolutionary certainty? Is there anything a ‘colony’ of 2 or 20 or 200 or 2000 cells can accomplish or fill a previously unfilled ecological niche that one cell can’t? And by the way, that 2 or 20 or 200 or 2000 stage has got to be selected for before one can get to the two million and two billion colony stage. Well, clearly the transition happened here, albeit it took some three billion years to seriously kick-start the process, so it’s hardly some inevitable ‘law of nature’. I mean taking some three billion years to get to a colony of cells from a single cell doesn’t inspire confidence that the process is easy, necessary or inevitable. Anyway, it did happen here, so it’s obviously possible. I just don’t see it as a super-evolutionary development that confers immediate survival-of-the-fittest advantage. Of course a colony of two cells might be harder to eat than one cell, but at that level, ‘food’ tends to be absorbed at the molecular level. In any event, microbes can easily attack and ‘eat’ multicellular critters, causing sickness, death and decay. We’re ultimately food for the microbes and the proof of that pudding is how we spend small fortunes keeping them at bay. But, eventually, though you might win the battles against the microbes, you’ll lose the last one, and thus the war.

Another factor that argues against multicellular organisms being a universally common feature of the Universe is that it is also a lot harder to transport around the Universe by natural means – that concept of panspermia – multicellular critters. I mean getting a microbe from Earth to Mars is one thing. Getting a cockroach there is a whole different scenario.   

Multicellular development; its probability, can’t be zero since we’re multicellular, but, on balance, I can’t assign a high probability to the transition between unicellular and multicellular life on every habitable planet, every time. This one is nearing zero!

Fifthly, as noted earlier, you don’t want to interact with your neighbour’s multicellular pets or multicellular garden plants, but your neighbours. What do you have in common with your neighbours that you don’t have in common with your neighbour’s pet or garden plants? Intelligence (even if you probably think your neighbours are a few cents short of a dollar!).

The issue now is whether, having evolved to a multicellular stage, will one develop some higher brain function? Is there any further evolutionary advantage towards increasing one’s intelligence? By going back to our sample of one, if Earth is any guide, the answer is roughly ‘not likely’. There are millions of multicellular species that have existed, and do exist, on Planet Earth. There are apparently only a very few species that have evolved something beyond the minimum level of brain power required for their day-to-day survival. That doesn’t inspire confidence that intelligence has inevitable value as a means of survival.

By far and away, most multicellular critters just operate on pure instinct and don’t (can’t) stop to figure things out (far less stop to smell and appreciate the roses) - but, there are an admittedly few exceptions.  Many wild birds would put our everyday companion animals to shame in the IQ department. I mean I love my cats, but little Einstein’s they’re not. Whales and dolphins have also been credited with being in the higher IQ bracket; ditto our close primate cousins. In the invertebrate kingdom, the octopus is pretty smart – by invertebrate standards (and then some if one is honest). However, on balance, most multicellular critters put their evolutionary strategies into something other than higher brain function. Take my cats. Is it to their survival advantage to ‘figure things out’ or to be just a bit faster afoot, hear just a bit better, see ever more clearly? Nearly all organisms put their survival abilities into something other than pure brain-power. Clearly brain-power has survival-of-the-fittest attributes. But, it’s not the only game in town, and therefore doesn’t have what I’d call evolutionary ‘certainty’.  However, it would be illogical to say that developing intelligence, the ability to figure things out, isn’t valuable and doesn’t have survival value; it’s just that if you were to list all the multicellular animal species on Planet Earth, very few would have an IQ of even one (the human average is 100). So, let’s say intelligence is somewhere between certainty and highly improbable.

To be continued...

Exobiology: Life Not As We Know It: Part Two

Exobiology was the original term given to the sciences central to the question of life-in-the-Universe. It’s now been largely replaced by Astrobiology, but I’ll stick with the original. To investigate life-in-the-Universe one needs to look at what the most likely sort of extraterrestrial life will. Terrestrial life, extinct and past; or alive and present is amazingly diverse – in appearance anyway, but also in the environments they inhabit and the abilities they have to survive and thrive. But under the skin, our fundamental biochemistry, be you T-Rex, or be you a maple tree, or be you a bacteria, or be you, you, well you’re all as closely related as makes no odds. Extraterrestrial life will also be amazingly diverse – in appearance. However, the fundamental biochemistry that makes them, them, might be equally diverse relative to what makes you, you.

Life has to have some abilities, and life has to exist within an environment that’s fit for, well, life. Both abilities and environments go way beyond life-as-we-know-it, if by that we restrict life-as-we-know-it to the very everyday familiar life forms that we perceive around us – even then, surprises abound.

Abilities: When it comes to special abilities relative to ourselves, well fish gotta swim (but so do dolphins, a paramecium, squid, penguins, some turtles; even we humans make a rather feeble go at swimming but we’re not in the same league, far less the same ballpark as fish, etc.). And birds gotta fly (but so do bats and many insects; humans are natural flyers too – as long as it’s straight down). Clearly lots of organisms can move faster than we can. Many organisms have had abilities that have enabled them to survive for multi-millions of years; billions if you include microorganisms. We’ve got a long way to go before we start making it in that ‘Guinness Book of Records’. Your dog can hear higher frequencies than you; your cat has a better sense of smell; many birds have sharper vision and many organisms can ‘see’ parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that we can’t.

But, not to worry, at least we tend to come top of the pops in the I.Q. category! Now the natural question is, what sort of evolved abilities or capabilities might intelligent aliens have that haven’t been thought of in anyone’s philosophy, apart from perhaps being mental giants and putting us to shame in that I.Q. category? 

Environment: When we think of the typical environment that life finds itself in, we tend to think of our own traditional environment, one that has a fairly narrow temperature range; predictable alternating daylight and darkness intervals; one relatively free of harmful radiation; a fairly narrow pressure range; also a very narrow range of an environment that’s not too acidic, not to alkaline; a near constant atmospheric composition, etc. We don’t often tend to think that life in general, terrestrial life in particular can survive, even thrive outside what’s comfortable to us. How wrong we are if we think that! Relatively few complex organisms exist in extreme environments, though examples would fill many an essay all by itself. We all know about animals that can live in Earth’s Polar Regions and in her ultra dry and hot deserts. We know that fish survive at the high pressure, eternally dark abyssal depths, and that some fish can bury into mud and cocoon themselves from drought for extended periods. Still, that’s peanuts compared to what some microorganisms can achieve. Without doing an exhaustive survey, you’ll find microbes surviving and thriving: high up in the atmosphere; kilometers beneath the surface of the earth; inside your digestive system; inside rocks; in battery acid equivalent environments; in extremely high saline environments; in extreme alkaline environments; in total darkness; in pressures that would crush you like an eggshell; in boiling water; in the near absence of water; in temperatures way below freezing; in toxic sludge; inside nuclear reactors; in environments totally free of oxygen. Some microbes can survive (but not thrive in) exposure to near absolute zero temperatures and the vacuum of outer space. The upshot is that the range of non-terrestrial planetary environments where we might detect, at least relatively simple life, has expanded to just about anywhere and everywhere. 

Chemistry: Life-Not-As-We-Know-It: Humanoid, or non-humanoid life forms, with biochemistry very different from ours, is a reasonable rarity in science fiction. When such beings are depicted, they tend to be pure energy entities (fairly easily done via special effects), or something resembling terrestrial life forms albeit given an exotic biochemistry. Star Trek’s Horta are a case in point. 

It’s going to be chemistry, not physiology that ultimately dictates life-not-as-we-know-it. Substitute liquid ammonia or ethane for water; silicon for carbon; copper for iron in the blood (Mr. Spock, anyone?), the literature of speculative astrobiology, not to mention the literature of science fiction as well as sci-fi TV series and films are relatively rare of really alien aliens, everything from pure energy beings to solid rock and crystalline life forms, but hardly non-existent. Alas, life-not-as-we-know-it, that is non-CHON (Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen & Nitrogen) life has been at best a ‘what if’ scientific and literary speculation of the purest kind. When subjected by biochemical specialists to critical examination, non-CHON biochemistries were found wanting as likely viable alternatives. For example, replacing carbon with silicon would have oxygen breathing aliens exhale not carbon dioxide but silicon dioxide – sand! Translated, we find the devil’s in the biochemical details as it were. While the possibility for alternative biochemistries can not be totally dismissed, we know CHON life can exist, so taking that certainty, we run with that first and foremost, when, in the first instance, looking for ET.

Really Far Out, Star Scout: Dark Life Composed of Dark Matter and Fueled by Dark Energy: However, while on the subject of life-not-as-we-know-it, you’re in for a bit of a surprise.

You are a minority, and it has nothing to do with your sex, age, blood type, religion, racial or ethnic characteristics, I.Q., or any other similar or related thing.

You are a minority, even a rarity, in that all the stuffs (matter and energy) that make you, you, and make you tick, is in itself a minority or a rarity in the cosmos, and it’s not because most of the cosmos is ‘empty’ space (not that in quantum theory space can ever be 100% empty). All that you experience (see, hear, feel, smell and taste) around you, be it from your immediate surrounds out to the farthest reaches of the cosmos is the result of just 4% (or thereabouts) of the ‘stuff’ we know and love – electrons and positrons, protons (composed in turn of quarks) and antiprotons, neutrons (again in turn composed of quarks) and antineutrons, neutrinos and antineutrinos, photons (electromagnetism), the theoretical to date undetected gravitons (gravity), gluons (the strong nuclear force), etc. And 4% of anything represents a minority, even approaches the definition of rarity.

The other 96% (or thereabouts) of the cosmos is made up apparently of both ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’, which isn’t your run of the mill electrons, protons, neutrons, electromagnetism, gravity (although ‘dark matter’ exhibits a positive gravity akin to normal matter.), etc. yet can and does interact with the cosmos and its contents. It’s sort of like having a room full of 100 people, only 96 of them are ghosts, albeit physical enough to interact with the contents of the room (just like real ghosts allegedly do).

One needs to point out that thus far at least, there’s no actual known connection between ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ apart from the fact that neither is visible to us in the way that a star or light bulb is visible; thus, the common term ‘dark’. Both ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ have been detected by more indirect means, primarily their influences on the 4% of stuffs we can see.

The subject of astrobiology (as outlined above) deals mainly with the question of finding extraterrestrial life-as-we-know-it. That is, finding life like us based around traditional forms of matter and energy; life with similar chemistry, energy needs, and environmental requirements. However, astrobiologists do like to speculate and cast their minds far and wide and envision possible forms of life that fall in the category of life-not-as-we-know-it; life that makes use of exotic chemistries, unfamiliar energies, and (to us) extremely hostile environments. 

So, the question proposed is could a form of ‘dark life’ originate and evolve out of some combination of ‘dark matter’ and/or ‘dark energy’? (This would be an ultimate life-not-as-we-know-it prize for astrobiologists.)  Well, since we don’t really know what ‘dark matter’ is – its chemistry and other properties – and since we don’t have a handle on the nature of ‘dark energy’ either, one can’t conclude one way or another at this stage. Let’s just call it a whopping big “maybe”. Perhaps (the late) Sir Fred Hoyle’s Black Cloud concept as expressed in his sci-fi novel of that name, might not have been that far off the mark after all!

The major fly in this ointment is, I suspect, that ‘dark energy’ is a repulsive force, which at first glance, seems incompatible with life of any kind. Thus, for the moment, I’ll include it as a ‘dead end’. However, it’s early speculative days yet and there’s a long way to go before ruling anything either in, or out.

An idle thought however, we wonder what the missing 96% of the Universe is – just calling it ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ doesn’t tell us what it is. Perhaps a ‘dark energy/matter’ being wonders what the missing 4% of their Universe is composed of!