Is Anybody out There?: An Essay on the Probability of the Existence of Extraterrestrial Technological Civilizations or ...

By Nigel Bob Collins

Are we alone? Or is the universe teeming with intelligent life? Can we expect extraterrestrial civilizations to be common? Occasional? Rare?

In this wide-ranging essay, writer/journalist/historian Nigel Bob Collins explores the probabilities of the existence of extraterrestrial, technological life based on the latest scientific findings. Not content with the well-worn assertion that life must be common because there are so many planets, Collins undertakes a thorough analysis of just what it would take for technological societies to arise on other planets. From quantifying the number of habitable planets, to examining the genesis and development of life on this planet, to grappling with the emergence of intelligence in our own species, Collins leaves no stone unturned.

The number of scientific topics addressed may appear daunting, but the author’s non-technical, sardonic style makes this work imminently readable.

Though written for the lay reader, the findings in this essay may well open the eyes of many in the scientific community.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781665502542

Nigel Bob Collins

Nigel Bob Collins is a writer, philosopher, and journalist whose works analyze politics, society, and international relations. Mr. Collins has no fixed place of residence, saying only that he goes wherever he is needed most. Due to the sensitive nature of his work, nothing more about him can be said.

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© 2020 Nigel Bob Collins. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  10/07/2020

ISBN: 978-1-6655-0255-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-0254-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020919099

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Editor: Lauren Hendrick

Associate Editor: Kerri Davidson

Production Manager: Adrienne Metz

Cover Design: Margaret Girouard

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or

links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may

no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those

of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher,

and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Dedication

This work is dedicated to my good friend, Harley McElroy, who asked me this very same question at a dinner party, to which I said I would have to get back with him. This essay twenty years later is my response.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to W.C. Atkinson, who consulted with me on this project on a hundred or so Sundays (for the modest fee of a hundred or so cocktails). Thanks as well to Nicole Collier, who, if never completely confident in this project, was always completely confident in me, which is what really counts.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

THE MISSION

I.      HABITAT

1.   The Milieu

2.   Goldilocks

3.   In the Stars

4.   Evil Twin

5.   Oddball

6.   Habitability

7.   It’s About Time

II.    LIFE

1.   Genisis

2.   Lottery Tickets

3.   Life Unfolding

4.   Analysis

III.  INTELLIGENCE

1.   Brains

2.   Planet of the Apes

3.   Ancestors

4.   Ice Age

5.   Homo

6.   Sapiens

7.   Sibling

8.   Analysis

POSTSCRIPT

1.   Ticking Clocks

2.   Space Travel

3.   Interstellar Communications

SUMMATION

Bibliography

About the Author

THE MISSION

For starters, I want to make one thing perfectly clear. There is no evidence whatsoever that spacemen have ever visited this planet. Nor is there a shred of evidence that flying saucers or other alien spacecraft have ever entered Earth’s airspace. Further, neither NASA nor the ESA nor SETI nor anyone else has ever detected a transmission from an intelligent, extraterrestrial source. The myths surrounding Roswell, Area 51, crop circles, Nazca lines and the Easter Island Moai are just that. As far as we know, there is no life outside this planet. We are looking but have found nothing yet. Absolutely nothing. So, with that caveat securely in mind, let us proceed.

Of course, just because we have found no evidence of extraterrestrial life does not mean there is none. The absence of evidence, as scientists are fond of saying, is not the evidence of absence (though it does mean that the matter remains unproven). Besides, until recently, we have not been looking very hard or very effectively.

The folks at the SETI Institute (i.e., Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) have been, since the early 1980s, scouring the heavens in search of evidence of intelligent life by looking for the signatures of its technology (radio and other electromagnetic signals, that is). So far, they have found nothing. Much more successful has been the Kepler Space Telescope that was launched by NASA in 2009. By the time of its retirement in 2018, it had discovered some 2,600 exoplanets (i.e., planets outside of our solar system). Many more will be found by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2021, and the European Space Agency’s PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) telescope, expected to be launched in 2024. The ESA’s CHaracterizing ExOPlanets Satellite (CHEOPS), launched in January of 2019, will not search for new exoplanets but will study in greater detail several hundred previously discovered exoplanets.

So, we just might have that evidence of extraterrestrial life in the very near future. Or maybe not. We’ll see.

Despite the present lack of evidence, I think most scientists feel quite certain that life and even intelligent life is abundant in the universe. The reason for their confidence is the staggeringly large number of planets there must certainly be. In our galaxy alone there are 200 billion stars, most of which are expected to have multiple planets. With perhaps a trillion planets, the galaxy must be just teeming with life, or so the reasoning goes, if that can be considered reasoning at all, which, I think, it cannot.

Considering the magnitude of the question, I’d say a little more inquiry is in order. Life requires a planet suitable for life. Most planets are not. In our own solar system, there are eight planets, only one of which can support life. Wouldn’t you want to know how many of the trillion or so planets are actually habitable? Can we expect all habitable planets to be inhabited? If not, why not? What are the necessary preconditions for the emergence of life? Is it easy or is it hard? Where there is life, will intelligent life eventually emerge? Is there a trajectory toward intelligence? How did intelligence arise on this planet? Does our experience have any relevance to the rise of life and intelligent life on other planets? These are the kinds of issues that must be addressed before we can make any reasonable assessment of the likelihood of anybody being out there. So, that is precisely what we will attempt to do in this essay.

Making such an assessment is a multidisciplinary project, involving astronomy, earth sciences, biology, microbiology, paleontology, paleoanthropology and more. That may be the reason why there have not been more of these analyses. Most scientists are simply not comfortable venturing outside of their own field of expertise. Moreover, to do so might be seen as an unprofessional encroachment on others’ turf. I am not a scientist, so I have no such compunction. I am a journalist and a writer of political and social commentary. Although I have read widely on these topics over the past couple of decades, I have no formal background in science. That would seem to make me singularly unqualified to undertake the present investigation. My job, however, is not to offer my own insights and opinions but rather to collect and present the ideas of the leading experts in each field and compile the latest scientific consensus on each topic. That, I am qualified to do.

As the title says, the goal of this work is to make a reasonable estimate of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial technological civilizations, meaning extraterrestrial civilizations with the capacity to communicate with civilizations on other planets also having that capacity. To do so, we will, in Part I, first attempt to determine what conditions are necessary for a planet to be considered habitable and how many habitable planets there might be. In Part II, we will examine what is necessary for life to emerge and develop on one of these habitable planets. Finally, in Part III, we will see what it takes for an intelligent species to arise on one of our living worlds.

Although I am not a scientist, I was, at one nadir of my life, a practicing attorney, which gave me a keen appreciation of the difference between actual evidence and unsubstantiated assertions. In this essay, I will stick to the evidence, at least where available, and limit speculation to those areas where conjecture is unavoidable.

This, of course, is not the first such analysis. In 1961, the astronomer, Dr. Frank Drake, composed his famous Drake Equation to estimate the number of communicating civilizations in the galaxy. Drake concluded that the chances that we have been the only technologically advanced life form to have ever developed is about one in a gazillion (he actually said one in ten billion trillion, but I think that’s about the same thing). Consequently, he opined, the chances that another advanced civilization has evolved is astonishingly likely. I agree with some of the factors used by Dr. Drake in his equation and will consider them in this inquiry, but much has been learned in the more than half a century since he performed his calculations. What is needed now is a fundamental reassessment of the probabilities of extraterrestrial life based on a comprehensive review of the very latest astronomical, astrophysical and astrobiological data, using the most sophisticated scientific methodologies and subjecting the findings to a rigorous, scholarly, peer reviewed analysis. Unfortunately, this is not that. This will be only a gathering of what is presently known and an attempt to draw from the data logical conclusions. It will, however, be conducted dispassionately and objectively, allowing the evidence to lead where it will.

And so, with the recognition that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, let’s get to work.

I

HABITAT

If a technologically advanced civilization is to exist, it must have a home, or, at least, it must have had a home from which it arose. So, our initial challenge will be to quantify the number of planets there might be that would be suitable for spawning, nurturing and developing life.

Note that by suitable for life I mean suitable for carbon-based life like that on our planet. There is good reason to so limit our inquiry. Life is complex, and necessarily so. Unlike any other element, carbon bonds easily with itself and other elements to form long chains and rings. No other element is capable of forming the large and complex molecules necessary for life. Since no one is even suggesting that there could be any other form of life, I think it reasonable and proper to limit our inquiry to planets amenable to carbon-based life.

Further, we will limit our search to our own galaxy. There are perhaps 200 billion galaxies in our universe, but even the closest are so vastly distant as to have no relevance for present purposes.

Finally, we will analyze planets only. Recent findings suggest that some moons, such as Jupiter’s Europa and Saturn’s Enceladus, might have vast subsurface oceans of liquid water. The action of the gravity of its planet and other nearby moons causes tidal heating within these moons sufficient for liquid water to exist, despite surface temperatures of minus 300 F and colder. Where there is water there is the possibility of life. Underwater environments, however, are ill suited for the development of technology. So even if there is life on such moons, it is highly improbable that a technologically advanced civilization could develop beneath an ocean, particularly one encased in miles of ice.

Subject to these limitations, we will search first for suitable stars then for suitable planets orbiting such stars.

1.The Milieu

The universe (this universe?) came into existence with the so-called Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. At that moment, all of the energy in the universe (there was no matter yet because it was far too hot) was concentrated into a tiny point smaller than the nucleus of an atom. At the moment of the Big Bang, there was neither space nor time. These came into existence when the microscopic point suddenly and violently expanded.

What was there before the big bang? Well, if the big bang created time, then before the big bang has no meaning. Asking what the universe expanded into is equally meaningless, since, if the expansion created space, there was no place else to expand into. It just expanded. I know, these are not the easiest concepts to get your mind around.

Anyway, the temperature at the Planck time, which was when the universe was 10 million trillion trillion trillionths of a second old, was a balmy 100 million trillion trillion degrees Kelvin (180 million trillion trillion degrees Fahrenheit, if that helps). At the age of a hundredth of a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second, the universe underwent a burst of expansion known as inflation. During that period, space expanded faster than the speed of light from subatomic size to the size of a golf ball.

As the cosmos expanded, temperatures dropped. By one second after the Big Bang, the universe was cool enough for protons, neutrons and electrons and their antimatter counterparts to condense out of an earlier quark-gluon plasma. Three minutes later, the universe had cooled to a billion degrees Kelvin, allowing the nuclei of the lightest elements to form. In another 380,000 years, the universe had cooled to 3000 k, which meant that the electrons had slowed to the point where they could be captured by the nuclei to form the first atoms. In the still intense heat and radiation, only the very lightest atoms could survive, those being hydrogen, comprising 75% of all matter, helium, 25%, and a smattering of lithium. These percentages continue to hold true today, the smattering now including all the other elements.

At that point, gravity began to take charge. Gravity will cause any spot that is even only slightly denser than its surroundings to attract matter in the vicinity. With the addition of this new matter, the area becomes denser yet, intensifying its gravitational pull. Over the course of millions of years, clumps of hydrogen and helium gas attract more and more matter, growing ever larger and emptying out the spaces between them in the process.

As matter accumulated, the clumps compressed, increasing the gravitational pressure within. Eventually, the pressure overwhelmed the electrostatic repulsion of the hydrogen atoms, forcing their nuclei together and igniting a fusion reaction. When the universe was 250 million years old, the first stars were born this way, lighting up the darkness of the cosmos.

Soon after the formation of the first stars (or possibly concurrent with their formation), the first galaxies, including our own, began to form. Initially, they were small and dim, containing relatively few stars. They were, however, loaded with gas that would eventually lead to the birth of many more stars, a process that continues to this time. Small galaxies merged with others to form larger and larger structures. Indeed, our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is thought to have formed from the merger of a hundred or more small galaxies.

Today, the observable universe extends 93 billion light years, and it is continuing to expand. There is an unobservable portion of the universe as well. We don’t know much about it, since it is too far away to be observed. Observations from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Planck satellite indicate, however, that it must be at least 250 times the radius of the observable part. That means the unobservable universe is 23 trillion light years in diameter and contains a volume of space 15 million times as large as what we can observe.

Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity establishes that the maximum possible speed is the speed of light (186,000 miles per second). The universe is 13.8 billion years old, yet just the visible portion is 93 billion light years across. Apparently, the expansion of the universe does not observe Einstein’s cosmic speed limit.

With the expansion of space, the temperature has continued to drop. Today, it is 2.73 degrees Kelvin (-454 F), that is, 2.73 degrees Celsius above absolute zero, which is the temperature at which no energy from molecular motion (i.e., heat) is available for transfer to other systems.

There are about 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe. A recent reassessment of surveys taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope indicates that the number should be more like two trillion galaxies. That, however, reflects the number of galaxies in the early universe. Over time, as we have seen, the myriad of primitive dwarf galaxies have merged into the larger galaxies we now observe.

The Milky Way galaxy is one of about 54 gravitationally bound galaxies known to astronomers as the Local Group. All but three are dwarf galaxies. The two largest, Andromeda and the Milky Way, are presently about 2.5 million light years apart. They are, however, on a collision course and will collide in about 4.5 billion years. Together, the two galaxies contain about 1.2 trillion stars. Galaxies are so empty that no two stars will collide. Not even close (the chances that a star will enter within Neptune’s orbit are 1 in 10 million). Gravity, though, will wreak havoc on the trajectory of the stars and planets, hurling many out into the void of space. In the end, they will merge into a single massive galaxy.

2.Goldilocks

The Milky Way galaxy is a barred spiral galaxy, that is, a spiral galaxy with a central bar-shaped collection of stars. It is composed of between 100 and 400 million stars, the most usual estimate being 200 million. We will use that.

The galaxy has a diameter of about 100,000 light years (i.e., the distance that light travels in one year, or about 5.9 trillion miles). A view from above would reveal a central bulge surrounded by four large spiral arms. The arms are contained within the galactic disk, which is only about a thousand light years thick.

The question, then, is whether there are some places in the galaxy that are more conducive to life or is one place about as good as any other.

One thing is for certain. Planets orbiting stars within the central bulge are not going to fare very well. There are about 10 million stars within the central one cubic parsec (3.2 light years) of the galactic center. By way of comparison, there are no stars within one parsec of our Sun and only perhaps seventy-four stars within ten parsecs. As a result, the galactic center is awash with harmful radiation, such as gamma rays, x-rays and cosmic rays, that would destroy any life trying to evolve there.

Moreover, catastrophic events, such as supernovas (exploding stars) and gamma ray bursts (stellar explosions that can release more energy in ten seconds than the Sun will in its entire ten-billion-year life) have the capacity to sterilize a planet. If, for instance, a supernova occurred within 10 parsecs of Earth, high energy protons released from the blast would obliterate the ozone layer, leaving life on the surface unprotected from the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation. Such catastrophes may be relatively rare, but, with so many stars crammed together, the chances that a planet in the galactic center would experience one or more such events are so high as to be almost inevitable.

It appears that most, if not all, of the planetary systems are surrounded by a halo of rock, ice and other debris left over from the formation of the star and its planets. In our planetary system, this is known as the Oort cloud, named for the astronomer Jan Oort who first theorized its existence. When the cloud of debris is jiggled a little by, say, a passing star, some of the debris is kicked from its orbit and sent hurtling toward the star (and the planets orbiting relatively nearby). We know these chunks of material as comets. When a comet a few miles in diameter travelling a hundred times faster than a speeding bullet collides with a planet, the consequences for any life there are devastating, as the dinosaurs and the seventy percent of all species on Earth that were wiped out by such a collision sixty-five million years ago would attest (okay, it was probably an asteroid, but the effect would be substantially the same). Comets for us on Earth are rare, but, again, increase the number of nearby passing stars, and they would be commonplace.

So, it would seem the farther away from the galactic center the better. This, however, is not exactly the case. In the beginning, you see, there was essentially only hydrogen and helium, the two simplest atoms (hydrogen consisting of one proton and one electron and helium of two protons, two neutrons and two electrons). A couple of hundred million years after the Big Bang, the universe had cooled sufficiently enough to allow gravity to begin pulling the clouds of hydrogen and helium together. As these clumps of gas became dense and internal pressures increased, they began to heat up. As the collapse continued, temperatures continued to rise. When the cores of these protostars (that is, the innermost part of a star) reached a temperature of