From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Tue Mar 18 2008 - 12:24:39 PDT
>From: Centauri Dreams <gilster_at_mindspring.com>
>Reply-To: Centauri Dreams <gilster_at_mindspring.com>
>Subject: Centauri Dreams
>Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 14:03:09 -0500 (CDT)
>
>Centauri Dreams
>
>///////////////////////////////////////////
>If the Phone Doesnt Ring, Its Me
>
>Posted: 18 Mar 2008 09:57 AM CDT
>http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=1774
>
>
>The line in the title above is from a Jimmy Buffett song. A friend who
>knows all Buffett songs line by line uses it on his answering machine,
>invariably provoking a chuckle when I ponder the implications. If the phone
>doesnt ring, just what kind of message is being sent? Or is any message
>being sent at all? Thus does the singer capture the bewildered funk of
>romantic attachments, which can make hash out of all our logic. Like the
>dog that doesnt bark (think Sherlock Holmes), the phone that doesnt ring
>carries its own meaning, one we must now try to parse.
>
>For the SETI phone isnt ringing. If extraterrestrial civilizations are out
>there, is their silence a way of sending us a message? Alan Tough created a
>Web site with the express purpose of offering a communications venue to any
>nearby alien probes, spacecraft designed to study us and report home. The
>Invitation to ETI contains a number of essays explaining the project and
>more or less asking for participation by ET (Paul Davies contribution is
>titled If Youre Out There, ET, Log On!), but David Brin jogged my memory
>yesterday on a mailing list when he mentioned his own essay on Toughs site,
>called An Open Letter to Alien Lurkers.
>
>Wonderfully, what physicist and science fiction author Brin did in this
>essay is to discuss the reasons why ET might choose to remain silent. If
>the phone doesnt ring, it may be because the species in question has a
>non-interference policy:
>
>If youve monitored our TV, radio and now our internet perhaps you have a
>policy of noninterference for a different reason in order to spare us and
>our culture from some harm that might come as a result of contact. An
>erosion of our sense of free will? Or our sense of having a high culture?
>We can understand this notion, too. Certainly the history of first contact
>between human cultures tells that the one with lower technology and
>sophistication often suffered ill effects.
>
>If mercy motivates your reticence, we grasp the concept. Yet, this provokes
>a question are you absolutely sure? Can you be certain were so fragile? Is
>it possible you might be mistaken? Or (again) perhaps rationalizing a
>decision that you made for other reasons?
>
>A Safer Solution for Contact?
>
>A solution would be not to phone but try the Internet, a safe course of
>inquiry because it can be performed via e-mail or anonymous participation
>in online discussion groups. Eccentricity would hardly be a drawback, for
>any such overtures would be met, at best, with amused tolerance, some
>people playing along with such messages out of curiosity and gamesmanship.
>Perhaps its happening today, opines Brin, or possibly ET writes science
>fiction stories under a pseudonym, hoping to tease our imaginations. If the
>latter is the case, the sad diminution is the number of well-paying short
>story markets for science fiction is grounds for concern.
>
>
>
>On the other hand: Perhaps you even lace these works with special clues
>that can only be deciphered by purchasing and carefully reading every one
>of the purported authors booksIn hardcover, yet. All of which gets across
>the tone of this delightful piece, one that confronts the SETI silence in
>provocative ways. Is the phone not ringing because any alien probe in our
>system is damaged and incapable of sending? Or because the extraterrestrial
>race is waiting for us to pass a particular milestone of development? If
>the latter, we could certainly use a hint.
>
>Image: The spiral galaxy NGC 4414. Would alien astronomers within such
>galaxies search nearby stars for other civilizations, or would they look
>closer to home? Credit: NASA, The Hubble Heritage Team, STScI, AURA.
>
>Brin lists eleven reasons for non-contact in all, including the possibility
>that the universe is dangerous enough to house berserker world-destroyers
>that might be programmed to make an end of civilizations on the rise. All
>the listed reasons go to the question of how little we know about the
>beings we hope one day to make contact with. If a SETI signal is ever
>received, should a response be sent immediately? The history of contact
>here on Earth between less technologically advanced cultures and those with
>superior tools has seldom ended well for those on the way up. So maybe the
>best strategy is considered silence until we work out the potential
>ramifications.
>
>Exopsychology and Its Chances
>
>Nonetheless, with powerful messages being sent to nearby star systems from
>the Evpatoria Planetary Radar in the Ukraine, NASAs Deep Space Network
>sites in California, Spain and Australia, and the European EISCAT system in
>Svalbard (the latter to contain a Doritos ad!), the question of contact
>could conceivably be upon us before we have developed a widely accepted
>mechanism for response. And if Dr. Tough is right and a smart probe may
>have already been attracted to our area by radio, TV and radar signals
>pushing into interstellar space, then the phone that doesnt ring becomes a
>psychological puzzler.
>
>Exobiology is a science currently without specimens to study. In the same
>way, exopsychology is a perhaps hopeless but profoundly entertaining
>attempt to trace out alien motivations. I say hopeless because we bring all
>the assumptions grafted into our bipedal species over aeons of evolutionary
>development to the challenge. Can we hope to understand the assumptions a
>species with an entirely different line of growth would make as it
>confronts a civilization far beneath it technologically?
>
>Perhaps not. Actual contact between humans and extraterrestrials may be so
>profoundly strange that we will have no real understanding of what has
>happened when and if the chasm is bridged. But then, the alien race may
>feel quite the same way. Brins eleventh and final reason for non-contact is
>that alien species might simply find us too weird to work with. All of
>which brings Leo Szilards response to Fermi when the latter asked his
>famous question to mind. Where are they? They are among us, said Szilard,
>but they call themselves Hungarians.
>
>A Long-Term Bet on an Artifact
>
>Contact or no, we do, at least, know where Allen Tough comes down on this.
>The Toronto-based researcher, now pursuing his interests in
>extraterrestrial life and the human search for meaning full-time, has an
>extensive background in both psychology and education that illuminates his
>thoughts on alien encounters. Tough has placed a bet on the Long Bets site
>that our first encounter with alien species or their artifacts will occur
>here in our Solar System. He makes no bones about the benefits of what we
>humans call a Bracewell probe:
>
>Most SETI scientists agree that any ETI we detect will likely be thousands
>or millions of years ahead of us (because our sun and our science are so
>young). Such an advanced society will likely have the capacity to build and
>launch cheap smart autonomous probes to explore the galaxy. Also, an
>advanced society will likely be motivated to send out exploratory probes.
>If such a probe were sent a few centuries ago to explore Earth, it will
>likely be here by now I am betting that extraterrestrial intelligence, in
>one form or another, has already reached our solar system and will be
>confirmed first.
>
>The SETI Leagues Paul Shuch is on the other side of the bet, not because he
>thinks Tough is necessarily wrong about those alien probes, but because
>detecting them will be so difficult if, indeed, they are there. Its a
>matter of instrumentation, says Shuch, and though weve gotten very good at
>intercepting electromagnetic waves, our record for detecting even nearby
>natural space debris is not too stellar (pun completely intentional).
>
>Those of us who suspect intelligent life is vanishingly rare in this or any
>other galaxy think this is a bet that may take quite a long time to be
>resolved, but searching for anomalies in the Solar System nonetheless makes
>good sense (maybe, as Hungarian-born Szilard implies, we should start the
>search in Budapest). After all, were completely in the dark when it comes
>to potential alien motivations or accomplishments. Thinking through what
>they might be, and the possibilities of a result close to home, is simply a
>matter of prudence and thoughtful engagement with the universe. If any of
>David Brins reasons for non-contact do apply, I for one want to find out
>which one it is.
>
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