Erosion on the Earth

Erosion on the Earth

Because of erosion on the Earth, our monuments and artifacts will not, in the natural course of things, survive to the distant future. But the spaceships Voyager launched in the XX Century carry human records on their way out of the Solar system.

Indeed, brains and genes and books encode information differently and persist through time at different rates. But the persistence of the memory of the human species will be far longer in the impressed metal grooves on the Voyager interstellar record. It happens because the erosion in interstellar space – chiefly impacting dust grains and cosmic rays – is so slow that the information on these recordings will last a billion years.

But the Voyager message is traveling with agonizing slowness. The fastest object ever launched by the human species, this probe will still take tens of thousands of years to go the distance to the nearest star.

Any television program will traverse in hours the distance that Voyager has covered in years. A television transmission that has just finished being aired will, in only a few hours, overtake the Voyager spacecraft in the region of Saturn and beyond and speed outward to the stars. If it is headed that way, the signal will reach Alpha Centauri in a little more than four years. If, some decades or centuries hence, anyone out there in space hears our television broadcasts, I hope they will think well of us, a product of fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution, the local transmogrification of matter into consciousness.

Our intelligence is providing us with awesome powers, but it is not yet clear yet if we have the wisdom to avoid our own self-destruction.

However, many of us are trying very hard. We hope that very soon in the perspective of our cosmic time we will have unified our planet peacefully into an organisation cherishing the life of every living creature on it and will be ready to take that next great step, to become part of a galactic society of communicating civilizations.

Will we ever become part of a galactic society? Image : © Megan Jorgensen.

Illegal Radio Transmissions

Illegal Radio Transmissions

or Million Years Old Society

A technical civilization one million years-old has descended on the planet Earth… Would we even recognize its presence?

More important question yet: Would a society a million years in advance of us be interested in colonization or interstellar spaceflight?

In fact, it may be people have a finite lifespan for a reason. Could it be that we are so interested in spaceflight because it is a way of perpetuating ourselves beyond our own lifetimes? Of course, progress in the biological and medical sciences might uncover that reason and lead to suitable remedies.

But might a civilization composed of essentially immortal beings consider interstellar exploration fundamentally childish? It may be that we have not been visited because the stars are strewn abundantly in the expanse of space, so that before a nearby civilization arrives, it has altered its exploratory motivations or evolved into forms indetectable to us.

It would be very easy for extraterrestrials to make and unambiguously artificial interstellar message (provided that they have the same logic we have and the same mathematics, which is reasonable enough if they try to make a contact with their neighbours). For example, they could first prime numbers – numbers divisible only by themselves and by one – are 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 19.

It is extremely unlikely that any natural physical process could transmit radio messages containing prime numbers only. If we received such a message we would deduce a civilization out there that was at least fond of prime numbers. But the most likely case is that interstellar communication will be a kind of palimpsest, like the palimpsests of ancient writers short of papyrus or stone who superimposed their messages on top of pre-existing messages.

Because we will share scientific and mathematical insights with any other civilization, understanding the interstellar message coming from a very advanced cosmic community will be the easiest part of the problem. Convincing the governments to fund a search for extraterrestrial intelligence is the hard part.

In fact, it may be that civilizations can be divided into two great categories: one in which the scientists are unable to convince non-scientists no authorize a search for extraplanetary intelligence, in which energies are directed exclusively inward, in which conventional perceptions remain unchallenged and society falters and retreats from the stars; and another category in which the grand vision of contact with other civilizations is shared widely, and a major search us undertaken.

This is one of the few human endeavors where even a failure is a success. If we were to carry out a rigorous search for extraterrestrial radio signals encompassing millions of stars and heard nothing, we would conclude that galactic civilizations were at best rare, a calibration of our place in the universe. It would speak eloquently of how rare are the living things of our planet, and would underscore, as nothing else in human history has, the individual worth of every human being.  If we were to succeed, the history of our species and our planet would be change forever.

Perhaps at an adjacent frequency or a faster timing, there would be another message, which would turn out to be a primer, an introduction to the language of interstellar discourse. The primer would be repeated again and again because the transmitting civilization would have no way to know when we tuned in on the message. And then, deeper in the palimpsest, underneath the announcement signal and the primer, would be the real message. Radio technology permits that message to be inconceivably rich. Perhaps when we tuned in, we would find ourselves in the midst of Volume 6,511 of the Encyclopaedia Galactica.

Any messages transmitted from outer space are the responsibility of the BBC and the Post office. It is their responsibility to track down illegal broadcasts (pronouncement from a British Defense Department, the London Observer, February 26, 1978). Image : Megan Jorgensen.

Why Do We Go to the Stars?

Why Do We Go to the Stars?

If our Sun or a nearby star were about to go supernova, a major program of interstellar spaceflight might suddenly become attractive, In fact, the discovery that the galactic core was imminently to explode might generate very serious interest in transgalactic or intergalactic spaceflight. Such cosmic violence occurs sufficiently often that nomadic spacefaring civilizations may not be uncommon.

However there may be many other motivations to go to the stars: an emerging technical civilization, after exploring its home planetary system and developing interstellar spaceflight, would tentatively begin exploring the nearby stars.

Some of these stars would have no suitable planets – perhaps they would all tiny asteroids or giant gas worlds. Others would carry an entourage of suitable planets, but some would be already inhabited, or the atmosphere would be poisonous or the climate uncomfortable.

In many cases the colonists might have to change –or as we would parochially say, terraform – a world to make it adequately clement.

The re-engineering of a planet will take time, but suitable world would be found and colonized. 

The utilization of planetary resources so that new interstellar spacecraft could be constructed locally would be a slow process. Eventually a second-generation mission of exploration and colonization would take off toward stars where no one had yet been. And in this way a civilization might slowly wend its way like a vine among the worlds.

It is possible that at some later time with third and higher orders of colonies developing new worlds, another independent expanding civilization would be discovered.

Very likely mutual contact would already have been made by radio or other remote means. The new arrivals might be a different sort of colonial society.

Conceivable two expanding civilizations with different planetary requirements would ignore each other, their filigree patterns of expansion intertwining, but not conflicting. They might cooperate in the exploration of a province of the Galaxy. Even nearby civilizations could spend millions of years in such separate or joint colonial ventures without ever stumbling upon our obscure solar system.

A million years is a very long period of time, but we could manage… (Cosmos by Carl Sagan). Image: © Megan Jorgensen.

Transmissions for Sale

Transmissions for Sale

To learn a little about what other kinds of civilizations are possible, we can study history and cultural anthropology. But we are all of us - us whales, us apes, us people – too closely related. As long as our inquiries are limited to one or two evolutionary lines on a single planet, we will remain ignorant of the possible range and brilliance of other intelligences and other civilizations.

Thus we are looking for other intelligences using different means and methods. For example, we suppose that most of other civilization will use powerful sources to transmit their notions and ideas. Some of our most powerful sources are radar transmitters; a few are used for radar astronomy, to probe with radio fingers the surfaces of the nearby planets.

As the Earth rotates, our more powerful radio transmitters slowly sweep the sky. A radio astronomer on a planet of another star would be able to calculate the length of the day on Earth from the times of appearance and disappearance of our signals. The size of the radar beam projected against the sky is much larger than the size of the planets, and much of the signal wafts on, out of the solar system into the depths of interstellar space to any sensitive receivers that may be listening.

On Earth, most radar transmissions are for military purposes as they scan the skies in constant fear of a massive launch of missiles with nuclear warheads, and augury fifteen minutes early of the end of human civilization. The information content of these pulses is negligible: a succession of simple numerical patterns coded into beeps.

Overall, the most pervasive and noticeable source of radio transmissions from the Earth is our television programming. Because the Earth is turning, some television stations will appear at on horizon of the Earth while others disappear over the other. There will be a jumble of programs. These might be sorted out and pieced together by an advanced civilization on a planet of a nearby star.

Large-scale television transmission on the planet Earth began only in the late 1940’s. There is no calling those television programs back. There is no way of sending a faster message to overtake them and revise the previous transmission. Nothing can travel faster than light.

Thus, there is a spherical wave front centered on the Earth expanding at the speed of light.

Because these transmissions were broadcast a few decades ago, they are only a few tens of light-years away from Earth. Hum… the most frequently repeated messages will be and appeals to purchase detergents, headache tablets, deodorants, automobile and petroleum products.

The most noticeable messages will be those broadcast simultaneously by many transmitters in many time zones – for example, speeches in times of international crisis.

If the nearest civilization is about 100 years away, then we can continue to breathe easy for a while. In any case, we can hope that they will find these programs incomprehensible.

The mindless contents of commercial television and the integuments of international crisis and warfare within the human family are the principal messages about life on Earth that we choose to broadcast to the Cosmos. What must they think of us? Image : © Megan Jorgensen.

Theory of Clouds

The Theory of Clouds

Stéphane Audeguy, Harcourt, Inc. 2007. English translation by Timothy D. Bent

For quite a long time, Kumo told her, scientists never thought about why the sky was blue. It was of course the same then as now – apparently monochromatic yet consisting of a nearly infinite variety of shades. Thousands of poets wrote about it being azure or cerulean, but not a single scientist bothered to explain why this was so. The poets’ evocations were scarcely better than what the scholar-priests offered, for they were not truly interested in the sky’s blueness so much as in turning it into a symbol – the color of eternity from the palette of God. It was as if they couldn’t accept the idea that the blue was simply and sublimely of its own creation.

Centuries passed and as science became less a servant of the church the skies were emptied of angels and divinity, filled instead with men on balloons or planes. What came to be understood was that the sky only seemed blue. Explanations followed as to why this was so. The sun has no sense of color, the light it emits is of no color in particular or, rather, all of them. It bombards the Earth atmosphere with light of every wavelength, from red to violet and everything in between – orange, yellow, green, blue and indigo. But these colors never reach us; as soon as they reach the upper layers of the atmosphere they strike up against tiny air molecules. These air molecules diffract small quantities of light, though not in uniform fashion – they are better of diffusing shorter waves of light than longer ones. That’s why the air in the sky won’t diffuse red, orange or yellow light. But it is very good at diffusing blue, and better still at violet. Most of the colors emitted by the sun thus never reach our retina. That, say scientists, is why the sky is violet. So why does the sky look blue and not violet? Because the eyes of men, even the eyes of men of science, are unable to distinguish violet. We perceive the sky’s color as blue just as we sense that the earth is flat or that the sun rises and sets every day.

Little by little people learn how to survive. Photo by Elena.

Increasingly, people – ordinary observers, devoted amateurs, gentlemen farmers – began keeping weather journals as they were called, in which, day after day, they noted wind direction, the state of the sky in the morning and evening, rainfall amounts, and so forth. The more people shielded themselves from the weather the more they seemed to talk about it, perhaps to pass the time. Meteorologists were persuaded they were on the verge of wrestling from the rain and wind all of their innermost secrets. Meteorological societies were formed, congresses convened, and journals published.

These men of science advanced things. Little by little they learned how clouds formed – doing away with a number of even the venerable Luke Howard’s own hypotheses on the subject. They had no difficulty getting funding for their research, because their interests intersected perfectly with a seemingly infinite number of financial interests. Steel-hulled ships, very often British and growing in number, were plowing the seas of the world; large office buildings were going up in Geneva and Washington and Berlin and Paris, in which workers used rulers and ink pens to create rectilinear boundaries along what had previously been beautifully round.

Empires built to last a thousand years were founded and then disappeared in less than a hundred. More and more people went off to fight and die in distant corners of the world, in villages with strange-sounding names, villages whose existence they had not known of six months before – like Sebastopol or Falluja. The fate of the world depended upon what happened on the seas: It was a war of commerce, as much as war of the more traditional sort. England was in its Golden Age, dealing in spices and rare perfumes, amassing diamonds and opals, construction white-stoned temples to commerce in its enormous capital city.

Now that the island nation of sailors ruled the universe, weather became a serious matter. On Septembre 5, 1860, the Times of London published its first weather announcement. Five years later, on April 30, 1865, Admiral Robert Fitzroy, director of the Meteorological Department at the National Chamber of Commerce, committed suicide because his department had issued an egregiously inaccurate forecast and the press had hounded him for it. As the world was being circumnavigated more and more often, and more and more quickly, it was being learned that climatic phenomena did much the same thing. Simultaneously, it was being learned how high the costs of not understanding the sky and its movements could prove. The Agriculture Ministry had estimated that the total annual value of agricultural production worldwide, including horticulture and tree-farming, to be somewhere around 100 million pounds sterling, and, estimating that an annual 5 percent growth in productivity would result from more precise meteorological predictions and their communication to those concerned (farmers, for example), reliable forecasting had a potential value of 20 million pounds sterling. Simply identifying clouds would no longer do. One had to predict their movements, their behaviour. In 1879, the inhabitants of Dundee and the entire region were thrilled when a metal bridge was constructed to span the Bay of Tay, making it no longer necessary to go around this body of water, reducing travel time to Edinburgh by a three full hours. Britani’s finest engineers had designed the bridge.

Several times a day, heavy iron trains crossed the bridge without causing so much as a shake. A few journalists speculated about the danger of conveyance at such high speeds – close to thirty miles an hour – that would be unleashed upon the world. In the spring of 1879, after five months of reliable service, the magnificent new bridge tumbled into the river whose waters it spanned, taking with it the train that happened to be crossing it and all its passengers (Note of Univers.grandquebec.com: Actually the disaster took place on December 28, 1879, not in spring). The collapse was blamed on a series of strong wind gusts that none of the engineers had been imaginative enough to take into account. The newspapers were savage in their denunciations. Public opinion turned sour. A few elected officials tendered their resignations and, as always in cases such as this, someone took his life. Several amateur meteorologists wrote memoirs establishing that the architect had not considered wind speeds in the region. It was decided that a new bridge should be built in the same spot; this one, however, would not collapse.

Despite the occasional setbacks, British technology was unrivaled in the world; at the beginning of that same year, for example, it had permitted Her Majesty’s Army to slaughter eight thousand Zulu warriors during the course of several weeks in southern Africa. The Zulus had charged across a plain on foot, spears in their hands, using wooden shields covered with zebra skins, straight into professional soldiers equipped with the finest rifles available. On March 29, 1879, at the Battle of Rorke’s Drift, a regiment withstood a siege that endured for several days and killed a thousand native warriors in the process. Those who survived the siege were decorated.

The great and powerful nations of Europe were seeking a way of predicting storms. There were of course always storms, as well as farmers who feared them. But never before had these storms caused quite so many factories to be blown away, or house roofs to be carried off, or cattle and men sent to their doom. In short, never before had so much been at stake. On November 14, 1854, during the Crimean War, a number of warships and commercial vessels – a total of thirty-eight of them, all flying French colors – sank in the middle of Balaklava, in the North Sea. Four hundred souls were lost. Napoleon III summoned the Minister of War, to learn how he could have managed to lose so many lives and an entire fleet, including the mighty three-masted Henry IV. In an attempt to save face, the Minister of War in turn summoned the director of the Paris Observatory. The director’s name was Urbain Le Verrier. Le Verrier had no difficulty demonstrating to the minister that the evening before it had hit, the storm had been brewing over the Mediterranean, and that two days before this it had been attacking the inhabitants of Europe’s northwest regions. A telegram might have averted the whole disaster. Le Verrier was given an audience with the emperor, who wanted to know how such a thing might be accomplished. The director then wrote to every amateur astronomer and meteorologist he could find throughout Europe. Most scientists of the day spent most of their time writing each other about their discoveries anyway. The director’s request was straightforward: Could his honored colleagues relay to him their observations about the weather in their regions between November 12 and November 16? He received two hundred and fifty replies, which he posted on a map of Europe in order to track the storm’s path. Such a system had a fatal flaw of course. What good was predicting weather that had already happened? Le Verrier therefore was allocated funds to establish weather stations throughout his native land. The era of individual weather-watching had ended; the moment of the network had arrived. Before long, other countries – Holland, England, Sweden, and Russia – followed France’s example.

Clouds. Illustration by Elena.