The Russell Stannard Questions: Life

The following questions (Q) are taken verbatim from those poised by Russell Stannard in his 2010 book The End of Discovery [are we approaching the boundaries of the knowable?]; Oxford University Press, Oxford. I consider these typical of the sorts of modern Big Questions that are part and parcel of the philosophy of modern science, especially physical science.

My answers are based mainly with the thought of our being in a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe that has been constructed by one or more Supreme Programmers. However, some of the answers apply regardless of what the nature of our ultimate reality is.

Q. Why is the universe life-friendly?

A. The universe is both bio-friendly and not bio-friendly. 99.999% (add a few more 9’s here) of the cosmic environment is decidedly bio-unfriendly and would snuff you out so quick-smart you wouldn’t know what hit you. Of course the cosmos is also bio-friendly otherwise you wouldn’t be here reading this. If you reject a supernatural explanation, that leaves coincidence, a multiverse, or software. Coincidence is stretching things since there are just so many dials that have to be set to a very narrow range. The multiverse appeals to probability statistics – think of those millions of monkeys at millions of typewriters one of whom will type “Hamlet” word-for-word – eventually. That leaves software, or in other words a Supreme Programmer programing our universe in a bio-friendly way. 

Q. Is there extraterrestrial life, and if so, how do we humans stand in comparison as regards intellectual capacity?

A. Given the vastness of the cosmos, and the sheer number of galaxies in the observable cosmos, and the numbers of stars per galaxy with associated solar systems and the number of planets per solar system not to mention possible rogue/orphan planets and how interstellar cosmic organic chemistry associated with life is, well, cosmic, etc., you would have to be pretty brave to bet the family farm arguing Planet Earth being the proverbial cosmic IT when it comes to life. Even going up the chain from the origin of life ‘living’ molecules to unicellular life to multicellular life to intelligent life to technologically advanced life forms and advocating extreme difficulty in getting from one step to the next step on up the line, there must be – if you’re a betting person – millions of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations throughout the cosmos and a goodly number in our galaxy too. Further, we humans are the new boys on the block, so the odds are that any other extraterrestrial intelligences will have been around way longer that we have, and thus have evolved greater intellectual capacity that we have yet achieved. However, the interesting bit is that once intelligence is achieved, natural selection gives way to artificial selection, and part of that artificial selection might ultimately be the transition from biological intelligence to artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence which will further evolve via artificial selection as machine intelligence designs ever better machine intelligences.



Astrobiology: The Jovian Planets

If you are a professional scientist interested in astrobiology (exobiology), searching for life in the Universe, your mantra is “follow the water”. If you want to find life, find liquid water first. But liquid water isn’t the total be-all-and-end-all when it comes to finding LGM – Little Green Microbes. Water, based on Planet Earth’s own terrestrial life as the only statistical sample we have, is certainly critical, but so to are lots of other things as we shall soon see.

The Jovian planets, Jupiter and Saturn, including those gas giants further out (Uranus and Neptune) continue to be overlooked as habitable abodes for ET or LGM. The logic of this escapes me as we shall soon see, for the idea that the Jovian planets could in theory harbour life forms as complex as jellyfish or other quasi-aquatic life forms even up to and including the equivalents of Jovian dolphins and whales can’t be ruled out. While Jovian extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) might be possible, Jovian ETI with technology can pretty much be ruled out, and for much the same reason as to why dolphins and whales here on Earth aren’t a technological species - they can’t build things in the environment to which they have adapted to.

So what’s needed to build us an ET? Well, minimum requirements are 1) appropriate life-as-we-know-it chemicals (CHON – Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen – and of course water or water vapour); 2) a proper comfortable environment for life-as-we-know-it (an appropriate temperature range for liquid water or water vapour); 3) mixing that brings the various inorganic and organic chemicals required into proximity; and 4) an energy source(s) to drive things along, like solar energy does for many terrestrial organisms on Earth.

It’s time to introduce the main players, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and those four essentials: CHON, environment, mixing and energy. If there is life-as-we-know-it on these four planets, then we need CHON, we need a proper environment, we need mixing to bring essentials together at one time and place, and we need a source(s) of energy.

One clarification is in order first. Although the Jovian planets are usually called “gas giants”, that is a slight misnaming. While it’s true that relative to Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, the Jovian planets are indeed great big balls of gas, they still must have at their centre a solid rocky core, due to, if for no other reason, that over 4.5 billion years of their existence, asteroids, maybe even small planets, meteors, dust, and comets have all slammed into them. The rocky stuff, ultimately, must sink to the bottom forming a solid heavy element core. With that clarification made, let’s see what there is to be speculated upon.  

CHON: Any biological organisms that have been and are are being provided with appropriate CHON. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune have atmospheres rich in carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen compounds.  The CHON box is ticked on all four Jovian planets. With respect to CHON, there are probably all sorts of way more complex organic molecules present in the four Jovian atmospheres but in such relatively small quantities that are dispersed widely and deeply so as to have escaped detection to date from our relatively faraway fly-by and orbiting probes. 

Suitable Environment: All the gas giants have a Goldilocks environment (at least in places). There’s no disputing that the cloud tops are bitterly cold; the deep interiors are way too hot. But, that alone suggests that there will be a Goldilocks area in-between, probably extending vertically for hundreds of kilometres, and extending as well horizontally around the globe. That volume, given their large size (relative to Earth), comprises a lot of Goldilocks territory. The habitable environment box on all four Jovian planets is therefore also ticked.

Mixing: Since Jupiter and company have very hot interior cores and the top of the atmospheres are extremely cold, and since heat rises and cold descends, that alone suggests that mixing in their primarily gaseous/quasi-fluid body must take place. Quite apart from that, all one needs to do is view time-lapse photography of their upper atmospheres to see all the turbulent motion that takes place. A tranquil pond the gas giants aren’t. The mixing box also gets a tick.

Energy: The Jovian planets all have an abundant energy supply, albeit not photosynthesis. Solar energy is highly unlikely to drive any Jovian biology because their atmospheres are very thick, and just like with our terrestrial oceans, things get very dark very quickly as one descends. However, chemical energy (chemosynthesis) is a strong possibility, like that which drives terrestrial hydrothermal vent communities. Then there’s infrared (instead of visible) radiation. Jupiter and company radiates much more heat that it receives from the Sun, the heat being slowly radiated outward from their original quota of primordial heat energy largely stored in the core of the planets.  The Jovian planets are fantastic places to visit if you’re fond of thunderstorms. Lightning really lights up their skies. Lightning is a prime source of energy for driving chemical reactions. Translated, all up, the gas giants are awash with potentially useful energy sources to drive any local biology. The available energy supply box is ticked too.

I suggest therefore that the soupy atmospheres of the giant planets have all the fundamentals required not only for the origin of life, but long-term habitability. There also have been over four and a half billion years for interesting biological happenings to have occurred. In addition, there’s a lot of volume in each of the Jovian planets for interesting stuff to happen in. The odds of things all coming and getting their act together in a small pond is small relative to a large soupy atmospheric ocean.

That all four Jovian planets have evolved life is problematical; that at least one has become a biological abode is much more certain, IMHO. Throw in one or more of their satellites like Europa and Enceladus that offer a liquid water ocean environment – well that’s a bonus. On top of all that, the Jovian planets have the highest gravities apart from the Sun. Now that means they suck in more than their fair share of other solar system debris – like comets and asteroids. Now comets and asteroids, the leftovers of that initial stuff out of which our solar system was made, also tend to be rich in CHON. No doubt they, via impacts with the Jovian planets, have contributed their CHON bit to the already potential suitability of those abodes as habitable abodes.

So what sort of Jovian life might we expect? On Planet Earth there is a sharp boundary between the atmosphere and the hydrosphere. On the four Jovian planets one just slowly merges into the other as one goes deeper and deeper. Terrestrial but airborne microbes, bacteria, germs, and other single-celled beasties, and their marine equivalents, like plankton and other unicellular critters, occupy both environments and are happy little campers. There’s no reason for there not to be Jovian equivalents that ‘swim’ and multiply in whatever region of the various four varieties of Jovian atmospheric ‘soups’ that have a comfortable, Goldilocks temperature regime. Of course that Goldilocks region could extend over hundreds of vertical kilometres in range. Some organisms might be better adapted to the thinner cooler upper regions; others to the murkier but warmer depths. Regardless, it gets dark fast so eyesight in the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum might be problematical. Of course phosphoresce, not all that uncommon in marine life here on Earth, can’t be ruled out of course.    

If simple life forms originated and evolved on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and/or Neptune, then more complex and far larger ‘marine’ and ‘aerial’ life forms might be present too. Their trick, in order to stay in the Goldilocks zone, will be to have evolved the capability to maintain neutral buoyancy, but also to be able to rise if turbulence pushed them downwards towards greater heat; be able to sink if currents push them too high where chill factors come into prominence. So ‘gas bag’ floaters or ‘fish’ with ‘airbags’ might be possible Jovian alien life-forms. There’s no reason such critters couldn’t have developed a relatively sophisticated degree of intelligence. It’s possible to have intelligence without the means of developing technology as our whales and dolphins and even the humble octopus demonstrate.

The fly in the ointment is that our on-site investigation is going to prove to be an extremely daunting technological task, one that most certainly won’t happen in the next several decades – probably much longer. In the short term, the best bet is to use remote spectroscopic analysis of the atmospheric ‘surfaces’ or actual surfaces (in the case of the satellites) to identify biological signatures – compounds that just cannot be accounted for by non-biological processes. An example would be the pinkish-red areas on Jupiter’s moon, Europa. 



Orphaned Rogue Interstellar Planets

Lots of effort has been put into discovering the existence of extra-solar planets and thus confirming that our own solar system isn’t some sort of anomaly. Hundreds of extra-solar planets have now been found and in the databanks, with more being found every week.  Meantime, there’s a whole other set of extra-solar planetary objects or abodes, probably undetectable with even foreseeable technology. These extra-solar abodes are the sunless orphans (technically termed ‘rogue planets’ or maybe ‘interstellar planets’) that exist in deep interstellar (perhaps even intergalactic) space itself. The number of orphaned interstellar planets could easily equal, or even vastly exceed, all the planets in all the solar systems in the Milky Way Galaxy combined. Could such orphans expand the range of abodes for life in the cosmos? There is a real possibility that orphan planets could host viable communities (ecosystems) of microbes based on chemosynthesis.

Our solar system today probably seems like a pretty well ordered place – it runs like clockwork, is predictable, and it’s pretty benign on the whole. But, it was not always so, and may not always remain that way in the future. In those early chaotic when the proto-sun and the proto-planets were forming, the orbital dynamics were anything but well ordered. Collisions and close encounters between these proto-objects, and associated interacting gravitational forces at play meant that some bodies spiralled into the proto-sun; others in their gravitational dances were ejected, in a slingshot sort of way, from the proto-solar system altogether. 

In the future, as our sun and solar system along with hundreds of thousands of other ‘nearby’ suns (stars) orbit the galactic centre, distances between stars vary, sometime coming close enough for their respective gravitational forces to cause another dance and throw monkey wrenches into the peace and tranquillity and well-ordered-ness of the respective stellar systems and debris (like planets orbiting their parent suns). As before, some objects could be perturbed and dislodged and fall into their sun, or be ejected from the gravitational control of that sun altogether and head out into space and a lonely, endless night, existence.  Also, the ejection process will be alive and well in binary (tug of war) star systems (and there are an awful lot of them about).

While there’s nothing to be said for those unfortunate bodies (and life forms – if any) that get cataclysmically into their parent suns, it’s not quite ‘The End’ for those now sunless orphans. There could be multi-thousands (or more) of orphaned planets (of all sizes and makeup) in deep space beyond the bright light and solar energy of a sun. There could be an orphan planet within a light year of us and we’d never know or suspect.

Could orphan planets form all by themselves in the depths of lonely space? Well, if a large interstellar dust and gas cloud can gravitationally collapse to form a star(s) and associated stellar (solar) system, I fail to see why a smaller interstellar dust and gas cloud couldn’t collapse to form a planet sized object, probably a ‘failed star’ like a Jupiter, maybe with moons. From that of course it is easy to extrapolate and suggest such a Jovian ‘failed star’ might have smaller abodes (planets) form and orbit same – a nearly invisible solar system. Or perhaps it’s just an orphan planet with associated moons. Either definition amounts to the same thing – a rose by any other name applies.

Regardless of initial origin, conventional wisdom would suggest that these orphans must be lifeless, even if before the event they had life.

When I was a high school biology student (1962-63), it was absolutely gospel (and no correspondence would be entered into contrary) that our sun was the be all and end all of the existence of terrestrial life. No sun; no life. All life ultimately depended on photosynthetic plants which in turn couldn’t exist without sunlight. Even then however I seem to recall speculation about the possibility of a non-photosynthetic based ecology in the atmosphere of Jupiter which gladdened my heart no end - however, it wasn‘t Jupiter that broke the photosynthetic mould, but good old Mother Earth herself. So gospel ain’t gospel any longer! Today we know about chemosynthesis (organisms that can produce organics from inorganic substances and derive energy from the process.)

A well known, if little understood example of chemosynthesis are the colonies of microbes (dubbed ‘rusticles’) that are eating the iron structure of the RMS Titanic, resting some four kilometres below the surface of the North Atlantic. Within another generation or two, the famous shipwreck will have been basically consumed by microbes, without any benefit bestowed by our sun.

But, an orphaned planet has severe problems quite apart from a lack of solar energy. What about heat? Sources of heat (apart from a parent sun) include gravitational contraction, radioactivity, chemical activity, friction, etc. So heat shouldn’t be too much of a problem for some planetary abodes. Rocky planets like Earth have radioactive elements that partly comprise their crusts and interiors, and radioactive decay gives off heat, and rock is a good insulator. I doubt if chemical activity or friction will contribute much, but for Jupiter-sized planets, gravitational contraction means that these types of planets (like Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune) give off more heat energy than they receive from the sun.

Of course friction could be a source of heat in some rare cases. One other heating scenario is plausible if an orphan planet had a satellite(s) of the right composition. The satellite(s) might be warmed by tidal frictional forces courtesy of their parent orphaned planet akin to what we observe on Io and Europa. These satellites are heated by the effects of Jupiter’s tidal attractions on the interiors of these moons which get flexed and stretched and compressed, ever alternating between extremes. The resulting friction results in heating. An alternative version could be two orphaned planets of roughly the same size, orbiting each other in relatively close proximity. Each would mutually tidally heat the other, but only for a while. You can’t produce heat energy out of nothing, and the price paid would be their orbital separation increasing until the gravitational bonds weaken so much that you’d have – for all intents and purposes – two separate orphaned planets. This is akin to our own Moon which is retreating from Mother Earth, albeit ever so slowly, over time.

But heat tends to be the final end waste product in any energy chain of events. Heat itself is not useful as an energy source for living things; albeit quite useful in contributing to the environmental friendliness in which organisms thrive, like keeping temperatures suitable for liquid water or for biochemical reactions. I mean an infrared lamp may feel real good, but it’s not providing you with any calories!

Could one have an origin of life (biogenesis) event on an orphaned planet? Why not, providing you had the appropriate chemicals, all mixing it up in an appropriate liquid medium (water most likely), and an energy source(s), and lots of time.

So, an orphan planet could have had a biogenesis event, coupled with suitable chemicals for chemosynthesis and heat. What more do you want! Well, are there any positives to be had?

Are there any obvious advantages to being a life form on an orphan planet? I think so. What if your initial parent star were a variable star, or a very massive star that’s going to have a very short lifespan, maybe terminate in a supernova - advantage orphan. Maybe your initial orbit was so lopsided (elliptical) that you alternatively froze and fried – advantage orphan. Gravitational (tidal) locking – keeping one hemisphere always turned toward one point, say the surface of your parent star – causing temperature extremes, is now irrelevant. The tilt of your axis (which can also cause extremes in heating/cooling is now also irrelevant. Your weather, such as it is, would be relatively gentle without solar energy driving it. Then too, inhabiting deep space via-a-visa crowded debris filled solar system reduces drastically those nasty collision impacts. A thick Jovian (Jupiter) type atmosphere or thick ice cap is probably good shielding from radiation, though even a nearby supernova might be bad news. You’re also insulated from all those nasty bug-eyed-monster alien types. They can easily find solar systems, but not orphans. In any event, your orphan planet isn’t very desirable real estate to alien invaders!

One day, in the not too distant future, it will be a fairly straight forward exercise to compare solar systems – what’s a typical solar system; what’s an atypical solar system. However, questions central to what a typical planet and an abode for life is  will still be difficult to answer, as that population of orphan planets (and ages of same) will take a long time yet to resolve itself. 

Further Readings:

Stevenson, David J.; Life-sustaining planets in interstellar space? (in) Nature, 1 July 1999; p.32:

De La Fuente, M.C. & De La Fuente, M.R.; Runaway planets (in) New Astronomy, Volume 4, #1, February 1999; p.21-32:

The Rare Earth Hypothesis: Part Two

If the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is a viable experiment and not a waste of time; if UFOs and ancient astronauts are facets that help document the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, then the very existence of an advanced extraterrestrial intelligence with technology has to be plausible in the first place. Unfortunately, it’s a long hard road to get from inorganic chemistry through to E.T. and there are many possible bottleneck hurdles that have to be overcome before the one evolves into the other. Goldilocks factors – not too this, not too that, but just right – have to be with you every step of the way. IMHO the major bottlenecks are the transition from unicellular to multicellular life and the evolutionary development and use of technology.

It’s been pointed out by others, and based on my readings I tend to have to agree, that astronomers (physical scientists) tend to be much more optimistic and supportive of the notion that advanced life forms in the Universe (extraterrestrial intelligence) are a dime-a-dozen relative to biologists (life scientists), who hedge their bets and who it must be said are presumably better qualified to pass judgments. So, taking things from a more biological perspective, what’s what?

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

There are apparently just too many planetary Goldilocks factors at play to grant the probability that complex, multicellular, animal, life is common throughout the cosmos. You need to be in a quiet part of the galaxy – no nearby supernovas, black holes to suck you in, gamma ray bursters, etc. You need a long lived stable single star. You need a gravitationally stable solar system so that planets are not gravitationally disturbed out of their orbit and either plunged into the parent star or cast out of the parent system altogether. You should have a good Jupiter(s) to absorb and/or gravitational deflect comets and asteroids that would otherwise slam into your otherwise environmentally-friendly planet causing havoc to established life forms. You need a planet that’s in a pretty circular orbit, one that doesn’t stray too close or too far from the habitable zone surrounding the parent star. The planet must have a fairly stable temperature range over geologic time periods, and so you must have an atmosphere, and thus has to be massive enough to retain an atmosphere, without being so massive that you end up with a brown dwarf - a quasi-stellar body. The axis can’t have an extreme tilt, and it would greatly assist if the planet had a large moon around it to assist its long term stability. You need some sort of plate tectonics to ensure land building and the recycling of materials. If it’s intelligence, with technology you seek, the planet can’t be a water world. The planet must have formed in a region abundant in the heavier chemical elements (oxygen, sulphur, carbon, silicon, nitrogen, various metals, etc.). When you take all those factors (and more) into account, the number of suitable abodes where simple life can slowly evolve into complex life decreases rather quickly. And there’s no guarantee that there is really any directed purpose to evolution in that evolution doesn’t require simple life to become complex life. Survival and leaving offspring is what it’s all about, and if single cell critters do that what more is needed?

One note about planetary disasters or catastrophes is that these cut both ways. They can’t be frequent enough and/or large enough to wipe out the entire biosphere in total, especially the biosphere comprised of complex life forms, but on the other hand, infrequent small disasters can spur on evolutionary change by opening up environmental niches, but depending on who or what you are, when you are, and where you are, a disaster can be a double edged sword. I mean if you’re a T-Rex sixty five million years ago, its bad news. On the other hand, without the bad news for T-Rex, we wouldn’t be here, so for us, an asteroid impact 65 million years ago turned out to be good news!

It’s also difficult to naturally transport complex life around the galaxy, unlike microbial life. If a meteor hit Earth and blasted a chunk of terra firma off towards Mars, pity the poor cockroach going along for the ride. Cockroaches are tough, but not that tough. And even if a cockroach did make it alive to the surface of, say Mars, it wouldn’t survive long.

Anyway, once you have multicellular critters that have survived and thrived in a reasonably stable part of the Universe over many generations, will they evolve intelligence? I mean finding an extraterrestrial equivalent of a trilobite is all well and good, but we want to find beings more like ourselves.

IMHO, intelligence, the ability to figure things out, has evolutionary survival value and will tend to be selected for, and thus over time, there will tend to have evolved life forms with ever higher IQ’s. Here on Earth, just about all mammals and birds, and some exceptional invertebrates (the cephalopods like squid and the octopus), have reasonable IQ’s at least when compared to bacteria, plants, insects, fish, etc. Of course just as some kinds of organisms are faster than others, or have keener senses of sight or smell or hearing, not all advanced organisms are going to end up equal in the IQ stakes. But, the fact remains, the ability to think, to figure things out, can only increase your odds of survival and leaving behind more offspring.

Finally, for SETI to succeed, for UFOs to be alien spaceships, one needs our intelligent species to develop technology, and here’s where I see bottleneck number two. The evolution of technology isn’t inevitable and has a lot of just-so factors attached.

Firstly, your home planet has got to come equipped with the right sorts of materials like oxygen and metal ores and other objects than can be turned into useful tools, and of course a suitable supply of various energy sources. That’s not a given.

Water worlds are out of the running since it’s difficult to discover and utilise fire in that sort of environment.

You can’t have all your required locomotive appendages in contact with the ground – some have to be free to manipulate objects in your environment. Birds have wings that are off the ground, but since wings aren’t good at making tools, that seems to rule out wings and birds of a feather pretty much as well

So, we’ve already ruled out dolphins and whales and the cephalopods being water based creatures, and the birds with their useless wings as far as building things is concerned, and all the four-footed walking mammals.

It might be conceivable that you can build up a technology using your mouth parts and/or using a tail to manipulate and build things, but we don’t have obvious terrestrial case studies, although you might argue that bees and wasps and termites and ants and birds can build elaborate structures using just their mouths.

It’s not all that obvious that technology actually adds all that much value towards ultimate long-term survival. Lots of technological advancements do, like controlling fire, developing agriculture, the rise of modern medicine and food technologies. But then lots of modern technological wonders, the automobile, CDs, sofas, microwave ovens, and thousands of other consumer products don’t really contribute to our overall survival – certainly cars don’t when considering the road toll! Then that brings up the fact that things technological can sometimes work in the opposite direction. Toxic this, pollutant that, nuclear the next thing; then throw in a bit of global warming; the rise of urban city living with overcrowding and in general overpopulation; chemical, biological and radiological warfare/terrorism; instruments of warfare in general, like guns; the overuse of antibiotics and the rise of antibiotic resistant germs; exposure to electromagnetic fields – well, the list of horrors or potential horrors goes on and on.

It makes for an interesting question: would mankind ultimately survive longer had technology never entered the equation, or not? It’s an unanswerable question in that 1) we can’t run the contrary as a controlled experiment, and 2) that the genie is well and truly out of the bottle and there’s probably no turning back now.

So, overall, SETI might not be able to detect our technological and communicating kin out there, and UFOs might not be alien spaceships right here, because it’s 1) hard to evolve multicellular organisms, and 2) technology isn’t inevitable and might even be counterproductive. Thus, Earth, with its multicellular critters and humanity with its technology, is quite the rare planet within the Universe – according to some.   

The main proponents of what is now called the ‘Rare Earth Hypothesis’ are the scientists Brownlee and Ward (see below), and they have certainly stirred up an astrobiological hornet’s nest with the idea. That’s good for science in the long term. The belief in an unproved but accepted scientific proposition, in this case that that there are lots of complex alien critters out there, needs to be challenged if fields of inquiry aren’t going to stagnate. However, make no mistake, it is the ‘Rare Earth Hypothesis’, not the ‘Unique Earth Hypothesis’, so religious fundamentalists who have taken this hypothesis to their hearts; who still need Planet Earth, and human beings, as some sort of religious special creation, should really not take comfort from these ideas.  The Copernicus Revolution is still alive and well.

Further reading:

Brownlee, Donald & Ward, Peter D.; Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe; Copernicus Books, New York; 2000:

Burger, William C.; Perfect Planet, Clever Species: How Unique Are We? Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York; 2003:

Morris, Simon Conway; Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans In A Lonely Universe; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 2003:

The Rare Earth Hypothesis: Part One

If the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is a viable experiment and not a waste of time; if UFOs and ancient astronauts are facets that help document the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, then the very existence of an advanced extraterrestrial intelligence with technology has to be plausible in the first place. Unfortunately, it’s a long hard road to get from inorganic chemistry through to E.T. and there are many possible bottleneck hurdles that have to be overcome before the one evolves into the other. Goldilocks factors – not too this, not too that, but just right – have to be with you every step of the way. IMHO the major bottlenecks are the transition from unicellular to multicellular life and the evolutionary development and use of technology.

It’s been pointed out by others, and based on my readings I tend to have to agree, that astronomers (physical scientists) tend to be much more optimistic and supportive of the notion that advanced life forms in the Universe (extraterrestrial intelligence) are a dime-a-dozen relative to biologists (life scientists), who hedge their bets and who it must be said are presumably better qualified to pass judgments. So, taking things from a more biological perspective, what’s what?

For starters, our Universe is a Goldilocks Universe in that the fundamental laws, relations and principles of physics unite in such a way as to be ultimately bio-friendly. If the Universe wasn’t bio-friendly, we wouldn’t be here to comment on that. That’s not to say however, in relative contrast, that many (most) parts of the Universe aren’t overly bio-friendly. You’d be hard-pressed to survive and thrive in the depths of a stellar core, heading down a Black Hole, vacationing on the surface of a White Dwarf or in the hard vacuum of space itself.  So, overall the physics of the Universe displays the physics of a Goldilocks Universe, but actually very few addresses within an overall Goldilocks Universe are really, by our definition, Goldilocks. However, starting with bio-friendly physics, where do we go from that point? Well, physics begat inorganic chemistry. That’s step number one, and clearly that’s easy because there’s an awful lot of inorganic chemistry in our Universe.

Going from inorganic chemistry to organic chemistry isn’t difficult either. Interstellar space is full of dust and gases made up of organic chemicals; ditto many of the planets and moons within our solar system (i.e. – Titan, a moon of Saturn) have organics being part and parcel of their composition, and comets, asteroids and meteors too can contain organic compounds.

Judging by how quickly organic chemistry turned into biochemistry (the origin of life) on the early Planet Earth, it’s not difficult to generate simple proto-cellular to unicellular life forms if the conditions (adequate energy, temperatures, environments) are Goldilocks conditions.

Yet life, even microbial life, is still very, very complex (try making a microbe from scratch if you doubt it). The fact that life arose from scratch on Earth within a very, very short span of geological time after the planet formed is a bit suspect IMHO. But what if Earth were seeded by microbial life forms already in existence from space (or deliberately seeded by extraterrestrials as the Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick has proposed)? Now I realize that just puts off the origin of life question to another time(s) and place(s). However, given the vastness of the cosmos is far greater than that of our finite globe, and given that the cosmos existed for vastly longer periods of time before our sun, solar system and home planet came into existence, such additional time and space easily turns the improbable into a near certainty. And once established somewhere, then life could spread throughout that time and space, until it reached our young planet.

Earth arose billions of years after the universe and our galaxy had evolved, ample time for life to have arisen elsewhere, and seed the early Earth. This is the concept of panspermia. We know that comets, meteors, and the cosmic dust of outer space are chock-o-block full of complex organic molecules. We know that simple terrestrial life can survive the outer space environment if suitably shielded – and it doesn’t take much to do the shielding. We know that surface bits from planets/moons can be ejected into space, carry a cargo of microbes, and land on another planet, even eons later with the microbes still viable. Of course 99.999% of all such microbial life will be doomed to forever wander in space or crash onto a cold, surface of a planet with no atmosphere or water, or plunge into a star, etc. But, sheer numbers will insure that now and again some microbes will land on a hospitable abode and be fruitful and multiple and evolve. The interesting bit is that if then, then now. And thus panspermia will be happening today. Certainly some meteorites which have impacted Earth have inside them ‘organized elements’ suggestive of microbial structures – the Murchison Meteorite from Australia is one such stone. The problem is terrestrial contamination as there are often lengthy time periods between their fall and subsequent discovery. As an aside, if Fred Hoyle & Chandra Wickramasinghe are correct (and I believe they are), microbes (bacteria and viruses) impacting Earth today are largely responsible for some select or various disease epidemics and pandemics, past present, and no doubt future.

On Earth, microbes rule, OK? The biomass of all the bacteria, etc. put together easily equals the biomass of every other multicellular plant and animal added together. And microbes can live in environments where multicellular critters fear to tread and often can’t: from the coldest terrestrial environments, up to the near boiling temperatures, from deep underground to the heights of the atmosphere, from inside water-cooled nuclear reactors and the interior of rocks, to intensely saline, acidic and alkaline environments, to ecosystems where the sun never shines, like the abyssal depths.

They can even survive outer space. Bacteria survived on the surface of the Moon – on Surveyor Three. This was possibly the most significant discovery of the entire Apollo Moon program and it hardly even rated a mention. Astronauts from the Apollo 12 mission brought back to Earth parts of the unmanned Surveyor Three Lunar Lander. Terrestrial bacteria on those parts survived the lunar vacuum, solar radiations (UV, etc.), the massive temperature extremes, and lack of water and nutrients. Experiments since then in low earth orbit have confirmed that given just minimal shielding, bacteria can boldly go!

You’d be aware of how difficult it is to totally sterilize something, be it hospital equipment or a spacecraft bound for a Martian landing. They’re tough – have you ever read about a mass extinction event where a bacterial species, unlike say the multicellular dinosaurs, went poof? Microbes are easy to transport. They can be blasted off the surface of the Earth, shielded from radiation by the debris, and survive to land on another world and be fruitful and multiply. There’s little doubt that somewhere way out there, terrestrial bacteria have hitched a ride to the stars, bolding going where lots of microbes have gone before! Translated, I firmly expect that the universe is teaming with life in all sorts of places. The less than glamorous catch is that LGM is not going to stand for Little Green Men, but Little Green Microbes.

But now we come to our first and major bottleneck.

It took 0.5 billion years for the unicellular origin of life on Earth, or for microbes from space to take root on Earth, but then it then took nearly another 3.5 billion years between the appearance of that ‘simple’ single proto-cell life form and the eventual evolution and the resultant Cambrian explosion of multicellular (complex) life forms. For some reason(s), it appears to be biologically difficult to go from the simple single cell to a complex multicellular organism based on the only example we have to judge such things. Probably the overall obstacle to the early quick-smart establishment of multicellular (complex) life is that heretofore microbes (single cells) were 100% self-sufficient generalists. Complex organisms require the evolution of single cells to give up being generalists, become specialists, and work as part of a team. That degree of organization apparently takes lots of time, especially to the stage of where it can leave a large fossil presence, if it takes place at all.

Once you get to the multicellular stage, and in order to evolve further, well the trick is to survive, for the Universe is a dangerous place.

Planetary environments tend to be dangerous and rarely stable, and thus you need a lot of factors in place to ensure that even simple life even survives the long term and get the chance to evolve into multicellular life. Or, if you have evolved multicellular life, the odds are pretty good it’s going to get the Big “E” – Extinction.  I mean complex life is very vulnerable to environmental forces. A tornado probably isn’t going to bother bacteria, but it sure could tear you apart. That’s not to say bacteria can survive everything the cosmos can throw at them, but when nasties come, you stand a better chance of survival if you’re a microbe. So, in order to get to the first proto multicellular critter, and from that to us, you need a lot of Goldilocks factors operating in your favour.

To be continued…

Are We the Proverbial “It”? Part Two

Every one and their great grandmother has apparently had a go at, and calculated a value for the Drake Equation (named after radio astronomer and SETI scientist Frank D. Drake). The Drake Equation estimates (guesstimates is actually more accurate) the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy that could in theory say “Hi” to us and receive our “Hello” in return by examining all the factors that are part and parcel of that scenario. Seeing as how the Universe is some 13.7 billion years old, and seeing as how the current human species has been around for only some 200,000 years (give or take), then I have to ask, is it logical to assume that we’re the proverbial “It”? Here’s my two cents worth.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Lastly, there’s the issue of longevity. If your neighbours move in, but then move out again in less than 24 hours, that doesn’t allow much time to meet them and chat over afternoon tea - blink, and they’re gone. But if you’re both on the block for twenty years, that allows lots of time for afternoon teas, philosophical chats and bridge games, etc. So, how long do technological civilizations last?  

Well, the pessimist will look around and cite global warming, probably antibiotic resistant germs giving rise to pandemics, chemical, biological and radiological warfare and/or terrorism, the extinction of species, rampant pollution, and in general an overall quality of life heading rapidly down the gurgler, right down to the point that the human race will to extinct – by our own hand. But if you’re an optimist, then the sky’s the limit.

Longevity – It’s hard to imaging what human civilization, what humans themselves, will be like 1000 years from now, but if you could come back 1000 years hence, would you indeed find a human civilization, indeed find recognizable ‘humans’ at all? Once you have evolved to the stage of being a multicellular critter with intelligence and technology, then physics and chemistry and plain everyday evolutionary biology are no longer in control of your evolution. You are now in control! You are in control not only over the future evolution of other species (artificial selection instead of natural selection) but of your own evolution. The age of the designer baby is already upon us, albeit still in its infancy (pun intended). What will another several more decades bring to this now embryonic field but obviously an ever ongoing and continuing maturity! 

Humans will probably go kaput within 1000 years, not because of a global nuclear war, or pandemic, or asteroid strike, but because they have by their own hand evolved into something else, and the process has already started. In fact, it’s possible that in 1000 years there could be two humanoid species on Earth. One will be an amalgamation of flesh and blood plus ‘iron and silicon’; the other pure ‘iron and silicon’ (robots).

The first is not too difficult a swallow. Just replace or augment flesh and blood bits with ‘iron and silicon’ bits (or wood bits, or ceramic bits, or plastic bits, etc.). Look at most pirate films and you’ll see those beloved peg-legs and hook-hands. Do you wear glasses or contact lenses? What about a hearing aid? Perhaps you have an artificial joint(s) or a heart pacemaker. You surely have a dental filling (or two), maybe even dentures. Then there’s artificial skin and all manner of other internal or external types of technology that have replaced your failed flesh and blood – like kidney dialysis. There’s now serious talk about the development of a bionic eye within a few years (to go with the bionic ear). What further artificial bio-bits will be available in another 20 years, another 50 years, or another 200 years? The era of the “RoboCop” or an actual “Six-Million Dollar Man” (and “Woman”) is nearly upon us.

Within 200 years or so, I can envision that one will be able to download the contents of a human mind into an ‘iron and silicon’ equivalent.  Why? Well, does the word ‘immortality’ (or as close to immortality as makes no odds) suggest a possible reason? You don’t think anything of endlessly replacing worn automobile parts for new parts to extend the useful lifetime of your car. Why not endlessly replace your worn parts. Your mind (brain) won’t last forever. Replace it - transfer it to a more durable technology Do it again, and again and again as is necessary. In fact, one might create a mega-mind or super-mind by merging into an ‘iron and silicon’ body a lot of minds. By merging the minds of say a cosmologist, general relativist, quantum physicist and mathematician, one might speed up the development of the Holy Grail of physics, the Theory of Everything (TOE) – which is a theory of quantum gravity. 

Once your mind is contained in an ‘iron and silicon’ ‘head’, just attach that to an all ‘iron and silicon’ ‘body’. Immortality indeed!

All of which leads to a future Earth inhabited by a humanoid robot species, artificially evolved from today’s human species. That process too has already started. Robotic appliances, even artificial ‘iron and silicon’ ‘pets’ are on the market. Research into artificial intelligence is ever ongoing. Watch that final minute of the final episode of the TV revision of “Battlestar Galactica’! How about those sci-fi “Transformers” or “Terminators”, or Data (from “Star Trek: The Next Generation”)? Then there’s “Doctor Who’s” Cybermen or Daleks (though they’re part machine; part organism). Think of those robots from “Westworld” or “Futureworld” where nothing can go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong… Then there’s “The Stepford Wives”, “Cherry 2000”, the original “Battlestar Galactica” Cylons, and many more. It might be just science fiction today – could it be science fact tomorrow? There doesn’t seem to be any violation of physics involved. Everything not forbidden is compulsory! However, some of those sci-fi scenarios suggest that perhaps ultimately there might be a conflict between the (part) machines we become, and the (artificially) intelligent machines that we create!

Of course we’re in control, so a robotic future isn’t of necessity compulsory. But I suspect it will happen. Why? There are rational reasons for humans deliberately abandoning their flesh and blood existence and evolving themselves, if not 100% into ‘iron and silicon’ then at least into something part flesh and blood coupled with part ‘iron and silicon’ – sort of like we have today (recall those dentures and peg-legs). 

Quite apart from immortality arguments, it’s nice having more indestructible bodies and bodies that can be more easily repaired. Death won’t go totally away of course – accidents still happen. Presumably, your mind will be able to absorb 10, 100, 1000 times the amount of experiences and memories and knowledge, etc. than is currently the case. You might be able to explore environments now closed to you, like taking a stroll across the sea bottom – kilometres down – in your robotic ‘birthday’ suit. All of which then opens up the entire ‘boldly going’ experience. What’s the hardest part of going to Mars? – it’s the flesh and blood frailty of the human body – the need for gravity and oxygen and organic food and water, and space suits, and how you can’t carry spare flesh and blood parts along too, etc.  Extrapolate to our exploration of the entire solar system, then our stellar neighbourhood, eventually the galaxy. Even if you don’t want to go yourself, well, there’s artificial intelligence housed in perhaps nanotechnology bodies, spreading throughout the cosmos like so much cancer.  

The ultimate point of all of this is that if eventually us (humans), why not them (extraterrestrials) now? Translated, after a relative short period of biological development, a civilization can obtain longevity that evolutionary development into ‘iron and silicon’ provides, coupled with far easier expansion into the realm of outer space.

This level of technology can also partly undo the bottleneck created by the relative improbability of multicellular evolution. There maybe relatively few multicellular infested planets, but once technology of the ‘iron and silicon’ kind happens on them, then boldly going, being fruitful and mechanically multiplying and colonizing the cosmos rapidly fill that gap.

All of which doesn’t mean that we are, in the here and now, the proverbial “It’. However, there are enough ‘probability one’ or certainty factors that suggest this is rather unlikely. The proof of the pudding will be to find them; or for them to find us.

Are We the Proverbial “It”? Part One

Every one and their great grandmother has apparently had a go at, and calculated a value for the Drake Equation (named after radio astronomer and SETI scientist Frank D. Drake). The Drake Equation estimates (guesstimates is actually more accurate) the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy that could in theory say “Hi” to us and receive our “Hello” in return by examining all the factors that are part and parcel of that scenario. Seeing as how the Universe is some 13.7 billion years old, and seeing as how the current human species has been around for only some 200,000 years (give or take), then I have to ask, is it logical to assume that we’re the proverbial “It”? Here’s my two cents worth.

Are we alone in the Universe? That’s a question that’s been asked by millions over the eons, without, to date resolution. Of course the word ‘alone’ implies alone in the sense of whether or not there exists elsewhere our rough equals, more likely as not betters. We want to get to know our neighbours across the street, not their pets, or their plants. The standard gut-feeling answer to the question usually revolves around how vast the Universe is, and surely, given the billions of stars in our galaxy and the existence of billions of galaxies each with billions of stars, etc. and the vastness of time, surely we can’t be the proverbial “It”. There’s unfortunately one slight flaw in that statistical approach. There’s a rather long chain of events that have to happen, hurdles to be jumped, in order to get from the elements of star-stuff to biological cosmic neighbours. Depending on whom you talk to, that chain can be extremely long indeed. The point is, if any one factor in that chain of causality has a very low probability of coming to pass, it matters not one jot whether or not all the other factors are extremely probable, the overall result is going to be low. If any one factor is as close to zero as makes no odds, then the overall answer will also be a close to zero as makes no odds. Certainty multiplied by certainty multiplied by certainty multiplied by certainty multiplied by zero multiplied by certainty multiplied by certainty multiplied by certainty ultimately equals zero!

Rather than give an exhaustive list of all those factors required to give us cosmic neighbours, I’ll focus on six essentials.

Firstly, one has to have the right kinds of matter and energy that can produce beings like us, and a solid surface to stand on. That’s no problem. The Universe has lots of kinds of energy on tap; stars can manufacture and disperse the required kinds of matter, like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, silicon, etc. There’s lots of solid bodies (planets) out there. That’s one vote for certainty. 

Secondly, one has to have a solid planetary body turn into a habitable world; a suitable environment for physics, chemistry, biochemistry and biology to do their evolutionary thing. Fortunately, that shouldn’t be a problem. There’s a lot of real estate out there and it comes in all sizes and flavours. While there’s only ever going to be one Planet Earth (I’ll avoid discussions of the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics, the notion of parallel worlds, and the Multiverse here which could argue the contrary), there has been, is, and will be, lots and lots of earth-like abodes, just letter perfect for life-as-we-know-it to survive, even thrive. If one wants to throw in life-not-as-we-know-it, there will be lots of worlds suitable for those possibilities as well. So, that’s another vote for certainty.

Thirdly, physics has to become chemistry, and chemistry has to become biology. We need biology to have had origins, or an origin, an origin(s) of life that’s an inevitable outcome of the everyday ordinary interactions between physics and chemistry. Well, many will argue that the origin of life is as nearly predictable as death and taxes, given a suitable habitat. Many will also argue that the origin of life is a fluke! In my point of view, the origin of life need only happen once, and that clearly has been a certainty – we exist and we are life. Once there’s one origin of life, the rest is just distribution. Panspermia provides the ways and means of distributing (microbial) life throughout the cosmos. So, I’ll have to cast another vote for certainty again!

Fourthly – well, now we hit the proverbial brick wall.  You and your neighbours aren’t microbes – you’re a colony of microbes. In short, you’re a multicellular life form. We seek, in the cosmos, other multicellular life forms, on the grounds that the odds that a microbe or unicellular life form isn’t going to prove to be much of a companion or drinking buddy is a near given. So, we need to get from unicellular to multicellular, and therein lays the rub. And it’s here that we have to rely for guidance on a sample of one – Earth. Note: It’s dangerous to extrapolate from a sample of one, but what choice do we have? 

There’s no ecological niche on Earth occupied by multicellular critters that’s not also occupied by unicellular critters (microbes). The reverse isn’t true. You may think the world is totally dominated by multicellular critters – you, your partner, your family, your pets, your garden, your food, all the life you see around you is multicellular. There’s millions of species of insects – all multicellular. What’s more common than bugs? Yet, if you did a biological census, even in your home and your garden, you’d find that apparently common multicellular life forms are out-common-ed, vastly outnumbered, by unicellular life forms by a ratio of trillions to one. What you don’t see does matter!

So, are multicellular critters an evolutionary certainty? Is there anything a ‘colony’ of 2 or 20 or 200 or 2000 cells can accomplish or fill a previously unfilled ecological niche that one cell can’t? And by the way, that 2 or 20 or 200 or 2000 stage has got to be selected for before one can get to the two million and two billion colony stage. Well, clearly the transition happened here, albeit it took some three billion years to seriously kick-start the process, so it’s hardly some inevitable ‘law of nature’. I mean taking some three billion years to get to a colony of cells from a single cell doesn’t inspire confidence that the process is easy, necessary or inevitable. Anyway, it did happen here, so it’s obviously possible. I just don’t see it as a super-evolutionary development that confers immediate survival-of-the-fittest advantage. Of course a colony of two cells might be harder to eat than one cell, but at that level, ‘food’ tends to be absorbed at the molecular level. In any event, microbes can easily attack and ‘eat’ multicellular critters, causing sickness, death and decay. We’re ultimately food for the microbes and the proof of that pudding is how we spend small fortunes keeping them at bay. But, eventually, though you might win the battles against the microbes, you’ll lose the last one, and thus the war.

Another factor that argues against multicellular organisms being a universally common feature of the Universe is that it is also a lot harder to transport around the Universe by natural means – that concept of panspermia – multicellular critters. I mean getting a microbe from Earth to Mars is one thing. Getting a cockroach there is a whole different scenario.   

Multicellular development; its probability, can’t be zero since we’re multicellular, but, on balance, I can’t assign a high probability to the transition between unicellular and multicellular life on every habitable planet, every time. This one is nearing zero!

Fifthly, as noted earlier, you don’t want to interact with your neighbour’s multicellular pets or multicellular garden plants, but your neighbours. What do you have in common with your neighbours that you don’t have in common with your neighbour’s pet or garden plants? Intelligence (even if you probably think your neighbours are a few cents short of a dollar!).

The issue now is whether, having evolved to a multicellular stage, will one develop some higher brain function? Is there any further evolutionary advantage towards increasing one’s intelligence? By going back to our sample of one, if Earth is any guide, the answer is roughly ‘not likely’. There are millions of multicellular species that have existed, and do exist, on Planet Earth. There are apparently only a very few species that have evolved something beyond the minimum level of brain power required for their day-to-day survival. That doesn’t inspire confidence that intelligence has inevitable value as a means of survival.

By far and away, most multicellular critters just operate on pure instinct and don’t (can’t) stop to figure things out (far less stop to smell and appreciate the roses) - but, there are an admittedly few exceptions.  Many wild birds would put our everyday companion animals to shame in the IQ department. I mean I love my cats, but little Einstein’s they’re not. Whales and dolphins have also been credited with being in the higher IQ bracket; ditto our close primate cousins. In the invertebrate kingdom, the octopus is pretty smart – by invertebrate standards (and then some if one is honest). However, on balance, most multicellular critters put their evolutionary strategies into something other than higher brain function. Take my cats. Is it to their survival advantage to ‘figure things out’ or to be just a bit faster afoot, hear just a bit better, see ever more clearly? Nearly all organisms put their survival abilities into something other than pure brain-power. Clearly brain-power has survival-of-the-fittest attributes. But, it’s not the only game in town, and therefore doesn’t have what I’d call evolutionary ‘certainty’.  However, it would be illogical to say that developing intelligence, the ability to figure things out, isn’t valuable and doesn’t have survival value, it’s just that if you were to list all the multicellular animal species on Planet Earth, very few would have an IQ of even one (the human average is 100). So, let’s say intelligence is somewhere between certainty and highly improbable.

Next, let’s assume your intelligent neighbours are fairly far away and the usual means of keeping in touch is by phone (or email). That introduces one additional complication; it’s not enough to just be intelligent. You need to have technology. Then, and only then, will the ‘are we alone?’ question be answered to our absolute satisfaction. We need technology if we are to find extraterrestrial intelligence(s); and/or extraterrestrial intelligence(s) will need technology to find us. One or both of us has to have invented engineering to a somewhat sophisticated level - maybe rocket ships, maybe radio telescopes, but something technological is required. There’s also a hidden assumption here – you actually want to seek out new civilizations. It matters not if you have all the required technology but care not to use it for the purpose of answering that question – ‘are you alone in the Universe?’ I’ll assume here that if you have intelligence, and it’s been able to construct technology, then part of your intelligence is devoted to be a curious critter who wants to know and find out things – so that’s a certainty of one. But what’s the level of certainty of developing technology in the first place? Rather poor judging from those terrestrial species that have some reasonable smarts to their credit. There’s the human species of course, and though while we’re not quite a sample of one, it’s pretty close. There are documentary observations of some animals (primates mainly) not so much making, but making use of existing ‘tools’ to assist in their survival. Alas, most intelligent species lack the anatomy and/or the right environment to manipulate objects. In the case of dolphins and whales, their ocean environment stymies any way and means of constructing things and making use of fire, for example. So, developing technology has to be rated, judging from our terrestrial sampling, as rather low. 

Technology is also a double-edged sword. The use of technology has had obvious survival value for the human species. You wouldn’t be hard-pressed to come up with dozens of technological inventions that have enabled us to survive longer and thrive better. But, out technological genie is out of the bottle, and unless you’re a hermit, you will have noted by now that technology can also reduce our quality of life, and no doubt you wouldn’t be equally hard-pressed to cite dozens of examples. Which leads nicely into the last consideration. 

To be continued…