The Indisputable Visitor

The Indisputable Visitor.

"We the People" web page was inaugurated in the US in September and requires a response by the US administration to an emailed tabled question signed up to by a large number of signatories. This produced an administration response to a website petition question on the existence of extraterrestrial life, that the US was hiding information, it   ‘denied that the knowledge of life outside Earth, is being hidden from public’. In response, Phil Larson of the White House office of science and technology policy further wrote that the US government has no evidence that life exists outside Earth, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted any member of the human race. "In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public's eye," Larson wrote.

“White House: there is no evidence that aliens exist”.

So went the article headline in the guardian on 8.11.11. It is a notable one, in so far as this perennial question of life ‘out there’ still has the power to raise any interest at all considering the much more important and pressing aspects of daily life here on earth.

I suppose it does offer a moment of lite relief to consider the question is still one that many people are interested in, ignoring the huge implication of an answer to the question or indeed the potential of actual proof!

The search for life goes on and a recent exploration shot by NASA on 26.11.11. as a  Mars rover mission called ‘curiosity’ is designed  to offer an answer, even though it will take 8.5 months to arrive at its destination, it is unlikely to find the stuff of ‘war of the world’, it just might bag a protozoa bug to make it worth while. If it does find life, it creates a wide pathway of discussion for how extensive and complex life might be within the solar system, galaxy or beyond..     

In some way the answer to this question of, is there life out there, can be broken down into a number of stages.  On the basis of (as scientist might say) probability, at best estimate there are  100 / 200 billion galaxies in the universe with 200 / 400 billion stars each and a multiplicity of planets of 400 / 800 billion of no size limited. Of which some just may be in the ‘Goldie Lock’ zone as defined by humans, the zone that has fluid water (or something) for life. This allows a rough estimate (dependant on what constructed formula one uses to generate an estimate; 200 / 400 billion planets holding life with <100 / 200 billion being potential habitable to complex life and 10 / 20 billion holding (undefined) intelligent life. From this, one can extrapolate down to consider those that might have recognisable comparable human attributes if not actually hominoid.

Drawing a comparison with the time taken for life to start on earth, with earths existence put at 4.8 billion years and life beginning at 3.7 billion years. Puts the limited  scope of time that humans have been in existence (200K - 1milion years) into a miniscule universal context. As the universe is assumed to be 15 billion years old, it has possibly taken a third of that time to form the physical structure of life. Perhaps then, of  those planets holding life some 33 / 66 billion might be capable of complex life. And given  that humans have only been  on the steps  to human evolution  1> million years ago, it could suggested that  1 to 2 billion planets have high conscious comparable intelligent life.  So far, there is no way of knowing just what form of life that life could take, or to what extent that any could be ‘human’ but just to be positive, there are some planets that will compare with earth onto which one can bestow the humanity status. . .

Less than 2 billion ‘intelligent’ planets seeded throughout the universe is not a lot  given the immensity and unknown boundary limits, moreover in extremist, any number beyond two intelligent occupied planets, creates a problem and might be as far as one can go to outline a probable answer to the question of; is there life out there?.

The problem is this answer does not wholly satisfy a desire to know. So let just assume that there is comparable life out there, another intelligent occupied planet and submit another perhaps solvable question; if there is life ‘out there’, why is it not evidentially here?

If it has taken humans 1m year to raise this far, enough to ask the question and using this as a percentage of the overall time it has existed against the number of  planets holding undefined intelligent life <2 billion then there may be X + 1 planets in the universe that has life “as we know it”. This may be a conservative or generous figure as you wish but it does extent the bounds of possibility to consider that there is similar intelligent life and leads to the substitute question, why is it not detected here?  

The petition response was wise enough to leave the original question open and could do little with the purported evidence. That there has been a number of reported visual contacts of debatable and contested veracity, the scarcity and irregular nature of such evidence leads one to think that something is occurring that is philosophically tenable. But that the reason for the lack of hard evidence is a conjecture that might best be approached by looking at the known obstacles to achieve an evidential presence.

The first obstacle would be the gaining of a trappable power source, abundant enough and universal to cover distance. This is the initial driver that an intelligence may require to move beyond the limits of its own confines. So far, using SF, that energy source might be ION drive, dark matter/energy, quantum drive, FTL propulsion, worm hole, spatial slip, gravity+mass divergence and even require the creation of unnatural exotic materials to handle energy stress . So far humans have reactive propulsion, primitive ion drive and maybe at some stage nuclear or fusion drive. None of this energy source is remotely possible within the realms of realistic science or usable enough to allow practical space travel.

Assuming that an abundance of energy was on stream and side stepping SF theoretical time or spatial short cuts, distance is the next conceivable barrier. With the nearest galaxy being 25000 LY away means that travel through normal space by an intelligence could exceed its life span or demand considerable extend life, hibernation and mass inertia control. So, for this barrier, distance and life span seem a restrictive limiting factor and as far as can be determined these are not currently feasible dynamics to overcome, even for humans to exit the galaxy seems a fanciful and remote idea in favour of them remaining planetary system localised. For example, the oldest living thing may be pine trees at 4000+ years old followed by reptile at 150+ years and with humans coming at 100+, it does not bode well to consider that an extended life span will be sufficient to solve the time required for galactic excursions.      

If life span, development time, feasible energy and distance are not problems, then behind these are the questions of technical ability, organisation and resources application. Judging by human example although the technical ability is growing and resources are available on a global scale to enter space, the organisation ability is lacking as it is corralled by cultural and economic structures and an undefined imperative drive to justify the effort. These are sufficient species strictures to hamper rapid progress or limit excursions to solar extremes and in this, there is no reason to suppose that an alien intelligence would not experience a similar path of constraints.

Even if the above limits were solvable, there remain the problems of resource depletion, the consumptive factors that can lead to an atrophy of life and overall entropy of a life systems before gaining mastery of localised space travel. In the short time that humans have been effective  10/20k years it has manage to reach a precipice of extinction. However, being generous, if humans survive for another 10k years they may just solve these tertiary problems to become solar system travellers that will bring them up to the abyss of cosmological space but, how much further?   

 

Now one could think, as above, that there are more than enough obstacles to stop any likelihood of intelligences being able to roam a galaxy yet the questions still persist,  is there life ‘out there’ and why is it not here? Some of this need to know, is derived from humans own self centred belief systems, but extending the unknowns to other posit like; what is to be gained by extending such effort into space journeys, why would ‘it’ want to, or to being able to do so in enough viable numerical strength, only complexes the issue.

Therefore in all likely hood if there is life out there, which given the statistical possibility, ‘life’ can be certain; there are clearly barriers to say that it is unlikely to arrive here under its own control. But just supposing an intelligence solved all the problems against it, it will have had to amass the wealth of sustainable knowledge over enough time to perhaps be able to do things with some impunity that humans cannot dream of. Just maybe, would it not have established flitting or undetectable temporal existence to suit its own purpose, to establish a untraceable inspection if it wished and maybe earth is not even special  amongst the billions of other intelligent planets to have to portray any great interest in it. Currently one could assume that an affirmative answer to the question of life out there will be solvable at a microbial level soon, one that has little challenging impact on humans’ self-interest nor raise any concern in populations. However, with anything more substantial, might it be best to have the comfort of the uncertainty of knowing, at least for now, but what about in 96 years with an indisputable visitor?

The most difficult part of offering an answer to the perennial idea of there being other comparable life ‘out there’ is that humans may never reach the opportunity state of being able to answer the question directly. For them it will have been an empty lonely place and their own existence in the universe may have been of no importance what so ever. They will have blinked out of existence and not to be missed and with no thing to know what they were, now that is a disheartening thought. The futility of human existence!

© Renot 2011

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