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Lonely Planets 295

Posted by timothy from the aren't-they-all dept.
Thomas Boutell writes "Are we alone in the universe? Any curious human being will recognize the question. David Grinspoon's Lonely Planets is a broad, newcomer-friendly and often hilarious exploration of the subject of extraterrestrial life. David Grinspoon is a respected planetologist with a particular focus on Venus. He is also a very engaging writer, able to translate dry scientific ideas for a general audience without patronizing. Most surprisingly, he can tell a joke, and as a representative of the scientific tribe, he can also take one. His first-hand experiences growing up surrounded by luminaries like Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov enable him to tell the story of astrobiology and SETI as few others can." Read on for the rest of Boutell's review.
Lonely Planets
author David Grinspoon
pages 440
publisher Ecco / Harper-Collins
rating 10
reviewer Thomas Boutell
ISBN 0060185406
summary A marvelously accessible, irreverent and fun exploration of the possibilities for other life in the universe.

Grinspoon, though, never falls victim to the temptation to proclaim that intelligent aliens are a scientific certainty, nor does he ridicule those who come to a belief in aliens by a less-than-scientific route.

The book begins with a historical perspective, telling the old stories of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Lowell in fresh and surprising ways. This makes even these chapters recommended reading for experts as well as newcomers to astronomy. Grinspoon is not content to repeat the usual pieties about these scientific "saints." For instance, he reveals that Galileo did much to intentionally antagonize the pope in his writings about the solar system. He also discusses the more off-the-wall beliefs that many early luminaries of science have held. He explores the link between the end of the earth-centered view of the universe and the beginning of a centuries-long popular craze for the idea of planets around every sun, and intelligent beings on every planet.

The second section of the book deals with the science of suns, planets, moons, and the potential life in, on and around them. All of the popular candidates, including Mars, Europa, and Titan, are discussed in nonscientist-friendly detail. Unearthly life is a broad subject, and Grinspoon does not cover it with perfect evenness. His chapters on cosmology, the early Earth, chemical evolution, and the cambrian explosion are great stuff; but after a quality discussion of DNA, he builds up the idea that RNA most likely evolved first, with ever quite saying what RNA is or explaining its role in our cells today.

But this is a rare omission. The science in the book is sound, and the footnotes and asides consistently entertaining. No song reference or movie quote is left unquoted, always to good effect. Throughout, Grinspoon maintains an almost unheard-of humility, always careful to point out how much we simply don't know about life on Earth, let alone life elsewhere.

The third and final section of the book could never have been written by a less honest or more egotistical scientist. It may also help that he plays in a reggae band. Titled "Belief," part three begins with a discussion of the development and present state of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, as nearly anyone with a screensaver knows. Grinspoon explores Fermi's paradox -- if they exist, why haven't they arrived on Earth, or at least said hello by radio? He doesn't duck the hard questions, and he brings us the human story of the SETI pioneers on both sides of the Iron Curtain. He acknowledges that the strong desire to believe in aliens is as something almost religious for many people, including scientists. And he gives the UFOlogists their due, taking a fascinating journey to the San Luis Valley of Colorado. If something really hasn't been adequately explained, he acknowledges that: "there are mysteries. Are we unfaithful to the church of Science if we admit that there are mysteries?" But he does point the finger at a few flimflam artists, and doesn't hide his disappointment with certain alien-visitation true believers who should probably know better.

Maybe the temptation to believe is not so hard to forgive. Where our knowledge is imperfect, our beliefs and hopes always become entwined. Grinspoon ends the book with a meditative chapter on "astrotheology," pulling together the threads of science and faith, exploring the moral implications of intelligent life elsewhere and sharing his own beliefs in the matter.

I recommend this book both for space buffs and for less "scientific," less skeptical readers on their gift lists. The book is worth reading for many reasons -- engaging writing, a friendly introduction to the science involved, eye-opening history, and a chance to learn a skilled planetologist's best guesses at what we may discover living or not living on, in or around Mars, Europa, and yes, Venus. Not since Sagan and Asimov passed away has there been a science writer with such a voice.

Will anyone hate this book? Maybe -- new agers, pot-haters, and supporters of the Bush administration could get their noses out of joint... but only if they read every footnote, and completely fail to take a joke. Most will be as entertained and informed as the rest of us.

You can purchase Lonely Planets from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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Lonely Planets

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  • sounds like a great book for linux geeks (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 05, 2004 @01:08PM (#7882494)
    after all, we are all lonely and most of us are the size of planets...

  • Statistically (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nightsweat ( 604367 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @01:10PM (#7882528)
    Statistics seem to dictate we are not alone in the universe. Unfortunately, they also dictate that we won't get to talk to our neighbors anytime soon.

    It's incredibly frustrating to me to think that there may be hundreds or even thousands of other species out there that are just too far away from us or technologically displaced from us (we're too primitive or they're too primitive) for us to ever make meaningful contact.

    • I feel the same frustration, but regard it as an interesting scientific engineering challenge for which we have no solution yet. The question that fascinates me most, is how we would detect and communicate with a very highly advanced civilization, or with a species in which everyone is massively smart.

    • Re:Statistically (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bhny ( 97647 ) <bh@u[ ]net ['sa.' in gap]> on Monday January 05, 2004 @01:31PM (#7882716) Homepage
      statistics don't dictate anything on this

      all we know is intelligent life occurred once. there's no way to extrapolate from a sample group of 1
      • We are not just intelligent life - we are spacefaring intelligent life. The universe could be teeming with all kinds of life, and even intelligent life, but technological, cultural, spacefaring life could be extremely rare indeed. For example, dolphins are pretty intelligent, as are dogs, chimps, parrots and octopuses, but only humans have developed technology.

      • Re:Statistically (Score:3, Informative)

        by beta21 ( 88000 )
        all we know is intelligent life occurred once. there's no way to extrapolate from a sample group of 1

        Thats the beauty of statistics, you can extrapolate from a sample group of one but your error bars are pretty large (bigger than your data point prob.).

        Of course this does not stop market surveys.

    • Re:Statistically (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Trurl's Machine ( 651488 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @01:54PM (#7882928) Journal
      From a metaphore coined by Arkady & Boris Strugatski (masters of Russian sf from the Breznhev era) - snails and squirrels encounter each other on a daily basis but even if they could talk to each other, they would have exactly nothing to say. Their everyday experience is so different, their languages would be untranslatable to each other. And we are talking about species inhabiting the same world, even the same forest. What about species as different as snails and squirrels - but living on different planets, to make things even worse?

      Even if we'll ever meet "them", we can talk to each other about the things we already know: the hydrogen resonance frequency, the Pythagorean triangle, the Big Bang echo radiation etc. Exciting as it might be, it wold be actually meaningless, just a kind of galactic small talk ("hi, how are you, what a beautiful day, and by the way - hydrogen frequency is 1.4 GHz"). But anything past that would lead us into the "snails and squirrels" lack of translation.

      And even that is an optimistic assumption - snails and squirrels at least don't fight for the same niche. So I am actually happy that probably there will be no "contact" as long as I live. At its best, it could be as meaningless as some small talk; at its worst, it would be a war for obliteration.

      • Well put - on a similar note if we were to suddenly come across a planet full of Cro-Magnons, I don't think it would occur to us to immediately land and start handing out toaster ovens. At best they would be an interesting subject of study, and we'd certainly have nothing worthwhile to say to them.

        More likely of course the comparison might be closer to handing out tire pressure gauges to a bee hive - both pointless and unappreciated.

        The Profound Dialog has always been one of the background fantasie

        • Re:Statistically (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Golias ( 176380 )
          Are you kidding? Do you really think we would ignore all that cheap labor!?

          If we discovered a planet of Cro-Magnons, Dell would hire them to do tech support.

    • Intelligent life is nowhere else in our Galaxy. I give our planet as proof. We have not been colonized yet.

      Our planet has been habitable for our type of like for well over 2.5 billion years, with the advent of Eukerotic organisms employing oxygen metabolisms. The development of photosynthesis, which dumped all that oxygen into the atmosphere killing most life on Earth at the time, I leave for another discussion.

      Back to my point. 2.5 billion years. That is plenty of time for some advanced civilization to

      • We have not been colonized yet.

        That's easy for you to say, sitting there all high and mighty with your unprobed rectum. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to freshen up my ice pack.

      • " That is plenty of time for some advanced civilization to detect our planet, send probes, send colony ships, terraform, and have a few billion citizens, even if they can't exceed the speed of light." Why is it a given that an alien species would WANT to colonize our planet? Maybe that's a trait unique to us. We've only been broadcasting our presence for what, 100 years or so? How would an alien species have decided we were a likely candidate for life if radio broadcasts were necessary?
      • So far, no ships. Not even transmissions. No alien cities.

        Oh, yeah, smart guy? Then explain Atlantis!

        (Actually, I agree with you, I just couldn't help myself.)

    • Re:Statistically (Score:4, Interesting)

      by SB9876 ( 723368 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @04:43PM (#7884728)
      One possibility that most people ignore is that spacefaring intelligent life has no compelling reason to communcate with us. In fact, if it does exist, it probably has compelling reasons to *not* communicate with us.

      There are two possible scenarios for intelligent observers to have physically reached our region of space. The first is that they have some variety of FTL drive which implies a level of technological and scientific advancement vastly superior to our own. The other is that there is no FTL travel and intelligence spreads through space in a leapfrog manner between stars.

      In neither case do I see the surface or interior of Earth or Earthly life as essential resources. FTL capable intelligence can simply travel wherever it wants to gain resources and non-FTL intelligence would be much more likely to mine asteroids and comets to avoid having to deal with the massive energy expenditures of entering and leaving Earth's gravity well. Furthermore, any non-FTL intelligence is almost certainly in the form of some sort of circuitry or AI of some variety because of the immense energy penalties of transporting organic life and its associated life support mass. Therefore it's unlikely they're here to steal our water or eat us.

      The human race in either case has little to offer in the way of technological or material incentive to contact us. I would argue that our only valuable resource is cultural. This is not to say that aliens have any interest in our culture from an asthetic perspective but rather in an anthropological manner.

      Imagine if we discovered some small Pacific island today that had no particularly valuable natural resources. On this island, we discover a species of primate that is showing signs of early technological development along the lines of, say Australopithecus africanus. Or, another scenario would involve the discovery of intelligent lizards or birds, whatever. We would probably consider this one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the century as it gives a look at how intelligent life develops in its initial stages.

      Presuming that alien intelligence has discovered us, it probably has some sort of scientific bent given its spacefaring nature. Presuming that its rise to intelligence is even remotely similar to ours, it has probably lost most information about the rise of its own intelligence and culture - not unlike how we can only speculate as to how society, agriculture, speech, etc developed. A developing intelligence such as our own would present a golden opportunity to this intelligence to watch such a process in action.

      In such a scenario, the alien intelligence would have great disincentive to make contact with us as it would 'contaminate' our development.

  • Either way is scary (Score:5, Insightful)

    by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @01:12PM (#7882537)
    Either we are truly alone in the universe. There are zero other 'intelligent' lifeforms out there. Anywhere. We are absolutely alone.

    Or, there are others. If there are >0 other 'intelligent' lifeforms, then presumably there should be many others. And some of those will not be very friendly. Or even if not friendly, we might be so far below their notice as to be paved over for a new bypass, without them noticing. Does the bulldozer driver notice the anthill he just smoothed over?
    • You are exactly correct in citing the vast distances to anywhere interesting out in space. You can presume that humans will never see these sights first hand - we will need to create artificial life forms that can exist and prosper in space over very very long periods of time (i.e. not die from radiation or muscle deterioration) far beyond any believable extension of the human lifespan (even if we could keep from going totally insane being in space that long).

      This is why we need to take better care of our o

      • I don't think its reasonable to presume that humans will never see these sights first hand. We have no way of knowing what life will be like in a hundred or a thousand years. Look at how much your life is different from someone who was your age in 1904. We simply don't know what technology will accomplish. Any presumptions we make are merest speculations with no evidence to support them.
        • I may be thinking 1904, but you are thinking back even further. You presume any scientific or exploratory task must be directed by, and benefit, humanity. My presumption is more far-reaching - artificial intelligence will be vastly superior to human intelligence within two centuries, and if we intend to see the starts, we will not do so as we currently exist. We will either have to be happy sending artificial life forms to be our emissaries, or merge with them somehow. Humans as we are currenly evolved will
      • It's a common misconception that Robotic life would somehow be more long-lived than human life.

        You don't simply build a robot and it works forever. They require constant repairs and upkeep. Not to mention programming upgrades to deal with the increasingly complex world we live in. If you look at the lifespan of our long-range probes, you would see that all of them lost functions over time to mechanical failure. Almost all deep space probes required reprogramming en-route to their destination.

        Oh sure, yo

    • If there are >0 other 'intelligent' lifeforms, then presumably there should be many others.

      Define "many," and then explain your presumption.

      I believe there are other intelligent life forms out there. I just don't see any way that there couldn't be. But that said, I doubt there's more than 1 intelligent species with the ambition to be spacefareing in any given galaxy, on average. That means the chance of meeting or having a conversation with an ET is very remote.

      For a more complete description of my b
      • many = hundreds/thousands.

        Personally, I too believe there are other life forms out there. Some of them even intelligent.

        If conditions exist that there can be one intelligent species (and it does--us), then it should follow that similar conditions will exist elsewhere. There are far too many stars/planets out there for it not to. This planet does not appear to be that unique.

        As far as colonization on a mass scale, I don't think so. The distances are too great to hold any societal structure together (At

    • The same physics still applies (Score:5, Interesting)

      by DG ( 989 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @01:57PM (#7882964) Homepage Journal
      Let's examine your bulldozer/anthill analogy a little closer:

      If the fear is that that we might encounter beings who are so far above us that we are beneath notice, this is unlikely to happen, mostly because of the physics of scale.

      There is a minimum amount of matter in which one can develop intelligence like our own. We don't know what that amount is, but from observing the world around us we can get a ballpark figure.

      It seems unlikely that something as small as an ant could develop human-level intelligence and with it, human-level technology. The scale is too small. Try sustaining an ant-scale fire for an ant-scale blacksmith, for example.

      Similarily, there is a maximum end to the scale as well. One might be able to imagine dinosaur-sized intelligences, but it's hard to imagine beings and the associated technical societies that are on the scale of kilometres in size. The loads scale faster than the energy output and material strengths.

      So while there's quite a bit of room for variation, it's probably safe to say that for the most likely examples of intelligent, technical societies, objects the size of planets are likely to be signifigant, energy levels involved with intersteller travel are likely to be signifigant, and quite possibly, lifespans are going to be of a similar order (an intelligent, technical creature needs a "timesense" at least as fast as a human's in order to be able to react to physical processes, and I wouldn't be at all suprised to find that the percieved duration of time is closely coupled to the strength of the gravitational field in which one evolved - where stronger gravity equals higher time resolution)

      That's not to say that a sufficiantly advanced civilization couldn't wield vastly more powerful energy levels than what we currently manipulate, but scale dictates that dealing with masses on the order of planets or energy levels on the order of stars is ever likely to become TRIVIAL.

      Put another way, I don't need a bulldozer to crush an ant - I get that ability by virtue of scale and physics. Those same physics makes it unlikely that anything is going to be of scale large enough to unknowingly crush planets.

      Not impossible, but unlikely.

      DG

      • Re:The same physics still applies (Score:5, Interesting)

        by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @02:23PM (#7883255)
        It seems unlikely that something as small as an ant could develop human-level intelligence and with it, human-level technology. The scale is too small. Try sustaining an ant-scale fire for an ant-scale blacksmith, for example.

        We may not recognise that 'intelligence'. Is a termite colony intelligent? According to us, no. But some species of termite build incredible structures. All without blueprints, a controlling boss, etc. On a scale and complexity to rival skyscrapers.

        Alien Developer: "We found a new source for that stuff we've been looking for. This planet here."
        Developer Two: "Anything interesting there?"
        One: "Naaa....just some cabon based individual life forms. They've built a few interesting structures, but they're not truly intelligent."
        Two: "Ok...let's put in the proposal"

        Human level intelligence may not be the pinnacle. We only have one data point to work with. Ok, two, if you count dolphins. 3, if you count some of the other primates. And we still eat those on occasion.

        "They" wouldn't have to destroy the actual planet to make it uncomfortable for us.
        • You forgot the most intelligent form of life: Lab Mice.

          They have us trained to deliver food to them when they press buttons. (With apologies to Douglas Adams).

        • I certainly agree with you about the small sample space - ever read a short story called "Meat"? :)

          But unless you're envisioning creatures for whom space travel is a biological function (and even then, where do they get the energy?) intelligences of the nature of termite colonies pose us little threat, because they are unlikely to ever develop technology at all, never mind on a scale likely to be threatening.

          Termites etc. make good models for slow building of complex structures, but it's hard to imagine t

      • Let's examine your bulldozer/anthill analogy a little closer:

        Woooooooooosshhhhhh!

        That wasn't a Swedish jet. That was the sound of the original post zooming over your head at Mach 17.

        He was referring to the Doug Adams novel. The point is NOT that Earth would be destroyed because the aliens are physically larger than us. The point is that Earth would be destroyed (and was destroyed in the novel) because of our insignificance in terms of intelligence (and also in the novel, "galatic awareness").

      • Scale matters (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Ars-Fartsica ( 166957 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @03:26PM (#7883833)
        Scale is extremely important in the physical universe.

        If we were the size of ants our mouths would not be able to break the surface tension of water, and we would die. Hence many insects have sharp pointed mouths/beaks. If we were as big as a whale, the rate of increase in the mass of muscle vs bone would crush us. Hence whales live in the ocean where the water can support their weight.

    • Or even if not friendly, we might be so far below their notice as to be paved over for a new bypass, without them noticing.

      "Yellow."

  • How could you not make jokes? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 05, 2004 @01:12PM (#7882539)
    You're in the planet business, which has a sample size of under a dozen. And most of those remain mysteries. It would be foolish to believe we know anything. Most conclusions have to be educated guesses. This guy seems to have a proper sense of a field that is still mostly mystery.
    • You're in the planet business, which has a sample size of under a dozen. And most of those remain mysteries. It would be foolish to believe we know anything.

      Non-sequitur. More correctly, one could not claim that we know everything, but no one is, so that's is a moot point

      .
    • You're in the planet business, which has a sample size of under a dozen. And most of those remain mysteries. It would be foolish to believe we know anything. Most conclusions have to be educated guesses. This guy seems to have a proper sense of a field that is still mostly mystery.

      Ahhh, but the physics of gravity and the math behind formation of bodies in space is well worked out. Biological science (at least here on earth) is also an area of intense study that should provide some insight into how biolog

  • Fermi's paradox? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nizo ( 81281 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @01:20PM (#7882627) Homepage Journal
    I have to admit, the idea of intelligent life out there somewhere is an interesting topic, but I am beginning to wonder based on Fermi's paradox (which I believe is summed up below):


    David Grinspoon: I agree that, given the time and energy constraints, any intelligent creatures would have to be nuts to attempt interstellar travel. But you would also have to be nuts to attempt to cross the ocean in a rowboat, and people have done that. Why do we need to go one-tenth the speed of light? What's the hurry? So what if travel times are thousands of years? From the perspective of an individual human life at this stage in our evolution, this seems like a long time. But will the galaxy never, ever, anywhere, produce a creature or cultural entity that doesn't find this span of time daunting? Even at these slow speeds, if someone decided to start spreading across the galaxy they would be able to spread across the whole Milky Way in a few hundred million years, tops, which is still short compared to the life of the galaxy.


    (This was ripped straight from here [astrobio.net] for those who wish to read more.

    • Re:Fermi's paradox? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Angry Toad ( 314562 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @02:03PM (#7883031)

      Fermi's paradox has lots of assumptions. Foremost, that we would recognize it if "they" were here or had been here. Leaving UFOs to the side for a bit, they could easily be here without detection. If they arrived for a couple of weeks 50000 years ago (let alone 1 million or 20 million) we would never know about it unless they decided to leave a permanent monument - but presupposing they would do so makes assumptions about their motives, which I think is a danerously silly practice since we're already talking hypotheticals here.

      Fermi's paradox seems to me to be asking us: if life exists elsewhere in the galaxy, then why aren't they landing on the White House lawn or at least running around yelling "Helllooooo! We're Alieeeennnns! Over HEEEREE!". Since we don't see them either they never existed at all, or their motives preclude setting up a colony or an "ALIENS WERE HERE" monument. Since we can't decide between these alternatives, that's not much use.

    • I am beginning to wonder based on Fermi's paradox

      Consider this: Earth has been broadcasting reasonable amounts of obviously-artificial EM into space for around a hundred years, mostly entirely by accident. We have been listening for obviously-artificial alien EM for under 50 years. So the search for life "in the universe" is really the search for "life with 50 lightyears of Earth that is in a comparable stage of technological development".

      Given that our galaxy (which is but one of many) is 90,000 lighty
      • Actually, we have only been broadcasting receivable EM for about 50 years. Early "wireless" was low frequencey up through shortwave. It doesn't penetrate the atmosphere very well.

        Only since TV and other VHF/UHF/Microwave sources have been in wide use (more or less the mid to late 1950's) have we been emmiting much into space.

        Jebus save us from "Single Female Lawyer" loving aliens...

    • Re:Fermi's paradox? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by tetsuji ( 572812 )
      Doesn't relativity take care of some of the problems of long travel times between celestial bodies, as well? If one was to travel close enough to the speed of light,the travel time would be negligible for the traveller, or at least limited to close to the time required for acceleration and deceleration. You could go anywhere you wanted, provided that you were willing to leave everything about your life and human civilization as you knew it behind.

      Fermi's paradox doesn't say much about the time scale of sp

    • Ahhh, but to believe Fermi's paradox, don't you also have to believe that we will never travel "seemingly" faster than light, and that we already aren't being visited by intelligent life?

      Both of which I do not subscribe to.
      Some others [disclosureproject.org] who may disagree with Fermi.

      And for those that wish to toy with probability:

      Universe is approx. 12.5 billions years old

      our little planet is approx. 4.5 - 5 billions years old, relatively young

      and humans have been on this planet for only approx. 200,000 years, far le
  • Lonely Planet is a registered trademark of Lonely Planet Publications [lonelyplanet.com].

    I wonder if we'll be reading about a trademark infringement lawsuit?

  • Alone? I hope so! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by shakamojo ( 518620 ) * on Monday January 05, 2004 @01:30PM (#7882700)
    I actually really do hope that we're alone, at least in our neck of the galaxy. I look at it this way, is there any species that is more "advanced" than another that doesn't prey on the weaker species? In nature, it seems that the strong always dominate the weak. If there is advanced life out there, how long do you think it would be before they dominated us? If the natural history of our particular planet is any indicator, I'm hoping that we don't run into any more "advanced" species in my lifetime!
    • How can the natural history of OUR planet be any indicator of what goes on elsewhere? Maybe the magnetic fields in our neck of the woods makes us more aggressive? Maybe the nature of our planet made us cruel? We have evolved enough to where we don't always prey on the weak. For instance going back to the anthill example. We really don't pay much attention to the ants now do we? Not to the point where we feel the need to exploit them. Are they more advanced than us? If not why haven't we dominated them

    • What nature shows are you watching??? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ianscot ( 591483 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @03:16PM (#7883735)
      ...is there any species that is more "advanced" than another that doesn't prey on the weaker species?

      Lions do not prey on ants or cranes. Orangutans don't catch the rabbits that live in their enclosure with them at one of my local zoos. Why aren't they attacking each other? Which of those species is most "advanced"?

      You don't know what you mean by that word, even as it applies to nature.

      In nature, it seems that the strong always dominate the weak.

      Not so. The natural world is way the heck more complex, and far more likely to result in peaceful coexistence or symbiotic relationships, than you're imagining. I notice the chickadees and nuthatches and wrens in my back yard aren't engaged in anything but a sort of indirect competition for the resources that they all need. I notice that some species of bird choose to "mob" birds of prey when it's mating season, whereas others do it all year round, and others don't at all. Which species is "stronger" than the others, please?

      In this case, anyway, what you're saying amounts to a variation on social Darwinism, so let's take an example: Columbus landed in the new world, and one of the things his crew noticed immediately was that people lived much longer among the "Indians" than they did in Europe. Everyone was struck by all the elderly people around. So, which society was "more advanced"? Were the Europeans 'superior models' because they'd been exposed to diseases that American populations had never seen? (Does that make Africans superior to Europeans who never could truly colonize the malarial latitudes there?)

      Life as a hierarchy of "advanced" and "less advanced" creatures is a misrepresentation of nature (and Darwinism), and applied to social interactions among intelligent beings, it's even more ridiculously oversimplified.

      (In my book you'd be more justifiably nervous based on the way invasive, non-native species have devastated native populations. The equivalents of Chestnut Blight should keep you up at night, if you're really worried about aliens. Eurasian House Sparrows are much closer to the real worry - unintended and indirect consequences being far more likely than little green men with Napoleon complexes.)

  • Conditions Ripe (Score:2, Interesting)

    by _newwave_ ( 265061 )
    A recent article [space.com] on space.com discusses a study that concludes that conditions are ripe for complex life at 10% of stars in our galaxy.
    • I say that 10% is a misleading figure. 10% is one tenth of the total stars. That's really small!

      But hearken! There's about 1 billion stars in our galaxy, and with just about 1 billion stars, that makes the total number of stars which could possibly support complex, Earth-type life is 100,000,000!

      That sounds a lot more impressive than 10 measly percent. And then let's not forget the OTHER galaxies in the Local Group, or even out in the Great Wall of galaxies. If there's and average one hundred million pos

  • Lonely Planets and a very Rare Earth (Score:4, Informative)

    by revoke ( 174834 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @01:44PM (#7882836)

    If you like this book by Grinspoon, you may also like Rare Earth [amazon.com] by Ward and Brownlee. Rare Earth presents arguments to show why intelligent life elsewhere in the universe may be very rare indeed. Life may exist elsewhere, but complex and intelligent life? If you consider all the variables needed on Earth (distance from star, size and effect of moon, evolution, climate, etc.), the possibility that another planet with the exact same conditions exists is very rare.

    Ward and Brownlee don't come right out and say that other intelligent life doesn't exist (there is always hope). They just show that the chances that intelligent life does exist on other planets is low. A great read, although more serious in tone and its science than Grinspoon. And for those of you that love all the footnotes in Grinspoon's Lonely Planets, you may want to check out his Venus book, Venus Revealed [amazon.com] , as well. Another great read. Grinspoon definitely knows his stuff.

    • They just show that the chances that intelligent life does exist on other planets is low.

      From what you describe, they show that the chances of intelligent life existing on a particular planet are very low. We can't say anything about the chances of intelligent life existing on other planets unless we know how many planets there in fact are out there.

      • Actually, Ward and Brownlee do make estimates as to how many solar systems there are in the known universe based on current projections of galaxies and known (discovered) solar systems. They do not look at particular planets and say that life does not exist on planet A, B, or C. Instead, they discuss all the conditions necessary for the Earth to sustain life and show that repeating Earth's environment (or even something close) is difficult. Earth's evolution for instance proceeded in the way that it did

  • Interesting timing considering the Mars exposition that will be going on for 3 months. I can't wait for the day that we discover that we're truely not alone in the universe. The shockwaves that it would send through religion would be huge; would we as humans finally band together as a planet, or continue our destructive separtist ways? Something to think about.

    Oh, and is the universe finite, or infinite? That is always a fun mental exercise for me to ponder.

    CB
    • Honestly, I think things will be interesting but not apocalyptic if life is discovered on Mars. If it is, there's a decent chance that it came from Earth or that Earth life came from Mars. I know it sounds crazy to think that critters could have gotten over that span of space but when dealing with the timescales, impacts, resiliency of life and distances involved, it's not all that far fetched.

      Creationists will call it a hoax, some "pot-haters" will call it confirmation that life is everywhere but I'm be

    • Re:Mars (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Slowping ( 63788 )

      The shockwaves that it would send through religion would be huge

      Only for religions that believe humans (and Earth) are "chosen ones" to represent the "one true god". There are other religions that are much more open towards other forms of intelligent life (eg Buddhism).
      • There are other religions that are much more open towards other forms of intelligent life (eg Buddhism).

        Yes, good point. I was mainly refering to the 'main one' that always tries to dictate to everyone else that there way is the right way. I'm much more in tuned to the ideals in 2001, A Childshood End or even Rendevous with Rama. The idea that at some point some 'higher power' could make contact with us is very cool to me.

        CB

  • Are we alone in the universe? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lawpoop ( 604919 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @01:49PM (#7882868) Homepage Journal
    Previous question: Are we alone in our $land?
    Current question: Are we alone in the universe?
    Next question: Are we alone in the $next_step_up?

    Seriously, the conversation could go like this:
    Us: Horray! You found us! We're not alone!
    Aliens: Sorry, but we're are actually terribly alone. As far as we can tell, all other dimensions are totally lifeless.

  • The Fermi Paradox (Score:3, Informative)

    by 602 ( 652745 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @01:54PM (#7882930)
    There's a book called If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens, Where Is Everybody? by Stephen Webb. The title is from the question posed by Enrico Fermi. I've just bought the book but haven't read it yet.

    The book discusses 50 possible answers grouped into 3 broad categories:

    1. 'They Are Here' (e.g., '...and They Are Meddling in Human Affairs', '...and They Are Called Hungarians'),

    2. 'They Exist But Have Not Yet Communicated' (e.g., 'Everyone Is Listening, No One Is Transmitting'),

    3. 'They Do Not Exist' (e.g. 'Continuously Habitable Zones Are Narrow').

    Semi-related quote: "The aliens will contact us when they can make money by doing so." -- David Byrne

    Semi-related problem: I know of a 7m parabolic dish (so that I can listen, too) I can get for free but have no place to put it. :(

    • I highly recommended the book mentioned above. It is written at a very intelligent and non-patronizing level, and is scientifically quite eclectic. It's thought-provoking and also a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the great diversity of possible "solutions" to the Fermi paradox that get discussed in the book. Lots of variety makes it hard to get bored, and some of the discussions are fantastic. Particularly good is the "percolation theory" explanation for why it may be impossible to hear from other intell

  • Prime directive (Score:2, Insightful)

    by XeroDegrees ( 717293 )
    Has anyone ever thought the reason no lifeforms have made contact is some sort of Lex Galactica?
    If they did make contact they would destroy all our high-tech industries overnight (by introducing us to their higher-technologies)
    Pharmacuticals,hardware,soft ware,transportation all become obselete instantly, making millions unemployed and destroying our economies.
  • And no one else to talk to?

  • why not say hello? - seems pretty obvious... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Creepy ( 93888 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @02:14PM (#7883159) Journal
    It seems pretty obvious why ETs wouldn't say hello, at least to me.

    First off, you have distance. If they said "hello" today, how many thousand or million of years would it take for the signal to reach here? The signal would need to travel the speed of light or less - we don't have tachyon communications yet (if such things exist), so we can't listen to signals that are faster than the speed of light.

    Second, in the billions of years the earth has existed, we've been listening for what, thirty, maybe forty years? We don't even know what we're listening for. Who knows - maybe radio became passe for aliens 100 years ago (actually probably more like several thousand because of relativity and distance) and we just missed our chance. Maybe our own radio signals are swamping their faint ones.

    Third, maybe they don't care or have a religion that tells them nothing else exists in the universe (like we have several of), so they don't even try. For instance, I know a devout Catholic who believes, as conservative Catholic doctrine preaches, that dogs (technically animals) don't dream, yet his dog is barking and moving while it sleeps - just like a dreaming human would do in REM sleep (well, probably more like talking and moving than barking :P ). The evidence points to the contrary, yet faith tells him the devil is making the movements in his dog to sway his faith. Jehovah's Witnesses use the same reasoning for the earth only being 6000 years old - the devil created the fossils to sway the faithful (trust me, I had a long discussion about this... mainly because the discussee was very attractive and I had several hours to blow trying to sway her to convert to a life of hedonism).

    Lastly, every planet close to us in the Universe is probably not significantly more technological than we are, so they're probably starting to listen and broadcast themselves and the signals haven't reached us yet. Then again, one good asteroid hit could put alien evolution back millions of years, or one extended prosperous era may have a million years more of a low evolution dinosaur age (ETosaur?). On the average, our tech levels would be about the same (unless we're above or below average, but I have only one society to base observations on, so I my error margin is +-100 :)

    • It has been argued - reasonably, I think - that any civlization we communicate with is likely to be considerably more advanced than us. Why? because we've only been at the business of using the EM spectrum for communication for a very short time - we're noobs. The little green men have probably been at it much longer, and are therefore more advanced, if one assumes that technological advance correlates with time.

  • ..."are we alone, as intelligent beings, in the Universe?"

    Well, we really only have a couple of possibilities:

    (1) No, there are more intelligent beings than just us;
    (2) Yes, we're all there is of the intelligent beings in the whole Universe.

    I believe that we are not alone, but none have made it here (physically) nor have they found a method to communicate that is more advanced that perhaps we have now (radio, light beam communications, etc.) But my belief is based on very little fact and a lot of hope.

  • There have been many arguments against the likelihood of life on other planets that have been disproven. For example, we now know with certainty that planets outside of our solar system exist and primitive life can indeed be created spontaneously from environmental conditions present on other planets.

    If the conditions are similar, I believe that there would see some of the same convergence of traits that we see with Earth's inhabitants. Yet, how far do we have to look to see the miraculous diversity of l
  • ...would be complete without links to the Brunching Shuttlecocks' interviews [brunching.com] with the planet Pluto [brunching.com]?
  • According to some popular theories, relating to the distrbution and formation of matter, there is actually strong scientific evidence that supports the notion of identical duplicates of ourselves existing two or three parallel universes away. More and more scientists are starting to accept the notion that we are not the only universe, but rather that we are one of infinite universes.

    So, if identical living beings exist in other parallel universes, then it stands to reason that other living organisms exist
    • In either case, it's like worrying about the stock market when you don't own shares in anything.

      Better to focus on where we can make a difference. Right here.

      On the parellel universe bit, optimists believe that this is the best of all possible worlds. Pessmists know that it is.

  • I still haven't seen the main other reason why we (H.Sap) seems so alone in this universe - specifically, that we might be one of the first intelligent species to evolve.

    It's not that hard to imagine. Given the currently accepted age of the universe (~15 billion years), and the age of the solar system (5 billion years), we very well might be the "old ones" you read about in scifi novels.

    Makes you think.
  • How long do we have until they come and bulldoze the Earth in order to make way for a new interstellar highway?
  • I am as big a science fiction fan as everybody else here on slashdot, and have recently read some alternate history novels, one of them on the dinosaurs surviving. I find the question of the dinosaur extinction a fascinating one, because, if the asteroid had not hit the planet (assuming that's why they died out of course) what would the chances be of our being here today. From what we can tell the dinosaurs reigned over the earth for an improbably long time and it was only their extinction that enabled mamm

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