Stephen Hawking Warns Against First Contact

[Devonai]

This is a major theme of my third book, so it's nice to hear my hero echoing some of my concerns.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/04/25/dont-talk-aliens-warns-stephen-hawking/?test=latestnews

Scientist suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: "We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet."

AFP

Jan. 14: Stephen Hawking speaks via satellite during a Science Channel presentation in Pasadena, Calif.

Aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact.

The suggestions come in a new documentary series in which Hawking, one of the world’s leading scientists, will set out his latest thinking on some of the universe’s greatest mysteries.

Alien life, he will suggest, is almost certain to exist in many other parts of the universe: not just in planets, but perhaps in the centre of stars or even floating in interplanetary space.

Hawking’s logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved.

“To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational,” he said. “The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.”

The answer, he suggests, is that most of it will be the equivalent of microbes or simple animals — the sort of life that has dominated Earth for most of its history.

One scene in his documentary for the Discovery Channel shows herds of two-legged herbivores browsing on an alien cliff-face where they are picked off by flying, yellow lizard-like predators. Another shows glowing fluorescent aquatic animals forming vast shoals in the oceans thought to underlie the thick ice coating Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter.

Such scenes are speculative, but Hawking uses them to lead on to a serious point: that a few life forms could be intelligent and pose a threat. Hawking believes that contact with such a species could be devastating for humanity.

Continue reading at the Times of London

[lee n. field]

IIRC, Charles Pelligrino and George Zebrowski wrote a pair of novels with that theme.  New civilization breaks radio silence, within short order gets a relativistic kinetic ZAP.  The universe ends up with a bunch of civilizations each keep a very low profile.

Personally, I suspect they're not out there.

[bedlamite]

Is there other life in the universe? probably. Are they at the level to take advantage of interstellar/intergalactic travel? much less likely.

[Ron]

So the great mind of Stephan Hawking cannot escape the anthropomorphizing of theoretic alien life forms.

Surprising lack of imagination IMHO.

Having said that, I have no issues with keeping a low profile as a planet. Just seems like a good idea from a survival of the species aspect. 

[Battle Monkey of Zardoz]

"Footfall"

[AJ Dual]

IIRC, Charles Pelligrino and George Zebrowski wrote a pair of novels with that theme.  New civilization breaks radio silence, within short order gets a relativistic kinetic ZAP.  The universe ends up with a bunch of civilizations each keep a very low profile.

Personally, I suspect they're not out there.

I suspect they're out there, that they are very rare and separated in space and time. The next few decades of study of places in our own Solar System such as Europa and Mars will give us a clue if life is common out there. And large next-generation spaceborne telescopes might show life signs such as spectroscopy of free oxygen etc. in the atmospheres of planets orbiting other stars. However, there's no reason that intelligence is some sort of goal or end-game for evolution.

And my views on exponential technological growth and the potential for technological singularity are pretty well known here. So I suspect that any species that "makes it" moves beyond paradigms of resource exploitation or any desire to communicate peacefully, or destroy another civilization.

The transmitting time for a civilization is probably very brief as compared to the distances separating civilizations. Despite how the claims that "I Love Lucy" is going on out there FOREVARRRRR.... etc. it's not true. Inverse square law is a bitch, and the frequency is not optimized for long distance space propagation. A civilization that built dish antennae the size of planets still could not detect us much beyond a few hundred light years.

Unless species are packed in and crowded like in Star Wars or Star Trek, you'd have to build a Dyson Sphere surrounding a star, convert most all the energy intercepted into radio at the 12cm Hydrogen "water hole" that's best for interstellar communication, and leave it running for thousands... millions of years to have a decent chance of being picked up by another civilization.

And I agree with Ron. Hawking's brilliance with physics and mathematics does not automatically translate to other things. And as far as the relativistic weaponry horror story with the evil game-theory basis of "it's the only way to be safe/sure", the problem is that if races are in such close contact and similar technological levels, the odds of some third race seeing what you're doing are pretty good, then making the aggressor race vulnerable, and with PROOF they're DEFINITELY a threat, instead of just "maybe" a threat by virtue of possessing technology/spaceflight.

[Bogie]

"It's a cookbook!"
 
Serjimously, I wonder what most religions would do...
 
And if the other guys are advanced enough to come to us, well... they'll likely make most of the bad guys in the science fiction movies look like possible allies...
 

[230RN]

Scientist suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on

Har, har.  If there are are any resources left.

I kind of concluded that there must be other life out there when I happened to be on an enormous stretch of concrete out at the old Stapleton airport in Denver.

There were a few persistent blades of grass sticking up here and there from teeny little cracks in the 10-15 acres of bare-nekkid concrete.  

I figured if a few blades of grass would insist on peeping out there, in the  middle of all that concrete, there must be other life in the universe.

But then again, I'm more of a poet than a scientist.

Terry, 230RN

[Mabs2]

I have always figured that IF life was out there, and IF it wasn't just some kind of microscopic plant thing living in goop, that it would probably be pretty hostile towards us.
I mean, look at the contents of fistful's gAy Thread.

[lee n. field]

I suspect they're out there, that they are very rare and separated in space and time. The next few decades of study of places in our own Solar System such as Europa and Mars will give us a clue if life is common out there. And large next-generation spaceborne telescopes might show life signs such as spectroscopy of free oxygen etc. in the atmospheres of planets orbiting other stars. However, there's no reason that intelligence is some sort of goal or end-game for evolution.

My understanding is, that all the extrasolar planetary systems we have discovered so far are extremely unpromising.  The very best is the one we're sitting in. The numbers aren't looking real good.

This is an oft-argued subject.

[AJ Dual]

My understanding is, that all the extrasolar planetary systems we have discovered so far are extremely unpromising.  The very best is the one we're sitting in. The numbers aren't looking real good.

This is an oft-argued subject.

That's only because the sensitivity of the telescopes used can most detect "hot Jupiters" large gas-giants and brown dwarfs close in to their parent star. They occult the star the most often, and have the greatest gravitation perturbations of the primary star.

There's been a handful of  "much closer" candidates found as well. Where the mass is more like 2-3x that of Earth, or orbiting in the liquid water zone for that star etc. So we keep pulling closer.

Right now though the big finding is we didn't even know if planets were common. Now we know they're more likely the rule rather than the exception.

The next generation space telescopes will be able to find more promising planets in "life zone" orbits directly. And eventually, if anyone funds a formation of space telescopes which can perform interferometry and "blot out" the parent star entirely, we can image an earth-like world at a few hundred light years, at least good enough to get spectroscopy to look for free O2, or other combinations of gasses in the atmosphere that are unlikely without some form of active life to replenish them.

[zahc]

Inverse square law is a bitch, and the frequency is not optimized for long distance space propagation. A civilization that built dish antennae the size of planets still could not detect us much beyond a few hundred light years.

Thank you. My friend and I calculated that in order for an alien civilization orbiting Alpha Centauri to intercept a TV broadcast (like in Contact) they would need a receiving dish hundreds of kilometers in diameter. With the assumption that "intercepting" means detecting a single photon (not a very good picture probably).

[Harold Tuttle]

[AJ Dual]

Thank you. My friend and I calculated that in order for an alien civilization orbiting Alpha Centauri to intercept a TV broadcast (like in Contact) they would need a receiving dish hundreds of kilometers in diameter. With the assumption that "intercepting" means detecting a single photon (not a very good picture probably).

Yeah, in Contact, the dishes were indeed somewhere on that scale. Described as a gigantic faceted planetoid covered in dishes. And were only eleven light years away orbiting Vega. Not much further than Alpha Centauri.

Although if your only criteria is to determine by frequency, modulation etc. that the signal is artificial, and that through doppler shift it matches the candidate star, plus the orbital motion of a planet, plus that planet's rotation... then the criteria for the detection threshold is way lower than if you want to extract information from the signal.

[MechAg94]

Of course, if you have the tech to cross interstellar distances, you might devise a means to create a large receiver/detector that doesn't need a physical dish so big.

I thought some of those big gas giants they found were actually in the life zone of the stars they orbited.  Any moons might be habitable...assuming they are not populated by Pitch Black creatures.


Regarding Hawking's comments, since we really only have one intelligent species to look at to figure out what others might be like, applying human failings and ambitions to them is not far fetched.  

[Perd Hapley]

Galactic Encyclopedia Vol. 64, Ha through Ϟʵ, pp. 485

"...Hawking's prediction proved deeply ironic when humankind's first sentient contact was with the ͻ̧Дҩᴧứῷ▒.  According to the few ͻ̧Дҩᴧứῷ▒ records that have survived, human military communications, and anti-alien propaganda preserved in 22^nd-century, Earth-based blogs, they were a race of wheel-chair bound intellectuals." 

[Doggy Daddy]

"wheel-chair bound" = politikly inkorrekt
"wheel-chair using" = politikly korrekt

You have been notified.   

DD

[mtnbkr]

Regarding antenna sizes, we're assuming antennas that work like the ones we're familiar with.  According to an article in this month's QST (Amateur Radio mag), a new type of antenna has recently been developed using a new type of material.  Those antennas can be a fraction of the size normally required for a given frequency.  Antennas that used to be 6" long can now be a 1/4" (for UHF).

Chris

[AJ Dual]

Of course, if you have the tech to cross interstellar distances, you might devise a means to create a large receiver/detector that doesn't need a physical dish so big.

I thought some of those big gas giants they found were actually in the life zone of the stars they orbited.  Any moons might be habitable...assuming they are not populated by Pitch Black creatures.


Regarding Hawking's comments, since we really only have one intelligent species to look at to figure out what others might be like, applying human failings and ambitions to them is not far fetched.  

Very true, it's all we have to go by.

OTOH, a sentient species might be some sort of colonial life form. All the bloodthirsty competition of sexual mammals might be completely foreign to them. We really have a hard time stepping outside ourselves to truly take on a frame of reference that's not bound by our bilology. There are such assumptions colored by sexual and competitive selection that are in EVERYTHING we do.

But if my suspicions should ever prove true, that being-machine interface, AI etc. comes to pass after a certain level of development is reached, then perhaps there are universal mathematical or game-theory truths to inter species interactions that we just don't understand yet.

[zahc]

a new type of antenna has recently been developed using a new type of material.  Those antennas can be a fraction of the size normally required for a given frequency.  Antennas that used to be 6" long can now be a 1/4" (for UHF).

The issue in this regime isn't really achieving the proper antenna size to have 1/4 wavelength or anything. In this case it's about intercepting anything at all. If you have photons radiating from earth, their distance from each other can be visualized as if they were spread evenly over the surface of an imaginary sphere. As they radiate outward, the size of that sphere increases as the radius squared (A=4piR^2). By the time the radius gets very big, the signal has broken down into individual photons basically, and a modulated signal cannot be extracted from individual photons.

Yeah, in Contact, the dishes were indeed somewhere on that scale. Described as a gigantic faceted planetoid covered in dishes. And were only eleven light years away orbiting Vega. Not much further than Alpha Centauri.

Although if your only criteria is to determine by frequency, modulation etc. that the signal is artificial, and that through doppler shift it matches the candidate star, plus the orbital motion of a planet, plus that planet's rotation... then the criteria for the detection threshold is way lower than if you want to extract information from the signal.

All good points. But in the movie, the aliens beamed back grainy television footage from WWII. Apparently they were visual aliens who also happened to use PAL.

[Barbara]

I believe that life is probably relatively prevalent in the universe. Intelligent life advanced enough to travel long distances in space? Much less prevalent.

[HankB]

No need for aliens to watch & decode I Love Lucy programs . . . I've read that the radars of the DEW line were putting out much more energy than an ordinary TV station, and doing it at a wavelength that would stand out from the solar background quite handily. And they were doing it in a more-or-less collimated beam. A spectrum analysis of our solar system that showed a line there would make an LGM^* sit up and say "Hmmmm . . . ?"





(^* - LGM - Little Green Man.)

[S. Williamson]

One argument I've heard regarding alien life as being more advanced than our own, in the technological and possibly even biological manner, makes sense to me.

Earth has had many setbacks of varying nature over the course of its life--one fine example is dinosaurs.  If the mass-extinction event that wiped them out didn't happen, they would most likely be the dominant form of life here, with several million years' worth of evolution on us.

Aside from that, human history has had its own setbacks as well.  Falls of great civilizations, dark ages, "total war," etc.  Many advances made during the course of the Roman Empire were lost until we figured them out again centuries later.  Things like the Antikythera mechanism and the Aeolipile, both from the BC era, are of a level of technology that didn't come about again until the 18th and 19th centuries.  If an alien civilization retained such knowledge and continued to improve upon them, it wouldn't be very difficult at all for them to be many, many years ahead of us--and that's if they equal us in intelligence.  No telling what point they'd be at if they were smarter.

[AJ Dual]

No need for aliens to watch & decode I Love Lucy programs . . . I've read that the radars of the DEW line were putting out much more energy than an ordinary TV station, and doing it at a wavelength that would stand out from the solar background quite handily. And they were doing it in a more-or-less collimated beam. A spectrum analysis of our solar system that showed a line there would make an LGM^* sit up and say "Hmmmm . . . ?"





(^* - LGM - Little Green Man.)

I was thinking of DEW line and the "woodpeckers" too. Although some were ionosphere bouncers so would not have much leakage into space.

[Harold Tuttle]

Vogon poetry is of course, the third worst in the universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their poet master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging and the president of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived only by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos was reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his 12-book epic entitled "My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles" when his own major intestine--in a desperate attempt to save humanity--leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain. The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paul Neil Milne Johnstone of Redbridge, in the destruction of the planet Earth. Vogon poetry is mild by comparison.