Aucbvax.4121 net.columbia utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!space-enthusiasts Wed Sep 30 05:14:05 1981 SPACE Digest V1 #204 >From Wed Sep 30 05:06:30 1981 SPACE Digest Volume 1 : Issue 204 Today's Topics: Re: Intelligent life Wiping Out the Human Race As far as I can tell Intelligent life in D.C. and elsewhere. Intelligent Life The indifferent stars Elucidation of previous message. where are they all [Re: SPACE Digest V1 #203 ] Astrometry Research on life-support systems for futures space colonies Re: Intelligent life ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 29 Sep 1981 0746-CDT From: CMP.MKSMITH at UTEXAS-20 Subject: Re: Intelligent life To: POURNE at MIT-MC cc: SPACE at MIT-MC In-Reply-To: Your message of 29-Sep-81 0258-CDT The argument that there must be lots of loose information pinging around the galaxy if there are 1E6 civilizations isn't obvious. In an information rich society, like ours is becoming, the airwaves wil be superceded by cables and optics. I have read estimates of how long a civilization will use broadcast to communicate but I don't remember them. 100 yrs? 1000? This clamps the probability of lots of easily accesible galactic eavesdroping way down. 10 billion (~age of galaxy) / (1E6 X 100) = .1 . Not great odds since we are not going to be capable of picking up information from everywhere with equal facility. Of course the idea that we should be swamped by broadcasts assumes that "they" share our love of random information as epitomized by the tube. Maybe they entertain themselves in other ways, impossible as that is to conceive. Admittedly we have been making our presence known for a while, but we have no reason the think they would want to talk to us. They will be truly alien, not just physically. I can't help being leery of arguments that seem to presuppose that our motives will be theirs. ------------------------------ Date: 29 Sep 1981 0831-PDT From: DIETZ at USC-ECL Subject: Wiping Out the Human Race To: space at MIT-MC With all this talk of races wiping themselves out, what evidence do we have that it is even possible? A full scale nuclear war doesn't even come close to wiping out humanity. I find it hard to conceive of a disaster that could destroy humanity without also nearly sterilizing the globe. Intelligence implies incredible adaptibility - so we are in much better shape than the dinosaurs. Also, evolution is NOT driven by mutation. In higher organisms, it is driven by the diversity created during the recombination of genes in sexual reproduction. In bacteria, resistance to drugs is not caused by random mutation but rather by picking up a drug resistance gene from another bacterium or a plasmid (conjugation) or from a bacteriophage. Granted, the gene originally was produced by random mutations, but this doesn't have to happen more than once. ------------------------------ Date: 29 Sep 1981 (Tuesday) 1134-EDT From: DREIFU at WHARTON-10 (Henry Dreifus) Subject: As far as I can tell To: space at MIT-MC I would guess another intelligent race would want to have NO BUSINESS with our race. ------------------------------ Date: 29 Sep 1981 1045-CDT From: Clyde Hoover Subject: Intelligent life in D.C. and elsewhere. To: space at MIT-MC Proxmire is quite right about there being questions of whether intelligent life exists in Washington D.C. Proxmire himself raises the biggest doubts because he is so obviously lacking in any intelligence. Short-sightedness on the part of our politicians is what has put the human species on the road to probable suicide, and Sen. Proxmire is a prime example of this malaise ("The planets will be there for billions of years, so let's not bother with exploring them any time soon"). It strikes me that the true test of the survivablitiy of a species is if it can move beyond its' home world and overcome the ignorant idiots among them. Did anyone think that maybe THEY are waiting for US to visit? Consider a semi-non-anthromorphic scale of maturity -- would an interstellar community WANT to make its existance known to a world where the inhabitants spend much of their energies devising better ways to kill each other? (Out of self-protection as much as galactic Darwinism). If mankind ever amounts to much, it will be in spite of our pea-brained, short-sighted politicians like Proxmire. Where **ARE** they? Probably waiting at Proxmia Centauri to see whether to throw a coming-out party or send in the Vogon Constructor Fleet. ------------------------------ Date: 29 Sep 1981 1054-CDT From: Jon Webb Subject: Intelligent Life To: Space at MIT-MC cc: cs.webb at UTEXAS-20 I don't think we know enough to say much about the number of intelligent civilizations in the universe. The problem is that we have only one example of such a civilization, indeed only one example of a solar system capable of supporting any kind of life, so that all our reasoning has to be done in a vacuum. There may be 1, 10, 100, 1000, ... intelligent civilizations in this galaxy or this universe; we simply don't have enough data to say. If we found evidence of any of these numbers we'd simply fiddle around with our models to make them fit the data. Jon ------------------------------ Date: 29 Sep 1981 0946-PDT From: Bob Amsler Subject: The indifferent stars To: space at MIT-MC One hypothesis I haven't seen mentioned as to why we haven't been visited is that we may simply be so common a phenomena that it isn't worthwhile even cataloguing such life developments. Suppose life isn't just possible, or even just probably, but SUPERABUNDANT. Suppose advanced civilizations visit their nearby 100 solar systems and discover life forms in some stage of evolution in virtually every one. Suppose even interbreeding is possible, plus inter-infectivity from viruses, etc. ("What, another flu brought home from those interstellar probes!"). The thought is that after a certain amount of this an advanced civilization might not continue indefinitely exploring the whole universe, but settle down to do some serious bio-engineering of its own. It is always very tempting for us to regard ourselves as extra-special in the scheme of things. Earthnocentrism may be the rule among embryonic civilizations. ------------------------------ Date: 29 Sep 1981 1244-CDT From: Clyde Hoover Subject: Elucidation of previous message. To: space at MIT-MC Hmm... apparantly some folks missed the reference to the planet-demolishing race introduced in "The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy". The point is that either man will be welcomed or destroyed, depending on behavior. ------------------------------ Date: 29 Sep 1981 1403-CDT From: Kim Korner Subject: where are they all To: space at MIT-MC Imagine homing in on reruns of "The Beverly Hillbillies" and other such drivel. Earth is probably infamous throughout the galaxy for the death of numerous exploratory crews (all suicided). Deathrays of dreck... -KMK ------------------------------ Date: 29 Sep 1981 1410-EDT From: PDL at MIT-DMS (P. David Lebling) To: OTA at SU-AI In-reply-to: Message of 29 Sep 81 at 0402 PDT by OTA@SU-AI Subject: [Re: SPACE Digest V1 #203 ] Message-id: <[MIT-DMS].211471> Another explanation for why "they" aren't out there is that they are, but they aren't broadcasting. More and more broadcasting on this planet is becoming "narrowcasting" via cables, optical fibers, and so on. As the argument goes, there is really only a narrow time window within which the Uncle Milties and Lucille Balls are broadcast to the universe. In our case it is likely to be considerably less than 100 years. Past that window, there would have to be a conscious decision to broadcast for the edification of lesser civilizations, because all internal traffic would be narrowcast. Dave ------------------------------ Date: 29 Sep 1981 1332-PDT From: DIETZ at USC-ECL Subject: Astrometry To: space at MIT-MC Some years ago some astronomers claimed that they had detected a large planet around Barnard's star by astrometric techniques (that is, by measuring the position of the star accurately to detect the motion caused by the planet). Their results are now generally attributed to errors in measurement. However, there have been some technological advances in astrometry that will make the detection of planets around nearby stars feasible. Viewed from 10 parsecs, the angular motion of the sun caused by the earth's motion is about 1 micro arc-second (1 uas). At the same distance jupiter causes a motion of about 500 uas. To get some idea how small these angles are, 1 uas is about the angle subtended by an atom held at arm's length. On the drawing boards right now are ground based astrometric telescopes that can achieve an accuracy of 1000 uas per night, or 100 uas per yearly normal point (average of one years observations). This would easily allow the detection of jupiter like planets within 30 ly. The space telescope was not designed for astrometry, but should be able to achieve 1000 uas. A space based astrometric telescope would be about 40m long (it would be telescoped to fit in the shuttle cargo bay). It would have an ultimate accuracy of about 1 uas. This would allow the detection of earth-like planets around nearby stars, and the detection of jupiter-like planets out to large distances (100's of lys). ------------------------------ Date: 29 Sep 1981 1914-PDT From: Hans Moravec Subject: Research on life-support systems for futures space colonies To: space at MIT-MC n018 0821 29 Sep 81 BC-SCIENCE-WATCH (UNDATED) c. 1981 N.Y. Times News Service In an experiment on possible life-support systems for future space colonies, a space agency scientist has established what appear to be totally self-sufficient communities of shrimp, algae and microbes capable of generating their own food, oxygen and water within the confines of sealed glass flasks. These laboratory communities have thrived now for more than 15 months. The animals and plants in these small ecosystems are the largest ever to have lived as much as a year in a closed environment, according to Joe Hanson, an ecologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The world for each of these communities is a one-liter glass flask that was hermetically sealed (by melting the neck of the flask closed) when the experiment began last year. Only light, from fluorescent lamps, and heat may enter or leave through the glass walls. Living in three cups of synthetic sea water inside each flask are as many as 16 small red tropical shrimp less than one inch long, assorted algae and many varieties of bacteria, viruses and microscopic animals. In these ecosystems, plants (algae) produce the oxygen and foods that feed the shrimp and other animal life, and the animals' wastes provide carbon dioxide and fertilizer consumed by the algae. Only energy, in the form of light, comes from outside the system. How these closed microecosystems, as they are called, could perhaps be applied to developing larger and more complex ecosystems to support human colonies in space will be explored at a National Aeronautics and Space Administration workshop to be held at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory next January. ------------------------------ Date: 30 September 1981 01:29-EDT From: Jerry E. Pournelle Subject: Re: Intelligent life To: CMP.MKSMITH at UTEXAS-20 cc: POURNE at MIT-MC, SPACE at MIT-MC You are undoubtedly correct, of course. ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest ******************* ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.