Page 14 - 201003 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - March 2010

March 2010_june_july_2009.qxd 29/03/2010 11:52 AM Page 14 14 The mystery of the silent aliens The mystery of the silent aliens Michael Hanlon, contributor Sixty years ago, space aliens were the preserve of lunatics and eccentrics, thanks to decades of sci-fi schlock, flying-saucer nonsense and Lowellian fantasies of Martian canals. Then, in 1950, came Enrico Fermi and his paradox - "Where the hell is everyone?" - and, 10 years later, the first attempts to put the search for ET on a scientific footing, courtesy of Frank Drake, who pointed a radio telescope at Tau Ceti and heard... silence. Since then, a modestly funded programme to detect alien radio transmissions has stepped up a gear, and we have made significant astronomical discoveries pertinent to the question of alien life. Despite this, Fermi's paradox has deepened, as the sheer size and antiquity of the universe has become increasingly apparent. Today it is rare to meet an astronomer who doesn't believe that the universe is teeming that most stars have planets. Surely our Earth is with life. There is a feeling in the air that light not unique. will soon be shed on some of science's most But while the odds against life seem to fundamental questions: is Earth's biosphere be shortening, thanks to those exoplanets, it is unique? Do other minds ponder the universe? now pretty clear that our part of the galaxy, at In April, the world will celebrate the least, is not a hive of obvious alien activity. The quinquagenary of SETI, the search for cosmos may be buzzing with life, or even with extraterrestrial intelligence, so it seems a good intelligence, but it is not Star Trek out there. time to take stock of the silence. Three new Perhaps we are looking in the wrong books tackle the issue in three different ways. way, muses Davies. At the core of his rather One, an immensely readable investigation of the wonderful book is a list of imaginative SETI enterprise (with a surprising conclusion); alternatives to the current focus on radio signals the second, a technical guide to what we should from nearby stars - a search that is, he claims, be looking for and how; and the third, a left- shackled by anthropocentric assumptions and field argument that the alien question has innate conservatism, and ripe for a shake-up. already been answered. Rather than expecting to stumble upon a high-power radio transmission aimed directly at Earth, we might look for ghostly neutrino signals or messages encoded in the otherwise clockwork light flashes from pulsars. We should also be on the lookout for alien life forms - or their probes - closer to home, and search for circumstantial evidence that aliens are here, or at least were here, perhaps millions of years ago. Beacons in the asteroid belt, perhaps, bits of ancient machinery left on the moon, or here. suspicious polygonal craters. Maybe ET will For one, Kasting dismisses some of the tune into the internet: the ieti.org website has "rare Earth" arguments put forward by Peter been set up to allow them to do exactly that. Ward and Don Brownlee a decade ago. He Not all the arguments here totally argues persuasively that Earth's large moon and convince. Davies assumes aliens will be, well, strong magnetic field are red herrings; neither is alien: slithery tentacled things with seven eyes, a prerequisite for life. The second part of his and so forth. Actually there may be good book is a detailed account of the search for reasons, espoused by the University of Earth-like exoplanets, and prospects for future Cambridge biologist Simon Conway-Morris, success. why ET may be more like us than many For a few scientists, the alien question imagine. And I disagree with Davies that the has already been answered. Not by the UFO physical appearance of our putative neighbours loonies but by the Viking landers which, 34 is of no interest. Humans are visual creatures. years ago, produced startling results when they It would help if we knew just how life baked and wetted samples of Martian soil. got started on Earth, and where. We know genesis happened early, when Earth was a very (Continued on Page 15) In The Eerie Silence, Paul Davies - who makes a living tackling the biggest questions of different place to what it is today, and this marks life, the universe and everything - begins with the starting point for James Kasting's rather the assumption that the universe should be full technical account of what makes a habitable of life. There are more stars out there than there planet and how we should go about finding such are grains of sand on all the Earth's beaches, and bodies. Kasting too often eschews everyday now that more than 400 planets have been found language and resorts to scientific shorthand, orbiting other stars, we can be almost certain even if no accuracy is gained and some clarity is lost. But, this gripe aside, there are nuggets