Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 13 YEARS AND 1 MONTH.
ON 06/07/2024 MORE THAN 2.101.500
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
01-01-2018
The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Post-Biological Intelligence - PART I
The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Post-Biological Intelligence - PART I
Papers presented at an international symposium considering the true nature of extraterrestrial Intelligence.
Introduction: The True Nature of Aliens
Is it time to re-think ET?
For well over a half-century, a small number of scientists have conducted searches for artificially produced signals that would indicate the presence of intelligence elsewhere in the cosmos. This effort, known as SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), has yet to find any confirmed radio transmissions or pulsing lasers from other beings. But the hunt continues, recently buoyed by the discovery of thousands of exoplanets. For many, the abundance of habitable real estate makes it difficult to believe that Earth is the only world where life and intelligence have arisen.
SETI practitioners mostly busy themselves with refining their equipment and their lists of target solar systems. They seldom consider the nature of their prey – what form extraterrestrial intelligence might take. Their premise is that any technically sophisticated species will eventually develop signaling technology, irrespective of their biology or physiognomy.
This view may not seem anthropocentric, for it makes no overt assumptions about the biochemistry of extraterrestrials; only that intelligence will arise on at least some worlds with life. However, the trajectory of our own technology now suggests that within a century or two of our development of radio transmitters and lasers, we are likely to build machines with artificial, generalized intelligence. We are engineering our successors, and the next intelligent species on Earth is not only certain to dwarf our own cognitive abilities, but will be able to engineer its own, superior descendants by design, rather than counting on uncertain, Darwinian processes. Assuming that something similar happens to other technological societies, then the implications for SETI are profound.
In September, 2015, the John Templeton Foundation’s Humble Approach Initiative sponsored a three-day symposium entitled “Exploring Exoplanets: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Post-Biological Intelligence.” The venue for the meeting was the Royal Society’s Chicheley Hall, north of London, where a dozen researchers gave informal presentations and engaged in the type of lively dinner table conversations that such meetings inevitably spawn.
The subject matter was broad, ranging from the multi-pronged search for habitable planets and how we might detect life, to the impact of both the search and an eventual discovery. However, the matter of post-biological intelligence – briefly described above – or the possibility of non-Darwinian evolutionary processes, was an incentive for many of the symposium contributions.
We present here short write-ups of seven of these talks. They are more than simply interesting: they suggest a revolution in how we should think about, and search for, our intellectual peers. Indeed, they suggest that “peers” may be too generous to Homo sapiens. As these essays argue, the majority of the cognitive capability in the cosmos may be far beyond our own.
-- Seth Shostak
This symposium was chaired by Martin J. Rees, OM, Kt, FRS and Paul C.W. Davies, AM, and organized by Mary Ann Meyers, JTF’s Senior Fellow. Also present was B. Ashley Zauderer, Assistant Director of Math and Physical Sciences at the Templeton Foundation
POST-HUMAN EVOLUTION ON EARTH AND BEYOND
Martin J Rees Institute of Astronomy Madingley Road Cambridge CB3 OHA mjr@ast.cam.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
The pace of technological advance on Earth is such that post-humans – whether organic, cyborg or entirely inorganic – could emerge within a few centuries (or indeed within a single century). In the billions of years lying ahead, such entities, continuing to evolve not through natural selection but on the (far faster) timescale of technological evolution could spread through the cosmos (in a manner whose details we manifestly cannot even conceive) . If advanced life had emerged on other planets, and followed a similar evolutionary track to what has happened on Earth, then the era of ‘organic’ intelligence will be a thin sliver of time compared to the far longer post-human era dominated by ‘machines’. This suggests that, if SETI succeeded, the most likely source of any artificial emissions would be unlikely to come from anything resembling the ‘organic’ civilization that prevails on Earth.
Extraterrestrial life and intelligence have always been fascinating topics on the speculative fringe of science. But in the last decade or two, serious advances on several fronts have generated wider interest in these subjects – indeed, they have become almost ‘mainstream’. One can highlight four areas where there’s a gratifying crescendo of interest and understanding:
(i) The discovery and study of exoplanets began only 20 years ago. It is now one of the most vibrant frontiers of science. Data are accumulating at an accelerating rate; we can confidently assert that there are billions of Earth-like planets in our Galaxy; it is not premature to seek evidence that some have biospheres
(ii) There has been substantial recent progress in understanding the origin of life. It’s been clear for decades that the transition from complex chemistry to the first entities that could be described as ‘living’ poses one of the crucial problems in the whole of science. But until recently, people shied away from it, regarding it as neither timely nor tractable. In contrast, numerous distinguished scientists are now committed to this challenge.
(iii) Advances in computational power and robotics have led to growing interest in the possibility that ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI) could in the coming decades achieve (and exceed) human capabilities over a wider range of conceptual and physical tasks. This has stimulated discussions of the nature of consciousness (is it an ‘emergent’ property or something more special?), and further speculation by ethicists and philosophers on what forms of inorganic intelligence might be created by us – or might already exist in the cosmos – and how humans might relate to them.
(iv) In the coming years there will be expanded and better-resourced efforts to search for ET; these will focus wider interest on the subject and thereby generate new ideas.
SOME HISTORY
Speculations on ‘the plurality of inhabited worlds’ date back to antiquity. From the 17th to the 19th century, it was widely suspected that the other planets of our Solar System were inhabited. The arguments were often more theological than scientific. Eminent 19th century thinkers like Whewell and Brewster argued that life must pervade the cosmos, because otherwise such vast domains of space would seem such a waste of the Creator’s efforts. An interesting and amusing critique of such ideas is given in books by Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-developer of natural selection theory. Wallace is specially scathing about the physicist David Brewster (remembered for the ‘Brewster angle’ in optics) who conjectured on such grounds that even the Moon must be inhabited [1]. Brewster argued that had the Moon “been destined to be merely a lamp to our Earth, there was no occasion to variegate its surface with lofty mountains and extinct volcanoes, and cover it with large patches of matter that reflect different quantities of light and give its surface the appearance of continents and seas. It would have been a better lamp had it been a smooth piece of lime or of chalk.”
By the end of the nineteenth century, so convinced were many astronomers that life existed on other planets in our Solar System that a prize of 100,000 francs was offered to the first person to make contact with them. And the prize specifically excluded contact with Martians – that was considered far too easy! The erroneous claim that Mars was crisscrossed by canals had been taken as proof positive of intelligent life on the Red Planet.
The space age brought sobering news. Venus, a cloudy planet that promised a lush tropical swamp-world, turned out to be a crushing, caustic hell-hole. Mercury was a pockmarked blistering rock. And NASA’s Curiosity probe (and its predecessors) showed that Mars, though the most Earth-like body in the Solar System, was actually a frigid desert with a very thin atmosphere. There may be creatures swimming under the ice of Jupiter’s moon Europa, or Saturn’s moon Enceladus, but nobody can be optimistic.
However, the prospects brighten enormously when we extend our gaze beyond our Solar System – beyond the reach of any probe we can devise today. What has transformed and energized the whole field of exobiology is the realization that stars are orbited by retinues of planets. Giordano Bruno speculated about this in the 16th century. From the 1940s onward, astronomers suspected he was correct: the earlier idea that our Solar system formed from a tidal stream torn out by the tidal pull of a close-passing star (which would have implied that planetary systems were rare) had by then been discredited. But it wasn’t until the mid-1990s that evidence for exoplanets started to emerge. Moreover, Bruno famously went further, and conjectured that on some of those planets there might be other creatures “as magnificent as those upon our human Earth.” Will he one day be proved right on this bolder speculation too?
ORIGIN OF LIFE
There seem good prospects for progress in understanding the origin of life. What triggered the transition from complex molecules to entities that can metabolize and reproduce? It might have involved a fluke so rare that it happened only once in the entire Galaxy. On the other hand, this crucial transition might have been almost inevitable given the ‘right’ environment. We just don’t know – nor do we know if the DNA/RNA chemistry of terrestrial life is the only possibility, or just one chemical basis among many options that could be realized elsewhere.
The origin of life is now attracting stronger interest: it’s no longer deemed to be one of those problems (consciousness, for instance, is still in this category) which, though manifestly important, doesn’t seem timely or tractable – and is relegated to the ‘too difficult box’. And of course the understanding of life’s beginnings is important not only for our assessment of the likelihood of alien life, but also to the most firmly earthbound evolutionary biologist.
And there is a second still more fascinating question (Bruno’s conjecture) : if simple life exists, what are the odds that it evolves into something that we would recognize as intelligent? Even if primitive life were common, the emergence of ‘advanced’ life may not be – it may depend on many contingencies (phases of glaciation, the Earth’s tectonic history, asteroid impacts, and so forth). Several authors have speculated about possible ‘bottlenecks’ – key stages in evolution that are hard to transit. Perhaps the transition to multi-cellular life is one of these. (The fact that simple life on Earth seems to have emerged quite quickly, whereas even the most basic multi-cellular organisms took nearly 3 billion years, suggests that there may be severe barriers to the emergence of any complex life.) Or the ‘bottleneck’ could come later.
Even in a complex biosphere, the emergence of intelligence isn’t guaranteed. If, for instance, the dinosaurs hadn’t been wiped out, the chain of mammalian evolution that led to humans might have been foreclosed and we can’t predict whether another species would have taken our role. Some evolutionists regard the emergence of intelligence as a contingency – even an unlikely one. The alternative view is represented by Simon Conway Morris (see his contribution to this workshop).
Perhaps, more ominously, there could be a ‘bottleneck’ at our own present evolutionary stage – the stage when intelligent life develops powerful technology. If so, the long-term prognosis for ‘Earth-sourced’ life depends on whether humans survive this critical evolutionary phase. This does not mean that the Earth has to avoid a disaster – only that, before it happens some humans or advanced artefacts have spread beyond their home planet.
In considering the possibilities of life elsewhere, we should surely be open-minded about where it might emerge and what forms it could take – and to devote some thought to non-earthlike life in non-earthlike locations. But it plainly makes sense to start with what we know (the ‘searching under the streetlamp’ strategy) and to deploy all available techniques to discover whether any exoplanet atmospheres display evidence for a biosphere. Clues will surely come in the next decade or two from high-resolution spectra using the James Webb Space Telescope and the next generation of 30+ meter ground-based telescopes expected to be operational in the 2020s. To optimize the prospects, we shall need beforehand to have scanned the whole sky to identify the nearest earthlike planets. Even for these, next-generation telescopes will have a hard job separating out the spectrum of the planet’s atmosphere from the spectrum of the hugely brighter central star.
Conjectures about advanced or intelligent life are of course far more shaky than those about simple life. But the firmest guesses that we can make are based on extrapolating the far future of Earth-based life. I would argue that this suggests two things about the entities that SETI searches could reveal.
(a) They will not be ‘organic’ or biological
(b) They will not remain on the planet where their biological precursors lived.
FAR FUTURE OF EARTH-SOURCED INTELLIGENCE
During this century, the entire Solar System – planets, moons and asteroids – will be explored by flotillas of tiny robotic craft. The next step would be the deployment of large-scale robotic fabricators, which can construct and assemble large structures in space (and fabrication in space will be a better use of materials mined from asteroids or the Moon than bringing them back to Earth). The Hubble Telescope’s successors, with huge gossamer-thin mirrors assembled under zero gravity, will further expand our vision of stars, galaxies and the wider cosmos.
But what role will humans play? There’s no denying that NASA’s Curiosity rover, now trundling across a giant Martian crater, may miss startling discoveries that no human geologist could overlook. But robotic techniques are advancing fast, allowing ever more sophisticated unmanned probes – and, later in the century, robotic fabricators will be building huge lightweight structures in space. The practical case for manned spaceflight gets ever-weaker with each advance in robotics and miniaturization. If some people now living one day walk on Mars (as I hope they will) it will be as an adventure, and as a step towards the stars.
The current cost gap between manned and unmanned missions is huge. Unless motivated by prestige and bankrolled by superpowers, manned missions beyond the Moon will perforce be cut-price ventures, accepting high risks – perhaps even ‘one-way tickets’. These missions will be privately funded; no Western government agency would expose civilians to such hazards. There would, despite the risks, be many volunteers – driven by the same motives as early explorers, mountaineers, and the like. But don’t ever expect mass emigration. No place in our Solar system offers an environment even as clement as the Antarctic or the top of Everest. Space doesn’t offer an escape from Earth’s problems.
Nonetheless, a century or two from now, there may be small groups of pioneers living independent from the Earth – on Mars or on asteroids. Whatever ethical constraints we impose here on the ground, we should surely wish these adventurers good luck in genetically modifying their progeny to adapt to alien environments. This might be the first step towards divergence into a new species: the beginning of the post-human era. And genetic modification would be supplemented by cyborg technology – indeed there may be a transition to fully inorganic intelligences.
(As a parenthetic comment, I’d note that the most crucial impediment to routine space flight, even in Earth’s orbit and still more for those venturing further, stems from the intrinsic inefficiency of chemical fuel, and the consequent requirement to carry a weight of fuel far exceeding that of the payload. So long as we are dependent on chemical fuels, interplanetary travel will remain a challenge. It’s interesting to note, incidentally, that this is a generic constraint, based on fundamental chemistry, on any organic intelligence that had evolved on another planet. If a planet’s gravity is strong enough to retain an atmosphere at a temperature where water doesn’t freeze and metabolic reactions aren’t too slow, the energy required to lift a molecule from it will require more than one molecule of chemical fuel).
Nuclear energy (or, more futuristically, matter/antimatter annihilation) could be a transformative fuel. But even then, the transit time beyond nearby stars exceeds a human lifetime. Interstellar travel (except for unmanned probes, DNA samples, etc.) is therefore an enterprise for post-humans. They could be silicon-based. Alternatively, they could be organic creatures who had won the battle with death, or perfected the techniques of hibernation or suspended animation.
Few doubt that machines will gradually surpass more and more of our distinctively human capabilities – or enhance them via cyborg technology. Disagreements are basically about the timescale – the rate of travel, not the direction of travel. The cautious amongst us envisage timescales of centuries rather than decades for these transformations. Be that as it may, the timescales for technological advance are but an instant compared to the timescales of the Darwinian selection that led to humanity’s emergence – and (more relevantly) they are less than a millionth of the vast expanses of cosmic time lying ahead. So the outcomes of future technological evolution will surpass humans by as much as we (intellectually) surpass a bug.
But we humans shouldn’t feel too humbled. Even though we are surely not the terminal branch of an evolutionary tree, we could be of special cosmic significance for jump-starting the transition to silicon-based (and potentially immortal) entities, spreading their influence far beyond the Earth, and far transcending our limitations.
Philosophers debate whether “consciousness” is special to the wet, organic brains of humans, apes and dogs. Might it be that robots, even if their intellects seem superhuman, will still lack self-awareness or inner life? The answer to this question crucially affects how we react to the far-future scenario I’ve sketched. If the machines are zombies, we would not accord them the same value as humans, and the post-human future would seem bleak. But if they are conscious, we should surely welcome the prospect of their future hegemony.
The far future will bear traces of humanity, just as our own age retains influences of ancient civilizations. Humans and all they have thought might be a transient precursor to the deeper cogitations of another culture — one dominated by machines, extending deep into the future and spreading far beyond Earth.
I think it’s likely that the machines will gain dominance on Earth – perhaps indeed before the stage when any self-sustaining human colony gets established away from our planet. This is because there are chemical and metabolic limits to the size and processing power of ‘wet’ organic brains. Maybe we’re close to these already. But no such limits constrain silicon based computers (still less, perhaps, quantum computers): for these, the potential for further development could be as dramatic as the evolution from monocellular organisms to humans. So, by any definition of ‘thinking’, the amount and intensity that’s done by organic human-type brains will be utterly swamped by the cerebrations of AI. Moreover, the Earth’s biosphere in which organic life has symbiotically evolved is not a constraint for advanced AI. Indeed it is far from optimal – interplanetary and interstellar space will be the preferred arena where robotic fabricators will have the grandest scope for construction, and where non-biological ‘brains’ may develop insights as far beyond our imaginings as string theory is for a mouse.
Abstract thinking by biological brains has underpinned the emergence of all culture and science. But this activity – spanning tens of millennia at most – will be a brief precursor to the more powerful intellects of the inorganic post-human era.
Human brains have changed little since our ancestors roamed the African savannah and coped with the challenges that life then presented. It’s surely remarkable that these brains have allowed us to make sense of the quantum and the cosmos – far removed from the ‘common sense’ everyday world in which we evolved. Nonetheless, some key features of reality may be beyond our conceptual grasp. Scientific frontiers are advancing fast. Answers to many current mysteries will surely come into focus. but we may at some point ‘hit the buffers’. Some insights may have to await post-human intelligence. There may be phenomena, crucial to our long-term destiny, that we are not aware of, any more than a monkey comprehends the nature of stars and galaxies. Some ‘brains’ may structure their consciousness in a fashion that we can’t conceive, and have a quite different perception of reality.
In cosmological terms (or indeed in a Darwinian timeframe) a millennium is but an instant. So let us ‘fast forward’ not even for a few millennia, but for an ‘astronomical’ timescale millions of times longer than that. The ‘ecology’ of stellar births and deaths in our Galaxy will proceed gradually more slowly, until jolted by the ‘environmental shock’ of an impact with Andromeda, maybe four billion years hence. The debris of our Galaxy, Andromeda and their smaller companions within the local group will thereafter aggregate into one amorphous galaxy. Distant galaxies will not only move further away, but recede faster and faster until they disappear – rather as objects falling onto a black hole encounter a horizon, beyond which they are lost from view and causal contact.
But the remnants of our Local Group could continue for far longer – time enough, perhaps for Kardashev Type III phenomenon to emerge as the culmination of the long-term trend for living systems to gain complexity and ‘negative entropy’. All the atoms that were once in stars and gas could be transformed into structures as intricate as a living organism or a silicon chip but on a cosmic scale.
But even these speculations don’t take us to the utter limits. I have assumed that the universe itself will expand, at a rate that no future entities have power to alter. And that everything is in principle understandable as a manifestation of the basic laws governing particles, space and time that have been disclosed by contemporary science. Some science fiction authors envisage stellar-scale engineering to create black holes and wormholes – concepts far beyond any technological capability that we can envisage, but not in violation of these basic physical laws. But are there new ‘laws’ awaiting discovery? And will the present ‘laws’ be immutable, even to a Type III intelligence able to draw on galactic-scale resources?
Post-human intelligences (autonomously-evolving artefacts) will achieve the processing power to simulate living things – even entire worlds. These super or hyper-computers would have the capacity to simulate not just a simple part of reality, but a large fraction of an entire universe.
And then of course the question arises: if these simulations exist in far larger numbers than the universe themselves, could we be in one of them? Could we ourselves not be part of what we think of as bedrock physical reality? Could we be ideas in the mind of some supreme being who is running a simulation? Indeed, if the simulations outnumber the universes, as they would if one universe contained many computers making many simulations, then the likelihood is that we are ‘artificial life’ in this sense. This concept opens up the possibility of a new kind of ‘virtual time travel’, because the advanced beings creating the simulation can, in effect, rerun the past. It’s not a time-loop in a traditional sense: it’s a reconstruction of the past, allowing advanced beings to explore their history.
These ideas would have the extraordinary consequence that we may not be part of the deepest reality: we may be a simulation. The possibility that we are creations of some supreme (or super) being, blurs the boundary between physics and idealist philosophy, between the natural and the supernatural. We may be in the matrix rather than directly manifesting the basic physical laws.
SETI: PROSPECTS AND TECHNIQUES
The scenarios I’ve just described would have the consequence – a boost to human self-esteem! – that even if life had originated only on the Earth, it would not remain a trivial feature of the cosmos: humans may be closer to the beginning than to the end of a process whereby ever more complex intelligence spreads through the Galaxy. But of course there would in that case be no ‘ET’ at the present time.
Suppose however that there are many other planets where life began; and suppose that on some of them Darwinian evolution followed a similar track. Even then, it’s highly unlikely that the key stages would be synchronized. If the emergence of intelligence and technology on a planet lags significantly behind what has happened on Earth (because the planet is younger, or because the ‘bottlenecks’ have taken longer to negotiate there than here) then that planet would plainly reveal no evidence of ET. But life on a planet around a star older than the Sun could have had a head-start of a billion years or more. Thus it may already have evolved much of the way along the futuristic scenarios outlined in the last section.
One generic feature of these scenarios is that ‘organic’ human-level intelligence is just a brief interlude before the machines take over. The history of human technological civilization is measured in millennia (at most) – and it may be only one or two more centuries before humans are overtaken or transcended by inorganic intelligence, which will then persist, continuing to evolve, for billions of years. This suggests that if we were to detect ET, it would be far more likely to be inorganic: we would be most unlikely to ‘catch’ alien intelligence in the brief sliver of time when it was still in organic form.
SETI searches are surely worthwhile, despite the heavy odds against success, because the stakes are so high. That’s why we should surely acclaim the launch of Breakthrough Listen – a major ten-year commitment by the Russian investor Yuri Milner to buy time on the world’s best radio telescopes and develop instruments to scan the sky in a more comprehensive and sustained fashion than ever before. Breakthrough Listen will carry out the world’s deepest and broadest search for extraterrestrial technological life using several of the world’s largest professional radio and optical telescopes. The project will deploy radio dishes at Green Bank and at Parkes – and hopefully others including the Arecibo Observatory. The radio telescopes will be used to search for non-natural radio transmissions from nearby and distant stars, from the plane of the Milky Way, from the Galactic Centre, and from nearby galaxies. They will search over a wide frequency bandwidth from 100 MHz to 50 GHz using advanced signal processing equipment developed by a team centered at UC Berkeley.
SETI searches seek some electromagnetic transmission that is manifestly artificial. But even if the search succeeded (and few of us would bet more than one percent on this), it would still in my view be unlikely that the ‘signal’ would be a decodable message. It would more likely represent a byproduct (or even a malfunction) of some super-complex machine far beyond our comprehension that could trace its lineage back to alien organic beings (which might still exist on their home planet, or might long ago have died out). The only type of intelligence whose messages we could decode would be the (perhaps small) subset that used a technology attuned to our own parochial concepts.
Even if intelligence were widespread in the cosmos, we may only ever recognize a small and atypical fraction of it. Some ‘brains’ may package reality in a fashion that we can’t conceive. Others could be living contemplative lives, perhaps deep under some planetary ocean, doing nothing to reveal their presence. It makes sense to focus searches first on Earth-like planets orbiting long-lived stars. But science fiction authors remind us that there are more exotic alternatives. In particular, the habit of referring to ET as an ‘alien civilization’ may be too restrictive. A ‘civilization’ connotes a society of individuals: in contrast, ET might be a single integrated intelligence. Even if signals were being transmitted, we may not recognize them as artificial because we may not know how to decode them. A radio engineer familiar only with amplitude-modulation might have a hard time decoding modern wireless communications. Indeed, compression techniques aim to make the signal as close to noise as possible – insofar as a signal is predictable, there’s scope for more compression.
Perhaps the Galaxy already teems with advanced life, and our descendants will ‘plug in’ to a galactic community – as rather junior members. On the other hand, Earth’s intricate biosphere may be unique and the searches may fail. This would disappoint the searchers. But it would have an upside. Humans could then be less cosmically modest. Our tiny planet – this pale blue dot floating in space – could be the most important place in the entire cosmos. Either way, our cosmic habitat seems ‘tuned’ to be an abode for life. Even if we are now alone in the universe, we may not be the culmination of this ‘drive’ towards complexity and consciousness.
The focus of the ‘Breakthrough Listen’ project is on the radio and optical parts of the spectrum. But of course, in our state of ignorance about what might be out there, we should clearly encourage searches in all wavebands (e.g. the X-ray band) and also be alert for artefacts and other evidence of non-natural phenomena. I don’t think even the optimistic SETI searchers would rate the chance of success as more than a few percent – and most of us are more pessimistic, but nevertheless think the stakes are so high that it’s worth a gamble – we’d surely all like to see searches begun in our lifetime.
Finally, there are two familiar maxims that pertain to this quest. First ‘extraordinary claims will require extraordinary evidence’ and second ‘absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence’.
REFERENCES
[1] Wallace, A. R 1903, Man’s Place in the Universe, Chapman and Hall (London) pp 15 – 19
-SUPERINTELLIGENT AI AND THE POSTBIOLOGICAL COSMOS APPROACH
Susan Schneider Department of Philosophy and Cognitive Science Program, The University of Connecticut Center for Theological Inquiry, Princeton Technology and Ethics Group, Yale University susansdr@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
The postbiological approach in astrobiology has been largely independent of the discussions of superintelligence in the AI literature, despite the increasing attention on superintelligent AI in both academe and in the media. In this paper, I bring these issues together. In my view, one route to understanding superintelligent alien civilizations, as well as superintelligence on Earth (should either ever exist) could involve identifying general features of computational systems, without which a superintelligence would be far less efficient. By drawing from Nick Bostrom’s work on superintelligent AI on Earth, as well as ideas from computational neuroscience, I will attempt to identify some goals and cognitive capacities likely to be possessed by superintelligent beings. I will then comment on some social implications of the postbiological approach
INTRODUCTION
Thinking about how aliens in other technological societies might think, if they exist at all, is obviously speculative, even for a philosopher. After all, exoplanets are habitable, we do not know if they are inhabited. We do not currently have an agreed-upon account of the origin of life on Earth, and we do not know how easy it is for life to originate elsewhere. And even if microbial life exists on many exoplanets, perhaps it is rare for microbial life to evolve into intelligent life. Or, perhaps it isn’t rare for intelligence to evolve, but civilizations do not survive their own technological maturity. Perhaps we are one of only a few technological civilizations in the universe, or perhaps we are alone.
But I am going to assume, optimistically, that advanced civilizations are out there. After all, if even one technological civilization exists, it is likely to be older than us, and it could have spread throughout the universe. Further, some proponents of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) estimate that we will encounter alien intelligence within the next several decades. Even if you hold a more conservative estimate – say, that the chance of encountering alien intelligence in the next 50 years is 5 percent – the stakes for our species are high. Knowing that we are not alone in the universe would be a profound realization, and contact with an alien civilization could produce amazing technological innovations and cultural insights. It thus can be valuable to consider these questions, albeit with the goal of introducing possible routes to answering them, rather than producing definitive answers. So, let us ask: how might aliens think? Believe it or not, it’s possible to say something concrete in response to this question.
We can approach this issue by drawing from science and the humanities, rather than just science In particular, I will draw from neuroscience, philosophy, astrobiology and artificial intelligence (AI). My point of departure is the intriguing position in astrobiology that the most intelligent alien civilizations may be postbiological, being synthetic superintelligences – creatures that are vastly smarter than humans in every respect, scientific reasoning, social skills, and more [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6].
The postbiological approach has been largely independent of the discussions of superintelligence, despite the increasing attention on superintelligent AI in both academe and in the media [7]. Herein, I bring these issues together, drawing from [4]. In my view, to understand the most intelligent alien civilizations, as well as superintelligence on Earth, we can look for general features of computational systems, without which a superintelligence would be far less efficient. So using work on superintelligent AI on Earth, as well as ideas from computational neuroscience, I will briefly and provisionally attempt to identify some goals and cognitive capacities likely to be possessed by superintelligent beings.
Section One overviews the postbiological cosmos approach. Section Two discusses Nick Bostrom’s recent book on superintelligence, which focuses on the genesis of superintelligent AI (“SAI”) on Earth; as it happens, many of Bostrom’s observations are informative in the present context. I then isolate a specific type of superintelligence that is of particular import in the context of alien superintelligence, biologically inspired superintelligences (“BISAs”). Section Three concludes by raising some issues for future reflection.
THE POSTBIOLOGICAL COSMOS APPROACH IN ASTROBIOLOGY
Our culture has long depicted aliens as humanoid creatures with small, pointy chins, massive eyes, and large heads, apparently to house brains that are larger than ours. Paradigmatically, they are “little green men.” While we are aware that our culture is anthropomorphizing, I imagine that my suggestion that aliens are supercomputers may strike you as far-fetched. So what is my rationale for the view that most intelligent alien civilizations will have members that possess SAI? I offer three observations that, together, motivate this conclusion.
(1) The short window observation. Once a society creates the technology that could put them in touch with the cosmos, they are only a few hundred years away from changing their own paradigm from biology to AI [3], [6], [2]. This “short window” makes it more likely that the aliens we encounter would be postbiological.
The short-window observation is supported by human cultural evolution, at least thus far. Our first radio signals date back only about 120 years, and space exploration is only about 50 years old, but we are already immersed in digital technology, such as cell-phones and laptop computers. It is probably a matter of less than 50 years before sophisticated internet connections are wired directly into our brains. Indeed, implants for Parkinson’s are already in use, and in the United States the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has started to develop neural implants that interface directly with the nervous system, regulating conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, arthritis, depression, and Crohn’s disease. DARPA’s program, called “ElectRx,” aims to replace certain medications with “closed-loop” neural implants, implants that continually assess the state of one’s health, and provide the necessary nerve stimulation to keep one’s biological systems functioning properly [8]. Eventually, implants will be developed to enhance normal brain functioning, rather than for medical purposes.
You may object that this argument employs “N = 1 reasoning,” generalizing from the human case to the case of alien civilizations. But it strikes me as being unwise to discount arguments based on the human case. Human civilization is the only one we know of and we had better learn from it. It is no great leap to claim that other civilizations will develop technologies to advance their intelligence and survival. This is especially true if the alien civilizations evolved with similar evolutionary pressures as those on Earth. And, as I will explain in a moment, synthetic intelligence will likely outperform unenhanced brains.
A second objection to my short-window observation rightly points out that nothing I have said thus far suggests that humans will be superintelligent. I have merely said that future humans will be posthuman. While I offer support for the view that our own cultural evolution suggests that humans will eventually be postbiological, this does not show that advanced alien civilizations will reach superintelligence. So even if one is comfortable reasoning from the human case, the human case does not support the position that the members of advanced alien civilizations will be superintelligent.
This is a correct reading of my first observation. Whether or not they would be superintelligent is the addressed by the second.
(2) The greater age of alien civilizations. Proponents of SETI have often concluded that alien civilizations would be much older than our own: “… all lines of evidence converge on the conclusion that the maximum age of extraterrestrial intelligence would be billions of years, specifically [it] ranges from 1.7 billion to 8 billion years” ([2] p 468). If civilizations are millions or billions of years older than us, many would be vastly more intelligent than we are. By our standards, many would be superintelligent. We are galactic babies.
But would they be forms of AI, as well as forms of superintelligence? I believe so. Even if they were biological, merely having biological brain enhancements, their superintelligence would be reached by artificial means, and we could regard them as having forms of “artificial intelligence.” But I suspect something stronger than this, which leads me to my third observation:
(3) It is likely that these synthetic beings will not be biologically-based. Currently, silicon appears to be a better medium for information processing than the brain itself, and future materials may even prove superior to silicon. Neurons reach a peak speed of about 200 Hz, which is seven orders of magnitude slower than current microprocessors ([7] p 59). While the brain can compensate for some of this with massive parallelism, features such as “hubs,” and so on, crucial mental capacities, such as attention, rely upon serial processing, which is incredibly slow, and has a maximum capacity of about seven manageable chunks [9]. Further, the number of neurons in a human brain is limited by cranial volume and metabolism, but computers can occupy entire buildings or cities, and can even be remotely connected across the globe [7]. Of course, the human brain is far more intelligent than any modern computer. But intelligent machines can in principle be constructed by reverse engineering the brain, and improving upon its algorithms.
In sum: I have observed that there seems to be a short window from the development of the technology to access the cosmos and the development of postbiological minds and AI. I then observe that we are galactic babies: extraterrestrial civilizations are likely to be vastly older than us, and thus they would have already reached not just postbiological life, but superintelligence. Finally, I noted that they would likely have SAI, because silicon is a superior medium for superintelligence. From this I conclude that many advanced alien civilizations will be populated by forms with SAI.
Even if I am wrong – even if the majority of alien civilizations turn out to be biological – it may be that the most intelligent alien civilizations will be ones in which the inhabitants are SAI. Further, creatures that are silicon-based, rather than biologically-based, are more likely to endure space travel, having durable systems that are practically immortal, so they may be the kind of the creatures we first encounter.
HOW MIGHT SUPERINTELLIGENT ALIENS THINK
There has been a good deal of attention by computer scientists, philosophers, and the media on the topic of superintelligent AI. Nick Bostrom’s recent book on superintelligence focuses on the development of superintelligence on Earth, but we can draw from his thoughtful discussion [7]. Bostrom distinguishes three kinds of superintelligence:
(1) Speed superintelligence – even a human emulation could in principle run so fast that it could write a PhD thesis in an hour.
(2) Collective superintelligence – the individual units need not be superintelligent, but the collective performance of the individuals outstrips human intelligence.
(3) Quality superintelligence – at least as fast as human thought, and vastly smarter than humans in virtually every domain.
Any of these kinds could exist alongside one or more of the others.
An important question is whether we can identify common goals that these types of superintelligences may share. Bostrom suggests:
The Orthogonality Thesis:
“Intelligence and final goals are orthogonal – more or less any level of intelligence could in principle be combined with more or less any final goal.” ([7] p 107)
Bostrom is careful to underscore that a great many unthinkable kinds of SAI could be developed. At one point, he raises a sobering example of a superintelligence with the final goal of manufacturing paper clips ([7] pp 107–108, 123–125). While this may initially strike you as a harmless endeavor although hardly a life worth living, Bostrom points out that a superintelligence could utilize every form of matter on Earth in support of this goal, wiping out biological life in the process. Indeed, Bostrom warns that superintelligence emerging on Earth could be of an unpredictable nature, being “extremely alien” to us ([7] p 29). He lays out several scenarios for the development of SAI. For instance, SAI could be arrived at in unexpected ways by clever programmers, and not be derived from the human brain whatsoever. He also takes seriously the possibility that Earthly superintelligence could be biologically inspired, that is, developed from reverse engineering the algorithms that cognitive science says describe the human brain, or from scanning the contents of human brains and transferring them to a computer (i.e. “uploading”).
Although the final goals of superintelligence are difficult to predict, Bostrom singles out several instrumental goals as being likely, given that they support any final goal whatsoever:
The Instrumental Convergence Thesis:
Several instrumental values can be identified which are convergent in the sense that their attainment would increase the chances of the agent’s goal being realized for a wide range of final goals and a wide range of situations, implying that these instrumental values are likely to be pursued by a broad spectrum of situated intelligent agents. ([7] p 109)
The goals that he identifies are resource acquisition, technological perfection, cognitive enhancement, self-preservation, and goal content integrity (i.e. that a superintelligent being’s future self will pursue and attain those same goals). He underscores that self-preservation can involve group or individual preservation, and that it may play second-fiddle to the preservation of the species the AI was designed to serve ([7] p 109).
Let us call an alien superintelligence that is based on reverse engineering an alien brain, including uploading it, a biologically-inspired superintelligent alien (“BISA”). Although BISAs are inspired by the brains of the original species that the superintelligence is derived from, a BISA’s algorithms may depart from those of their biological model at any point.
BISAs are of particular interest in the context of alien superintelligence. For if Bostrom is correct that there are many ways superintelligence can be built, but a number of alien civilizations develop superintelligence from uploading or other forms of reverse engineering, it may be that BISAs are the most common form of alien superintelligence out there. This is because there are many kinds of superintelligence that can arise from raw programming techniques employed by alien civilizations. (Consider, for instance, the diverse range of AI programs under development on Earth, many of which are not modelled after the human brain). This may leave us with a situation in which the class of SAIs is highly heterogeneous, with members generally bearing little resemblance to each other. It may turn out that of all SAIs, BISAs bear the most resemblance to each other. In other words, BISAs may be the most cohesive subgroup because the other members are so different from each other.
Here, you may suspect that because BISAs could be scattered across the galaxy and generated by multitudes of species, there is little interesting that we can say about the class of BISAs. But notice that BISAs have two features that may give rise to common cognitive capacities and goals:
(1) BISAs are descended from creatures that had motivations like: find food, avoid injury and predators, reproduce, cooperate, compete, and so on.
(2) The life forms that BISAs are modeled from have evolved to deal with biological constraints like slow processing speed and the spatial limitations of embodiment.
Could (1) or (2) yield traits common to members of many superintelligent alien civilizations? I suspect so.
Consider (1). Intelligent biological life tends to be primarily concerned with its own survival and reproduction, so it is more likely that BISAs would have final goals involving their own survival and reproduction, or at least the survival and reproduction of the members of their society. If BISAs are interested in reproduction, we might expect that, given the massive amounts of computational resources at their disposal, BISAs would create simulated universes stocked with artificial life and even intelligence or superintelligence. If these creatures were intended to be “children” they may retain the goals listed in (1) as well.
You may object that it is useless to theorize about BISAs, as they can change their basic architecture in numerous, unforeseen ways, and any biologically-inspired motivations can be constrained by programming. There may be limits to this, however. If a superintelligence is biologically-based, it may have its own survival as a primary goal. In this case, it may not want to change its architecture fundamentally, but stick to smaller improvements. It may think: when I fundamentally alter my architecture, I am no longer me [10]. Uploads, for instance, may be especially inclined not to alter the traits that were most important to them during their biological existence.
Consider (2). The designers of the superintelligence, or a self-improving superintelligence itself, may move away from the original biological model in all sorts of unforeseen ways, although I have noted that a BISA may not wish to alter its architecture fundamentally. But we could look for cognitive capacities that are useful to keep; cognitive capacities that sophisticated forms of biological intelligence are likely to have, and which enable the superintelligence to carry out its final and instrumental goals. We could also look for traits that are not likely to be engineered out, as they do not detract the BISA from its goals.
If (2) is correct, we might expect the following, for instance.
(i) Learning about the computational structure of the brain of the species that created the BISA can provide insight into the BISAs thinking patterns. One influential means of understanding the computational structure of the brain in cognitive science is via “connectomics,” a field that seeks to provide a connectivity map or wiring diagram of the brain [11]. While it is likely that a given BISA will not have the same kind of connectome as the members of the original species, some of the functional and structural connections may be retained, and interesting departures from the originals may be found.
(ii) BISAs may have viewpoint-invariant representations. At a high level of processing your brain has internal representations of the people and objects that you interact with that are viewpoint-invariant. Consider walking up to your front door. You’ve walked this path hundreds, maybe thousands of times, but technically, you see things from slightly different angles each time, as you are never positioned in exactly the same way twice. You have mental representations that are at a relatively high level of processing and are viewpoint invariant. It seems difficult for biologically-based intelligence to evolve without viewpoint invariant representations, as they enable categorization and prediction [12]. Such representations arise because a system that is mobile needs a means of identifying items in its ever-changing environment, so we would expect biologically-based systems to have them. BISA would have little reason to give up object-invariant representations insofar as it remains mobile or has mobile devices sending it information remotely.
(iii) BISAs will have language-like mental representations that are recursive and combinatorial. Notice that human thought has the crucial and pervasive feature of being combinatorial. Consider the thought “wine is better in Italy than in China.” You probably have never had this thought before, but you were able to understand it. The key is that the thoughts are combinatorial because they are built out of familiar constituents, and combined according to rules. The rules apply to constructions out of primitive constituents, that are themselves constructed grammatically, as well as to the primitive constituents themselves. Grammatical mental operations are incredibly useful: it is the combinatorial nature of thought that allows one to understand and produce these sentences on the basis of one’s antecedent knowledge of the grammar and atomic constituents (e.g. wine, China). Relatedly, thought is productive: in principle, one can entertain and produce an infinite number of distinct representations because the mind has a combinatorial syntax [13].
The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Post-Biological Intelligence - PART II
The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Post-Biological Intelligence - PART II
Brains need combinatorial representations because there are infinitely many possible linguistic representations, and the brain only has a finite storage space. Even a superintelligent system would benefit from combinatorial representations. Although a superintelligent system could have computational resources that are so vast that it is mostly capable of pairing up utterances or inscriptions with a stored sentence, it would be unlikely that it would trade away such a marvelous innovation of biological brains. If it did, it would be less efficient, since there is the potential of a sentence not being in its storage, which must be finite.
(iv) BISAs may have one or more global workspaces. When you search for a fact or concentrate on something, your brain grants that sensory or cognitive content access to a “global workspace” where the information is broadcast to attentional and working memory systems for more concentrated processing, as well as to the massively parallel channels in the brain [14]. The global workspace operates as a singular place where important information from the senses is considered in tandem, so that the creature can make all-things-considered judgments and act intelligently, in light of all the facts at its disposal. In general, it would be inefficient to have a sense or cognitive capacity that was not integrated with the others, because the information from this sense or cognitive capacity would be unable to figure in predictions and plans based on an assessment of all the available information.
(v) A BISA’s mental processing can be understood via functional decomposition. As complex as alien superintelligence may be, humans may be able to use the method of functional decomposition as an approach to understanding it. A key feature of computational approaches to the brain is that cognitive and perceptual capacities are understood by decomposing the particular capacity into their causally organized parts, which themselves can be understood in terms of the causal organization of their parts. This is the aforementioned “method of functional decomposition” and it is a key explanatory method in cognitive science. It is difficult to envision a complex thinking machine not having a program consisting of causally interrelated elements each of which consists in causally organized elements.
All this being said, superintelligent beings are by definition beings that are superior to humans in every domain. While a creature can have superior processing that still basically makes sense to us, it may be that a given superintelligence is so advanced that we cannot understand any of its computations whatsoever. It may be that any truly advanced civilization will have technologies that will be indistinguishable from magic, as Arthur C. Clarke once suggested [15]. I obviously speak to the scenario in which the SAI’s processing makes some sense to us, one in which developments from cognitive science yield a glimmer of understanding into the complex mental lives of certain BISAs.
SOME ISSUES FOR FURTHER REFLECTION
In the spirit of encouraging future discussion, I will close by raising issues for future reflection.
Given the vast variety of possible intelligences, it is an intriguing question to ask whether creatures with different sensory modalities may have the same kind of thoughts or think in a similar ways as humans. There is a debate in the field of philosophy of mind that is relevant to this question. Contemporary neo-empiricists, such as the philosopher Jesse Prinz, have argued that all concepts are modality specific, being couched in a particular sensory format, such as vision [16]. If he’s correct, it may be difficult to understand the thinking of creatures with vastly different sensory experiences than us. But I am skeptical. For instance, consider my aforementioned comment on viewpoint invariant representations. At a higher level of processing, information seems to become less viewpoint dependent. Similarly, it becomes less modality specific, as with the processing in the human brain, as it ascends from particular sensory modalities to the brain’s association areas and into working memory and attention, where it is in a more neutral format.
But these issues are subtle and deserve a lengthier treatment. I pursued issues related to this topic in my monograph, The Language of Thought, which looked at whether thinking is independent of the kind of perceptual modalities humans have and is also prior to the kind of language we speak [12]. In the context of alien life or SAI, an intriguing question is the following: If there is an inner mental language that is independent of sensory modalities, having the aforementioned combinatorial structure, would this be some sort of common ground, should we encounter other advanced intelligences? (Many of these issues apply to the case of intelligent biological alien life as well, and could also be helpful in the context of the development of SAI on Earth.)
The ethical and metaphysical issues surrounding postbiological intelligence concern me greatly. Perhaps the best way to introduce the ethical and metaphysical issues is to consider that the post-biological cosmos approach involves a shift in our usual perspective about intelligent life in the universe. Normally, we think of encountering alien intelligence as encountering creatures with radically different biological features and sensory experiences. The shift of focus is twofold: first, the focus moves away from biology to superintelligent AI, and this will involve theorizing about the computational abilities of advanced artificial intelligence. Second, as we reflect on the nature of postbiological intelligence, we must be keenly aware that we may be reflecting upon the nature of our own descendants as well as aliens. In essence, the line between “us” and “them” blurs, and our focus moves away from biology to the difficult task of understanding the computations and behaviors of creatures that will be far more advanced than we are.
What does this all mean? In contrast to Ray Kurzweil’s utopian enthusiasm for the singularity, I do not see normative evaluations of whether a post-biological existence is desirable for our species in the astrobiology literature, and there has been little discussion of the singularity within contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of mind. But it is important to reflect upon the ethical, philosophical and social implications of all this. Would superintelligent AI, including our own postbiological descendants, be selves or persons? Could they be conscious? My own view is that the question of whether AI could be conscious is key – if the synthetic being in question is not capable of consciousness, that is, if it doesn’t feel like anything to be it, then why would it be a self or person? I’ve discussed the issue of consciousness elsewhere [4], but since that point, I have been increasingly convinced that the question of machine consciousness is an open question that cannot be solved today. In addition to the matter of whether the substrate in question (e.g., graphene, silicon) supports consciousness, the devil is in the details of the particular AI design. That is, we would have to determine whether the architecture of the particular AI in question even employs conscious thought. Consciousness is associated with slower, more deliberative processing in humans, and it is unclear whether superintelligence would even need conscious processing, as it would have mastered so much already. What would be novel to it? And would consciousness even be associated with slower, deliberative processing in an AI in any case?
The science fiction treatment of androids may lead us to believe that machines can feel – for instance, consider the Samantha program in the film Her, or consider Asimov’s robot stories. But this is just science fiction, and the empirical and philosophical question of whether AI can be conscious remains open.
CONCLUSION
In this brief piece, I’ve discussed why it is likely that the alien civilizations we encounter will be forms of superintelligent AI (or “SAI”). I then turned to the difficult question of how such creatures might think. I provisionally attempted to identify some goals and cognitive capacities likely to be possessed by superintelligent beings. I discuss Nick Bostrom’s recent book on superintelligence, which focuses on the genesis of SAI on Earth; as it happens, many of Bostrom’s observations were informative in the present context [7]. Finally, I isolated a specific type of superintelligence that is of particular import in the context of alien superintelligence, biologically-inspired superintelligences (“BISAs”). I urged that if any superintelligences we encounter are BISAs, certain work in computational neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience and philosophy of mind may provide resources for at least a rough understanding of the computations of BISAs.
REFERENCES
[1] Cirkovic, M. and Bradbury, R. 2006, “Galactic Gradients, Postbiological Evolution and the Apparent Failure of SETI,” New Astronomy 11, pp. 628–639
[2] Dick, S. 2013, “Bringing Culture to Cosmos: the Postbiological Universe,” Cosmos and Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context, S. J. Dick and M. Lupisella eds., Washington, DC: NASA, online at http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4802.pdf
[3] Shostak, S. 2009, Confessions of an Alien Hunter, National Geographic (Washington, DC)
[4] Schneider, S. 2015, “Alien Minds,” in Discovery, Steven Dick, ed., Cambridge University Press (Cambridge)
[5] Davies, P. 2010, The Eerie Silence, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (London)
[6] Bradbury, R., Cirkovic, M., and Dvorsky, G. 2011, “Dysonian Approach to SETI: A Fruitful Middle Ground?” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 64, pp. 156–165
[7] Bostrom, N. 2014, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, Oxford University Press (Oxford)
[9] Miller, R. 1956, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information,” The Psychological Review, 63, pp. 81–97
[10] Schneider, S. 2011a, “Mindscan: Transcending and Enhancing the Brain,” Neuroscience and Neuroethics: Issues At the Intersection of Mind, Meanings and Morality, J. Giordano ed., Cambridge University Press (Cambridge)
[11] Seung, S. 2012, Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Boston)
[12] Hawkins, J. and Blakeslee, S. 2004, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machine, Times Books (New York)
[13] Schneider, S. 2011b, The Language of Thought: a New Philosophical Direction, MIT Press (Boston)
[14] Baars, B. 2008, “The Global Workspace Theory of Consciousness,” The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, M. Velmans and S. Schneider eds.,Wiley-Blackwell (Boston), pp. 236-247
[15] Clarke, A. 1962, Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible, Harper and Row (New York)
[16] Prinz, J. 2004, Furnishing the Mind: Concepts and their Perceptual Basis, MIT Press (Boston)
Seth Shostak SETI Institute 189 Bernardo Ave. Mountain View, CA 94043 seth@seti.org
Introduction
We consider the biological provincialism of traditional SETI, and why there are good arguments for thinking that the bulk of the intelligence in the cosmos is synthetic. Given this possibility, the SETI community should consider how to conduct a meaningful search for intelligence that is not constrained to habitable worlds. To that end, we consider some of the factors that might govern the behavior of highly advanced, cognitive machinery and some strategies that might aid in the discovery of same.
THE ANTHROPOCENTRIC BIAS
The premise of most SETI experiments, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, was established with Frank Drake’s pioneering Project Ozma more than five decades ago [1]. Today’s efforts differ in scale, but not in approach: Their strategy is to seek signals produced by cosmic inhabitants whose level of technology is at least as advanced as our own.
For more than two decades, SETI has been largely underwritten by private donations, and because of this the scientists involved are often pressured to make some estimate of the chances of success. To this end, they will frequently invoke the well-known Drake Equation which quantifies the number of galactic societies currently producing detectable signals. If some estimate of the prevalence of transmitting sources can be made, then a timescale for SETI success can also be made.
Unfortunately, the value of many of the parameters of this equation are still unknown, and the few for which new data have recently become available are little changed from the estimates made when the equation was first written. The Drake Equation, while ubiquitous and helpful in formulating the problem of SETI, does little to determine the odds for any particular experiment.
Of possibly greater importance is the Equation’s influence in setting strategy. It assumes that SETI will succeed only if there are at least a few thousand technically accomplished civilizations resident in the Milky Way. Detectable societies are assumed to consist of a large number of individuals, resident on a planet that’s not only amenable to life but also able to beget and sustain complex organisms. In other words, a world analogous to our own.
That view hasn’t changed in a half century. New thinking on how to conduct SETI has been less about the nature of the beings we seek or their habitat, and more about their presumed behavior.
As example, a matter of popular discussion is whether signals from extraterrestrials are more likely to be deliberate beacons, or accidental leakage. This discussion is largely motivated by the trend in our own society to shift to higher efficiency communication modes (e.g., direct satellites and fiber optics in place of traditional broadcasting.) This change has led many to opine that advanced civilizations will be economical, and not generate significant leakage. However, while this argument sounds plausible, there’s no denying that it is highly parochial, and based on human experience a scant century after the invention of practical radio and lasers. And even this modest speculation on the conduct of extraterrestrials – they will be more efficient users of energy than we are – has had little impact on SETI experiments.
In fact, experiments do what they are able, and are mostly indifferent to whether the signal being sought is intentional or otherwise. SETI today continues to adopt the playbooks of the past: the aliens are analogous to us, only more advanced. The circumstances of their environment are also presumed to be similar to ours.
Unsurprisingly then, SETI practitioners have been heartened by recent discoveries of exoplanets. The good news is that worlds akin to our own could exist in great abundance. Current estimates are that between 0.1 and 0.2 of all star systems host an Earth-size planet in the habitable zone [2]. This implies that tens of billions of these favored locales pepper the Galaxy.
But there is also bad news. At a time when the prospects for beings comparable to ourselves are improving, there is a slow-growing realization that biological intelligence may be only a short-lived – and possibly cryptic – stepping stone to the real thinkers of the cosmos: synthetic intelligence.
PROSPECTS FOR SYNTHETIC INTELLIGENCE
If researchers in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) are to be believed, we will invent machines that are our cognitive equals by mid-century. Roboticist Hans Moravec has pointed out that the exponential improvement in digital electronics will produce workaday computers with reckoning power comparable to a human brain in less than a decade’s time [3]. This rapid betterment in computation has led some, such as Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil, to predict a future time – the “singularity” – at which our own intellectual capacities will be swamped by that of our devices [4],[5].
Of course, there are already machines that can outperform the human brain in tasks generally regarded as “intelligent.” The best chess playing computer can beat the best grand master, and the recent triumph of IBM’s Watson computer against seasoned contestants on a television quiz show attracted widespread attention, if not admiration. More recently, Google’s AlphaGo software beat a world expert human at the game of Go, one that is considerably more complex than chess. But as AI entrepreneur Peter Voss has noted, these attainments merely point up the current situation in which one can either build a machine that is excellent at a narrowly scoped task (e.g., chess) or one that is quite mediocre at many things [6]. In order to challenge the intellectual abilities of humans, what’s required is what is termed GAI – generalized artificial intelligence.
It is not the intent of this essay to either review or critique developments in AI research, but rather to assume that GAG machines will appear – if not in this century, then in the next. The timing is of little consequence to the implications for SETI. But the events following this development are straightforward:
1. If our own example can be taken as typical, then GAI quickly follows on the heels of radio technology – within a few centuries.
2. There is no reason to believe that the evolution of “wet ware” – augmentations of our own brains – can keep pace with GAI.
3. Because artificial intelligence can quickly evolve (by its own design), it will soon outstrip the cognitive capability of biological beings.
4. Artificial intelligence will be self-repairing, and therefore of indefinite lifetime.
5. GAI will be the dominant form of intelligence for any society that has progressed even slightly beyond the point of being able to send signals into space.
6. Unlike biology, which has been “engineered” bottom-up, GAI will be engineered top-down. We cannot hope to forecast what talents or interests it will have, but the one aspect of its functionality that seems safe to assume is survival. This sounds Darwinian, and therefore biological, but is essential if we are to find GAI now, billions of years into the history of the cosmos.
The bottom line is simple, if disquieting: biological brains will beget synthetic ones. If this technical evolution is commonplace, then there’s reason to expect that the majority of the intelligence in the universe is non-biological. This intelligence would not be dependent on water worlds, atmospheres, or planets at all. Consequently the premise of most SETI – that we should expect to find signals from old, habitable worlds – could be wide of the mark [7],[8].
It seems probable that the future of our hunt for extraterrestrials will require more than just new equipment. We’ll need to rethink what it is we seek.
SO HOW DO WE FIND IT?
Adapting our SETI strategies to the challenge of uncovering GAI may sound simple at first. Nothing more is required than to put less emphasis on targeting habitable planets, or even individual stars, and simply scan as much of the sky as possible. However, there may be opportunities to increase our chances of success by augmenting this simple, brute-force approach with insights about the likely nature or behavior of synthetic intelligence.
First, we are probably well advised to avoid hubris. There may be little we can fathom about the nature of artificial intelligence that might be the result of millions of generations of self-improvement – improvement not predicated on the slight and random modifications of Darwin, but directed changes. Such intelligence will surely be as superior to us as we are to the nematodes in the garden. Consequently, we should not feel too sure about our speculations as to what AGI might do or how it might be detected. Imaginative ideas about the interests and activities of synthetic beings are plentiful in fiction, but these ideas are vulnerable to anthropocentric bias.
However, there are at least a few aspects of GAI that seem less suspect:
1. Assuming that for such machines more computation is better, they can be expected to prefer locations with abundant energy and an effective heat sink. The former suggests the neighborhoods of early-type stars or black holes (either of the stellar variety or the massive objects hunkered at the centers of galaxies.) It’s been suggested that the outer regions of galaxies might be preferred locales for such machines because of their slightly lower temperatures, resulting in greater thermal efficiency [9]. However, given that the efficiency depends only on a temperature ratio between source and sink, this argument is of significance only if the energy source is no more than a few hundred degrees, as space is cold almost everywhere.
2. The short timescales for self-improvement may set up a “winner take all” situation. Whatever machine first appears in a given part of the cosmos could endlessly trump others that arise, since even a cosmically short period of time is a great number of GAI generations, and the new kids on the block could never catch up.
3. Given the dangers present in the universe, a machine might wish to buy insurance in the form of backup machines. These could be kept at a distance that would minimize simultaneous annihilation, but linked to the mother machine so that updates could be continually offered. Detecting this telemetry might offer a way to discover GAI, although one can assume that the communication would be point to point and unlikely to be intercepted with our instruments.
4. Another possible organization scheme for GAI might be hierarchical. Social systems might make sense if the increase of information in a machine eventually becomes small compared to the timescale for interaction with other machines (the light travel time between them). In other words, if the new capability acquired per year by a GAI eventually becomes a very small fraction of the previously accumulated capability, then interchanging information makes sense, since that information is not rendered obsolete and irrelevant in the time it takes to effect the exchange.
5. Whether intelligent machines would have any interest in broadcasting (as opposed to point-to-point telemetry) is impossible to know. One metric for intelligence is the ability to foresee danger and avoid it. The cleverest GAI, by this measure, might be less concerned about revealing their presence with easily found signals. They might also wish to communicate with other such machines that are largely outside their light cone, as these would have information that they could not obtain otherwise [10].
These considerations offer a few plausible arguments as to where we should look for GAI. However, they promise little in terms of assuring SETI scientists that such machines would have any motive to make themselves known.
In the case of biological beings, we can safely assume the presence of curiosity, as this trait is necessary to divine the laws of nature and build transmitters we could find. But artificial sentience might not share this type of curiosity. Maybe after solving all the puzzles of science, GAI would be happy to indulge itself with endless entertainments – perhaps with Bostrom-like simulations [11]. If they are capable of self-repair (an assumption in all of the above), then it may be that their primary project is to forestall the heat death of the universe and an end to their own existence.
CONCLUSIONS
What might SETI practitioners do to increase their chances of detecting what is likely to be the most prevalent form of intelligence in the cosmos? Unfortunately, the list is short.
A search for unusual phenomena in the vicinity of high-density energy sources is a straightforward desideratum. Another is to consider that the oldest of such machines might wish to contact their peers in other parts of the cosmos to compare notes and offer novel information. This suggests an experiment in which SETI searches for signals (radio or optical) in the direction of stellar black holes or quasars that are antipodal. E.g., two stellar black holes on opposite sides of the sky might conceivably host AGI whose beamed data would pass through our neighborhood.
Perhaps the best strategy to find the universe’s intellectual giants is the least deliberate: simply be careful to note any unusual phenomena uncovered in the course of astronomical research. Are there nebulae with anomalous, depleted deuterium? Do some stars or galaxies display unnatural infrared excess, a possible tipoff to energy-intensive residents [12],[13]? Are there cosmological behaviors without natural explanation?
It is easy to design an experiment to find the aliens of sci-fi, for these are robustly similar to ourselves. But when you don’t know your prey, the hunt can be hard.
REFERENCES
[1] Drake, F. 1960, “How can we detect radio transmissions from distant planetary systems,”Sky and Telescope39, 140
[2] Petigura, E. A., Howard, A. W., and Marcy, G. W. 2013, “Prevalence of Earth-size planets orbiting Sun-like stars,” PNAS, 110, No. 48, 19273
[3] Moravec, Hans 2000, Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind, Oxford
University Press (Oxford)
[4] Vinge, V. 1993 “The coming technological singularity,” Vision-21:
Interdisciplinary Science & Engineering in the Era of CyberSpace, proceedings of a Symposium
held at NASA Lewis Research Center (NASA Conference Publication CP-10129)
[5] Kurzweil, Ray 2005, The Singularity is Near, Viking Penguin (New York)
[7] Shostak, S. 1998, Sharing the Universe, Berkeley Hills Books (Berkeley)
[8] Shostak, S. 2011, “Seeking intelligence far beyond our own,” International Astronautics Congress, IAC-11.A4.2.4
[9] Cirkovic, M. M. and Bradbury, R.J. 2006, “Galactic gradients, postbiological evolution, and the apparent failure of SETI,” New Astronomy, 11, 628
[10] Windell, Alex Noholoa 2015, private communication
[11] Bostrom, N. 2003, Philosophical Quarterly, 53 No. 211, 243
[12] Carrigan, R. 2009, “The IRAS-based whole-sky upper limit on Dyson spheres,” Ap. J.698 2075
[13] Griffith, R. L., Wright, J. T., Maldonado, J., Povich, M. S., Sigurdsson, S., Mullan, B. 2015, “The Ĝ Infrared Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations with Large Energy Supplies. III. The Reddest Extended Sources in WISE,” arXiv:1504.03418 [astro-ph.GA]
Researchers have another arrangement for discovering extraterrestrial life in our Solar System
Researchers have another arrangement for discovering extraterrestrial life in our Solar System
Humankind hasn’t touched the most superficial layer of investigating the Milky Way cosmic system, a great deal less whatever is left of the universe, yet with regards to our own Solar System, we have a truly smart thought of what’s here. We know there’s no space-faring races hanging out in the cavities of Mars or noiselessly turning within Jupiter’s incredible red spot, yet there’s as yet the shot that life exists in our little planetary terrace outside of Earth, and scientists have another methodology that could enable us to discover it. The objective? Saturn’s ice-shrouded moon, Enceladus.
Another paper from Jay Nadeau and his group of analysts from Caltech, distributed in the diary Astrobiology, separates another imaging strategy that could give researchers the apparatuses they have to distinguish and recognize tiny life in space — all the more particularly, microorganisms stowing away in the water of Saturn’s solidified moon.
Enceladus is totally encased in ice, which doesn’t seem like an exceptionally affable place for life to flourish, yet fortunately there’s water under its solidified surface. We know this since pictures of the planet taken by NASA’s Cassini test have demonstrated enormous planes of water being regurgitated out from between breaks in its frigid shell, and in light of the fact that Enceladus is so little, its gravitational force isn’t sufficiently solid to shield the water vapor from taking off into space. That makes the occupation of examining the water substantially less demanding, yet NASA would even now require the correct apparatus for the employment.
Nadeau and his associates have proposed an answer as a holographic magnifying lens particularly intended to identify microbial life and separate between small living life forms and bits of tidy and flotsam and jetsam that would likewise likely litter the example.
“It’s harder to recognize a microorganism and a bit of clean than you’d might suspect,” Nadeau says. “You need to separate between Brownian movement, which is the arbitrary movement of issue, and the purposeful, self-coordinated movement of a living being.” In trying, the new magnifying lens framework has demonstrated equipped for doing only that, and keeping in mind that further testing and execution stays on the schedule, it’s a promising begin for a system that could give the primary proof of extraterrestrial life.
Research on the biophysics of frog tongue adhesiveness provided fodder for one of our most popular video stories of 2017. (Watch the video below.)
A. NOEL, M. MANDICA, D.L. HU/GEORGI
No story on the Science News website is complete without visuals. And when it comes to videos, those visuals have lives of their own on other platforms. In addition to incorporating videos into some of our articles, we also post videos to the Science News YouTube channel and the Science News magazine Facebook page, where thousands of people watch them each year.
In science, progress rarely comes in one big shebang. Well, it has now, two years running. The first-ever direct detection of gravitational waves, our top story in 2016, launched a long-dreamed-of kind of astronomy capable of “unlocking otherwise unknowable secrets of the cosmos,” as physics writer Emily Conover puts it. 2017’s key event: a never-before-seen neutron star collision that immediately validated some theories in physics and killed others. And so a new way to probe cosmic mysteries wins our top spot again this year.
Another turning point is coming, and maybe soon, via CRISPR/Cas9, a biotechnology that holds the promise of curing genetic diseases (and the peril of making permanent, heritable tweaks). Nearly five years after the gene-editing tool debuted, researchers for the first time have used it to alter genes in viable human embryos. That’s a big advance, and worthy of the No. 2 spot.
And crack by crack, one of the biggest icebergs ever recorded calves. That story, No. 3 on our list, is not exactly progress, but it’s surely an opportunity to make scientific headway. Teams racing to Antarctica’s Larsen C ice shelf will have an unprecedented chance to collect real-time data on how the remaining ice reacts and to reveal secrets of a long-hidden ecosystem. Building on those advances, as well as others described in our Top 10 picks, will fuel “aha!” moments — both revolutionary and incremental — well into the future. — Macon Morehouse, News Director
The number of Zika cases in the Western Hemisphere has dropped this year, but the need for basic scientific and public health research on the virus remains strong.
HOW EARTH WOULD COPE WITH AN ACTUAL ALIEN INVASION
HOW EARTH WOULD COPE WITH AN ACTUAL ALIEN INVASION
When flying saucers visit Earth they are immediately blasted out of the sky by all the military resources we can throw at it – Well, that’s the Hollywood way of dealing with things.
In reality, how would we deal with the prospect of alien visitations? It’s a question that has taunted us for decades, and a range of scenarios run from the plausible to the outright incredible.
On the possibility of direct attack, Professor Stephen Hawking claims ET contact is dangerous, because they ‘may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria’.
The Debate
Theoretical physicist, Michio Kaku warns:
If they are hostile, it would be like Bambi meeting Godzilla if we ever had to fight them…we would present no military challenge to such an advanced civilisation…We would be a pushover for them. Forget all the Hollywood movies.
Ryan Sprague, the author of Somewhere in the Skies notes that so far UFOs don’t seem to represent an alien threat to humanity:
It would appear that we’ve been so aggressively conditioned to believe an invasion would be catastrophic and malevolent beyond comprehension, that any advanced civilisation would come to our planet with an agenda of taking over and using our resources to it’s advantage.
While I can understand this pessimistic view, the decades and decades of possible alien visitation here on the planet already, and the countless UFO sightings throughout the world, would indicate that if they were to do such a thing, they would have done it already.
Could Aliens Even Reach Earth?
UFO sceptic Robert Sheaffer isn’t too concerned about the threat of an alien invasion either, he says:
Well, I would worry about an alien invasion about as much as I would worry about a Zombie Apocalypse. Both are equally implausible.
First, any supposed alien invaders would have to find us. Given that they would be at least several light years away in some other solar system, and probably much farther than that, finding us and learning what earth is like is not so easy.
Second, they need to somehow get here, which is very difficult, even if we assume they have advanced technology, because fundamental physics tells us that they would need insanely large amounts of energy to accelerate space ships to relativistic speeds – and then to decelerate them when they arrive.
Even nuclear fusion power is woefully inefficient compared to what would be needed. If they are bringing along scary armaments and supplies, that’s just more mass to add to their armada.
Protection And The Lack Thereof
Whatever the facts of UFOs as alien invaders, what should we do to protect ourselves other than to have a tin foil hat at the ready?
The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and their Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (CUPUOS) is not geared for such possibilities.
UNOOSA director Simonetta Di Pippo tells us:
UNOOSA and COPUOS Member States consider a range of space science and space exploration topics, fields in which the topic of astrobiology sits. However, the Office for Outer Space Affairs has been given no mandate by Member States to consider the question of potential advanced or intelligent extraterrestrial life.
For this reason there is no protocol or process for any contact by extraterrestrial life.
The Threat Of Artificial Intelligence
Michael Michaud author of ‘Contact with Alien Civilizations: Our Hopes and Fears about Encountering Extraterrestrials’ (2007) says we shouldn’t be concerned because as he observes in his book, ‘UFO advocates have not yet proven their thesis that some UFOs are visitors from other worlds. I also said that aliens stepping out of a spacecraft on the Earth may be the least likely form of contact.’
He goes on to wonder, ‘Why would extraterrestrials make such a long journey? If they are capable of interstellar flight, they won’t need the Earth’s territory or resources.’
Michael thinks, ‘A more likely scenario is a visit by an unmanned interstellar probe equipped with artificial intelligence. Intelligent machines don’t need the massive spacecraft required to transport biological beings over vast distances, and they are patient.’
Invisible Defence In The War Of The Worlds
Assuming they do somehow get here,’ says Robert Sheaffer ‘presumably it is because they believe that they can live on our Earth, if they can only get rid of us. H.G. Wells was onto something when he had his fictional Martian invaders killed off by earthly microbes. Our bodies consist of not just ‘us,’ but an entire biome of separate organisms: the bacteria in our gut, microbes and mites living on our skin, etc.
Sheaffer adds:
It is doubtful that our bodies could survive in an entirely alien biosphere with different parasites, different foods, etc. The same problem would apply to any alien beings who might come here.
Sprague agrees that, ‘we simply can’t even begin to comprehend their genetic make-up, whether or not they possess any type of progressive knowledge, or even if they harbour emotions, empathy, ethics, or morals.’
A Technological Gamble
Malcolm Robinson founder of Strange Phenomena Investigations (SPI) observes that situations of contact between human civilisations set a disturbing precedent:
We have learned that when any technological superior race gets involved with an inferior race the inferior race usually comes off worse (as the history of this planet has shown). We can only hope that when that day comes, when another technological race meets mankind it will not prove to be disastrous and to our disadvantage.
That is a good reason for not trying to send signals out to alien civilisations in our galaxy, but has the horse already bolted as our planet has already beamed radio messages out to celestial targets since 1962?
Michael Michaud says we shouldn’t worry:
The vast majority of those signals are too weak to reach the distance of the nearest star. As Frank Drake has pointed out, we actually are becoming less detectable because of changes in the way we use radio technology. The powerful one-time message he sent from Arecibo in 1974 was aimed at a distant star cluster, not at nearby stars.
A United Front
Philip Mantle, Veteran UFO researcher, author and publisher at FLYING DISK PRESS , doesn’t think UFOs are of extraterrestrial origin, but says if we were invaded we would cope with the situation and ‘Mankind would hope to pull together as one to stand up to any such invasion.’
Sprague, is equally optimistic:
I believe that factions of the world would unite…and others would separate. Science and religion would be shattered overnight, but would continue.
Our hope would be to benefit and expand our own sciences and core beliefs by finding some way to communicate with this advanced civilisation.
What If We Don’t Know We’ve Been Invaded?
Neuro-psychologist, Gabriel G. De la Torre, professor at the University of Cádiz thinks there is a distinct possibility of aliens visiting, but says:
I am not sure we will be fully conscious about it. The main problem in this topic is it has been approached in a very simplistic way.
I don’t think we can be a real problem for Cosmos in any way. It is more probable we may be researched rather than destroyed.
Stealth is a possible approach, however I can not imagine an equal to equal agreement with people of Earth….I don’t think we could even understand their strategy.
As to whether they might secretly manipulate humanity, Gabriel says:
I think this could actually happen even without humans noticing…
If they conform to another consciousness state of mind they could try to operate in our belief systems and consciousness in a subtle way until a more physical approach is convenient for both sides of the communication process. This could be a gradual process.
Even in the radio message approach, this may happen. I don’t believe they will exchange codes, numbers and pictures in the same way we are trying to do. These messages if they happen anytime will have a deeply rooted message direct to our own consciousness.
Reasons To Be Cheerful
If there is ever any kind of alien contact Malcolm Robinson, hopes it could be positive:
It will be both enlightening and wonderful which may change not just our technology but medicine and the way we look at ourselves in the cosmos. As a researcher into the UFO enigma I look forward with anticipation to that day which I hope will be in my lifetime.
So with bacteria, unity, perhaps a little humility, the prospect of an alien invasion needn’t necessarily strike fear into our hearts. It could be the driving force behind bigger and better things.
(CNN)The mysterious flying object that one man saw looked like a “40-foot-long Tic Tac” and was maneuvering and shifting directions rapidly.
That claim doesn’t come from a random townsperson, though. It comes from retired Cmdr. David Fravor and bears the Pentagon’s stamp of approval. And it was one of many confounding examples of unidentified flying objects the Pentagon investigated in the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program.
“My personal belief is that there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone,” Luis Elizondo, a former Pentagon official, told CNN.
The belief in alien encounters has long been a prominent feature of American life. A 1997 poll from CNN/Time on the 50th anniversary of the Roswell incident found that 80% of Americans think the government is hiding knowledge of the existence of extraterrestrial life forms.
But instead of funding a $22 million project to get to the bottom of the issue, the US military could have spent its time reading some of the many tales of UFO sightings, abductions and alien encounters with humans over the decades.
There are thousands and thousands of reported UFO sightings, but in light of the Pentagon’s extensive research into the possible existence of UFOs, here’s a look back at some of America’s closest encounters of the third kind.
Many of the best known alien claims come from Project Blue Book, the name for the US government program tasked with investigating reports of UFOs from 1948 to 1969.
In that time, Air Force personnel looked at 12,618 reported UFO sightings and said that 701 remain “unidentified.”
But in the end, the project concluded: “No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our national security.” The program also concluded that the “unidentified” sightings were advanced technology or extraterrestrial vehicles, according to the National Archives fact sheet.
The project was closed down in 1969 because of its cost, the National Archives said.
“Since Project Blue Book was closed, nothing has happened to indicate that the Air Force ought to resume investigating UFOs,” the archives said.
The town of Roswell in New Mexico became shorthand for alien encounters in 1947 after reports that a flying object crash-landed in a field.
The Roswell Army Air Field initially said a “flying disk” had been recovered, but a…
Project Blue Book
Many of the best known alien claims come from Project Blue Book, the name for the US government program tasked with investigating reports of UFOs from 1948 to 1969.
In that time, Air Force personnel looked at 12,618 reported UFO sightings and said that 701 remain "unidentified."
But in the end, the project concluded: "No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our national security." The program also concluded that the "unidentified" sightings were not advanced technology or extraterrestrial vehicles, according to the National Archives fact sheet.
The project was closed down in 1969 because of its cost, the National Archives said.
"Since Project Blue Book was closed, nothing has happened to indicate that the Air Force ought to resume investigating UFOs," the archives said.
Roswell
Groups dressed as aliens ride through downtown Roswell, New Mexico, in July 2000 as they participate in the annual UFO Encounter.
The town of Roswell in New Mexico became shorthand for alien encounters in 1947 after reports that a flying object crash-landed in a field.
The Roswell Army Air Field initially said a "flying disk" had been recovered, but a second press release clarified that the object was from a weather balloon. Since then, a number of supposed witnesses have said they saw the military take away the flying disc -- and bodies of aliens.
Decades later, plenty of Americans remain skeptical of the government's claim that it was a weather balloon. In that 1997 CNN/Time poll, nearly two-thirds of respondents said they believed a UFO crash-landed in a field in that incident.
Roswell, now home to the Roswell UFO Museum, remains a major destination for alien enthusiasts looking for more evidence of their beliefs.
Area 51
Long thought to be the location where the US government stores and hides alien bodies and UFOs, the mysteriously named location in Nevada has been the focus of alien conspiracies for decades.
The area has long been a focus of public interest for citizens and presidents alike. John Podesta, chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, said that his former boss had "asked for some information about some of these things, and in particular, some information about what was going on at Area 51."
Area 51 has been a prominent pop culture reference and made a notable appearance in the alien invasion movie "Independence Day."
In 2013, the CIA declassified documents that officially acknowledged for the first time that Area 51 was a secret military site located a short distance northwest of Las Vegas.
But rather than host flying saucers or alien life, Area 51 was used to test the U-2 and OXCART aerial surveillance programs, according to the documents. The need for secrecy was to keep information from the Soviets, rather than to cover-up an alien encounter, they said.
Three of the former Air Force officers said UFOs hovered over nuclear missile silos around Montana's Malmstrom Air Force Base in 1967, causing problems with the military base. Former Air Force Capt. Robert Salas said one of his guards told him about a red, glowing object about 30 feet in diameter hovering above the front gate of the facility.
"And just as I [called my commander], our missiles began going into what's called a no-go condition, or unlaunchable. Essentially, they were disabled while this object was still hovering over our site," Salas said.
Salas said he didn't personally witness the UFO. But Robert Hastings, an author and UFO researcher who organized the press conference, said the series of stories showed aliens had a particular interest in nuclear weapons.
"I believe -- these gentlemen believe -- that this planet is being visited by beings from another world, who for whatever reason have taken an interest in the nuclear arms race which began at the end of World War II," said Hastings.
Phoenix Lights incident
In March 1997, a number of Arizona residents said they witnessed a large flying object in the sky near Phoenix. Ten years afterward, former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington wrote on CNN about the experience ahead of an event discussing various UFO sightings and incidents.
"I witnessed a massive delta-shaped craft silently navigate over Squaw Peak, a mountain range in Phoenix, Arizona. It was truly breathtaking. I was absolutely stunned because I was turning to the west looking for the distant Phoenix Lights," Symington wrote. "To my astonishment this apparition appeared; this dramatically large, very distinctive leading edge with some enormous lights was traveling through the Arizona sky."
Symington, a former Air Force officer, said it did not look like a man-made object. And he ruled out the Air Force assertion that the object was high-altitude flares.
"I was never happy with the Air Force's silly explanation. There might very well have been military flares in the sky that evening, but what I and hundreds of others saw had nothing to do with that," he wrote.
Symington thanked those who were speaking out about their mysterious encounters, and called for the US government to be more open about what really happened.
"We want the government to stop putting out stories that perpetuate the myth that all UFOs can be explained away in down-to-earth conventional terms. Investigations need to be reopened, documents need to be unsealed and the idea of an open dialogue can no longer be shunned," he wrote.
CORRECTION:This story has been updated to correctly characterize the conclusions of Project Blue Book.
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Why aliens are not contacting us if they know about humans? Explains astonishing ‘Zoo Theory’
Why aliens are not contacting us if they know about humans? Explains astonishing ‘Zoo Theory’
A fundamental motivation for the zoo hypothesis would be that premature contact would “unintelligently” reduce the overall diversity of paths the universe itself could take. If there is a plurality of alien cultures, however, this theory may break down under the uniformity of motive concept.
Alien life and UFO were hot topics among the alien seekers and conspiracy theorists in the year 2017. Some believe that we are not alone and some form of intelligent life exists in some other part of the world which also gave upward thrust to many conspiracies this year.
Recently, SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch was mistaken as UFO while some still claimed to see mysterious alien spacecraft alongside the SpaceX rocket. The launch was so bizarre that drivers on the road got distracted and crashed their cars.
Some alien hunters including Scott C Waring from UFO Sightings Daily claim to find proof of extraterrestrial life on Mars and Moons. Some alien buffs also believe that UFO lingers around International Space Station and talk to astronauts. While some blame the US space agency NASA for hiding the existence of the alien life despite knowing the truth.
Apparently, our every attempt to find extraterrestrial life failed, and no one was able to prove the existence of aliens. Meanwhile, a radio astronomer from MIT who believes in the existence of alien life came up with a theory to prove why we have failed in establishing a contact with aliens even after several attempts.
It is to be noticed that recently, METI scientists beamed a signal into space to establish contact with aliens. The scientists have sent a set of radio signal with such instructions that they would definitely get some reply back on Earth within 25 years. However, the universe is vast, and the possibility of receiving the signals is minimal.
According to the “Zoo Theory”, given by John A. Ball, an MIT radio astronomer, aliens might be living in some distant galaxy, and they know about the existence of humans, but still, they are purposefully hiding from us and avoiding contact with humans. The theory further states that aliens aren’t still advance enough. Therefore they don’t interfere with our activity, similar to zookeepers at a zoo or nature preserve.
“I suggest, first, that mankind is neither alone nor number one. Advanced civilizations exist and exert some degree of control over the galaxy. Second, they’re aware of us at least at some level. But are they concerned with us? We may be only an obscure entry in their tabulation of inhabited regions of the galaxy. Third, we’re unaware of them because either they want us to be unaware| they’re hiding (But this means that they care about us, else why bother to hide?)|or because we’re not (yet) clever enough to know that they’re there, but they don’t care whether we know,” Ball said.
Ball believes that aliens are curious to know about humans; which is why people report thousands of UFO sightings each year that further results in mysterious and unsolved conspiracies. “ETI (extraterrestrial intelligence) may be discreetly and inconspicuously watching us but not dabbling,” Ball wrote in his paper on the subject.
According to Freeman Dyson, “a reasonable long-range program of searching for evidence of intelligence in the galaxy is indistinguishable from a reasonable long-range program of general astronomical exploration.”
Previously, researchers at the University of California Berkley researching for the $100m ‘Breakthrough Listen” project, had successfully detected 15 strange and repetitive Radio signal bursts radiating out from a small galaxy using the Breakthrough Listen Project by accumulating 400 terabytes of observations of FRB 121102’s location. Scientists believe that aliens located in the distant galaxy might be sending these signals.
Moreover, an astronomer from the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) claimed that we are heading towards our first contact with aliens. At the World’s Nano Fair, Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at SETI told Futurism that they are going to find intelligent alien life within 20 years and for that, he bet everyone a cup of coffee. He is optimistic about the fact that we are incredibly close to answering the question of whether we are alone in the Universe or not. He also confidently said that within a couple of decades he can prove that aliens do exist.
Has the release of Defense Intelligence Agency videos of alleged UFO encounters by US military jets spawned a competition among government agencies over who is more in tune with this type of disclosure? That might be the case with a new tweet by the CIA over the weekend (yes, the CIA has a Twitter account – or does it?) showing a photograph of a flying saucer UFO and a link to a page on its website entitled “Trying to Photograph a UFO?”. Are the CIA and the DIA competing to release files that were once MIA?
The CIA UFO photo from its tweet
The photograph is one of many released by the CIA earlier this year when the agency opened up about 13 million pages of declassified documents to the general public and set up an Electronic Reading Room for searching through them. Those documents included UFO photos from around the world, along with guides for future UFO spotters on how to get better photographs (set the camera to infinity, use fast film (Film? What’s that?), don’t move, take a lot of pictures, move around, include some ground images in the photos, etc.), how to gather non-photo information and submit a report (date, type of camera, direction you were facing, details of surroundings, breathalyzer results (OK, that last one wasn’t on the list but should be), etc.) and how to conduct a UFO investigation(consult with experts, eliminate false positives, gather forensic evidence, etc. (how about avoiding men dressed in black?)).
Why did the CIA decide to release this photograph now, along with a reminder that it’s been disclosing secret UFO files for a while? Perhaps it’s because many reports on the DIA and the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program claim that AATIP survived after spending its $22 million budget because of secret funding by the CIA. Is the CIA trying to distance itself from this alleged connection by displaying much better photos than the radar images in the DIA videos?
Or could there be a X-Files connection? The CIA document release earlier this year coincided with the return of The X-Filesfor a limited six-episode tenth season. That season was so successful, Fox is bringing Mulder and Scully (and Cigarette Smoking Man!) for a 10-episode eleventh season on January 3rd. Is the real CIA trying to outdo the fictional FBI? The CIA website actually has a page entitled “Take a Peek Into Our “X-Files” with “Top 5 CIA Documents Mulder Would Love To Get His Hands On:” and “Top 5 CIA Documents Scully Would Love To Get Her Hands On.”
Is the CIA’s tweet a sly distraction to divert the public away from demanding more real disclosure to demanding more episodes of The X-Files?
There is absolutely no doubt that the world, right now, is a dangerous place. An extremely dangerous place. In light of that, an important questions needs to be asked – and answered. If war comes – and it turns nuclear – will those who run the nations of this world head deep below the surface of the planet, only to return years later to claim what remains of the planet and human civilization? Such a thing is not at all impossible.
In fact, there are significant signs that plans are indeed being made to ensure that the underground will be the place to be if the apocalypse occurs. But, as is usually the case, it will be the controlling elite who will be calling the shots, rather than the rest of us. Let’s take a look at several of the highly-classified installations that exist on our planet and how they may be used if the unthinkable happens. Today, I’ll focus on Russia (with certain other countries to follow).
Given the fact that Russia amounts to a huge area of land, there are plenty of areas in which secure, underground facilities can be built – and which have been built. The U.S. Intelligence community has known for decades that at least two, massive facilities exist – and which have the ability to survive nuclear strikes, chiefly as a result of the fact that they are built deeply into almost impenetrable mountains. Those same mountains are Mount Yamantau and Kosvinsky Mountain.
As for Yamantau, it stands at in excess of 5,000 feet and is the highest mountain in the Urals. A couple of decades ago the Russians began the construction of a massive facility within Mount Yamantau, primarily to provide the controlling elite with a secure place in which to survive a nuclear exchange between the super-powers.
American spy-satellites have confirmed massive digging on the mountain, suggesting that huge, hollowed out sections of the mountain now exist – and which have been turned into the perfect locations for literally hundreds of thousands of people to survive an attack. And make no mistake, the Yamantau facility is gigantic. Studies undertaken by American intelligence agents suggest that its size is that of Washington, D.C.’s huge Interstate 495, which surrounds the capitol of the United States. Given that I-495 has a circumference of more than sixty miles and that will give you an idea of the scale of the Yamantau facility.
As for the Kosvinsky Mountain installation, that is equally almost impenetrable. Built well into the heart of the mountain – which is located in the northern Urals – it is protected by around 1,200-feet of granite and, just like the Yamantau base, is designed to provide housing for the elite in the event of a nuclear attack – and also to allow for some form of continuation of government. Presuming, of course, there is anyone left to be governed after a major nuclear exchange between the most powerful nations on the planet.
All that’s really known for sure is that the construction of the base was completed by the mid-1990s and that it, like Yamantau, can house thousands of people – with a near-indefinite supply of food, water, medical supplies and all the provisions needed to survive underground not just for months but for years. Some intelligence estimates suggest possibly even for decades.
Moving away from the Urals, but still focused on Russia, there is Kapustin Yar, which is situated in Astrakhan Oblast. Construction of the installation began back in the 1940s – with the intention being to create the ultimate facility for building and testing new and novel rockets. The first such rocket launch took place in October 1947 – it was a test using a captured Nazi A-4 rocket; one of a number that the Russians got their hands on when the Nazi regime collapsed in 1945. As the base grew in size and scope, yet further rocket tests were undertaken and by the early 1950s atomic-bombs tests were carried out in close proximity.
Spy-satellites of the United States’ National Reconnaissance Office have noted that in the last few years massive digging has been afoot at Kapustin Yar, all of which suggests that the base is no longer just used for rocket and missile tests; but that it may be being refurbished on a gigantic scale – to essentially turn portions of it into a huge, underground bunker, one designed to withstand the terrible effects of a nuclear war.
Mensen staan voor mysterie nadat “groene ufo” door de lucht vliegt tijdens oudejaarsavond: “Nog nooit eerder gezien”
Mensen staan voor mysterie nadat “groene ufo” door de lucht vliegt tijdens oudejaarsavond: “Nog nooit eerder gezien”
Spectacular 'green UFO' spotted over Britain leaves intrigued viewers wondering if it was early New
Het was een opmerkelijk zicht voor vele inwoners uit Groot-Brittannië. Al honderden mensen lieten onder meer via sociale media weten dat ze “een groen lichtgevend object” in de lucht zagen tijdens oudejaarsavond. Volgens sommigen ging het om een vallende ster, terwijl anderen vermoedden dat het om wat vuurwerk ging.
Het vliegende object was zowel te zien boven Engeland als delen van Schotland. Zo had James MacCallum uit de stad Dundee als een van de eerste de mogelijkheid om een korte video te maken van het verschijnsel. “Het is misschien wel de slechtste video ooit, maar zonet vloog hier een meteoriet door de lucht”, tweette hij bij zijn beelden. “Het was best cool.” Intussen duiken ook steeds meer dashcambeelden op van het speciale zicht.
Het gros van de tweets over de ‘groene ufo’ bleven weliswaar beperkt tot een kort bericht over het moment dat ze het object opmerkten. “We zagen een groene en gouden meteoor over Nord Bottleshop in Whitley Bay vliegen toen we wat aan het drinken waren”, aldus Alyson Dodd. “Ik dacht dat het vuurwerk was, mijn vriend meende dat het om een straaljager ging.”
Ook Tom Gold, die het fenomeen in het Engelse Corbridge zag, blijft het spektakel een groot mysterie. “Het was een buitengewoon zicht, zoiets heb ik nog nooit eerder gezien” vertelde hij aan ChronicleLive. Wat het object daadwerkelijk was, is voorlopig niet helemaal duidelijk, al lijkt de kans groot dat het om een meteoor ging.
Ball of Light flying towards Tourist's Camera in Bello Colombia
Ball of Light flying towards Tourist's Camera in Bello Colombia
A tourist in Bello Colombia recorded a disturbing video with the camera of his mobile on December 30, 2017.
While filming the surrounding area from his hotel room, a ball of light suddenly flying towards the camera of the tourist before it vanishes.
It seems that more people in that area have witnessed similar unexplained sightings. One commenter says that he already has witnessed similar ball of lights two times. "It always appears at the same location in the sky, then goes vertically downwards, like an inverted L and flies very low."
Since theuploader's accountdoes not show any irregularities such as fake or cgi created videos we may wonder whether the tourist captured a paranormal phenomenon or the creators of the video just wanted to make a prank.
An expert on the intersection of science and philosophy posits that our current transition to "postbiological" life could have already been undertaken by extraterrestrial species.
She warns that these alien lifeforms could by artificially intelligent, in which case they could pose a tremendous threat to life on Earth.
POSTBIOLOGICAL LIFE
Susan Schneider is a fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET). She is also an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut, and her expertise includes the philosophy of cognitive science, particularly with regards to the plausibility of computational theories of mind and theoretical issues in artificial intelligence (AI).
In short, Schneider has a keen understanding of the intersection between science and philosophy. As such, she also has a unique perspective on AI, offering a fresh (but quite alarming) view on how artificial intelligence could forever alter humanity’s existence. In an article published by the IEET, she shares that perspective, talking about potential flaws in the way we view AI and suggesting a possible connection between AI and extraterrestrial life.
The bridge Schneider uses to make this connection is the idea of a “postbiological” life. In the article she explains that postbiological refers to either the eventual form of existence humanity will take or the AI-emergent lifeforms that would replace our existence altogether. In other words, it could be something like superintelligent humans enhanced through biological nanotechnology or it could be an artificially intelligent supercomputer.
Whatever form postbiological life takes, Schneider posits that the transition we’re currently experiencing is one that may have happened previously on other planets:
The technological developments we are witnessing today may have all happened before, elsewhere in the universe. The transition from biological to synthetic intelligence may be a general pattern, instantiated over and over, throughout the cosmos. The universe’s greatest intelligences may be postbiological, having grown out of civilizations that were once biological.
In light of that, Schneider asks the following: “Suppose that intelligent life out there is postbiological. What should we make of this?”
EXTRATERRESTRIAL, POSTBIOLOGICAL AI
There isn’t any guarantee that we can “control” AI on Earth when it becomes superintelligent, even with multi-million-dollar efforts devoted to AI safety. “Some of the finest minds in computer science are working on this problem,” Schneider writes. “They will hopefully create safe systems, but many worry that the control problem is insurmountable.”
If artificially intelligent postbiological life exists elsewhere in our universe, it’s a major cause of concern for a number of reasons. “[Postbiological extraterrestrial life] may have goals that conflict with those of biological life, have at its disposal vastly superior intellectual abilities, and be far more durable than biological life,” Schneider argues. These lifeforms also might not place the same value on biological intelligence that we do, and they may not even be conscious in the same manner that we are.
Schneider makes the comparison between how we feel killing a chimp versus eating an apple. Both are technically living organisms, but because we have consciousness, we place a higher value on other species that have it as well. If superintelligent, postbiological extraterrestrials don’t have consciousness, can we expect them to understand us? Even more importantly, would they value us at all? Food for thought for any proponents of active SETI.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:SF-snufjes }, Robotics and A.I. Artificiel Intelligence ( E, F en NL )
Stanton Friedman weighs in on Pentagon's Secret UFO Search, with Kathleen Marden, 12-27-17
Stanton Friedman weighs in on Pentagon's Secret UFO Search, with Kathleen Marden, 12-27-17
Stan Friedman with Kathleen Marden weigh in on the Pentagon's Secret UFO Search. Stan mentions he is pleased with Tom DeLonge's efforts and the team of high profile people on the To The Stars Academy board. Kathy mentions how important Luis Elizondo, Chris Mellon and Dr. Hal Puthoff among others are to the board as well. Stan: "It's a new ballgame for UFOlogy!" https://podcastufo.com/ In hour two, along with replying to caller's questions, they discuss the Betty & Barney Hill case including some never mentioned before family dynamics when they decided to go public.
Bio: Nuclear Physicist-Lecturer Stanton T. Friedman received his BSc. and MSc. Degrees in physics from the University of Chicago in 1955 and 1956. He was employed for 14 years as a nuclear physicist by such companies as GE, GM, Westinghouse, TRW Systems, Aerojet General Nucleonics, and McDonnell Douglas working in such highly advanced, classified, eventually cancelled programs as nuclear aircraft, fission and fusion rockets, and various compact nuclear powerplants for space and terrestrial applications.
He became interested in UFOs in 1958, and since 1967 has lectured about them at more than 600 colleges and 100 professional groups in 50 U.S. states, 10 Canadian provinces and 18 other countries in addition to various nuclear consulting efforts. He has published more than 90 UFO papers and has appeared on hundreds of radio and TV programs including on Larry King in 2007 and twice in 2008, and many documentaries. He is the original civilian investigator of the Roswell Incident and co-authored Crash at Corona: The Definitive Study of the Roswell Incident.
Bio: Kathleen Marden is a leading researcher of contact with nonhuman intelligence, an author, and lecturer. Her educational background in the social sciences has shaped her interest in scientific ufology. Extensive research and investigation into alien abduction has convinced her that some abductions are real.
She earned a B.A. degree in social work from the University of New Hampshire and participated in graduate studies in education while working as a teacher and education services coordinator. Her scholarship led to acceptance into the Alpha Kappa Delta sociology honor society. During her fifteen years as an educator, she innovated, designed and implemented model educational programs. She also held a supervisory position, coordinating, training and evaluating education staff.
Her interest in UFOs dates back to September 20, 1961, when her aunt, Betty Hill, phoned her childhood home to report that she and Barney had encountered a flying saucer in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. A primary witness to the evidence of the UFO encounter and the aftermath, Kathleen has intimate knowledge of the Hill’s biographical histories, investigation files, and scientific interest in their sensational experience. This led to a journey of exploration, leaving no stone unturned, to find answers through scholarly work, investigation and social research. She is recognized as the world’s leading expert on the Betty and Barney Hill abduction.
Here are 7 of the most-viewed news and feature stories of this past year.
1. Scientists reveal secrets of lost continent Zealandia.
In February, scientists were discussing whether a submerged realm called Zealandia should be recognized as a full-fledged Earth continent. In October, a team of researchers returned from an expedition to Zealandia and reported their results.
A rainbow seen from the research ship JOIDES Resolution, during the Zealandia expedition.
Image by Tim Fulton via International Ocean Discovery Program/ JRSO/ NSF.
2. Close shave from an undetected asteroid.
Whoosh! Astronomers discovered a small asteroid – now designated as asteroid 2017 OO1 – on July 23. That was 3 days after it passed 1/3 the moon’s distance from Earth. More.
Artist’s concept of an asteroid passing near Earth.
3. When’s the next U.S. total solar eclipse?
After 2017’s awesome total solar eclipse on August 21, the next total solar eclipse visible from North America will be April 8, 2024. More.
4. Biblical signs in the sky on September 23, 2017?
A mirror in the sky to “signs” from the Bible’s Book of Revelation? Possibly. But this same sky scene has been seen 4 other times in the past 1,000 years. An astronomer explains.
Green arrows show the “9” stars of Leo.Blue arrows show the planets Mercury, Venus, and Mars. Red arrow is Jupiter. Violet arrow is the moon (shown enlarged). The sun is at Virgo’s shoulder.
This asteroid-comet hybrid was closest to Earth December 16. Its presence near Earth may be why the Geminid meteors put on a good show in 2017. Info and images of the rock-comet here.
6. History of global temperature 1880-2016.
Take 14 seconds to watch the change in Earth’s surface temperature from 1880 through 2016. More.
7. And, lastly, the ever-popular … Betelgeuse will explode someday.
Someday, the star Betelgeuse will run out of fuel, collapse under its own weight, and then rebound in a spectacular supernova explosion. Someday … but probably not soon. More.
Betelgeuse imaged in ultraviolet light by the Hubble Space Telescope and subsequently enhanced by NASA. The bright white spot is likely one of this star’s poles.
Image via NASA/ESA.
Bottom line: EarthSky’s 7 most-viewed news and feature stories of 2017. Happy new year to our readers, and thank you for visiting EarthSky!
EarthSky sends out a year’s worth of thank yous to our friends from around the world who shared images with us throughout the year. Please keep sharing in 2018!
Here are the most popular photo galleries from 2017:
1. Moon sweeps past Venus and Mars.
As 2017 opened, the young moon swept past dazzling Venus in the west after sunset. Mars was there, too, and, for those with optical aid, Neptune! Go to gallery.
As seen from the Northern Hemisphere, the moon, Venus and Mars arced up and to the left of the sunset Sunday evening, January 1, 2017.
Photo by Gowrishankar Lakshminarayanan Parsippany, New Jersey. More photos here.
2. February 10-11 lunar eclipse.
A penumbral eclipse is subtle, but has a quiet beauty all its own. Go to gallery.
February 10, 2017 full moon rising over northeast Oklahoma, with a tinge of Earth’s penumbral shadow visible.
Wonderful photos of the moon and Jupiter on June 3, 2017, from around the world. Go to gallery.
Moon and Jupiter on June 3, 2017 from Deirdre Horan in Dublin, Ireland. More photos.
4. Summer full moon.
EarthSky friends are moon-lovers! Favorite photos of the July 2017 full moon from EarthSky friends around the world. Go to gallery.
John Ashley at Glacier National Park, Montana, wrote: “The July 2017 full moon rises over Mount Saint Nicholas on its way into a warm summer dusk. Video on my FB page at JohnAshleyFineArt. More photos. ”
5. Total solar eclipse.
We received many more wonderful photos of the August 21 eclipse than for any prior event. Go to gallery.
Sue Waddell contributed this eclipse composite from Eastview, Kentucky, where there was a 98.3% eclipse.More photos.
6. Orionid meteor shower.
October’s Orionid meteor shower didn’t disappoint. Go to gallery.
Composite image of meteors seen on the morning of October 21, 2017 from Simon Lee Waldram of Fuerteshoot in Spain. More photos.
7. A grand year for the Geminids.
December’s Geminid meteor shower was thought to have a better-than-average chance of producing a rich display, since the Geminids’ parent body – a strange rock-comet called 3200 Phaethon – is nearby. And so it was! Go to gallery.
“The Geminids are good,” reported veteran meteor observer Eliot Herman in Tucson, Arizona, who captured this fireball on the morning of December 14 around 4 a.m. More photos.
Bottom line: Favorite Earthsky photo galleries of 2017.
Science fiction has taught us to expect our first contact with alien life to be a momentous event, with radio signals from another civilization filling our airwaves and perhaps even the arrival of an alien spaceship or two. Reality is somewhat less exciting, and scientists have long expected our first discovery of extraterrestrial life to be on the microscopic scale. Now, the Russian space agency claims they may have stumbled upon just that, and it may have been hiding under our noses the entire time.
Russian cosmonauts have reportedly discovered tiny bacteria on a swab collected from outside the International Space Station, and they’re confident that the organisms didn’t originate on our planet. If the discovery can be confirmed, it would be the very first concrete evidence of extraterrestrial life. That’s a pretty big deal.
The swabs, which were collected years ago but seemingly overlooked, contained living bacteria which may have come from outer space. “Somehow these swabs reveal bacteria that were absent during the launch of the ISS module,” Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov explains. “That is, they have come from outer space and settled along the external surface. They are being studied so far and it seems that they pose no danger.”
Along with the purported alien bacteria, other bacteria thought to have originated on Earth was also found on the swabs. Surviving in the vacuum of space is no easy feat, and intense temperature fluctuations failed to kill the bacteria over the course of three years, which is mighty impressive. It’s unclear exactly how the researchers were able to differentiate between terrestrial bacteria and the alien bacteria that appeared within the same samples.
The bacteria was brought back to Earth on the swabs and is now being studied, though the Russian space agency says it shouldn’t be considered dangerous. The group apparently didn’t actually know the bacteria was present on the swab samples until it was returned to Earth for closer examination.
There will surely be plenty of scientific interest and certainly debate over where the bacteria originated, but if you’ve seen sci-fi movies you already know that the bacteria will become sentient and lead to the total destruction of the Earth within a few weeks anyway, so get your affairs in order.
MIT Astronomer's 'Zoo Theory' Explains Why Aliens Have Not Made Contact With Earth
MIT Astronomer's 'Zoo Theory' Explains Why Aliens Have Not Made Contact With Earth
It may be an old theory that was first proposed almost 45 years ago. But with SpaceX’s recent rocket launch sending many Los Angeles residents into a frenzy due to what they thought was a UFO sighting, and reports claiming that the U.S. government was secretly involved for years in the study of such phenomena, the so-called “Zoo Theory” is again making headlines for its unusual explanation as to why there has yet to be a confirmed UFO or alien sighting to this day.
The Zoo Theory was first proposed in 1973, when Massachusetts Institute of Technology radio astronomer John A. Ball wrote that aliens behave in a similar way to zookeepers, avoiding actual contact with humans to allow them to function normally and perform their everyday tasks. As Newsweek explained, the theory suggests that aliens are quietly watching us behind the scenes, but not interfering with the evolution of humanity because we are “too unevolved and uncivilized” to pose a significant threat or distraction to extraterrestrial beings.
In a 2016 article, Science Alert opined that the Zoo Theory is plausible, as there is a chance that life on other planets, if it does exist, evolved at a much faster pace than life evolved on Earth. That could lead to some interesting hypotheses about how these highly-evolved, possibly older civilizations could be much more technologically advanced than humanity currently is.
“An OC [other civilization] that is, say, a century younger than we are might not be able to communicate over interstellar distances; a century ago we couldn’t,” Ball wrote.
“And an OC a millennium older than we are would probably be using a technology for interstellar communications, such as modulated gamma rays, that we humans haven’t yet learned how to do.”
As further noted by Newsweek, the Zoo Theory is just one of many that explain why we have yet to confirm alien life on other planets, though other theories are leaning toward the possibility of non-intelligent life, as opposed to extraterrestrial beings that boast of advanced technology. Scientists have been exploring worlds such as Saturn’s moon Enceladus, in hopes of confirming whether the necessary ingredients of life are present. But while there could be a chance Enceladus, which is notable for its subsurface ocean, is habitable, experts believe that the moon might only be able to support microbial forms of life.
Despite the best efforts of scientists to confirm the existence of extraterrestrial life, recent efforts have not come anywhere close to proving that we aren’t the only form of intelligent life in the universe. Last month, a team of scientists conducted the first extensive search for radio signals from alien life, only to come up empty due to a lack of signals from distances of 50 parsecs (963 trillion miles) from Earth in all directions. According to Cosmos, the researchers concluded that the chances of signals from high-duty-cycle radio transmitters ever being detected within that 50-parsec distance are less than 0.1 percent.
Even with the Zoo Theory in place, as well as the continued lack of evidence to support the belief that other planets can support alien life, whether intelligent or non-intelligent, some researchers are still confident in the possibility of confirming extraterrestrial life in the foreseeable future. Earlier this year, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute senior astronomer Seth Shostak spoke to Futurism, quipping that he “bet everybody a cup of coffee” that scientists will be able to confirm intelligent alien life within the next 20 years.
Topgeheim materiaal uit UFO’s moet openbaar. Deze ufoloog voert de druk op de overheid op
Topgeheim materiaal uit UFO’s moet openbaar. Deze ufoloog voert de druk op de overheid op
Ufoloog Anthony Bragalia probeert te achterhalen wat voor soort metaal de Amerikaanse overheid uit UFO’s heeft gehaald.
Het materiaal zou opgeslagen liggen op het terrein van miljardair Robert Bigelow in Las Vegas.
Bragalia heeft een Wob-verzoek ingediend over het metaal en eist dat bepaalde documenten hierover openbaar worden gemaakt.
Hij is naar eigen zeggen bereid de Amerikaanse overheid voor de rechter te slepen als hij de informatie niet krijgt.
Grote sommen geld
De New York Times schreef eerder deze maand dat het Amerikaanse ministerie van Defensie in het geheim onderzoek deed naar UFO’s. Het ministerie bevestigde het bestaan van dit project.
De krant meldde ook dat tijdens het onderzoek een onbekende metaallegering uit een UFO zou zijn gehaald.
Bigelow kreeg grote sommen geld van het ministerie om de metaallegering te onderzoeken en te bewaren.
Historische gebeurtenis
Het feit dat het Amerikaanse leger toegeeft onbekend materiaal uit een UFO te hebben gehaald is volgens Bragalia een ‘historische gebeurtenis’.
“Er zijn nog maar weinig details over de herkomst van het materiaal,” zei hij. “Ik eis dat verschillende agentschappen alles naar buiten brengen wat zij weten over deze mogelijke buitenaardse legeringen.”
Verbluffende eigenschappen
Ralph Blumenthal, één van de auteurs van het artikel van de New York Times, verklaarde tegenover MSNBC: “Ze hebben materiaal verzameld van die onbekende vliegende objecten. Zo hopen wetenschappers te kunnen achterhalen hoe die UFO’s aan hun verbluffende eigenschappen komen.”
Blumenthal zei verder dat het Pentagon nog altijd niet weet uit welk materiaal ze bestaan. “Het is een soort legering die ze niet kennen,” stelde hij.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.