Recently, information appeared on the Internet that literally blew up the Internet. NASA researcher Silvano Colombano has published a document called "New Assumptions to Guide SETI Research". The report contains some very controversial statements, but the media sources all as one began to repeat: "Scientists from NASA claim that the Earth could already be visited by aliens"; "Tiny aliens could visit Earth." But what did the NASA expert actually say? Let's figure it out.
To begin with, Colombano, of NASA's Intelligent Systems Division, does admit that aliens may have visited Earth. But in essence, the document he published is another analysis of the Fermi paradox. In other words, the scientist asks the question: where are all the aliens?
In terms of scale, there must be many places in space where complex and intelligent life forms could live - the universe is infinitely huge. In terms of numbers, for example, within the framework of the Kepler program alone, scientists have discovered 3848 confirmed planets. Among them there are candidates that are in systems that are about 11.2 billion years old. Our home solar system is only about 4.5 billion years old. In other words, there is a possibility that at least one of these very ancient systems has an Earth-like planet, which is 6 billion years older than our Earth.
Let's imagine what life could be like on this planet. The predetermining factor in this matter, according to Colombano, will be time (in our particular case, 6 billion years). The scientist points out that technological evolution on Earth is happening at such a pace that we are unable to predict what humanity will expect over the next thousand years, let alone 6 billion years.
Colombano's conclusion: Our understanding of where aliens might be and what technologies might play a critical role in detecting them is based on four misconceptions. And overcoming these delusions will help us finally find extraterrestrial civilizations. A brief description of these misconceptions is presented below.
Interstellar travel is impossible or very unlikely
When it comes to how far we can travel in the Universe, the answer to this question will be biased for a number of reasons. And the main one lies in the limitations of our technologies and our understanding of physical laws at the current time. The farthest man could reach is to fly around the moon in the 70s. We do not have the technology to travel faster than the speed of light. We don't even have nuclear space engines. Until.
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However, aliens may already have these technologies. Therefore, it will be obvious to us to search for things like giant ion-powered spacecraft that can fly by Earth. Colombano insists that our limited resources and imagination should not dictate to us an understanding of how space / energy and space / time can be controlled.
Radio waves are and will be the main form of communication for thousands and millions of years
So far, we have not found a way to travel through space faster than the speed of light, so we are trying to search for intelligent life, relying on methods that allow us to communicate over very long distances. This aspect is one of the reasons why SETI (Search Institute for Alien Civilizations) continues to search for radio waves from space.
Even if radio waves, as a method of communication, will exist in the distant future (or they are used by technologically advanced aliens), then, most likely, they will be able to carry much more information than ways to carry it now, says Colombano. In other words, "current us" simply cannot define them - separate the real message from the "background noise". According to the scientist, this form of communication may become obsolete in the future. More advanced civilizations are more likely to choose other ways of long-distance communication, ones that we cannot even imagine.
Reasonable civilizations will be carbon-based
According to the author of the report, this is one of the most important delusions. For a long time, we relied on our idea that life in the Universe is based on certain components, without which it would be impossible. We simply stubbornly ignore the possibility that very different forms of life could exist in the universe. Our carbon-based ecosystem, Colombano argues, may be just a tiny first step in an ongoing evolution that could lead to intelligent life forms that are many times superior to us and are no longer (or never at all) carbon-based.
It is very convenient to assume that all life in the Universe could appear in situations similar to the one in which our life appeared in the Solar System. But the likelihood that the evolution of each organism will proceed in a similar way and follow the same rules is unlikely. If we proceed from this, then our interest and attempts to search for life should go beyond the so-called habitable zone of stars. It is difficult to imagine how life forms living in such conditions will look like, how they will behave and or what methods of communication they will use, but they will definitely not be like us. Even remotely.
In fact, the above aspect can affect everything else in the list presented. For example, the same technologically advanced civilizations that are not based on carbon may have access to interstellar travel, since they will not be constrained by the constraints that we ourselves have, such as lifespan or physical size.
We have not been visited and are not visited
In the search for extraterrestrial life, Colombano notes, the potential relevance of UFO phenomena is largely ignored, mainly due to the fact that the bulk of such messages do turn out to be "fake", and there is a clear disinterest and skepticism among the public about these events. But instead of such a position, the specialist believes, scientists should focus on finding real "signals" among all this "noise".
In the bulk of the "noise" in UFO reports, though small, but real "signals" may be hidden, indicating phenomena that cannot be explained, and therefore, they should not be ignored. If we can agree and accept a new set of assumptions about what forms of higher intelligence or technology we might find, some of these phenomena may be suitable as concrete examples for these assumptions, or at least stimulate deeper analysis and investigation.
What needs to be changed to get things off the ground?
Colombano cites several proposals that will allow a more "aggressive" approach to the search for extraterrestrial civilizations within the same SETI program.
First, physicists should pay more attention to "speculative physics" - still based on real theories and evidence, but allowing us to expand the boundaries of our understanding of spacetime and energy. At the same time, scientists should more actively involve technical specialists to investigate the prospects for the development of certain technologies, especially those related to artificial intelligence, as well as issues exploring the relationship between man and machine. In addition, sociologists should be involved in assistance and discussion, who could, if not explain, then at least imagine what societies could arise within such technologically advanced civilizations and what means of communication these societies could use. Last but not least, more attention should be paid to UFO phenomena,really worth exploring in a low signal to noise ratio context.
What conclusion can be drawn from all this? With all that has been said - including the fact that life in space can take on completely unfamiliar forms - we are again faced with new questions. How will new approaches, ideas and perception of certain probabilities help us in establishing contact with extraterrestrial civilizations, completely unlike those that we imagined for ages? We also have to figure this out, since this is another obstacle on the path of our discoveries.
Nikolay Khizhnyak