4 - Jewish E-Books

Rabbi Avi Shafran
The Sound of Silence
ARE WE ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE?
The latest hope for signs of possible life on other planets
lies in the cargo bay of a spacecraft that blasted off
from Cape Canaveral the morning of Shabbos parshas
Toldos.
The Mars Science Laboratory will deliver a rover,
aptly named Curiosity, to the surface of the Red Planet. Methane
gas, which can be emitted by living organisms, has tentatively
been detected in the Martian atmosphere, and instruments on
other carbon-based molecules likewise considered to be “building
blocks of life.”
Many scientists assume that life must exist on other planets.
Although science doesn’t usually
embrace beliefs that have not been
supported by observations, the
conviction that there is life elsewhere
in the universe derives from
the creed that chance pervades and
governs the universe—that randomness
lies at the root of reality.
If probability is the loom on which
the universe’s fabric is stretched,
the creed’s canon proclaims, what
reason could there possibly be for
only a single, unremarkable planet
in a single, unremarkable solar
system in a single, unremarkable
galaxy to alone have spawned life?
This abiding scientific faith
assumes something of a miracle: that terrestrial life somehow
arose from inanimate matter here on earth. It reveres a trinity: a
single-celled ancestor, random mutation, and natural selection.
Their interplay, the belief goes, is responsible for the astounding
diversity of life on earth.
And so, during the same eons over which time and chance on
Earth allowed inert elements to slowly morph into iPods and
their owners, countless other worlds should have done no worse.
Indeed, they may have done considerably better.
Creation, we believing Jews know, was in fact an act of Divine
will, not the yield of randomness. Still and all, it isn’t unthinkable
that rudimentary life on other planets exists, like the kind Curiosity
is looking for. After all, G-d created life here on Earth that
remained unseen for most of human history—whether in undersea
volcanic vents or Amazonian jungle canopies. The discovery
of life on other planets would hardly challenge Jewish belief.
But intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos? Unlikely, I think.
One thing is certain: all efforts thus far to detect it have come up
empty.
Over the 1960s and 1970s, there was SETI, or the “Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence,”; META, the “Megachannel Extraterrestrial
Assay”; and META II. In 1972 and 1973, plaques
depicting the location of Earth in the galaxy and solar system,
and what humans look like, were launched aboard the Pioneer
and Voyager probes. In 1974, the Arecibo message, which
carried coded information about chemistry and terrestrial life,
was beamed into space. And in the 1990s, the “Billion-channel
Extraterrestrial Assay” (BETA) was created, as well as a project
harnessing the computing power
ers
to crunch numbers that might
reveal patterns indicative of intelligent
life beyond our planet. Tens of
billions of hours of processing time
have so far been consumed by the
project.
So far, though, nothing.
The dearth of any sign of intelligent
life beyond our own planet
doesn’t prove anything, of course.
It’s a big universe.
But I’m reminded of what Rabbi
Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev had
to say about a verse in the Torah
(Devarim, 17:3) concerning a false
prophet who will “prostrate himself to… the sun or the moon
or to any host of heaven, which I have not commanded.” Rashi
explains that last phrase as meaning “which I have not commanded
you to worship.”
The Berditchever had a different approach. The reason one
may not bow down to a heavenly body, he explained, is because
G-d has not commanded it in any way. One may, however, bow
down in respect to a human being, because humans are unique,
sublime creatures—beings who have been commanded, who
uniquely possess the free will to accept and execute G-d’s will.
Intelligent extraterrestrials, I suppose, could have received
their own Divine commandments. A planet revolving in the
Alpha Centauri system may have had its own Mt. Sinai revelation,
or some alien equivalent.
One could, I imagine, “hear” such a thing.
Personally, I think the silence out there speaks louder.
20 AMI MAGAZINE // DECEMBER 7, 2011 // 11 KISLEV, 5772