In previous postings I’ve enthused about the difference any one of us can make through our choices and what we do every day in seemingly ordinary ways. Also there are opportunities to take part in activities that may in the past have been out of reach, or placed out of reach, for most people - for example by making a contribution to scientific and medical research – and appreciating the results.
We can all make such a contribution – and it could turn out
to be an important one - through an increasing range of 'citizen science'
projects in which the nature of the research means that there is a massive
amount of data to process even by supercomputer standards.
Public facilities may not exist or official priorities may
lie elsewhere, so the idea is to distribute the computing load over the
internet to individual volunteers with their own participating computers located
all over the world. There are now millions of computers in the various
programmes. I have been involved with one such overall scheme for some time.
This is BOINC, the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing. After
downloading and installing the BOINC software (to get going, Google BOINC) you
can select the research projects (one or several) that you would like to
support.
At the time of writing there are 43 projects available to
choose from including finding cures for diseases, studying global warming,
joining a quake-catcher network and much else besides. The blocks of data are seamlessly
downloaded, analysed on your computer and then uploaded back automatically to
the University in the background.
Within BOINC, the project I’m involved with is SETI – the
Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence – which is now very much a citizen
science project since official support was cut back, presumably due to a lack
of results in a political or business cycle. The programme was saved by a
vigorous voluntary campaign of fundraising which, incidentally, included the actress
Jodie Foster who starred in the film 'Contact' which was based on the novel by
Carl Sagan. But SETI is still a small and dedicated team working on a tight
budget and based at the Berkeley SETI Research Centre.
With SETI the analysis looks into the data gathered for a ‘candidate
signal’ from civilisations elsewhere in the Milky Way. Now I do know that we
could do with a good deal more terrestrial intelligence down here, but projects
like this might help to gain a much wider perspective – one that current events
suggest is vital. SETI is indeed a noble quest and it addresses one of the most
fundamental questions that humanity can seek to answer.
My two computers in the SETI programme mainly process data (using
their spare cycles – idle time – there is no cost to this) from the huge radio
telescope at Aricebo in Puerto Rico - which
you may also have seen in the Contact film. There are other large radio
telescopes throughout the world that are also taking part in the programme.
All this and more is a real democratisation of science as
well as its expansion and it provides an opportunity for people in all walks of
life to contribute towards major discoveries or improvements and to push back boundaries.
It makes me aware of what a privilege it is to be involved with this inspiring work.
I would not want to miss such an opportunity.
Helping with research such as this is just one of the many
ways in which we can all make another difference every day of the week. You can,
of course, choose a very different project (for my own part I may also get
involved with earthquake detection) and you could be part of an international
team that makes an important breakthrough in your chosen field.
In terms of SETI, while no intelligent signal has been found
as of the time of writing, the area probed thus far is just a drop in the galactic
ocean (remember those drops?). And we now know that there are far more
potential places for life to arise in the Galaxy and even the Solar System than
we would have dreamt of just a few years ago. Part of the range of SETI’s work
is to look for new kinds of signals contained in the data and to develop new
algorithms – so, I like to imagine, there may already be something there!
There is a real chance of answering definitively, and within
the lifetimes of people alive today, the question that human beings have asked
since the dawn of our awareness – are we alone? Contact could happen tomorrow,
next year, by 2050 or much further into the future. But if we don’t seek, we
shall surely never find.
There’s another question I’ like to address. Suppose that
SETI did succeed, what would we then do? Firstly I hope that the success would
have a salutary effect on undesirable entities such as dictatorial regimes, those
with regressive political attitudes, religious extremists and such like.
But this result would by no means be instantly guaranteed as
scope for denial by irrational individuals is virtually limitless as is the
scope for conspiracy theories (‘they’re making it all up’) and outright mind
control (‘you’re forbidden to express belief in this on pain of death.’).
Nevertheless, should there be a copy of Encyclopaedia
Galactica included with new physics and new engineering results (albeit with
its own associated hazards) I think there would be rapid progress if the rest
of the world is mature enough to handle it. It may be no more than belief, but
I have great confidence in human capacities to cope with external shocks – and
nothing could be much more external than this!
But would ET be hostile or benign? An important question
indeed. Benign seems the more likely to me. What would a hostile civilisation
be able to gain if it was 1,000 light years distant from us as a lesser
civilisation? In contrast a benign civilisation could transmit its knowledge
and information about its culture and pitfalls and so propagate its views on
the Cosmos and its approach to life and help us to survive natural and human
shortcomings. This is assuming of course that the extraterrestrials are not so
alien in their form or the environment in which they live as to rule out much
of their approach.
Also, if by some faster than light means a hostile
civilisation was, in fact, able to engage in conflict, the relative number of
such civilisations would I believe go down assuming that conflict with other
aggressive civilisations is somewhat more likely than with peaceful ones. Hostile
civilisations would also possess extremely formidable weaponry, of almost
unimaginable power, possibly with one weapon able to destroy an entire solar
system. The more of these weapons were around, the more likely will be accidental
destruction.
If a message is received through SETI, should there be a
reply? First of all there is no hurry, with a built-in delay of an absolute
minimum of 4.2 years (light speed to the nearest star) and more likely 420 or
4,200 years. But you can be sure that some rich egotist would try to jump the
gun and defy collective wisdom presumably expressed through the United Nations.
Decency would suggest that we should respond by at least
saying “We are here. You are not alone.” and saying something of what we are and
what we have accomplished off our own bat – perhaps along the lines of the
famous Voyager disk - since the sender may have similar ingrained search
imperatives to our own. But what more?
The greater the distance the less the point in asking
questions as it is more likely that we would obtain the answers more quickly
from our own research, possibly including the work of home grown aliens
(intelligent machines).
But the situation would be very different if faster-than-light
(FTL) communication or travel is possible notwithstanding General Relativity - and
that we have developed this capacity ourselves. If FTL applies only to
communication, then a productive dialogue would be possible in which we were,
for the most part at least, the pupil.
If physical transportation turns out to be possible, then I
believe that great caution is needed and there should be patience with the
resulting slow progress. ‘Civilisation shock’ needs to be withstood and we are,
of course, capable of being deceived. ‘Contact’ gave one illustration of this very
gradual pace of widening awareness with benign extraterrestrials as the guides.
Though it may sound negative, there is something, I think,
to be said for carrying on by ourselves secure in the knowledge that we are not
alone in the Cosmos. Somewhat selfish perhaps, but there would be less chance
of our civilisation being totally destroyed – as isolated peoples have had
happen here on earth even when, at least in terms of their social and
environmental values, they were arguably more sophisticated than the rest of us
and had much to offer.
This said, I can’t help wondering what data my computer has
been analysing as I write this piece. You just never know!
