Page 28 - 201007 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - July 2010

July 2010_june_july_2009.qxd 31/07/2010 10:53 AM Page 28 28 E.T., Phone Here E.T., Phone Here Edward T. Oakes, S.J. In the early spring months of 1950, the city of New York witnessed an outbreak of juvenile delinquency. Late at night, prowling gangs were stealing those iconic Department of Sanitation iron-mesh trash cans from New York’s street corners—and local newspapers at the time were in a dither. That was also the time when America was going through one of its many flying-saucer crazes, a mania that would in that same decade bequeath to pop culture the delightfully cheesy sci-fi movie The Day the Earth Stood Still and the equally cheese-laden TV hit The Twilight Zone. The coincidence of these two “leading cultural indicators” prompted the always whimsical New Yorker to publish a captionless cartoon by Alan Dunn in its 20 May 1950 issue, which showed a flotilla of flying saucers bivouacked on the Great Lawn of Manhattan’s Central Park: in the foreground could be seen aliens schlepping up DSNY trash cans into the these earlier aliens must already have evolved vast distances in the universe, it plods along like cargo holds of their spaceships. far beyond our own pathetically primitive a Sunday stroller out to take in the sights. It While all this was going on, the famous civilization. So they should already have takes a full four years for the light coming from Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi was arrived, and a long time ago too—just to show earth’s nearest star to get here, and billions of working away at the famous government off their fancy new hotrod spaceships, if for no years for light from distant galaxies to get here. laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. One other reason. We would. But they haven’t. A On earth, down in this woe-begotten vale of day, he was chatting to Edward Teller and paradox. tears, even Indian smoke signals get better Herbert York as they walked over to a cafeteria There are of course ways of short- results. for lunch, where they were joined by Leo circuiting this paradox, the subject of a most Moreover, photons are able to travel at Szilard, Eugene Wigner, and John von amusing book by the physicist Stephen Webb— the speed of light only because they’re Neumann (all except Fermi and York were whose amusement starts with its lengthy title: If massless. Something as heavy as a spaceship Hungarian émigrés). the Universe is Teeming with Aliens, Where is laden with supplies for a long journey would Their topic was the recent spate of UFO Everybody? Fifty Solutions to the Fermi take prodigious amounts of energy, and even sightings. (Roswell, site of perhaps the most Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial then it would arrive at many of the Milky Way famous claim of alien-visitation, was after all in Life. destinations we’d like to visit in about the same the same state.) At that point another colleague, There are three basic options for amount of time it took the human species to Emil Konopinksi, joined the group and told his answering Fermi: either aliens have already evolve from its last hominid ancestors about fellows of the Dunn cartoon. Fermi drolly been here (Hollywood’s preferred solution); or 200,000 years ago. And as for intergalactic remarked that Dunn’s was a reasonable theory they exist yet have chosen, for whatever reason, travel, forget about it. because it accounted for two distinct not to communicate with us (which is possible, But since radio waves also travel at the phenomena: the disappearance of trash cans and but runs afoul of Ockham’s razor); or they don’t speed of light, surely we should have picked up those recent reports of flying saucers. Just what exist (Fermi’s solution). by now signals from the exo-versions of I Love scientists are supposed to do! Actually, solution #1 was already Lucy and The Ed Sullivan Show. But so far, When the men sat down to lunch, mooted that day at lunch when Fermi first nothing has been picked up—despite numerous discussion turned to other topics. Then, in the enunciated his paradox. Szilard said, no doubt toilsome efforts of those dedicated drones who middle of the conversation and seemingly out of with a twinkle in his eye: “They are among us, check their computers and radio telescopes nowhere, Fermi asked: “Where is everybody?” and they call themselves Hungarians,” every night at the Search for Extraterrestrial Thus was born what has become known ever presumably a droll reference to the Hungarians’ Intelligence (SETI) project. No ET seems to be since then as Fermi’s Paradox. remarkable intelligence. phoning here. Orbiting a middling star nestled among a And of course all those people who So maybe the third solution is the only teeming flock of other suns in our galaxy, which claim that the pyramids in Egypt were built by one left. Certainly we’d have to conclude we are is itself one galaxy among billions of others, the visitors from outer space, or that they truly alone if evolution on earth is as contingent earth must be one of countless planets just like themselves have been abducted by aliens, or as some evolutionary biologists say it is. For it, so obviously we are not alone. But if there are actually saw flying saucers landing on their example, the late Steven Jay Gould claimed that so many ETs out there, then, as Fermi asked, patios right next to papa’s home-built barbecue if we rewound the “tape of evolution,” it would where is everybody? pit, have resolved the paradox to their be extremely unlikely that humans would Fermi’s is a genuine paradox, because satisfaction. Don’t believe them? Well, just emerge again. Daniel Dennett retorts in the same principle that is invoked by others to check out the photographs taken on their Darwin’s Dangerous Idea that in that case SETI say that intelligent aliens are out there he used iPhones and posted on their Facebook pages! would make as much sense as the search for to refute the assertion. That principle is called (Skeptics might refer to unidentified flying extraterrestrial kangaroos. the Copernican Principle or, perhaps more objects, but they’re not at all unidentified to the But even if the emergence of intelligent helpfully, the Principle of Mediocrity, which in folks who laps up supermarket tabloids.) humans is quasi-inevitable, that still doesn’t colloquial terms means “We ain’t that special, Webb has no trouble dispatching these mean that the Mediocrity Principles now kicks so get over it.” reports of UFOs (and takes Hungarian in. Perhaps the features of our solar system If we suppose—as the Mediocrity chauvinism in stride too). The big problem with make earth unique as a home fit for life. Such is Principle tells us we must—that we have option #1—and it is a big, big problem—is the the argument of Simon Conway Morris’s book, appeared somewhere in the middle of countless “slowness” of the speed of light. whose subtitle gives away the thesis: Life’s other episodes of intelligent beings emerging Now the speed of light might seem Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely from their countless earth-like planets, then pretty fast to us. But when judged against the Universe. (Continued on Page 29)