Thursday, October 26, 2006

E.T., Where are You?

There is an interesting debate over at PZ Myers site on the development of extraterrestrial intelligence. It's quite illuminating in a lot of ways, but I was struck by this insight:

What Percentage of Planets on Which Life Has Originated Will Produce Intelligent Life?

Physicists, on the whole, will give a different answer to this question than biologists. Physicists still tend to think more deterministically than biologists. They tend to say, if life has originated somewhere, it will also develop intelligence in due time. The biologist, on the other hand, is impressed by the improbability of such a development.


Personally, I remain optimistic about the chances of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, especially in light of progress in the last century on gravity. I would like to believe (but cannot objectively prove) that we're only a few decades away from a theory of inertial mass. Should such a formalism arise, we'd be well placed to build vehicles capable of interstellar flight.

However, this is an article of faith, not one of reason. The full critique is interesting and, although I can pick apart some of it, I reach a similar conclusion when I rebuild the argument with my corrections: i.e. intelligent, space-faring civilizations may not overlap in terms of space and time. The galaxy may only hold one or two at a time, separated by vast stretches of astronomical time. A million years is nothing in terms of astronomy, yet I can't imagine what future, if any, the human race has in that timeframe.

They may be out there, and they may be far more advanced than us, but if so, I can’t imagine them wanting to talk.

2 comments:

Brian Dunbar said...

A million years is nothing in terms of astronomy, yet I can't imagine what future, if any, the human race has in that timeframe.

All I know is that the odds of their being a human race - or people descended from homo sap - will be enhanced once we get large numbers of people off the earth and spread across many many other solar systems.

I can't imagine what future we'll have - but I can imagine we'll have one in some fashion or another.

MAH said...

I definately believe there is a future for some kind of being that traces at least part of it's ancestry back to humans, but even that is a belief.

A million years is an incomphrensively long time for a civilization. I suspect I am no more capable of understanding what becomes of the human race than my cat is capable of understanding where I go all day, or why.

I agree though that getting off the earth improves the odds of some kind of future immeasurably.