Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
About Those UFOs. I Have a Theory.
One night in the spring of 1980, shortly before midnight, I left my dorm room at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro, New Mexico, got in my pale blue 1972 VW Super Beetle, and drove west into the desert toward the tiny town of Magdalena. Magdalena, population 900 or so, isn’t precisely the middle of nowhere. The middle of nowhere, and my destination, was about 20 miles further west, in the high desert basin known as the Plains of San Augustin. The 1947 “Roswell Incident,” much featured in UFO mythology, purportedly occurred on that isolated plain, but that isn’t what drew me there that clear moonlit night.
The Very Large Array (VLA) is a group of 27 radio telescopes spread out in an enormous Y on the Plains of San Augustin. The dishes, weighing more than 200 tons each on their multi-story gantries, can be moved by rail to vary the size of the Y, the legs of which can be more than 20 miles long at their greatest extent. Using a technique known as interferometry, the array can achieve, in some instances, the resolving power of a single dish with a diameter equivalent to the span of the array.
I read voraciously as a child. I’d walk the few blocks from my elementary school to the library when school got out and then stay there reading until my father picked me up on his way home from work. I quickly exhausted the children’s section, one small room clearly demarcated from the much larger, newer area of the library, and so one day ventured cautiously around the corner and into the grown-up space. As it happens, the wall of books immediately adjacent to the children’s area contained science fiction; I stopped there, and never wandered farther into the library. Science fiction gripped my young imagination; it has never let go.
There are few sights more romantic and unworldly to a lover of science fiction than the VLA by moonlight.
I’ve never been a big Carl Sagan fan, but I enjoyed the 1997 movie adaptation of his 1985 novel Contact. Part of that enjoyment came from seeing Jodie Foster in the starring role, sitting on the hood of her car parked under that same VLA I visited repeatedly as a young man, listening for sounds of extraterrestrial life. I’d been there; more, I’d wondered the same thing her character wondered: is anyone out there?
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Project, better known as SETI, is an effort to detect the faint radio transmissions of advanced life out in our galaxy. Many of us who think it unlikely that we occupy this universe alone expected to have discovered some distant radio source by now, some evidence that at least one other species has reached the level of technology we achieved a century ago. That hasn’t happened, and there are numerous theories as to why it hasn’t. One theory that I stubbornly reject as implausible is that there’s no one no thing out there, that we’re alone — at least alone in this portion of our galaxy. I’d prefer to think that the technological window during which a civilization might produce detectable radio emissions in a profligate fashion is narrow, and we’ve simply missed it: now their transmissions are so perfectly compressed as to be indistinguishable from static, and so efficiently directed as to miss us entirely. They’re out there; we just can’t hear them. Anyway, that’s my hope.
Now we hear that UFOs are real. What are we to make of that?
I have a theory.
Assume that we really can’t go faster than the speed of light, that that paltry 186 thousand miles per second is the best we can ever do. Assume that wormholes and warping and subspace and improbability drives and all the rest will forever remain fiction. Assume all that and we’re left with a depressing thought — depressing, at least, for anyone hopeful that we’ll make contact with another civilization.
There’s no plausible reason to journey across the light years in pursuit of material resources. There just isn’t an economic model under which that makes sense. Oh, maybe one could be contrived in a rare instance — say, the need of some race in a planet-poor system to collect the raw material with which to build its own Dyson sphere or parts thereof. But that’s a long way to go for stuff that can almost certainly be found closer to home.
That means no interstellar wars, no Independence Day, no Starship Troopers, no Ender’s Game. (And no mediocre sequels either.) I guess that’s good. But it also means no Close Encounters, no ET, no Day the Earth Stood Still. No Contact. No contact at all.
It seems unlikely that they’d make the trip simply to meet people. Presumably, if they were interested in making our acquaintance, they’d have called ahead, sent us a message by now, long before they arrived in “person.” And if they had made the trip, why would they flit around our planet for decades, never quite revealing themselves, never actually saying hello? Why be that way?
But I’m an optimist. I want to believe that there’s life out there, that UFOs could be real. I just need it to make sense.
Imagine that there are advanced civilizations out there. For reasons we don’t understand we’re unable to see their radio signature. Perhaps they’ve moved beyond radio; perhaps their encoding is simply too subtle, or their focus too precise, for us to detect them. But imagine that they’re out there. They’re technologically advanced, wealthy by material standards, vastly more knowledgeable than we are. What could we have that might possibly interest them, that they couldn’t find on their own?
Novelty. Authentic novelty.
The wonders of the ocean depths, of the darkest African jungle, or of the icy extremes of Antarctica will, when packaged in sufficiently high fidelity and seen enough times, lose their romantic appeal. Been there, done that: nothing, no matter how awe-inspiring and dramatic, retains its impact after sufficient viewing.
One thing an advanced civilization can’t simply create is something natural and authentic and unexpected. It may be able to synthesize, simulate, and invent almost anything, but not anything authentically alien and mysterious. It can’t create novelty.
So what they do is send automated probes out into the universe. These probes have a mission, to collect information about other places and send that information home. They’re instructed to avoid contaminating the worlds they find, because contamination diminishes the authenticity of their discoveries, and hence their value. So these probes scatter throughout the galaxy, replicating in out-of-the-way places, always looking for that most novel of things, life, and, beyond that, for the even greater richness of alien intelligence. What could be more novel, after all, than alien civilization?
The probes would try to avoid contaminating such a civilization as it developed. Its novelty and authenticity would depend on that. But, once that civilization reached a certain level of development, once all the knowledge that could be safely gathered without risk of discovery had been accumulated, it would be time to communicate with the alien civilization, to learn as much as possible for the eager minds far away. Perhaps the probes would offer knowledge in return, as an incentive for greater openness and communication.
Perhaps we’ve reached that level of development.
I don’t write fiction because I’m not good at it. I’ve tried. But I thought about a short story years ago, the gist of which is this:
Aliens land at the White House. They tell the President et al that the galaxy is full of advanced civilizations, Earth is a dirt poor little backwater planet with nothing of value… except for that novelty I’ve described. They explain that they’ve been sent to catalog everything about our world and to hold that information in trust, so that the profit from its release to the galactic federation can be invested in Earth’s technological development and we can join the fellowship of other advanced civilizations.
With the permission of Earth’s leaders, the aliens exhaustively catalog everything about our world. Their cameras and probes and scanners are everywhere, we’re tripping over them as they rush to document everything before it’s contaminated by exposure to the inevitable tourists and sightseers who we’re told will soon follow the discovery of our planet. And then one day they’re all gone, their ships and their cameras all vanished.
A few weeks later another delegation arrives at the White House. They explain that they are the official representatives of the galactic federation. They regret to inform us that poachers have preceded them to Earth, that Earth’s pirated intellectual property has been disseminated to the stars — we’re the latest fad, our three minutes of fame are almost up, and there are, unfortunately, no profits banked for the development of our sad little backwater.
Then one of the aliens looks at the Mickey Mouse watch on his wrist and says they have to go.
Published in Science & Technology
I also find it difficult to believe that we are the only lifeform in existence, anywhere in the universe. Statistically, that possibility seems extremely remote.
But interstellar travel is likely to be extremely inconvenient and expensive, if our understanding of the laws of physics is even close to correct. So waiting for interstellar tourists seems a bit silly to me.
But who knows? Maybe they’re here already. I really enjoyed the ‘Men in Black’ movie, in which aliens were all around us, but none of us noticed. Awesome concept.
But the universe is a big place. And Earth is a really, really, really small place. If we can’t find aliens, I would guess that they’ll also have difficulty finding us.
Or…the Rare Earth Hypothesis advanced by Ward and Brownlee back in the late 90s is true and the most intelligent form of life within 50 light years of Earth is the local equivalent of a possum. Or a slime mold, more likely. That’s what the numbers would indicate, left with materialist explanations for the origins of life.
“What could we have that might possibly interest them, that they couldn’t find on their own?”
Cherry coke?
Facial piercing?
Twerking?
(sigh) you’re right.
Hank, what a fun post. Thanks. I have a couple of thoughts, not really useful but entertaining, I hope.
We didn’t have to wait for the sequel to find mediocrity in Starship Troopers. The sequel that I saw was worse.
Speaking of mediocre sequels: V’ger, anyone? (Though I actually liked the first Trek movie.)
It sounds like you and I were SciFi fans at about the same time. I like the premise of your story, which reminds me of some other good ones, and the IP piracy twist, which I’ve never heard before. It’s a bit reminiscent of To Serve Man, but your twist is less horrible.
I tended to like SciFi stories in which humans seemed hopelessly primitive when they first encounter ETs, but in which we turn out to be very special indeed. The ones that come to mind are Clarke’s Rescue Party, David Brin’s Uplift series, and Julian May’s Many Colored Land series. On TV, Babylon Five had this theme.
Another fun one, with a similar premise but different twist, is John Ringo’s Troy Rising series, which starts off with the maple syrup war. That’s enough of a teaser, if you haven’t read it.
So the whole, “To boldly go where no (man) has gone before” thing is out?
Just kidding.
Every technologically advanced civilization only became capable due to curiosity and exploration. So it’s natural that advanced societies would continually explore, if only to show on their alien documentary channels as a novelty. GalaxyFlix is a favorite I’ve heard. I would imagine our world might be pretty interesting to some aliens. Disgusting, amusing, appalling, beautiful, strange – for sure.
On a related subject. I sometimes do the thought experiment of asking whether technological advances are completely linear. That is, could one civilization invent, for example, nuclear fission and fusion, while another would develop technologies that bypass those scientific insights altogether? That a civilization could travel across the universe but never have invented an iPhone?
It’s difficult to wrap my head around, because the only technology I can think of has already been invented, everything else is magic.
However, in ancient pre-history, they had technology that we don’t have now. They built the pyramids and other megalith sites in the Andes which defy modern explanation. Maybe they could build precision structures but didn’t invent the wheel – because they didn’t have any use for the wheel when they had some kind of anti-gravity technology! See what I mean? If I had anti-gravity capability, I’d never even consider something like a wheel. I know, but if there was this sophisticated technology wouldn’t things like wheels have assisted the culture to get to the higher level? It seems so, but possibly not? This is where I can understand various religious claims that otherwise seem preposterous.
So I do think that advanced beings would explore and perhaps become interested in other technologies heretofore undiscovered.
We also must always remember that time is as vast as space. Not only are we a tiny, tiny point in space, our civilization – and even life forms on earth – are a snapshot in history. Okay, I’m sufficiently awed and can’t go further….
Interesting post!
(I liked your short story idea.)
I also liked Contact. And I also am not reflexively a huge fan of Carl Sagan. (I live in Ithaca, where he is revered as a saint – Cornell. I’ve been to his house, and like the art he collected very much. Did some electrical work for his brother. He was a smart guy. But . . . . )
I always keyed in on that catch-phrase from Contact: “If we’re the only ones in the universe, it sure seems like a huge waste of space.”)
Well, yeah, I agree.
But maybe it isn’t being “wasted”. We can only know what we know, perceive what we perceive. Maybe we are an extremely primitive form of “life”, which apprehends material existence in such a limited way that Space does indeed look daunting to us. How do you suppose it looks to microbes on Earth, if they have an opinion about the cosmos?
What if there is a whole class of being outside of our ken, which is carrying on business throughout the universe, for whom the crazy distances are no problem at all? For whom our laws of physics would be risible, if they ever had a way of being introduced to them: “You guys are doing what? Your physics is what?? OMG, no wonder you think you’re all alone – you are, for all practical purposes!”
Vonnegut had that great description in Slaughterhoue Five, when the Tralfamidorian tries to explain to Billy Pilgrim what Earthlings look like to them (paraphrase from memory):
Imagine you are strapped into a chair so that you can’t move. A helmet is placed over your head, you are forced to look forward. The helmet has a long tube on the front, through which you can see nothing but a tiny dot of sunshine ahead.
This chair is bolted to a train car, and that train begins moving, only forward, and at a constant speed.
Whatever you can make out that is happening in that tiny dot as you move past it is all you are able to experience of the universe.
As you watch the flickering at the end of the tube, you remark confidently “Yep, that’s the world. That’s all it is. I got this.”
Of course there’s no way to know, any more than you can ask a fish about water. But I hope there is at least one fish the you could talk to about possibilities, things that might offer an explanation to his perceptive questions. Like “Wow, if there aren’t little green men who can cross these vast distances, it sure seems like an awful waste of space.”
D’oh!
Next time, get it in writing.
Aren’t we told that every asteroid contains near infinite riches of rare elements? Assuming that is true everywhere, I agree that nobody is galaxy hopping for metals or stuffs. Alchemy is easier that bending space.
That still leaves the possibility of ET collecting us as “pets” or hunting us for sport.
I want there to be other intelligent beings out there. I guess it makes me feel hopeful.
But the universe is billions and billions of years old. (Imagine that in the voice of Carl Sagan). And beings that advanced as far as the technology of broadcast TV of the 50’s should have produced signals that we should be able to detect. If they are out there … or were out there … we should hear them. In fact, if even a tiny fraction of worlds got that far, it should still be a cacophony of noise. No?
So either they aren’t there. Or they are hiding. And if they are hiding it doesn’t bear thinking about what they are hiding from.
As regards the UAPs in the news.
I suppose if they aren’t aliens or time travelers that leaves them being classified technology of some terrestrial source. Or it is Russia or China then they are being awfully cavalier about security. That leaves them being ours.
I postulate that we have to act as if we are surprised and have no idea what these things are just in case the Russians and Chinese have detected them. It preserves deniability. If we don’t act confused then they immediately know the objects are ours. At least this makes our adversaries wonder.
What if they lived 10,000 years ago, and they were just over 10,000 light-years away? We haven’t received their signals yet, and they’re already long gone.
This was very thought-provoking. Thanks!
I’ve been to Roswell many times. The very last time, I took then 12-year old son #3 with me for company. He’s best described as quirky, from a very young age he would speak a little strangely and his interests were always unusual.
Anyway, I was telling a sister that I was worried about bringing him to Roswell; that he might want to stay. Sister replied: If I were you, I’d be worried that people start saying “welcome back”.
At one point, I had seven or eight computers running the SETI client.
V’Ger!
C’mon Man!
V!
Respectfully, your third son sounds like a high-functioning autistic. Not for nothing is autism called the wrong planet syndrome. Of course I don’t have enough evidence to make a serious judgment but your recalling heavily suggest it.
https://wrongplanet.net
Years ago, I read a comment by some general or other: Either we’re alone or we’re not. Either way it boggles the mind.
I’m not familiar with this. Google wasn’t much help, but it did turn up some theory that autistic people have alien DNA.
Is it called wrong planet syndrome as a metaphor, or because of that theory, or both?
Douglas Adams thought it was just adolescents buzzing the planet for kicks.
Also known as “Where Nomad Has Gone Before.”
Did you/he ever see the series Roswell, from 1999-2002?
Are we all of a sudden talking about The Stars My Destination?”
Did someone say SETI?
I liked Bester’s writing in several stories, but even as a child I couldn’t suspend disbelief over teleportation just by thought, which he called “jaunting” in that story. Just, plain, Nope.
Have not. But loved Taken.
I remain deeply skeptical. My doubts seem to be backed up by recent research done by a group of scientists and mathematicians from Oxford who, after careful study of the data concluded that it is highly unlikely that other intelligent life exists anywhere in the universe. I won’t pretend to understand the math and research, but I see much merit in their conclusion. Consider that there are billions of life forms on earth, most of which have yet to be identified, yet only humans possess reason (or what passes for reason). I’ll go from skeptic to believer when aliens land on earth and say “Wassup?”
You might give it a try with episode 1 at least. The video is reversed and maybe sped up or slowed down a bit, they do that sometimes to avoid copyright claims. But still watchable.
If the Navy’s UFOs are real, then our understanding of the laws of physics is incomplete. No matter what, however, our understanding is provably correct. Nobody ever said it was complete.
If I were to have software running on several computers housed at a government agency that I would not name, they would all run the SETI client when idle. Electricity costs money.
If they’re real and purely physical beings.
I wouldn’t want to rule out supernatural theories too quickly.