What stands in the way of the dream of discovering intelligent life in
? the universe
The verification of the hypothesis will open the door to countless questions that will not occur for a decade or two
Since the beginning of space exploration, there has been a belief that there is alien life in the deep universe (Reuters)
With the number of discovered galaxies in the universe reaching about 100 billion, each containing 100 billion stars, and each star orbiting at least one planet, there is an unimaginable abundance of planets.
With the emergence of modern ways to discover signs of life on these planets thanks to new telescopes and advanced technologies such as the James Webb telescope and other ground-based telescopes in preparation, scientists believe that within a decade or two, evidence of intelligent life will be discovered on some planets near or far from Earth.
This will be achieved through what is known as technical fingerprints, not just biological fingerprints. What are these fingerprints and how can they confirm the existence of life thousands or millions of years away?
Just science fiction
Since the beginning of space exploration about 65 years ago, the belief that there is alien life in the deep universe has remained for many people just a science fiction or a conspiracy aimed at distracting humans from their reality on Earth.
But after confirming with conclusive evidence that there are 5,084 planets until today, according to the American “NASA” agency, and hundreds of them continue to be explored every year, the possibilities of life on some of these planets, whether they are near or far, have become more acceptable, especially after the James Webb telescope opened "The astronaut who uses infrared imaging techniques is the door of possibilities for monitoring planets that may have life elements such as oxygen and methane, in addition to the fact that there are now new devices and telescopes being built that can fill the gaps that the James Webb Space Telescope cannot capture through more accurate techniques. and evolving.
? What are technical fingerprints
When the American space shuttle Atlantis took off from the Kennedy Space Center on October 18, 1989, he carried with him the "Galileo" telescope, which discovered four moons around Jupiter and monitored the spots of the sun and the phases of Venus, but most importantly, it circled the Earth twice at altitudes 597 and 188 This gave the engineering team responsible for the telescope an opportunity to test its sensors, as astronaut Carl Sagan, a member of the Galileo science team, called for a closer look at what the spacecraft could observe when looking at a distant planet for signs of intelligent life.
There was already so much for the spacecraft to see, from intriguing chaos, glowing lights and streams of atmospheric gases, to the billions of devices and antennas that jammed electromagnetic transmissions, and this in turn raised questions about whether the civilizations of other planets that could be discovered really resembled ours? Will the chemical and electromagnetic signals create the same alarms that scientists have classified in recent years under the name of "technological signature" or "technical fingerprint"
"? discovered by the "Galileo telescope
Decades ago, the search for intelligent beings, or what is known as the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, was conducted by assuming that aliens had developed technologies and radio frequencies similar to what humans invented on Earth, and even in some early academic papers on the subject dating back to the late 1950s Last century, scientists assumed that these aliens might be interested in communicating with us, but according to Adam Frank, an astrophysicist at the University of Rochester, New York, the search for signals from deep space has changed over time and instead of looking for direct communications or calls that reach Earth from Potential aliens, telescopes have now spread in the sky to search among billions of frequencies for electronic signals whose origins are not just celestial phenomena, and at the same time the search for intelligent life has turned in a new direction, according to the American newspaper, "The New York Times".
Dawn of a new era
In 2018, Frank participated with 60 researchers in a meeting in Houston that focused on technical signatures, as the meeting aimed to think about identifying a new scientific field with the help of “NASA” to search for any signs of the presence of some kind of technology in distant worlds such as atmospheric pollution, which is what For these scientists the dawn of a new era, given that "NASA" has a long history of not caring about this matter.
As a result, Frank and a few of his colleagues across the United States formed a group that became known as CATS, an acronym for "classifying the technological signatures or fingerprints of the atmosphere".
Thus, "NASA" provided the "Cats" group about a million dollars in the form of grants in the hope that it would create a library of technical fingerprints for what could represent evidence of the existence of a technological civilization on other planets, a work that is not related to communication with aliens and is not intended to contribute to research About extraterrestrial radio broadcasting but just thinking about searching through the atmospheres of distant worlds of a civilization doing everything that humans do and without any assumptions about whether or not anyone wants to communicate with the inhabitants of the Earth.
? When will you discover intelligent life
The reason behind this interest is that several developments have made the search for technical fingerprints possible, the first of which is that new telescopes and space technologies have made it possible to identify planets revolving around distant stars that were observed until last August, 5084 of the exoplanets, and the number tends to grow by hundreds. Several times a year, it turns out that almost every star we see in the night sky has a planet revolving around it, if not a group of planets, something that was not firmly established in scientific concepts except in the past decade.
Given that there are at least 100 billion stars in the Milky Way alone that the Earth is inside and an estimated 100 billion galaxies in the universe, the number of stars is up to 2 trillion, so the number of planets likely to have life as well as Civilizations with technology may be in greater numbers than we can imagine.
But most importantly, exploration tools are constantly improving. This summer, the first images from the new James Webb Space Telescope amazed scientists with their accuracy and detail, at a time when many other powerful space exploration tools are being developed on Earth and space that will allow us to see very distant objects for the time. The first or seeing predetermined things in new ways, including being able to explore the atmosphere of other planets in search of signals, which made Michael New, a research official at NASA, expects to explore intelligent life on exoplanets within 10, 20 or 30 years. at the latest.
? What are biometrics
According to Heidi Hummel, a multidisciplinary astronomer who worked on the development of the James Webb Telescope, the newer space telescope can look close or far, and within its first year it will spend about seven percent of its time observing our solar system, so that it can analyze the atmospheres of nearby planets such as Planet Jupiter and Mars using infrared sensors, and these capabilities can also be directed to some of the exoplanets closest to Earth, such as those surrounding the star "Trapist 1", which is located 40 light-years from Earth, in order to distinguish the signature or biosignature on the surface of other planets, i.e. trying to find any indication that life actually exists or has existed in those worlds.
While the biosignature or imprint on the planet may be a fallen bird feather or fossilized bodies immersed in sedimentary rocks, this vital imprint on a planet outside the solar system may be a certain percentage of gases such as oxygen, methane, carbon dioxide or water, for example example, indicating the presence of microbes or plants on a planet.
According to Nicole Lewis, an assistant professor of astronomy at Cornell University, whose team will use the James Webb Telescope to observe TRAPPIST 1E, one of the seven planets orbiting the star TRAPPIST-1, the announcement of the discovery of a vital fingerprint requires careful identification. The atmosphere of a planet and the possibility of life on it is like knowing if there is air, and then what is in the air.
The difference between the two fingerprints
Biometric fingerprints and technical fingerprints in the same way indicate the existence of life on the surface of a planet, but the monitoring and follow-up of the two fingerprints are carried out by two separate scientific communities for historical reasons, as the study of biological fingerprints, which began in the 1960s within a new discipline of exobiology, receives support from NASA. And other academic institutions for decades, but the technical signature or fingerprint has only recently been formulated and approved. However, scientists looking for biometric fingerprints may find signs or fingerprints that the technology is present as well, especially since the technical fingerprint is easier to monitor and can be detected more easily.
For example, a research paper written by Jacob Misra, a member of the CATS group working at the Blue Marble Space Institute, indicated that the presence of chlorofluorocarbons, an industrial byproduct, would give a distinct spectral signal that could be detected by the James Webb telescope, and that any An exoplanet containing agricultural plants outside the solar system that may emit atmospheric emissions.
In another paper written by Ravi Coparabo, a member of the CATS group who works at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, it was found that the emission of nitrogen dioxide, an industrial byproduct, could indicate the presence of alien technology.
It is expected that these emissions will be observed by a space telescope belonging to “NASA” known as “LOVER”, which is scheduled to be launched after 2040. It is a huge telescope that will conduct large surveys and use ultraviolet and infrared rays in order to search for aliens that are not likely to be photographed in action. in factories or driving tractors at harvest, but scientists working on the tech fingerprints are relieved that there are even lower odds of intelligent, intelligent life.
More abundant and long lasting
One reason for cautious optimism seems to be that technical fingerprints or signatures are not only more detectable than biometrics, but they are also more abundant and longer-lived, which can be inferred from looking at our planet Earth for example, where our technical fingerprint already extends throughout the solar system. Junk on the moon and we have crafts that go around Mars and we have satellites that go around other planets.
Also, several spacecraft such as the "Pioneer" spacecraft and the "Voyager" spacecraft and the "Pluto New Horizons probe", all launched by "NASA", have traveled beyond the edge of the solar system in interstellar space and such technical fingerprints can last for billions of years, and this just happened. 65 years after the start of the era of space exploration, it can be expected that an ancient civilization will fill the galaxy with thousands of similar things from technical fingerprints, making them easier to detect.
Drake equation
In 1961 astronomer Frank Drake introduced what is now known as the "Drake equation" which consists of several variables and attempts to help calculate the number of intelligent civilizations elsewhere in the galaxy, but with very few data to enter into the variables the equation is still without Solution.
But for Jason Wright, a professor of astrophysics and astrophysics at Penn State and a member of the "Cats" group, the "Drake equation", although it allows at least a degree of plausibility about the existence of possible life on other planets, but we do not know whether this life is simple or technologically advanced.
And if biosignatures are very difficult to detect if they are present, this leads us to two conclusions, the first is that life is likely to be so rare that there is nothing at a close distance to find it, and the second is that assuming a relatively distant intelligent civilization has launched a telescope or signal This means that the scope of the search should be much larger, and that is why some scientists are concerned that it is not making enough effort to search and that the lives of those who live now may end without finding This intelligent life in the universe, not because it does not exist, but because the scope of the search is insufficient.
previous frustrations
Frustration among space scientists is not new. In the early 1970s, NASA showed a willingness to fund searches through radio telescopes for extraterrestrial activity, but the search for aliens aroused opposition, as Senator William Proxmire announced in 1978 that taxpayers They are being robbed, a criticism to which NASA responded by stopping spending on the search for extraterrestrials from its budget, and then the agency resumed its willingness to support research projects again in the eighties, but another senator, Richard Bryan, stopped the programs in 1993 and expressed at that time his hope for That this would be the end of Mars exploration at the taxpayer's expense.
But only recently, some things began to change, so the former chair of the US House of Representatives Science Committee, Lamar Smith, called for a bill in Congress to allocate $ 10 million to NASA to search for technical fingerprints. However, the agency considers working on technical fingerprints a high risk, as The sum he's setting aside is small compared to the $93 billion being invested over the next few years on the Artemis mission to the moon.
many doubts
The skepticism of NASA is not an exceptional case, as some scientists have begun to ask similar questions about the feasibility of searching for technical fingerprints in the universe by measuring pollution, combustion processes, energy measurements, or chemical reactions, which may be wrong measurements, because scientists assumed That the technology of other intelligent civilizations develop in the manner and style of human civilization.
But any idea of the technical fingerprints should pass through the set of doubts that Katz investigated, some wondering if sodium light would have been used by a civilization that evolved differently and that perhaps their eyes would work in different parts of the spectrum or maybe they would live underground? And if you're a creature that
? can't see, like a bat that uses echolocation, will you even need lights
Some scientists have noted that there may be several other ways to define civilization beyond what the "Cats" group focuses on. Instead of aliens building radars or telescopes, these organisms can be more like trees in an orchard and communicate through threads of fungi underground, and aliens may be Like octopuses using different tools we don't understand in the oceans, some theorists have even hypothesized that these societies could completely ignore matter and choose to replace themselves transparently, as much different biology and minds could be imagined.
Other challenges
Although it is difficult for humans to imagine alien types of possible life on other planets, imagining long time frames is equally challenging, as modern science as a system is only about 500 years old and the transistor, the basic building block of modern technologies, is about 75 years old. The first iPhone was about 15 years ago, so how can a technological society in outer space develop over 100,000 years? Or more than a million years?
Another question is what if another civilization was discovered, would there be contact? There will likely be a period of silence for a while. Although there is a growing body of literature on "first contact with aliens" protocols, we may be watching the distant technical footprint for decades or perhaps centuries and taking readings with increasingly better telescopes and then perhaps sending a space telescope or message, But because the distances between us are so vast, sending an email and receiving a reply would take at best about 100 years, and the actual journey might take thousands of years.
But at the same time if we find biometric fingerprints, it means that there is a group of planets that humans can live on and if we find many signs of life but there are no signs of technology, this is more worrying because it may mean in one of the possibilities that the technological civilizations that Maintaining itself may be extremely rare or tend to self-destruct.
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