THE SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE

Posted by admin_akashic on Jun 27th, 2022 in Space

Conclusion

So much for the Great Silence. Perhaps it is too early to draw a curtain over this debate. It is only this century that speculators about the existence of ETI have been given the technology to conduct an empirical search for it. At the present time so little of the universe has been explored, and so little (less than 1 per cent) of the solar system. There is no firm knowledge of how life began on Earth, no a priori knowledge to rule out claims to how it might have begun elsewhere. It is too premature to speak of a paradox in the context of the Great Silence, as yet there is not enough evidence either way. ‘Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.’ As long as the number of negative searches cannot be regarded as a statistically representative sample, all conclusions regarding the absence of ETI remain unsupported. Either side could be right. The issue is undetermined. One cannot base predictions about the existence or non-existence of ETI on hypotheses regarding their alleged activities. There is no alternative other than a comprehensive search. When speculation reigns, the priority of observational research must reassert itself in the scientific domain. Fermi’s Paradox is employed as an argument that research into the possibility of ETI should not be funded or undertaken. It has no force against a commitment to observational science. But this is not to rule out the possibility that, if negative searches were to continue, it would begin to look as if we have missed the chance of finding intelligent life in the galaxy.

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CONTACT WITH ADVANCED SUPERCIVILIZATIONS

Someday, from somewhere out among the stars, will come the answers to many of the oldest, most important and most exciting questions mankind has asked.

(Frank Drake, Preface to Project Cyclops, Oliver and Billingham, 1973)

Introduction

The dream shared by SETI researchers is that one day contact will be made with an advanced civilization and that such contact will provide great cultural and scientific rewards. But what does it mean to speak of an advanced civilization? Would we recognize one if we saw it? And would contact be necessarily beneficial?

Kardaschev–Dyson supercivilizations

During the 1960s there was considerable speculation concerning the evidence of supercivilizations with an immense technological superiority to ours. Nikolai S. Kardaschev, the astronomer who mounted the first Soviet ET search in 1963, published in 1964 his prediction of supercivilizations (SCs) which are billions of years ahead of us in their technology. According to Kardaschev, they would be capable of harnessing all the energy from their sun, while we at a very primitive level of evolution only take what happens to shine on our planet. But taking the argument a step further he argued that a very advanced SC could harness the entire energy output of its galaxy (Kardaschev, 1964). He suggested that the measure of a civilization’s technological level would be in proportion to its use of energy, and proposed that three types of advanced civilizations could be considered. Type I would have a similar technological level to Earth, using 6.6 × 10¹² watts. This civilization could engage in something akin to the present power output of Earth for the purpose of interstellar communication. Type I civilizations would have the power to restructure entire planets.

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