New Orbit Magazine: Issue 04, October 2018

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The concept that life can only come about within the carbon-based bounds that we possess is very restrictive. Perhaps lifeforms on the next planet are so different from us that they are unable to be detected via light or sound. Perhaps they are gaseous or liquid, rather than (mostly) solid. Perhaps, like in Hot & Cold, they don’t require water or any means of nutrition that we would understand. One method of lifesearching is to monitor the atmospheres of exoplanets for gases that would not be there absent some kind of biological life, even microbes or bacterium. On Earth, one of those gases is oxygen, being constantly replenished by plant life, and we’re on the lookout for oxygenrich atmospheres elsewhere for exactly this reason. We tend not to look for gaseous sulphur, for example, as it is regularly emitted by volcanoes and therefore fairly common – but any sulphur-emitting life that we’re yet to conceive of are then flying under our radar. assumption too far. A relatively new theory posits that if we, humans, have moved from prototypic computers to universal, handheld supercomputers between 1945 and today, an alien species coming about earlier or developing faster than us could easily have moved on to making life of their own – biological or otherwise. Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, has said There is a whole universe of possibilities of life forms that we are as yet unable to search for, simply because we don’t know how to conceive of them yet. As it turns out, even searching out life that is traditionally “biological” might be an ≠ Most all of our major avenues for searching for alien life involve radio. We have been emitting radio out into the depths of space for decades, some incidentally, and some intentionally. SETI’s main goal is to either finally stumble into the firing line of some incidental non-natural radio waves from another civilisation, or have our own heard and responded to. For humans, this is our best way of attempting to communicate outside of our solar system. Unfortunately, this method also leaves a lot to be desired. Drake himself (of Drake’s Equation) was of the opinion that only one in every hundred intelligent species would discover radio in the capacity that it’d be able to communicate with ours. An intelligent species might be as or more advanced than humans and never have invented radio, never having had the need for it or having developed a means of longdistance communication that doesn’t utilise any of the wavelengths that we’re watching out for. Not only this, but in only searching for radio frequencies we are limiting ourselves to potentially finding only technologically intelligent life – and only a very fine band of it. While stumbling upon an advanced alien civilisation with whom we can communicate would be incredible, so would coming upon a lush alien landscape (seascape? Airscape?) populated with pre-technology species which we could study and understand. Gorillas, dolphins, parrots, corvids, and even octopus
are earth species intelligent enough to use tools, learn, exhibit self-awareness, empathy or altruism, and communicate with humans on a complex level – even understanding theoretical concepts as well as simple physical commands or nouns. The amount we could learn from a species this intelligent on another planet, in another solar system, is unprecedented – but we’re not looking for them yet. Fortunately for us, our boundaries are evolving. The more we learn about life on earth, physics in space, and the possibilities that science affords, the wider our search can become. For example, a relatively recent development in SETI itself saw researchers turning their focus from only yellow dwarf doppelgangers of our own home star (expecting that a sun like ours could make a planet like ours and therefore life like ours), and are now actively including red dwarfs as a strong possibility in the search after discovering that despite their generally not running as hot, they still have a great many planets in their habitable “Goldilocks” zones capable of producing life as we know it. Binary star systems like the one in which Hot & Cold takes place are very complex in terms of temperature & light patterns, but also haven’t been ruled out as places where alien life might thrive. As with all science, the only answers we have are the ones we’re trying to prove wrong, and the more we prove wrong, the further ahead we progress. Carl Sagan said beautifully in the above linked clip, “There’s no predictive theory of biology just as there is no predictive theory of history. The reason is the same. Both subjects are still too complicated for us. But, we can understand ourselves much better by understanding other cases.” Specktor, B. (<strong>2018</strong>, July 31). Strange, Scientific Excuses for Why Humans Haven't Found Aliens Yet. Retrieved from Live Science: https://www.livescience.com/63208-alien-lifeexcuses.html O'Neill, I. (2013, March 11). 13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Aliens. Retrieved from Space.com: https://www.space.com/20155-hunting-intelligentaliens-extreme-seti.html SETI Institute. (date unknown). The Drake Equation. Retrieved from SETI Institute: https://www.seti.org/drake-equation
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New Orbit Magazine: Issue 04, October 2018

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