I’m a big fan of SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intellience) and I think their search program constitutes the best chance we have of making contact. In fact, on a recent Saturday I was rained out of my normal 4-hour bike ride, so I read SETI scientist Seth Shostak’s new book, Confessions of An Alien Hunter (published by National Geographic), a brilliant and fun read. Seth has a fantastic sense of humor and in his book he presents some of great one-liners to use when dealing with UFOlogists, alien abductees, and the saucerites. For example:

Regarding the time it would take to traverse the vast distances between the stars, which would be millions of years (it will take Voyager II 300,000 years to reach a nearby star), Shostak notes: “That’s a long time to be squirming in a coach seat.”

As for the lack of tangible evidence for UFOs: “Physical evidence — a taillight or knob from an alien craft — is in short supply.”

UFOlogists claim that they have tens of thousands of UFO sightings, as if this is a good thing, but Shostak notes that this actually argues against UFOs being ET, because to date not one of these tens of thousands of sightings has materialized into concrete evidence that UFOs = ETIs. It’s counterintuitive, but more sightings equals less certainty because with so many saucers zipping around we would have captured one by now, and we haven’t.

Shostak notes that crop circles are a very poor means of communication because they represent only a few hundred bits of information, 1,679 bits in the most complex crop circle to date, which is less than a paragraph of text! If ETIs are advanced enough for interstellar space travel, why resort to using wheat fields, which are only ripe a couple of months a year, and then the crop-circle communication is quickly mowed down by angry farmers!

As for alien abductees, Shostak points out that Whitley Strieber’s book, Communion, launched the modern alien abduction movement. And guess what Strieber does for a living? He is a SciFi/fantasy/horror writer! Actually, I knew this already because I met Strieber in the green room at Bill Maher’s ABC show, Politically Incorrect, and Whitley and I were chatting it up over coffee and granola bars in the green room before the show when I asked him what he did when he wasn’t writing about being abducted by aliens. He told me that he writes science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels. The show was over right there in the green room! What else is there to say to a guy who writes this stuff as fiction, then slaps a “nonfiction” label on the book jacket?

A review of George Basalla’s Civilized Life in the Universe: Scientists on Intelligent Extraterrestrials.

On February 8, 2000, the New York Times science section featured a newly published book, Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe¹ by the paleontologist Peter Ward and astronomer Donald Brownlee, who were called radicals for daring to challenge the orthodox assumption that the cosmos is probably teaming with complex life. “Now, two prominent scientists say the conventional wisdom is wrong.”²

How did the belief in the existence of extra-terrestrial intelligence (ETI) change from the heresy it was in the early 1960s when Frank Drake, Carl Sagan, and others took up the search, to “conventional wisdom” by the late 1990s? It certainly was not due to any new empirical data for the existence of ETIs, since this continues to be a science without a subject. A compelling answer may be found in George Basalla’s critically important new book, Civilized Life in the Universe, the best treatment on the history and science of the subject since Steven Dick’s magisterial two volumes, Plurality of Worlds and The Biological Universe.³

Basalla’s tightly-woven and highly readable narrative begins with an epigraph from the theoretical physicist Paul Davies: “What I am more concerned with is the extent to which the modern search for aliens is, at rock-bottom, part of an ancient religious quest” (p. 3). That is precisely what it is, says Basalla, who precedes to outline three assumptions underlying the thinking about extra-terrestrial intelligence from antiquity to the present:

1. the universe is very large or infinite,
2. there are other inhabited worlds,
3. these other complex and intelligent beings are vastly superior to us.

Modern cosmology has confirmed the first assumption. We live in an accelerating expanding universe some 13.7 billion years old, which contains several hundred billion galaxies each of which houses several hundred billion stars. And modern astronomy is in the process of confirming half of the second assumption: there are a great many worlds circling those hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy. Whether they are inhabited or not, of course, remains to be seen.

As for the third assumption, if we did make contact with an ETI, they would have to be vastly superior to us (since we just recently mastered radio and space-flight). On an evolutionary time scale, an ETI species only slightly ahead of us biologically could be millions of years ahead of us technologically. Pace Arthur C. Clarke, I have called this Shermer’s Last Law: “Any sufficiently advanced extra-terrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God.”⁴

This is actually an ancient belief, says Basalla.

The idea of the superiority of celestial beings is neither new nor scientific. It is a widespread and old belief in religious thought. Aristotle divided his universe into two distinct regions, the superior celestial realm and the inferior terrestrial realm.

The incorporation of Aristotle into Christian theology carried this belief into the Middle Ages. “Christians populated the celestial regions with God, the saints, angelic beings of varying ranks, and the souls of the dead. These immortal celestial beings were superior to mortals, who inhabited the inferior terrestrial realm” (p. 10). Even though the Copernican revolution overturned Aristotelian cosmology, “the belief that creatures living on a distant planet were superior to the human species” hung on into the modern age, and that “religious elements continue to adhere to the perception of extraterrestrial life even as we study it in the twenty-first century” (p. 12).

As I demonstrated in an analysis I conducted on the SETI pioneers,⁵ most were once religious but became either atheists or agnostics as adults. Radio astronomer Frank Drake — creator of the canonical “Drake Equation” for estimating the number of ETIs inhabiting the galaxy — was raised Baptist, and later reflected: “A strong influence on me, and I think on a lot of SETI people, was the extensive exposure to fundamentalist religion.”⁶ In his book on the subject, Drake suggested that “immortality may be quite common among extraterrestrials.”⁷ Carl Sagan — who did more than anyone to conventionalize SETI — was raised Jewish and became agnostic, later writing of SETI’s importance: “It touches deeply into myth, folklore, religion, mythology; and every human culture in some way or another has wondered about that type of question.”⁸ ETIs are secular Gods. Deities for atheists.

Why should so many people — theists and atheists, theologians and scientists — believe in the existence of superior celestial beings, be they angels or aliens? Basalla’s answer is twofold:

1. the psychologist Robert Plank suggests that humans have an emotional need to believe in imaginary beings.⁹ “Despite all their scientific trappings,” Basalla writes, “the extraterrestrials discussed by scientists are as imaginary as the spirits and gods of religion or myth” (p. 14);
2. the historian of science Steven Dick thinks that when the Newtonian mechanical universe displaced the spiritual world of the Middle Ages it left a vast and lifeless void, which was filled by modern science with ETIs. Consider Sagan’s vision of alien intelligences, says Basalla. “Sagan was certain that these creatures were benevolent. They would help us solve current problems, like the spread of nuclear weapons and environmental pollution, by sharing their advanced knowledge with us” (p. 13).

Basalla is also highly critical of the anthropomorphism inherent in SETI science. Although Sagan identified a number of chauvinisms (oxygen, carbon, temperature, etc.) that cloud scientific thinking on this subject, Basalla thinks that he didn’t go far enough. The chauvinism that ETIs will communicate via radio signals, that their intelligence will take a form similar to ours, and especially that they are social beings who live in civilizations are anthropomorphisms that have no basis whatsoever in reality. We cannot even communicate with terrestrial intelligences such as apes and dolphins, Basalla notes, “how can we hope to decode complex messages sent by superior extraterrestrial ones?” (p. 200).

Nevertheless, if we do make contact with intelligent celestial beings, all of this speculation and conjecture will fall by the wayside in favor of real science. So in the spirit of scientific inquiry, the search must go on. Ad astra!

References & Notes

1. Ward, P. D. and D. Brownlee. 2000. Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe. New York: Copernicus Books.
2. Broad, W. J. 2000. “Maybe We Are Alone in the Universe, After All.” New York Times, February 8.
3. Dick, Steven J. 1982. Plurality of Worlds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1996. The Biological Universe. New York: Cambridge University press.
4. Shermer, Michael. 2002. “Shermer’s Last Law.” Scientific American, January, p. 33.
5. Shermer, Michael. 2001. The Borderlands of Science. New York: Oxford University Press.
6. Swift, D. 1990. SETI Pioneers: Scientists Talk About Their Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, p. 57.
7. Drake, Frank and Dava Sobel. 1992. Is Anyone Out There? New York: Delacorte, p. 160.
8. Swift, D. 1990, p. 219.
9. Plank, Robert. 1968. The Emotional Significance of Imaginary Beings. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas.

(Cambridge University Press, 2006, ISBN 0195171810)
This review was originally published in Science.

In science there is arguably no more suppositional formula than that proposed in 1961 by radio astronomer Frank Drake for estimating the number of technological civilizations that reside in our galaxy: N = R fp ne fl fi fc L

In this equation, N is the number of communicative civilizations, R is the rate of formation of suitable stars, fp is the fraction of those stars with planets, ne is the number of Earth-like planets per solar system, fl is the fraction of planets with life, fi is the fraction of planets with intelligent life, fc is the fraction of planets with communicating technology, and L is the lifetime of communicating civilizations.

Although we have a fairly good idea of the rate of stellar formation, a dearth of data for the other components means that calculations are often reduced to the creative speculations of quixotic astronomers. Most SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) scientists are realistic about the limitations of their field; still, I was puzzled to encounter numerous caveats about L, such as this one from SETI Institute astronomer Seth Shostak: “The lack of precision in determining these parameters pales in comparison with our ignorance of L.” Similarly, Mars Society president Robert Zubrin says that “the biggest uncertainty revolves around the value of L; we have very little data to estimate this number, and the value we pick for it strongly influences the results of the calculation.” Estimates of L reflect this uncertainty, ranging from 10 years to 10 million years, with a mean of about 50,000 years.

Using a conservative Drake equation calculation, where L = 50,000 years (and R = 10, fp = 0.5, ne = 0.2, fl = 0.2, fi = 0.2, fc = 0.2), then N = 400 civilizations, or one per 4,300 light-years. Using Zubrin’s optimistic (and modified) Drake equation, where L = 50,000 years, then N = five million galactic civilizations, or one per 185 light-years. (Zubrin’s calculation assumes that 10 percent of all 400 billion stars are suitable G- and K-type stars that are not part of multiples, with almost all having planets, that 10 percent of these contain an active biosphere and that 50 percent of those are as old as Earth.) Estimates of N-range wildly between these figures, from Planetary Society scientist Thomas R. McDonough’s 4,000 to Carl Sagan’s one million.

I find this inconsistency in the estimation of L perplexing because it is the one component in the Drake equation for which we have copious empirical data from the history of civilization on Earth. To compute my own value of L, I compiled the durations of 60 civilizations (years from inception to demise or the present), including Sumeria, Mesopotamia, Babylonia, the eight dynasties of Egypt, the six civilizations of Greece, the Roman Republic and Empire, and others in the ancient world, plus various civilizations since the fall of Rome, such as the nine dynasties (and two republics) of China, four in Africa, three in India, two in Japan, six in Central and South America, and six modern states of Europe and America.

The 60 civilizations in my database endured a total of 25,234 years, so L = 420.6 years. For more modern and technological societies, L became shorter, with the 28 civilizations since the fall of Rome averaging only 304.5 years. Plugging these figures into the Drake equation goes a long way toward explaining why ET has yet to drop by or phone in. Where L = 420.6 years, N = 3.36 civilizations in our galaxy; where L = 304.5 years, N= 2.44 civilizations in our galaxy. No wonder the galactic airways have been so quiet!

I am an unalloyed enthusiast for the SETI program, but history tells us that civilizations may rise and fall in cycles too brief to allow enough to flourish at any one time to traverse (or communicate across) the vast and empty expanses between the stars. We evolved in small hunter-gatherer communities of 100 to 200 individuals; it may be that our species, and perhaps extraterrestrial species as well (assuming evolution operates in a like manner elsewhere), is simply not well equipped to survive for long periods in large populations.

Whatever the quantity of L, and whether N is less than 10 or more than 10 million, we must ensure L does not fall to zero on our planet, the only source of civilization we have known.

As scientist extraordinaire and author of an empire of science-fiction books, Arthur C. Clarke is one of the farthest-seeing visionaries of our time. His pithy quotations tug harder than those of most futurists on our collective psyches for their insights into humanity and our unique place in the cosmos.
And none do so more than his famous Third Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

This observation stimulated me to think about the impact the discovery of an extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) would have on science and religion. To that end, I would like to immodestly propose Shermer’s Last Law (I don’t believe in naming laws after oneself, so as the good book says, the last shall be first and the first shall be last): “Any sufficiently advanced ETI is indistinguishable from God.”

God is typically described by Western religions as omniscient and omnipotent. Because we are far from possessing these traits, how can we possibly distinguish a God who has them absolutely from an ETI who merely has them copiously relative to us? We can’t. But if God were only relatively more knowing and powerful than we are, then by definition the deity would be an ETI!

Consider that biological evolution operates at a snail’s pace compared with technological evolution (the former is Darwinian and requires generations of differential reproductive success; the latter is Lamarckian and can be accomplished within a single generation). Then, too, the cosmos is very big and very empty. Voyager 1, our most distant spacecraft, hurtling along at more than 38,000 miles per hour, will not reach the distance of even our sun’s nearest neighbor, the Alpha Centauri system (which it is not headed toward), for more than 75,000 years. Ergo, the probability that an ETI only slightly more advanced than we are will make contact is virtually nil. If we ever do find an ETI, it will be as though a million-year-old Homo erectus were dropped into the 21st century, given a computer and cell phone and instructed to communicate with us. The ETI would be to us as we would be to this early hominid — godlike.

Because of science and technology, our world has changed more in the past century than in the previous 100 centuries. It took 10,000 years to get from the dawn of civilization to the airplane but just 66 years to get from powered flight to a lunar landing.

Moore’s Law of computer power doubling every 18 months or so is now approaching a year. Ray Kurzweil, in his book The Age of Spiritual Machines, calculates that there have been 32 doublings since World War II and that the singularity point — the point at which total computational power will rise to levels so far beyond anything that we can imagine that it will appear nearly infinite and thus be indistinguishable from omniscience — may be upon us as early as 2050.

When that happens, the decade that follows will put the 100,000 years before it to shame. Extrapolate out about a million years (just a blink on an evolutionary timescale and therefore a realistic estimate of how far advanced ETIs will be), and we get a gut-wrenching, mind-warping feel for how godlike these creatures would seem. In Clarke’s 1953 novel, called Childhood’s End, humanity reaches something like a singularity and must then make the transition to a higher state of consciousness. One character early in the story opines that “science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of Zeus or Thor, but they have few followers now.”

Although science has not even remotely destroyed religion, Shermer’s Last Law predicts that the relation between the two will be profoundly affected by contact with an ETI. To find out how, we must follow Clarke’s Second Law: “The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.” Ad astra!