your target planet.† Today this idea strikes me as unlikely, but useful for
reminding us that electromagnetic signals, our communication mode
du jour, are not the only possibility. It is also useful to think about send-
ing a message through time as well as through space. Huge longevity
could give a material message more chance of being found than a radio
message, which travels far but doesn’t stick around. Once we get used
to the idea that a message may well be one-way, rather than part of a
dialogue, then it doesn’t really matter whether it is sent through space
or time.
*Or at least, it turns out, that of Celera Genomics CEO Craig Venter, suggesting that the genes for egomania may be overrepresented in “the human genome.”
†Unless you also designed their biosphere to begin with, but this thought is “scientifically incorrect.”
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If you ask any biochemist to explain the prime number products
found in the genome of bacteriophage φX174, they will tell you that it
is just a funny coincidence. The skeptical mind wants intelligent design,
but wants to find it out there, not in here. The problem with looking
for signs of “anomalous order” is in determining what is anomalous,
what is coincidence, and what is simply beyond our limited ability to
comprehend natural sources of order. In 1967, astronomers were aston-
ished to discover several strong sources of regularly repeating radio
emissions—just the kind of thing that SETI had been looking for. These
were first called LGM sources, for “little green men.” Today we have
discovered over three hundred of these, and we know that the patterns
are due to rapidly spinning neutron stars (picture a lighthouse with a
strong radio lamp). We call them pulsars, and nobody thinks they were
made by advanced aliens.
Any strange enough coincidence can seem like anomalous order, and
even on a cosmic scale, they are all over the place. The weirdest and
most wonderful cosmic coincidence is that the Sun and the Moon are
the same size when viewed from Earth, which makes possible the
lovely, spine-tingling spectacle of a total solar eclipse, when the bright
disk of the sun is completely, precisely masked by the nearby moon,
and the exquisite outer tendrils of the solar corona is briefly visible to
starstruck watchers on Earth. Even stranger, since the Moon is slowly
receding from Earth, this is also a temporary situation. Total solar
eclipses on Earth became possible only in the age when humanity hap-
pened along to enjoy them. Evidence for God? A message from some
supertechnological creator of worlds? Just a coincidence?
How much coincidence is too much? For any given coincidence this
probability can often be calculated, but for all possible coincidences I
don’t think it can be. So our sense about whether too much weird stuff
happens to be explained by “just coincidence” is left as a question of
intuition, not probability theory.*
A completely logical resolution to the Fermi Paradox is simply that
we’re the first ones in the galaxy to make it to the stage of radio tech-
nology and space travel. Some have claimed that this is the simplest
explanation and therefore the best. The problem is that this explana-
*I’m hoping that I’m wrong about this and that, coincidentally, someone who knows the proof will read this and e-mail it to me.
Fermi’s Paradox
331
tion requires an extreme violation of the principle of mediocrity,
because if we are first, then our location is unique in the entire uni-
verse.* It doesn’t seem likely. So, it comes down to which unsupported
pillar of scientific reasoning you want to violate: Occam’s razor (the
simplest explanation is correct) or the principle of mediocrity (there is
nothing special about our location). Take your pick.
Even if we are not completely unique, or “really alone,” we can be
“functionally alone.” If the nearest communicative species is so far
away that we can never have a conversation, then we may forever be
isolated. Any messages received will be from extinct societies saying,
“We were sentient once, and young.”
M A G I C
I have thus far avoided one obvious solution to the Fermi Paradox.
Some people believe that there is no paradox, because contact has
already been made. UFOs are alien spaceships. Their presence is being
covered up by the authorities or simply not taken seriously by narrow-
minded scientists. Or, somehow, although individuals have had unmis-
takable contact experiences such as sightings and abductions, our cur-
rent conceptions of physical reality are limited in ways that preclude a
scientific recognition of the signs of contact.
These views are widely held. Opinion polls consistently demonstrate
that more people believe in UFOs and alien abductions than believe in
key precepts of modern science. Yet, the mere mention of this solution
to the paradox raises the hackles of most skeptical scientists.
The possibility that aliens visited Earth long ago is the least offensive
to modern science. My family once took a ten-day raft trip down the
Tatsenshini River in Alaska, a wild and beautiful place with no obvious
traces of human activity. Our guides were fanatical about insisting that
we leave no signs, however trivial, of our presence in that wilderness
area. If past alien visitors had a similar preservation ethic, we might not
know that they had been here. Or, our solar system today may be lit-
tered with alien artifacts, with little chance that we would yet have dis-
covered them, as the solar system is almost completely unexplored. A
buried artifact on the Moon would surely still be undetected, let alone
*Galileo’s persecutors were right!
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objects on the surface of, or orbiting, any of the other planets, or within
the asteroid belt. It is premature to rule out a past or current alien pres-
ence in our solar system.
And then there is “Clarke’s Third Law,” Sir Arthur’s dictum that
“any sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from
magic.”* Think of how the people of King Arthur’s day reacted to the
telephones, electric lights, typewriters, and steam engines brought to
them by one Connecticut Yankee. It all seemed like pure magic, and
they were only separated by thirteen centuries and the Atlantic Ocean.
How would we react to technology that comes from someplace beyond
us by ten thousand centuries and an ocean of stars?
We can try to imagine the technology of a society millions of years
older than our own, but we can’t rule anything out. Even things that
seem to us like violations of physical laws might not be off-limits to
another species who have had millennia to work the problem. Even
with technology that is already on the horizon, many capabilities that
sound like New Age dreams might become possible. Assuming that
they do not lead to our extinction in the near future, nanotechnology,
wireless communication
s, genetic engineering, and much faster micro-
processors might allow capabilities indistinguishable from telekinesis,
ESP, and immortality. And foreseeable technology is probably a lousy
guide to future capabilities.
Advanced technology may often be incompatible with long-term sur-
vival. But assuming there are survivors, they may have powers that
seem magical, and by nature of their having learned the trick of peace-
ful survival with these fantastic powers, they will be spiritually
advanced creatures. Perhaps they will have solved the riddle of the
quantum and will be able to walk through walls. Um, gee, they sound
sort of like angels. . . .
Even scientific rationalists like Sagan and Clarke, considering the
capabilities of long-lived intelligences, talked themselves into the likely
existence of omnipotent, godlike creatures. Yet they recoil with horror
*His other laws are (1) when a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right; when he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong; (2) the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. Lesser known is Clarke’s Sixty-ninth Law:
“Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software.”
Fermi’s Paradox
333
from people who express a belief in the existence of such creatures but
come at it from outside science.
Once we consider the possible technical capabilities of civilizations
hundreds of millions of years older than ours, nothing is too magical to
be possible.* We are forced to admit that those who believe in angels,
spirits, and creatures from other dimensions living among us are not
really advocating ideas inconsistent with science, only unverifiable by science. Certainly, the universe would be a much less frightening place
if we could clearly delineate the limits of the possible with scientific rea-
soning. But to believe that we can is a modern positivist superstition.
How confident can we be that we are not being contacted in very dif-
ferent ways from what we imagine? Might aliens already be here?
Given our great ignorance, and the possible, unknown capabilities of
advanced alien civilizations, can we really dismiss the possibility that
UFOs are real?
In acknowledging Clarke’s Third Law, science launches us into the
realm of magic. Logic tells me that it is reasonable to look for godlike
signs of advanced aliens in the sky. And yet the idea seems ridiculous. It
is both logical and absurd. Go figure.
*This is maddening for both organized skepticism and organized religion, which have in common that they don’t like magic one bit. Amusingly, the Harry Potter books have been condemned by both scientific skeptics and religious fundamentalists as containing too much magic and sorcery for young minds.
Have You Seen
20 the Saucers?
As we staggered out into the Sunday afternoon sun-
light, somehow the subject of space flight came up.
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Bill Broonzy and his buddies began to sound off
electronic edition
about what the people on the moon would look like.
‘Man,’ said Bill, ‘they gonna be so ugly, if you threw
’em into the Mississippi River, you’d skim ugly for six
months.’ ‘That’s right,’ said Sonny Boy Williamson, ‘they
got feet comin’ out of their ears and eyes comin’ out of their toes,
and their mother would cry if she looked at ’em!’
—ALAN LOMAX, LINER NOTES TO Blues in the Mississippi Night
As is your sort of mind,
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So is your sort of search:
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You will find what you desire.
—ROBERT BROWNING
T H E Y A R E E V E R Y W H E R E
You don’t have to look very far for evidence of a cultural cacophony
about extraterrestrials. In the minds of many, UFOs constantly zip
through our skies carrying mysterious visitors who take a huge interest
in certain humans. Yet, you do have to be a little careful with opinion
polls. If I was asked, “Do you believe that the universe is full of
extraterrestrial intelligent beings, and do you think it possible that
some of them are now on Earth, or have been in the past?” I think I’d
check the “yes” box. If the question was “Do you believe that reported
UFO sightings are alien spacecraft and that aliens walk among us?” I’d
have to check “no.”
Have You Seen the Saucers?
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I think we sometimes confuse interest with belief and overestimate
the extent and danger of public gullibility on this issue. I like reading
my daily astrology message but that doesn’t mean that I think it
“works.” Everyone who collects alien books and conspiracies is not
necessarily a true believer.
Some people take the profusion of stories itself as evidence pointing
to an alien presence. Certainly the intensity and ubiquity of the interest
tells us that the subject taps into a deep well, but is this well fed by visi-
tors or by desire?
“Flying saucers” were actually born of journalistic distortion. In June
1947, pilot Kenneth Arnold, flying near the Cascades in Washington
State, saw something strange—nine brightly glowing lights, moving in a
series of jumps. Arnold described this motion as “like a saucer if you
skip it across water.” A reporter from the Associated Press picked up
on this and described the sightings as “flying saucers.” Arnold never
said they were saucer-shaped, but ever since then dishware-shaped
flying objects have filled our skies. Waves of saucer sightings often cor-
relate with prominent media reports of sightings or human space activ-
ities. One of the largest was provoked by Sputnik, which got everyone
looking up, scanning for new machines.
Among those looking skyward as Sputnik orbited overhead in 1957
were “angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connec-
tion to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.”* Today’s New
Age interest in alien friends descends from beatnik mysticism, which
morphed into hippie psychedelic cosmic consciousness and the boomer
yearning to be members of a special generation who would set them-
selves free. When the revolution did not materialize as planned and
everyone aged past thirty, trust in the coming transcendence was often
placed in creatures from beyond this Earth.
The alien symbol—the little green guy with the big black eyes—ubiq-
uitous in the nineties, will soon go the way of other saturated cultural
icons like the sixties’ peace sign and the seventies’ smiley face. Which is
to say that it’ll never really go away.
UFOs and abductions have become a modern American folk mythol-
ogy in the tradition of Paul Bunyan; tales that grow taller as they are
retold. Some take the stories more seriously than others. As pluralism
*As Ginsberg wrote in Howl.
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/> was fertile ground for social commentary in Voltaire’s irreverent eigh-
teenth-century interplanetary sagas, so today saucer and abduction
myths are rich fodder for satire, as seen in the raunchy cartoon South
Park. * In the pilot episode, “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe,” third-
grader Eric Cartman is abducted by aliens and given some kind of an
implant. Cartman thinks he just had a nightmare, but his pals suspect it
really happened, because they have heard about the mysterious “visi-
tors” who are probing humans and abducting cattle. Cartman angrily
insists that it was just a dream, until a few days later when an eighty-
foot radio antenna suddenly sprouts out of his ass.
S C I E N C E A N D T H E S A U C E R S
The typical scientific response to reports of UFOs and alien encounters
is to assume that there is nothing to any of it. Unquestionably, nearly
all UFO reports are due to illusion, delusion, or confusion. Weather
balloons, strange reflections, satellites, migrating flocks, and the planet
Venus are among the usual suspects. There’s a lot up there to misinter-
pret. Add to this all the reasons that people want to believe—the wish
*I do not mean to imply that Trey Parker and Matt Stone are the Voltaires of the twenty-first century.
Have You Seen the Saucers?
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for a cosmic connection, the need for a personal message from the great
beyond, and the desire for a protective higher power that takes matters
out of human hands. Consider also the close correspondence between
alien stories and earlier myths involving mysterious and mischievous
little humanoids hiding in the forests, hills, and seas. Now that we our-
selves have taken to the sky, we see the little creatures up there, too.
Anyone with her head screwed on more or less in the forward direc-
tion will conclude that most alien reports have nothing at all to do with aliens. But even supposing that 99 percent of alien reports are false,
what about the other 1 percent? One answer is to use inductive reason-
ing to write these off along with the rest. Why don’t you respond
enthusiastically every time some stranger calls and tells you he can save
you a lot of money on your phone bill? Gotta screen your messages.
Astrobiologists are often bombarded with questions and testimonials
Lonely Planets Page 49
