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FQXi BLOGS
CATEGORY: Blog
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TOPIC: Hunting LGM
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 | | image: Gaetan Lee |
Time to upgrade that so-last-season flip phone you are still carrying around in favor of a flashing lightweight earpiece? Tech moves so fast these days, in part thanks to the Law of Accelerating Returns, we've hardly time to show off the latest before it becomes the out-of-datest. The positive side, of course, is that updates can in fact bring about startling improvements‚ such as those just instituted at the Aricebo radio scope in Puerto Rico. Thanks to a major upgrade, Aricebo has significantly increased its sensitivity to extraterrestrial signals, upping its data stream by some 500 percent.
That's good news for anyone interested in astronomical research, but it has a special ring to Foundational folks, who will recognize that Aricebo is where Project Phoenix gets piggyback time. Phoenix is part of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, which is the quest for hard evidence of alien society (what friend and foe alike sometimes call LGM, or Little Green Men). SETI, it bears repeating, has nothing to do with UFOs. According to everything we currently know about stellar evolution, planetary formation, organic evolution, and the like, the galaxy should, by at least some plausible readings, be full of LGM. Given that logic, if reasonably advanced civilizations--meaning neither too far behind to be sufficiently technological nor so far ahead as to be unrecognizable--elsewhere in the Milky Way are putting out transmissions, there is some non-zero chance that one of the SETI projects will spot them.
Is it likely, though? That's a separate question. When pondering SETI it's hard not to think of ourselves as an earnest tribe looking for smoke signals when all around them electromagnetic chatter goes unnoticed. (If there is superluminal communication, for example, we don't know how to do it, much less how to look for it.) The smoke signal metaphor, though, may both be apt and hopeful. The Milky Way is a big place, and has been turning a long time. While super-tech societies could well be transparent, those closer to us in technological evolution might not be. We might miss the podcasts, that is, but still catch the smoke signals from some other awkward beginners, which would be more than enough.
 | | image: jesiehart |
(Problem, though: would even legitimate alien chatter be distinguishable from noise? Perhaps not, according to some, who have argued that even if the residents of Gilese 581C are talking to each other, their signals will resemble black-body radiation from here. Such considerations add to the difficulties of knowing how to define, scan for, and recognize, life. But what is SETI if not daring?)
The search for exoplanets on which LGM might be found got a similar boost recently with the coming online of E-ELT, the rather frankly named "European Extremely Large Telescope." E-ELT is a marvel of adaptive optics, that technology that makes the wobbly, fuzzed-out images we tend to see from underneath our blanket of turbulent sky into sharply defined pixels. I've seen a demonstration of the difference in clarity between adaptive and nonadaptive optical systems in single-star resolution, and it is decidedly impressive. One can only imagine what this 1000-mirror system may produce.
Just keeping E-ELT dish clean is a technological feat; it requires a "snow" of carbon dioxide crystals that take dust with them as they evaporate. There is also an array of six lasers to excite sodium ions high in the atmosphere as "artificial beacons," essentially visual reference points for focusing the dish. For those interested in how the whole thing works, a nicely concise summary is here.
Next, Charles Simonyi (that Microsoft billionaire who went to the ISS) and Bill Gates (you know him) are building a telescope of their own on a Chilean mountaintop: the LSST, or "Large Synoptic Survey Telescope." Each man is ponying up $10 million for the three-mirror system, which attaches to a three billion pixel camera in order, essentially, to film the sky.
An extension of the impulse that led Andy Warhol to film the Empire State building for 24 hours? Rather, LSST's detailed motion picture of the stars will allow for time to be used as an observational parameter in a novel way. A rush of neutrinos strikes Super-Kamiokande? Check the LSST record--the supernova, from prequel to burst, may all have been recorded.
Even better than that, the data will be distributed free of charge to anyone on the internet. Look for some potentially revolutionary astrophysics and a lot of "There's a Face on Mars" type noise.
Earth-based searches not enough for you? There's also a project in the works, this time with Russia at the helm, to land on Europa and look for LGM directly. In this instance, that would probably be Little Green Microbes; but who knows? There's no technological society under the Europan ice (though that would make a killer screenplay), but folks who say there's no life at all are saying more than they know. It's still within the realm of possibility that our nearest alien neighbors are no "more" than a few hundred million miles away.
From Physorg.com:
"The head of the Space Research Institute, Lev Zelyony, said a project to explore the giant gaseous planet Jupiter would shortly be included in the programme of the European Space Agency (ESA) for the years 2015 to 2025.
'The main task is to explore its satellite Europa, on which under a thick layer of ice a liquid water ocean has been detected,' said Zelyony.
Russia is to participate in the programme, called Laplace after French astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace, and has suggested landing a craft in one of the fissures in Europa's icy crust.
Having landed, the craft would melt some of the ice and search for life forms, he said.
'Where there is an ocean, life could arise. In this respect, after Mars, the Europa satellite is probably the most intriguing place in the solar system,' said Zelyony."
 | | image: Sir Mildred Pierce |
| | this post has been edited by the author since its original submission |
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Addendum: This isn't technically Foundational, but for those interested in humanity's quest to become a spacefaring species, there's noteworthy news this week.
Richard Branson-- the Virgin Galactic entrepreneur who has said he wants to offer low-orbit tourism by 2010 -- just unveiled the much-awaited Spaceship Two. Construction and test-flights of the midair-launched vehicle will take place later this year, and the seats for the first public trips are already filled -- at an affordable $200,000 a ride.
(There's a nice animation of the ship here.)
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I agree with your article whole heartedly. I have long considered SETI a dubious,if not noble, folly, for we are searching for civilizations at precisely the same developmental point in their history (as we observe it) as our own. For how many years have we had radio communications and how for many years longer before something else replaces it? Your analogy with smoke signals is one I have also used in the past. Why should we assume that any life forms still use or have even developed this technology at precisely the same moment in time of which we are searching for it.
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