by Mac Tonnies
The Cydonia controversy has not—and never has been—a cut-and-dry battle between NASA and a minority of eccentric researchers who want the truth about Cydonia. None of the credentialed scientists involved in planetary SETI have accused NASA of covering up the existence of extraterrestrial artifacts. But until privately operated spacecraft are dispatched to Mars, NASA remains the sole arbiter between the public and the scientific priesthood.
NASA’s obstinance betrays a certain unacknowledged fear. The reasons for this fear are clearly rooted in the emerging democratization of space science data. Malin Space Science Systems boasts one of the most incredible collections of imagery—of any type—ever posted on the Internet. With the online Cydonia researchers watching this archive with bated breath, the priesthood of the Space Age’s halcyon pre-Internet days realizes that its grip is slackening.
A knowledgeable amateur with the right software can produce stunning imagery beyond the abilities of the NASA’s own computers and can correspond with others with similar aims. The end result is comparable to the wild success of SETI@home. With enough eyes searching the Martian landscape for oddities, the public can, theoretically, beat officialdom to the punch in the event that an indisputable alien artifact lies buried in NASA’s stash of online Mars images.
Harvesting the Stars
Almost as if on cue from the new millennium, the mainstream search for extraterrestrial intelligence movement has unofficially conceded that it’s not impossible that aliens are already here, rather than diligently manning radio telescopes hundreds of light years away. In press releases, senior SETI researchers Seth Shostak and Jill Tarter have quietly revised SETI’s longtime assumption that aliens will be forever out of physical reach. Inevitably interpreted by some as signaling a conspiratorial inside agenda, SETI’s change of perspective is more accurately attributed to recent advances in science and their implications for the human future.
While SETI continues to ridicule the UFO phenomenon as evidence of extraterrestrial visitation, arguments by nuclear physicist and ufologist Stanton Friedman outlined in his online journal New Frontiers in Science remain especially topical. Friedman, a long-time critic of SETI’s justifications, has justifiably lambasted the “old school” SETI assumption that extraterrestrial civilizations would necessarily forgo interstellar travel because of the daunting requirements of chemical rockets. Indeed, SETI’s long-held contention that beings thousands or millions of years more advanced than us would be constrained by Apollo era technology (already near-obsolete here on Earth) has always seemed something of a convenient anachronism for researchers content to keep the study of extraterrestrial intelligence comfortably academic.
New Earths
New technologies and promises of bigger, better space telescopes lead increasing numbers of scientists to postulate a galaxy brimming with planets. Extrasolar planets, far from being rare jewels, are turning out to be almost alarmingly common; new worlds are discovered monthly, with scarce mention in the mainstream press. Like Space Shuttle flights before the disintegration of the Columbia in February of 2003, the detection of new planets is taken for granted.
But while our list of extrasolar planets grows, we have yet to locate a rocky terrestrial world that might foster recognizable life. All of the new planets detected are gas giants, some dwarfing even Jupiter. The current generation of telescopes is simply too coarse to detect something as infinitesimal as a Mars or Earth analogue. However, that by no means implies that terrestrial worlds aren’t out there waiting to be discovered by more refined instruments. If the Jovian planets in our own solar system are any indication, it’s very likely that the swelling numbers of new planets harbor rocky moons. And since some of the newly discovered planets are much closer to their respective stars than Jupiter, it’s conceivable they might lie well within what exobiologists call the “habitable zone,” where there is enough heat to keep life from freezing, but not enough to sterilize it.
Statistical analysis dictates that somewhere in the galactic whirlpool are Earth-like planets. If only some of these develop prebiotic conditions (i.e., the proverbial primordial soup), and only some of the remaining planets develop life, and only some of these develop intelligent life, prospects for extrasolar intelligence seem good. So good, in fact, that Amir D. Aczel, a mathematician intoxicated with the sheer vastness of the known universe, has presented an engaging mathematical proof that we share the cosmos with at least one other intelligent extraterrestrial race.
Aczel’s proof, spelled out in his nonfiction book Probability 1, may prove nothing to committed debunkers who insist that intelligent life is an astronomical fluke. Analogies to previous paradigm-defining innovations such as the Copernican revolution are simply too numerous to mention. While rogue cosmologist Frank Tipler and like-minded philosopher-physicists continue to preach that intelligence is ours and ours alone, their statistically and anthropocentrically based certainties are beginning to show cracks. By carrying out a methodical search for extrasolar planets using improved telescopes and spectroscopes, finding the first living world is imminent; I predict that we will be able to discern the chemical signature of life on an extrasolar planet within twenty years.
Unlike the controversial discovery of organic pigment in Mars’s atmosphere, the detection of life orbiting a neighbor star promises to be less threatening to our collective ego. And because of the enormous distance involved, political rivalries such as the one currently waged between geologically inclined JPL and proponents of manned Mars missions won’t enter into the equation. Not that vast distances are uncrossable, but NASA has yet to announce even a tentative date for an interstellar probe. Such a craft is not technically out of the scope of existing technologies, but interstellar ventures will probably not be attempted in the near future.
The discovery of a life-harboring world would accelerate preparations for an interstellar mission. Even with a potential relativistic time delay of decades or centuries, the scientific payback may be too tempting to ignore. The questions that arise are less technical than political: What sort of social structure can last long enough to receive the probe’s broadcasts when it finally arrives and commences observation? Will the probe pose risks to the native biosphere? In the unlikely event that the planet is inhabited, should we adopt a hands-off policy or study the aliens at our discretion?
The planets and asteroids beckon.
The Postbiological Cosmos
Rapid advances in computing, manufacturing, and physics (theoretical and otherwise) suggest that intelligent extraterrestrials (assuming they exist) are almost certainly more exotic and technologically capable than previously assumed. Visionaries such as roboticist Hans Moravec, who predicts that the human species will become effectively obsolete within the next few hundred years, and K. Eric Drexler, whose work with nanotechnology has done nothing less than redefine how futurists view the coming decades, have collectively modeled a future in which artificial intelligence is near-omnipresent (which they call “ubiquitous computing” or “ubicomp”), and practical travel between stars is moved out of the arena of wishful thinking and into the realm of the imminently possible.
Recent books such as Moravec’s Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind and Ray Kurzweil’s The Age of Spiritual Machines present technologies as optimistic as any dreamed by Arthur C. Clarke—and as potentially hazardous as the dystopian nightmares of neo-Luddite Bill Joy, computer expert and author of the provocatively titled article in Wired magazine, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us.”
At the same time, breakthroughs in fields as seemingly arcane as “quantum teleportation” (and possibly “antigravity”) reveal a universe alive with untapped potential. If the human species can survive what astronomer Carl Sagan poetically termed our “technological adolescence,” predicting the future with any hope of accuracy becomes impossible. In all probability, the minds that will plot our trajectory through the next millennium will be humanity’s cybernetic offspring; the role of humans as we know
them is quite unfathomable (although Moravec argues that we will coexist peacefully with our “mind children,” perhaps even merging with them until the distinction between animate and inanimate is thoroughly dissolved).
SETI’s Disturbing Double Standard
Such speculation fuels SETI’s new intellectual renaissance, as addressed by Shostak and Tarter (the inspiration for Jodie Foster’s character in the movie Contact ). SETI’s new assessment of the galactic neighborhood, while conservative, is both welcome and long overdue. Rather than reflecting a hidden agenda, SETI’s willingness to entertain once-heretical notions indicates the (perhaps grudging) need to acknowledge the changing scientific climate.
However, SETI’s implicit rejection of evidence for extraterrestrial artifacts on Mars betrays its frailty as a political entity. Ignoring the evidence in Cydonia is ironic, as Carl Sagan’s own early calculations suggested that our solar system may have been visited once every twenty-thousand years. Even if Sagan grossly overestimated, a single visiting ET civilization could have left artifacts within our ability to discover.
Interestingly, mainstream SETI astronomers have made no secret of their searches for “Bracewell probes”—theoretical automatic devices left by visiting civilizations (much like the Monolith left buried on the Moon in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey ). Bracewell probes, if any exist, are thought to function as calling cards, alerting their long-departed creators upon detecting intelligent life; conversely, the probes themselves could establish a dialogue with an emerging technical species.
Since SETI is willing to look for ET artifacts in space, why not planetary surfaces? Perhaps if the disconcertingly human-like Face hadn’t first been discovered and popularized, radio SETI’s attitude toward planetary SETI would be different. Cydonia, with its implied terrestrial connection, has been neatly excluded from mainstream SETI research for no apparent scientific reason (NASA’s erroneous “tricks of light” and bungled Mars Orbital Laser Altimeter data notwithstanding).
Merging planetary SETI and mainstream radio SETI promises to advance objective efforts to detect intelligent alien life, even if eventual contact is one-way. The hoped-for signal sought by Jill Tarter may not be an electromagnetic emission from some distant sun but a collection of geometric anomalies on a planet we’ve already pronounced “dead.”
Not long ago, a geologist involved in JPL’s robotic exploration of Mars remarked that the proper way to view the fourth planet was to “expect the unexpected.” We would be wise to apply this maxim to the ongoing search for extraterrestrial intelligence as well.
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Taking the Leap
The population has taken to underground vaults and sprawling, sand-abraded domes. Solar panels cover the desert floor like crystalline seas. Even the craters have been fitted with cyclopean greenhouses, accessed by earthen ramps that clash with the reddening sky.
Surface activity is limited to the lumbering, automated sweepers that patrol the solar farms, whisking away the everencroaching sand. Occasionally, a tracked vehicle with polarized windows emerges from one of the vault-like habitats. Their errands are inscrutable and somehow listless, like the motions of dying beetles.
Derelict scaffolds conceal half-finished habitats. The background radiation is high, even not accounting for the invisible sleet of cosmic rays. Although records of the Event itself are scarce and fragmented, it seems at least a small portion of the apocalypse was humans’ own doing; automatic defense systems had interpreted the first incoming meteors as enemy warheads, and had responded with missiles of their own. Consequently, cities that might have otherwise had a chance against the threat from space were vaporized.
At night, the sky burns with the aseptic white glow of infalling debris. The stars are lost in a devilish halo. The Event’s survivors dig deeper, buying time…
Will the human race survive the next one-thousand years? Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, for one, doesn’t think we will unless we expand into space. It’s sad commentary on our predicament when a week’s worth of precision bombing in Iraq could have financed a manned Mars exploration program. Will humans make the evolutionary cut? Almost certainly not. But that doesn’t exclude our descendants, who may not be human in any recognizable sense.
We are treading a vast and portentous ontological gulf, and the next few hundred years will be absolutely decisive in determining the direction taken by (presumably) intelligent life on this planet. Either the Earth will become a planetary mass grave or it will become a fondly remembered home, a quasi-utopian sanctuary and beloved womb. Our posthuman descendants will take on a variety of forms; almost by definition, they will be multiplex, vastly intelligent, and as tenacious as any virus.
A thousand years, in geological time, is less than an eyeblink. In this context, a mere century can be viewed as a single defining event. If so, it’s not unreasonable to expect that our flailing attempts at ascension, burdened as they are with superstition and bureaucracy, are being watched by others in the space-time neighborhood. We might be quite amusing to them. Or quite sickening.
Upon learning of my interests, people invariably ask me about my beliefs in aliens and Martian civilizations. The point I try to make is this: If extraterrestrials exist—which I think they probably do—then it doesn’t logically follow that they’re here (although they very well might be). Second, aliens are not likely to think in terms of 1950s sci-fi films. I doubt there are too many cosmic altruists out there, like the blatantly messianic Mr. Carpenter in the 1951 sci-fi movie classic The Day the Earth Stood Still.
On the upside, I don’t think actively malevolent civilizations are too common, either. Why destroy or enslave another civilization when reason suggests that advanced ET intelligences will be able to provide for themselves?
Our time as an endlessly complacent species is running out. In a very true sense, it has always been running out, but our technological society is just waking to the fact—and perhaps wishing it was all a bad dream. Our weather patterns are showing ominous new trends: global warming continues; deforestation and desertification hack away at our biosphere’s roots with the unheeding avarice of out-of-control clockwork. Can we rouse ourselves in time to make a difference? Or is Earth to become a clone of Mars, arid and wind-scoured, with any remains of civilization consumed by dust?
An ecological 9/11 might get our attention, but it also might consume too much of it: while we feebly try to restore order, an uncatalogued asteroid might be racing silently our way. Or the rain forests will unleash an airborne Ebola in an attempt to maintain some semblance of homeostasis. Evidence strongly suggests that Mars died a convulsive and sudden death via meteor bombardment. If this is true, Mars exploration may prove essential if we’re to protect our own planet from a similar fate.
Earth is gradually but inexorably dying under what William S. Burroughs referred to as a mudslide of “devalued human stock.” Don’t think our planet won’t fight back, even if its weapons seem initially quaint compared to humankind’s iconic nuclear stockpiles.
As I write, our planet is steered primarily by soulless multinational corporations and bigoted governments whose future is as reassuringly near as next month’s NASDAQ or voter opinion poll results. Is this how it ends, snuffed out into petrochemical oblivion before we make the critical move off-planet? Our space shuttles crash because they’re obsolete, fragile museum pieces. But our smart bombs are cutting edge: gleaming chrome and laser-light avatars of technological cunning.
But if we have every reason to be deeply afraid, we also have room to be deeply hopeful. We possess the technology to stage a crewed mission to Mars. It is within our means to colonize the Moon and extend our reach to the outer planets, probing the enigmatic moons of Jupiter for life and looking for evidence of extraterrestrial visitation. If we can establish beachheads in space, we will be helping to ensure that the human legacy is not lost in some orgy of destruction.
If we—almost certainly not the familiar carbon-based “we” but a g
reatly empowered posthuman “we”—still exist in one-thousand years’ time, we will have achieved a monumental victory over entropy and our own penchant for violence. Destroying a posthuman civilization won’t be easy. But destroying a merely human civilization is almost absurdly simple in a cosmic context.
Survival implies drastic change. Parting ways with the familiar can be difficult but is nonetheless imperative. We can embrace the future by creating it, or we can retread the past by succumbing to xenophobia and the pathological allure of war and destructive energy sources. Our collective predicament transcends national allegiance and geopolitical clashes. The future is not some static entity waiting for us to catch up; it is a dynamic realm that demands creativity, intellect, foresight, and drive.
We know that planetary extinction is a real possibility. What will we choose to do about it? So far, our best method of calculating the lifetimes of extrasolar civilizations is by extrapolation based on our own technological prowess. It is by no means certain that we will follow in the footsteps of the protagonists of 1950s science fiction, boldly expanding into space until we are galactic citizens. If NASA’s current manned space program is any indication, we may very well fail to make the crucial move off-planet, thereby ensuring our eventual extinction.
The odds against a single-planet civilization surviving are astonishingly high. Carl Sagan referred to the violence and environmental irresponsibility of the twentieth century as growing pains in our species’ “technological adolescence.” As an unruly and destructive species with little interest in long-term, survival-oriented goals, we may not survive past our collective childhood.
