The Debate Over Active SETI

Recently, Centauri Dreams has hosted some absolutely fascinating discussion about how to determine the threat to Earth from broadcasting messages to the cosmos. Check it out: “Active SETI & The Public” and “San Marino: Assessing Active SETI’s Risk” (don't skip the comments for either post).

One particularly eloquent commenter summed the problem:

It is arrogant in the extreme, for a small group of scientists to take upon themselves the responsibility of representing all 6 billion of humankind. Nobody has ever asked the citizens of the world whether they agree to their presence being broadcast far and wide. Regardless of whether contact with ETIs is completely benign or a profound discontinuity in our history, it is a step which should not be made unilaterally by a small group without the consent of a majority of our global civilization.

The great thing about Centauri Dreams is that often the actual scientists participate in the conversation. In this case, a Dr. Alexander Zaitsev actively responds to commenters (especially in the first post). Several others mentioned his “arrogant” tone but, based on my experiences with people speaking English as a Second Language, sometimes the informality of English is hard for non-native speakers even when they may be very articulate on technical matters. However, I very much agree that he has done an incomplete job of addressing with the political and social ramifications of Active SETI. The general response has been to say “Well, there’s no agreed way to choose someone to speak for all of Earth, so we’re not going to do it.” This seems to me a somewhat circular argument. At the very least, more effort could be made to start that conversation about how we go about choosing someone to speak “for all mankind”.

One thing I was quite surprised about (but when I thought about it made sense), it appears even our radar transmissions to track asteroids and comets could tip off an alien civilization that we're here. But I guess if our wayward radio signals can leak into space, then I should expect signals actually sent into space would be detectable as well. These radar signals would be unlikely to provide repeating or message-like signals but they would nevertheless be quite distinctive.

This has been an issue that bothered me for some time (see here and here) so I’m thrilled that someone is finally started to ask questions and have a conversation about how we, as a planet, would want to pursue this. Consider how once upon a time asteroid impacts were just a topic for scientists but are now discussed widely by people in a variety of professions and governments. I can only hope this discussion also successfully transforms into a wider debate.

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Space News

Interesting article on the Pioneer anomaly. Two space probes currently exiting our solar system are slowing down for reasons no one can fully explain. The article goes through some of the latest thinking and research as to why this is happening.

Update on developing liquid mirror telescopes on the moon. There’s been some very intriguing developments here that make this very plausible in the next 10-15 years.

Bigelow Aerospace will (hopefully) launch Genesis II tomorrow. This is their second inflatable space module design (the third is already in the works). The first was inflated successfully, sent back some cool pictures and demonstrated the feasibility of inflatable modules for spacecraft design. More information is at the Bigelow website, including some proposals for human-capable modules.

Op-Ed from UK’s Independent on the dangers of attempting to contact alien civilizations (via Speculist. Considering my previous concerns, I’m glad more people starting to ask questions about whether it is a good idea to brazenly announce our existence to the galaxy at large. It’s not that I think we should hide. What disturbs and worries me is that this decision is being made by a few idealistic scientists without any larger deliberation or say-so from the rest of humanity. One of Western civilizations greatest features is our debating of controversial issues and ideas. This act could change human civilization but the decision is being made for us without an appropriate level of debate.

My goodness, these are interesting times, aren’t they?

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Thursday's Occurances of Note

1) Flemming Rose of Mohammed cartoons fame now has a blog with Pajamas Media. His first few posts cover everything from Sir Salman Rushdie, women’s lib for immigrants in Denmark and worldwide demographic trends. It definitely leaves me eager for more.

2) CA company develops lasers without heat. And it’s being tested for various commercial applications right now.

3) The latest weapon in the War on Terror – Cyborg Moths. The US military plans to use chip-implanted moths to find, track and eavesdrop on terrorist enclaves.

4) China surpasses US as No.1 in CO2 emissions. I eagerly await condemnation from environmental organizations.

Link to full post.

Miscellaneous

Just a quick run-down of what's up:
1) To the American chocolate manufacturers, GOD DAMN YOU, damn you to hell! If you want to save money by taking the cocoa products out of chocolate, that's your call. BUT you don't get to keep calling it chocolate! Link has info about how to complain to the FDA to prevent this travesty of proper labeling.

2) In cool-science news, my dream of interplanetary spelunking is that much closer to reality. The Mars Orbiter has discovered 6 incredibly large cave entrances on Mars. The scale picture with the article shows an opening 100m across! Also, the caves are so deep that no information can be ascertained about their insides.

3) Before Pirate of the Caribbean: At World's End last weekend, they showed a trailer for the new Transformers movie. Everyone in my theater liked it but did a quick side-to-side check of the other people to be sure it wasn't just them. I was skeptical of this project (honestly, I thought Michael Bay had finally lost it) but, man, it looks fantastic!

4) Recent Reading: "7 Daughters of Eve" by Bryan Sykes - I really enjoyed this book about the genetic origins of modern Europeans and the research that went into it. The author has a very wry sense of humor that helps ease through the more technical explanations of things like polymerase chain reactions. However, the last chapter was a weird change of tone from the rest of the book.

Coming this week: My review of NASA's recently released report on Asteroid Deflections. Interesting stuff...

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Planetary Defense Thoughts

I recently read a sci-fi book entitled Von Neumann’s War about Earth being invaded by machines modeled on Von Neumann’s hypothesis of using self-replicating machines for planetary exploration. One of the more disturbing aspects of the book was how long it took Earth to identify that a problem existed. The machines had colonized several planetary bodies & moons before they were detected during the invasion of Mars. Upon arriving on a planet they would convert every available bit of metal into machinery to make other machines thus acting like low-tech Replicators (who are likely a rip-off of the Von Neumann idea).

Why was this disturbing? Because by the time they invaded Earth, the machines had a massive logistics infrastructure within our solar system that we couldn't do anything about. Granted, Earth prevailed in the end (it was that kind of book) but it strikes me as incredibly worrying that something (or someone) could operate with impunity and setting up the means to defeat Earth in-system. Currently, we would essentially have no means of detecting them barring a fortunately placed space probe.

But it got me thinking….What could be done right now to either extend our ability to detect threats or better use what we have? Which lead me to the following ideas. I limited myself to two specific proposals. For a more general overview of the problems & strategies of Planetary Defense, I recommend Introduction to Planetary Defense by a group of engineers with experience in defense development.

I. Albedo Verification

One of the key methods of detecting machine presence in the book was to check for changing reflectivity of the bodies involved. Mars changed from red of iron ore to the gray of refined iron alloys. However, even though Earth possessed the ability to check the albedo of bodies in the outer solar system, it was not a regularly performed check. This is exactly how the machines were able to colonize so many places before they were detected.

Thus, I would say this is a relatively low-tech (within current state-of-the-art) method of checking for in-system infiltration on a massive scale. It should be the task of whomsoever is in-charge of planetary defense (Space Command, maybe?) to regularly perform these checks & for it to be done in secret.

Why secret? If the bad guys exist & have the ability to perform massive colonization of our outer solar system, then they can probably listen to our transmissions fairly easily. If the tests were public, it might lead to said bad guys attempting to conceal their efforts, which may very well make their actions undetectable to Earth authorities & greatly diminishing Earth’s ability to gather intelligence, and greatly diminishing the time Earth has to react to any detected threat.

This check should be performed semi-regularly on every moon & planet possible in order to ensure no significant changes have been made.

II. Improved DSN to In-Space SOSUS Network

During the Cold War, the United States Navy created networks of sonar bouys in the Atlantic Ocean in order to detect enemy submarines. It was referred to as the SOSUS Network. Currently, we have a Deep Space Network of antennae for communicating with distant space probes but no in-space assets solely dedicated to tracking natural or not where-ever they are in the solar system.

The creation of the SOSUS network was a technological feat of its time but it would still be several orders of magnitude easier than a space system. This is because the US knew the Soviets' technological capabilities and had a very good idea about what capabilities were necessary in their network. Also, they could track improvements to Soviet submarines through other sources like satellite coverage of known anchorages & human intelligence (ie – spies). Any implementation of this idea to space would have the opposite situation. With so many unknowns, the probes composing the network would have to be versatile, capable of detecting a variety of frequencies & phenomena, and easily adaptable by ground controllers in light of new information. This would greatly increase both the cost of each individual probe & make it less likely to be built. How do you create a network to detect what you cannot define?

One good thing, unlike albedo checking, a space SOSUS would not necessarily have to be secret because there is a very good side benefit to this system. These probes could be used to “cut their teeth” on impact detection for earth by asteroids & comets and acting as conduits for interplanetary probes & their communications. This could ensure international cooperation (as big enough asteroid impacts affect everyone & multiple international entities have interplanetary probes). It would also provide not a cover story so much as plenty of opportunity, motive & market to develop a more advanced Deep Space Network.

Off the top of my head, these probes should be robust, long-lived and versatile. Their positioning & density should reflect both Earth strategic concerns & ensure it is very difficult for a large portion of the network to be compromised in one instance due to any event natural or otherwise. It strikes me as especially important to ensure coverage of the opposite side of the sun from earth, the asteroid belt and the outer solar system especially areas where Earth has few interplanetary probes.

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Notice that both of these ideas involve detecting a threat & not necessarily doing anything about it? Well, that’s because as of right now, there’s not much Earth can do. The Intro to Planetary Defense book explains in more detail but, barring something deeply unexpected, anybody capable of traveling between the stars is probably out of our league militarily. Honestly, all it would take is lobbing a few asteroids in our direction to wipe out our civilization and then wait a few decades for everybody to die off in the “nuclear” winter. Problem solved.

You know all those people accusing the government of running secret programs to fight aliens? They always say it like it’s a BAD thing. But truthfully, I’d feel a lot better knowing there’s a poor man’s SGC out there working toward ensuring that if anybody invades Earth, they get more than a few nasty surprises.

It’s not that I think there definitely aliens out there or that, if they exist, they are de facto hostile. I’m just one of those people who believe it’s better to plan for a rainy day than count on a sunny one.

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