The case for space colonies

Writing in the Space Review, Stephen Ashworth complains that we're losing sight of the great potential for space colonies:

For example, the material published so far by the DARPA-NASA Ames 100-Year Starship Study ignores colonies in space, despite their obvious relevance, as does Lou Friedman’s report on their recent meeting (see “Fly me to the stars”, The Space Review, January 24, 2011). Joy Shaffer’s 2004 essay “Better Dreams” at Spacedaily.com, enthusiastically referenced by one Space Review commenter, explicitly excludes colonies in space: “there is no need to massively industrialize any place in the solar system beyond the elevator terminals and power stations at geosynchronous orbit”. Even the Tau Zero Foundation focuses on “the ultimate goal of reaching other habitable worlds”.

Ashworth makes the case that, while the Earth gave us a great start, it's time to move on:

The conclusion has to be drawn that, while a planet is a good place for life to get started using unconscious means that can evolve spontaneously from the chemical substrate, once life has reached the stage of industrial development, its further growth depends on the use of technology to construct artificial space colonies, which use the material resources of planetary systems at a much higher level of efficiency.

As is so often the case in these sorts of analyses, these speculations are predicated upon the assumption that we will colonize space as humans, and not as cyborgs or non-corporeal artificial intellects. Ashworth continues:

First, the project of sending humans to the stars is absolutely dependent upon prior large-scale space colonization. To begin with, the passengers on any interstellar mission will be devoting the rest of their lives to the voyage and the explorations at their destination: a return journey within a human lifetime is hardly conceivable (barring some magical new propulsion technology, and even that is hardly likely to come cheap).

This means that no crewed starship will be dispatched until the viability of a space habitat has been demonstrated for at least one complete human lifetime (including one or more reproductive cycles, unless the starship is conceived as a suicide mission). With space colonization in progress, spurred by general economic and population growth, such a demonstration will be a matter of course, and will be funded by the broader economy. Without it, the demonstration will be an expensive one-off project, and volunteers (together with their yet unborn offspring) will have to renounce all claim to a normal life.

Ugh.

Okay, here's what I say to this: This is a noble endaevor given (1) our current biological condition and (2) our critical need to get off planet before we're wiped out by an existential catastrophe. There's no harm done in figuring out how to create a biosphere in space for biological humans. In fact, a fully robust and operational space station might actually save our ass. I'm all for it.

But if the discussion is about longterm interstellar exploration and colonization, and that's what this is, let's get real and discuss our potential to venture out as a postbiological species. As NASA's Stephen J. Dick has stated, "Biologically based technological civilization...is a fleeting phenomenon limited to a few thousand years, and exists in the universe in the proportion of one thousand to one billion, so that only one in a million civilizations are biological."

In a post-biological future, machines are the dominant form of intelligence in the Universe. Talk of humans venturing out is just plain silly and short-sighted.

Using synthetic life to explore outer space

Lou Friedman's yawn-inducing article about the 100-Year Starship Study workshop has at least one interesting snippet of information:

One really provocative idea using information technology was advanced by microbiologist Craig Venter: sending signals from Earth with information to create synthetic life out of constituents on a complex Earth-like planet in another star system. That would be interstellar flight at the speed of light, so long as that synthetic life could signal us about their success. It is pretty way out—but maybe less so than sending actual humans on the voyage.

Despite this very visionary idea, the article makes me laugh, especially when Friedman notes, "If we are creating the future for humans in the universe, we must occasionally look at where we are going." I don't really think we're creating the future for humans in the universe—and NASA and DARPA of all institutions should be aware of this. As I`ve noted on this blog to the point of nausea, space will be explored by our post-biological descendants—if at all.

Study: Interstellar Travel Not Possible Before 2200

According to a recent paper put out by Marc G. Millis, humanity will not meet the energy requirements for an interstellar trip for at least another two centuries. Millis is the former head of NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project and founder of the Tau Zero Foundation which supports the science of interstellar travel.

He bases these calculations on 27 years of historic energy trends, societal priorities, required mission energy, and the implications of the Incessant Obsolescence Postulate (where newer probes pass prior probes).

Millis considers two possible missions: launching a minimal colony ship where destination is irrelevant, and sending a minimal probe to Alpha Centauri with a 75 year mission duration. In the experiment, the colony ship is assumed to have a mass of 10^7 kg, and the probe 10^4 kg.

The first mission is a human generation ship of 500 people on a one-way journey into space. He assumes that such a mission would require 50 tones per human occupant and that each person would use about 1000W, equal to the average amount used by people in the US in 2007. From this, he estimates that the ship would need some 10^18 Joules for rocket propulsion. That compares to a shuttle launch energy of about 10^13 Joules.

The second mission would be a 71 year journey by an unmanned probe headed for Alpha Centauri which is just over 4 light years away. Such a ship would be some three orders of magnitude less massive than a colony ship so it would require considerably less energy.

"It is found that the earliest interstellar missions could not begin for roughly another two centuries, or one century at best," writes Millis, "Even when considering only the kinetic energy of the vehicles without any regard for propellant, the colony ship cannot launch until around the year 2200, and the probe cannot launch until around 2500."

Problems I have with this paper:

• Millis's extrapolations assume a linear progression of available energy density; technological development is showing a strong tendency to progress non-linearly
• He assumes that there won't be a "wild card" type breakthrough in propulsion technology and energy extraction; it's not unreasonable to assume that there will be a sudden breakthrough that could serve as a significant game changer 
• His 500 passenger colony ship is ludicrous; biological humans won't be making such a journey, and most certainly not 200-500 years from now 

A leftist reaction to the commercialization of space

Peter Dickins has penned a provocative article in the Monthly Review: The Humanization of the Cosmos—To What End? Dickins approaches the subject of space colonization from a decidedly leftist perspective, and is left wondering how the process can unfold without the exploitation of humans and the environment.

Society is increasingly humanizing the cosmos. Satellites have for some time been central to the flow of information, to surveillance, and to the conduct of warfare. As these examples suggest, however, the humanization of the cosmos is primarily benefiting the powerful. These include major economic and military institutions. Furthermore, the forthcoming commodification and colonization of the cosmos is again likely to enhance the interests of the powerful, the major aerospace companies in particular. The time has come to consider alternative forms of cosmic humanization. These would enhance the prospects of the socially marginalized. They would also allow humanity to develop a better understanding of the cosmos and our relationship to it.

Reading this article, I couldn't help but think that Marxist analyses are growing increasingly irrelevant and anachronistic. Dickins's piece, while well intentioned and thoughtful, seemed, well, just unsophisticated by modern standards. Read this and see what I mean:

The general point is that the vision of the Space Renaissance Initiative, with its prime focus on the power of the supposedly autonomous and inventive individual, systematically omits questions of social, economic, and military power. Similarly, the Initiative’s focus on the apparently universal benefits of space humanization ignores some obvious questions. What will ploughing large amounts of capital into outer space colonization really do for stopping the exploitation of people and resources back here on earth? The “solution” seems to be simultaneously exacerbating social problems while jetting away from them. Consumer-led industrial capitalism necessarily creates huge social divisions and increasing degradation of the environment. Why should a galactic capitalism do otherwise? The Space Renaissance Initiative argues that space-humanization is necessarily a good thing for the environment by introducing new space-based technologies such as massive arrays of solar panels. But such “solutions” are again imaginary. Cheap electricity is most likely to increase levels of production and consumption back on earth. Environmental degradation will be exacerbated rather than diminished by this technological fix.

A simplistic and idealistic view of history, technology, and human agency therefore underpins the starting point of the Space Renaissance Initiative. Humanization in this shape—one now finding favor in official government circles—raises all kinds of highly problematic issues for society and the environment. What would an alternative, more critical, perspective on humanizing the cosmos tell us?

Hmm, dunno about that. Economic determinism ain't what it used to be. Dickins isn't really accounting for other pressures that lead to to greener solutions in innovation. I wouldn't write off capitalism and free enterprise just quite yet in terms of its ability to address environmental or humanitarian concerns.

And then there's this:

Some influential commentators argue that the current problem for capitalism is that there is now no “outside.” Capitalism is everywhere. Similarly, resistance to capitalism is either everywhere or nowhere. But, as suggested above, the humanization of the cosmos seriously questions these assertions. New “spatial fixes” are due to be opened up in the cosmos, capitalism’s emergent outside. At first, these will include artificial fixes such as satellites, space stations, and space hotels. But during the next twenty years or so, existing outsides, such as the moon and Mars, will begin attracting investments. The stage would then be set for wars in outer space between nations and companies attempting to make their own cosmic “fixes.”

Again, I don't buy it. Modern wars are not caused by economic stressors, they're more the result of ideological differences. Looking ahead, I see a greater emphasis on the creation of positive sum arrangements and the drive towards more powerful sources of energy which will alleviate many of these concerns.

Read the entire article and see if you agree with me.

Guest Blogger: Russell Blackford: Where's my alien civilisation? Part 1.

Fermi's paradox

I'm sure my readers are familiar with Fermi's paradox. Some of you may even feel it's debated to death lately, but in this great memorial year (Darwin's 200th birthday, among other things) we'll be hearing a lot more about the origins of life and the trajectory of evolution. Fermi's paradox connects with all that, and I'll get to the connection in Part 2.

Here's a quick refresher. Enrico Fermi observed that there seems to be a contradiction between the fact that we have not encountered alien civilisations and facts about the scale of the universe (and, indeed, our own galaxy). The vastness of space, the enormous number of stars and planets, and the age of the stars all add up to a presumption that there should be plenty of life Out There, some of it much older than life on Earth. If there are intelligent beings in space that began with millions of years of head start over us, why don't they have technological civilisations far more advanced than our own? But if they do, why have we never encountered such things as alien space craft, probes, or radio signals?

Colonising the galaxy

Consider that the diameter of the galaxy is about 100,000 light years. Imagine for the sake of argument that there's a technological civilisation somewhere near the galactic centre. Then imagine that it has the capacity to send out space ships or self-replicating probes or similar devices at even 1 per cent of the speed of light. It could get a ship or a probe out to the galactic rim in something like five million years.

If the alien civilisation sends out a few ships every thousand years, they will soon mount up in numbers. Over a few million years, it could send out many thousands of ships. If the colonies founded by those ships themselves got in on the act and sent out ships of their own, and the colonies they founded sent out ships, we get ourselves an exponential increase.

It looks as if a sufficiently advanced and determined civilisation could colonise the galaxy, to a greater or lesser level of density, in "only" a few million years (a tiny amount of time in geological or astrophysical terms). Perhaps not all advanced technological civilisations have that ambition, but it would only take one that has the ambition plus a few million years' start on us, and the galaxy should be widely colonised by now – at least to some density level that we’d notice. Where are the space craft, the probes, the signals, maybe even the astrophysical engineering projects?

There seems to be good evidence that the galaxy doesn't contain even one civilisation that is old enough, advanced enough, and determined enough. So, why?

You might think that if the evolution of technological civilisations were a common event in the universe, there'd be at least one civilisation like this somewhere in the galaxy, with its billions of stars. Even if it started out on the distant rim, far away from us on the other side, that's just going to make it take a few million more years to reach us. So allow ten million years of head start – that's still nothing in the kind of timeframe we're talking about. If technological civilisations are commonplace, there should be some that are those millions of years ahead of us (and some will come along behind us, trailing by a few million years).

So, where are they?

Might it be that creating space craft that can travel reliably at even 1 per cent of the speed of light is harder than we assume? Or maybe advanced technological civilisations tend to destroy themselves? Or do they tend to stop expanding their populations, as human beings are doing? We're really guessing.

The most pessimistic solution is that they tend to destroy themselves. From the point of view of our own species, that solution would suggest that our self-destuction lies ahead. If we discover life elsewhere, then, it's bad news: the more common life is, the more common technological civilisations should be, and hence the more likely it is that the reason we don't see them is that they destroy themselves. QED.

But I don't think that's the best way to look at it. There are other possibilities. Perhaps technological civilisations tend to reach a technological singularity point, at which stage they are transformed so comprehensively and deeply that we wouldn't even recognise them. They might miniaturise themselves in some way that makes expansion into space pointless, or they might switch over to some kind of substrate that we would never recognise as a form of life (partly, no doubt, for their own convenience, but perhaps partly to avoid interfering with vulnerable civilisations at our level).

Another possibility – one that might bother my transhumanist friends almost as much as the self-destruction account – is that the rate of advance of technology does not accelerate to a singularity. I.e., the mathematical relationship between time and technological capacity may not be an exponential function . Perhaps it will turn out that we are now somewhere on the relatively steep part of a sigmoid curve. In that case, perhaps advanced technological civilisations never obtain the level of technological capacity that enables them to go out and colonise galaxies. Maybe there are hard limits to what is possible, or perhaps there are universal limits to desire. If this is the correct picture, transhumanists should be disappointed – what lies ahead for the human species may not be anywhere near as radical as they hope.

The sigmoid curve interpretation has a kind of intuitive rightness about it (which doesn't mean it's correct). First, when science fiction writers describe the future they tend to imagine reaching some higher technological level and things then going on without huge change for millions of years. But of course the content of science fiction might just be evidence of limits to our current imaginative capacities.

We might also be impressed by the now-embarrassing question, "Dude, where's my jet car?" It sometimes seems that, even as the power of computer hardware continues to follow Moore's Law, progress in what we can actually do with it seems to be slowing down. "Where's my robot maid?" If so, human technological potential may be limited, and we need to imagine the future of the world with bounded horizons. Not that that need lead to crippling pessimism – it would not demonstrate our inability to produce great advances in, say, health and life span. What is and is not possible may be different from what we intuit in advance.

I think, though, that there's another way to look at this. I'll be back in a few hours to go deeper into the Drake equation.


Russell Blackford is an Australian philosopher. He has published extensively (novels, short stories, academic monographs and articles, and book reviews) and is editor-in-chief of The Journal of Evolution and Technology. His home blog is Metamagician and the Hellfire Club.

Hawking: We must colonize space in order to survive (video)

Hi-tech space diaper almost ready for prime time

Proof that humans have no business being in space in their current form:

Clean and easy to use, the envisioned space toilet is designed to be worn like a diaper around the astronaut’s waist at all times. Sensors detect when the user relieves him or herself, automatically activating a rear-mounted suction unit that draws the waste away from the body through tubes into a separate container. In addition to washing and drying the wearer after each use, the next-generation space toilet will incorporate features that eliminate unwanted sound and odor.

Sure, you could do this. Or you could re-engineer humans for space such that they wouldn't need to wear these ridiculous hi-tech space toilets. That's why the concept of cybernetic organisms was developed in the first place; cyborgs don't wear diapers.

Via Pink Tentacle.

The intersection of transhumanism and space travel

Athena Andreadis, author of To Seek Out New Life: The Biology of Star Trek, has penned an article about the implications of transhumanism on the future of space travel. In the article, titled "Dreamers of a Better Future, Unite!," Andreadis correctly observes that most transhumanists with a "a socially progressive agenda" have very little interest in the whole idea of space travel and interstellar colonization.

Indeed, outside of humanitarian efforts, most transhumanists would rather explore inner space than outer space.

But Andreadis argues that transhumanists should take space travel more seriously. She writes,

Consider the ingredients that would make an ideal crewmember of a space expedition: robust physical and mental health, biological and psychological adaptability, longevity, ability to interphase directly with components of the ship. In short, enhancements and augmentations eventually resulting in self-repairing quasi-immortals with extended senses and capabilities – the loose working definition of transhuman.

Coordination of the two movements would give a real, concrete purpose to transhumanism beyond the rather uncompelling objective of giving everyone a semi-infinite life of leisure (without guarantees that either terrestrial resources or the human mental and social framework could accommodate such a shift). It would also turn the journey to the stars into a more hopeful proposition, since it might make it possible that those who started the journey could live to see planetfall.

Ultimately, she makes the case that human intelligence, if it is to survive and prosper, needs to get off planet. Andreadis concludes by saying,

Despite their honorable intentions and progressive outlook, if the transhumanists insist on first establishing a utopia on earth before approving spacefaring, they will achieve either nothing or a dystopia as bleak as that depicted in Paolo Bacigalupi’s unsparing stories. If they join forces with the space enthusiasts, they stand a chance to bring humanity through the Singularity some of them so fervently predict and expect – except it may be a Plurality of sapiens species and inhabited worlds instead.

Read the entire article.

Seven ways to control the Galaxy with self-replicating probes

So, you want to take over the Galaxy. A good career move. Ultimately, you're hoping to communicate with extraterrestrials, colonize entire sets of star clusters, and eventually lord it over the entire Milky Way.

You've got the motive, but what about the means?

Well, forget about generation ships, suspended animation or ringworlds – the best way for you to explore, colonize and ultimately rule the Milky Way will be through the use of self-replicating robotic spacecraft – what are sometimes referred to as von Neumann probes.

Von Neumann's idea

Back in late 1940’s the brilliant mathematician John Von Neumann wondered if it might be possible to design a non-biological system that could replicate itself. Von Neumann wasn’t thinking about space exploration at the time, but other thinkers like Freeman Dyson, Eric Drexler, Ralph Merkle and Robert Freitas later took his idea and applied it to exactly that.

The strength of Von Neumann's idea lies in the brute efficiency of exponential growth. Given enough time and patience, a single self-replicating probe could produce millions upon millions of offspring; it would be like a massive bubble expanding outward into the Galaxy. It’s possible that these probes could come to occupy all four corners of the Milky Way in as little as half a million years – even if each probe travels at an average cruising speed of one tenth the speed of light.

In order to work, however, a von Neumann spacecraft would have to be put together using advanced nanotechnology and artificial intelligence -- technologies that we have yet to develop. In fact, the device itself would be a molecular assembler, capable of reconstituting matter into copies of itself.

A number of scientists and sci-fi writers have speculated over the years about the different kinds of probes we might want to construct once we're ready to explore space in this fashion. Other thinkers, namely astrosociobiologists, have wondered if extraterrestrials have constructed probes of their own.

I recently took a look at these visions and came up with a Von Neumann probe taxonomy. I came up with 7 basic spacecraft functions:

1. Exploration
2. Communication
3. Working
4. Colonization
5. Uplifting
6. Berserking
7. Policing

These tasks don’t have to be exclusive to a single probe. It’s possible that probes will be fairly versatile, able to change their functions as circumstances dictate. That said, you're likely going to need all these probes in your effort to take over and control the Milky Way.

Here’s how the different probes will work:

1. Exploration probes

These probes would be designed strictly for space exploration and surveillance; they would not contact or interact with other intelligent civilizations. We have already created such probes, namely Voyager 1 and 2 – although strictly speaking they are not von Neumann replicators.

Exploration probes could remain local and explore our Solar System (what has been dubbed Astrochicken probes), or they could be sent on interstellar missions to explore and transmit their findings back to Earth.

Admittedly, the timescales in question are significant – at least to modern human lifespans and our reasonable expectations for return on investment. But the information these probes could provide would be invaluable. They could study foreign solar systems in exquisite detail – and even alert us to the presence of extraterrestrial life.

These probes could also act as stationary reconnaissance stations. They could take residence in a data rich area and continuously beam that information back to Earth--all without ever being detected.

2. Communication probes (a.k.a. Bracewell probes)

The current SETI strategy of targeting stars and listening for radio signals has an extremely slim chance of success. It’s a needle-in-the-haystack approach. That said, given the assumption that civilizations want to communicate with us, a more efficient way for them to make contact would be to disseminate self-replicating communication probes across the Galaxy.

Dubbed Bracewell probes (named after Ronald N. Bracewell who thought of the idea back in 1960), these devices would work as an alternative to interstellar radio communication between widely separated civilizations. This strategy only makes sense given the inefficiency and weakness of radio signals emitted from the source planet.

Christopher Rose, an electrical engineer at Rutger’s University, has suggested that we should actually look for these probes in our own Solar System. He argues we should be checking the mail instead of waiting for a phone call.

Multiple Bracewell probes could also be set up as a distributed array of communication relay stations. Such a set-up was portrayed in Carl Sagan’s Contact. In this story, a dormant Bracewell probe was lying in wait in the Vega system. It began to transmit a strong signal after it received a radio signal from Earth. The device itself was part of a larger network of probes, as witnessed later by Ellie’s journey from probe to probe.

3. Worker probes

If we are going to embark on megascale engineering projects, we’re going to need robots. Lots of 'em. Projects like Dyson Spheres, Ringworlds and Alderson Disks would require fleets of specialized and artificially intelligent probes working in concert to construct these truly massive structures.

Given the sheer scale of these projects and the amount of matter that would have to be subverted, it’s not unreasonable to assume that millions of individual probes would be required. The most sensible way to construct and disseminate these probes would be through self-replication schemes.

These probes could also be put to work as mining machines that dig-out and transport matter across vast distances. Ideally, these probes would be programmed to work together and take advantage of swarming intelligence and emergent properties.

4. Colonization probes

The advent of molecular assembling nanotechnology will make it possible for probes to go about interstellar colonization. It’s conceivable that a von Neumann probe could find a suitable planet and use the matter around it to not just reproduce itself, but to establish a colony and seed actual settlers.

Such settlers would likely be uploaded consciousness patterns. This would obviously require an advanced mind emulation scheme, powerful artificial intelligence, and advanced supercomputing. Ideally, these consciousness patterns would be able to migrate to a robotic body for corporeal investigation of the environment. The number of settlers in any given location could be significant, limited only by computational resources.

Colonization probes could also construct data receivers and transmission stations so that uploaded persons could travel as digital data streams from one point to another. Consequently, the dream of traveling at the speed of light will some day be possible.

Colonization probes, sometimes referred to as seeder probes, could also perform double-duty as terraformers. Project Genesis, as portrayed in the Star Trek film series, utilized such a probe, which was able to transform a dead planet into one that suited the needs of its future inhabitants.

5. Uplift probes

Probes could also work to transform and 'uplift' other civilizations and their citizens. This scenario was explored in 2001: A Space Odyssey in which an advanced extraterrestrial civilization used probes (called monoliths) to steer the direction of evolution on Earth. In the story, these probes endowed primates with the capacity to use tools, and later, the human David Bowman was transformed into the next stage of evolution, the so-called Star Child.

This scenario was also explored in David Brin’s Uplift series in which advanced civilizations brought sapience to primitive life forms--what’s more accurately termed biological uplift. Also conceivable is technological or civilizational uplift in which an extraterrestrial intelligence brings an entire civilization up to its own advanced level.

Motivations for doing so could involve meta-ethical imperatives meant to reduce suffering, to prevent civilizations from destroying themselves, or to ensure the safe onset of non-threatening post-Singularity intelligences. Or, it could be part of your plan to take over the Galaxy.

Uplift probes could quickly bring a civilization to a post-Singularity, postbiological condition. Such a force might appear as a colonization wave that sweeps across the Galaxy, transforming all that it touches into computronium. Such a scenario has been projected by such thinkers as Hans Moravec and Ray Kurzweil.

6. Berserker probes

Unfortunately, you're going to have to look out for malevolent probes, what Fred Saberhagen dubbed Berserkers. Just as an intelligent civilization could use self-replicating probes to spread life across the Galaxy, another misguided or evil civilization could do quite the opposite and destroy everything.

Berserkers could be disseminated with the sole purpose of sterilizing every planetary system it encounters, forever eliminating the possibility for life to emerge and evolve. Should it encounter an inhabited planet, it could use any number of schemes, including nanotech instigated ecophagy, to quickly destroy all life in a matter of hours. By using a scorched galaxy policy, a civilization could sterilize the Milky Way in about 500,000 years.

Alternately, berserker probes could be disbursed across the entire Galaxy and lie dormant, patiently waiting for signs of intelligence.

Berserkers could also work to stamp out intelligent life that it deems dangerous. Anders Sandberg, Eliezer Yudkowsky and myself conceived of a strategy in which an advanced civilization (or Galactic club) could monitor for potentially dangerous post-Singularity mind-types and quickly stamp them out of existence.

7. Police probes

It’s not unreasonable to suggest that probe-making civilizations would also be thinking about defensive measures. Sandberg recently came up with an idea for anti-berserker policing probes (what I've started to call Sandberg probes). These devices would be on the lookout for bad news of any kind and take action.

Civilizations might want to establish quarantined areas; policing probes would ensure that nothing gets through the defenses and ensure the integrity of a specified region. Xenophobic civilizations might want to set up quarantined areas to prevent memetic infection, to protect themselves against invasion of any kind, or simply due to a fear of the unknown.

The best way of stopping a replicator, argues Sandberg, is to nip it in the bud. To do so, an advanced civilization would require widespread surveillance and enough power to deal with possible threats. And because replicators could emerge outside a given region of control, a civilization would want to have widely stockpiled defenses. The easiest way of doing this? Yup, you guessed it: make a replicator that spreads and builds these stockpiles and quietly waits for signs of something threatening.

So, where are all the probes?

Given all this technological potential, one must wonder why we haven’t encountered any extraterrestrial probes. Why haven't extraterrestrials communicated with us? Why haven't we be uplifted....or destroyed?

This conundrum was first articulated by Frank Tipler and has become a critical driver of the Fermi Paradox. It's been a cause of much the contact pessimism that has taken root since the 1970s (my own inclinations included). If it's so easy for probes to colonize the Galaxy, then where the heck are they? Tipler concluded that extraterrestrials simply don't exist.

Carl Sagan and William Newman came up with a different answer. They were convinced that Tipler had it all wrong and that all this talk of probes was sheer poppycock. Sagan and Newman, in their 1983 paper titled "The Solipsist Approach to Extraterrestrial Intelligence," calculated that von Neumann probes, should they exist, would eventually start to consume most of the mass in the Galaxy. Consequently, they concluded that intelligent civilizations would never dare construct such probes and would try to destroy any such device as soon as it was detected.

I'm not so convinced. Probes with even a modicum of AI and smart programming could be programmed to stop after a certain reproductive threshold has been achieved (time-to-produce schemes, maximum number of iterations, etc.). These probes wouldn't be simple mindless automatons. Moreover, the Sagan and Newman theory violates non-exclusivity; it might explain why most civilizations wouldn't dare embark on such colonization schemes, but not all. All it would take is just one.

And interestingly, Sagan and Newman seemed to be arguing for counter-measures against probes -- a strategy that Sandberg has argued would require self-replicating police probes. Moreover, as Sandberg writes,

One of the interesting things with police probes is that it makes strategic sense to announce that they are around to civilizations that might "break the law" - yet not reveal exactly how strong they are or what their modus operandi is. So the Fermi paradox appears to say that there are no police around here right now.

Further, says Sandberg, one species' police is another species' invader - we would probably not like having some alien probe impose their view of what is an unacceptable activity on us, and vice versa. And the process of making police probes will likely be indistinguishable from making other replicators. Consequently, there might be a race to set up the first interstellar police force.

At any rate, the reason for the absence of probes is still a mystery. And as the future ruler of Galaxy, you're going to have to assume this is the case. So you better get going and create a fleet of self-replicating probe before somebody else does it first.

Frank Stratford: Tapping humanity's potential through space exploration

From Frank Stratford's Space Review article, "Our potential in space":

So why would humans want to explore or live in such places? The one argument that has often been glossed over or ignored is, in my opinion, the most important, and many others are beginning to see this. This motive for sending humans into space comes down to rediscovering the importance of realizing our potential as a people. If scientific discoveries and resource utilization or spin-offs are not enough to get our governments and businesses interested in investing more in space, perhaps it’s time to take a different approach
.......
When I think of what the colonization of space could achieve for us I only have to look at what we have achieved here on Earth to understand what could be our future in space. Yes, we will always carry the negatives with us wherever we go. There will still be problems here on Earth as long as we exist, but growing onto new worlds and new horizons is in our genes. All societies that ceased to look outward have ceased to exist, from the records we have of great civilizations of the past. When apathy, internal politics, and agendas take over, that’s when we lose sight of our potential for greatness.

Read Stratford's entire article.

Centauri Dreams: Odds on the human future

Centauri Dreams has posted a review of Princeton astrophysicist Richard Gott's take on the Fermi Paradox and the future of human civilization. Gott uses the Copernican Principle to suggest that humanity likely represents a typical civilization and that humans better get going on colonization efforts before it's too late.

This conclusion is very similar to the one I'll be presenting at TransVision 2007 a week from today in Chicago. Specifically, I will be speaking about the implications of our failing search for extraterrestrial civilizations. While my presentation does touch upon the threat of human extinction, I will also be offering some other non-catastrophic solutions to the Great Silence problem (namely localized digital existence).

As for Gott's argument, I whole heartedly agree that the Copernican Principle can be applied to the Fermi question. We should self-sample ourselves and subsequently not assume that a) we're somehow different than other civs, and b) there are more radically advanced civs in the Galaxy than pre-Singularity civs.

Yes, it's an upsetting conclusion, but that's where the data is pointing.

At TV07 I will also be arguing that the Copernican Principle trumps Occam's Razor in this matter. It's been said (by Kurzweil and others) that the most simplest explanation to the Fermi problem is that we're the first intelligence to emerge in the Galaxy.

To tackle this, I spend the first third of my presentation taking apart the Rare Earth Hypothesis (and other related notions) in an attempt to show that this suggestion is not only grossly improbable, but a bi-product of human arrogance and anthropocentrism.

It's Copernicus all over again.

Stross: Space colonization is not in our future

I'm sure most readers of this blog have stumbled upon Charlie Stross's recent post, The High Frontier, Redux, in which he argues that space colonization is not in our future (Charlie's post was BoingBoing'd and Slashdotted and of this writing has over 452 comments!). He crunches the numbers and offers some interesting food for thought about the limitations and absurdities of space travel and colonization.

He says,

This is not to say that interstellar travel is impossible; quite the contrary. But to do so effectively you need either (a) outrageous amounts of cheap energy, or (b) highly efficient robot probes, or (c) a magic wand. And in the absence of (c) you're not going to get any news back from the other end in less than decades. Even if (a) is achievable, or by means of (b) we can send self-replicating factories and have them turn distant solar systems into hives of industry, and more speculatively find some way to transmit human beings there, they are going to have zero net economic impact on our circumstances (except insofar as sending them out costs us money).

I recommend that you read article; there's lots to consider.

That said, I agree with Stross that space colonization is not in our future -- or anybody's future for that matter. But I disagree with him as to why this is the case (this is largely what I'll be speaking about at TransVision 2007 next month).

First, Stross's analysis fails to take into account future civilization types; I get the sense that he takes a normative view of today's technological and economic realities and projects them into the future. This is surprising, not only because he's an outstanding science fiction visionary, but also because he's a transhumanist who has a very good grasp on what awaits humanity in the future (in fact, he was the WTA's transhumanist of the year for 2004). Specifically, he should be taking into account the possibility of post-Singularity, Drexlerian, Kardashev Type II civilizations. Essentially, we're talking about post-scarcity civilizations with access to molecular assembling nanotechnology, radically advanced materials, artificial superintelligence, and access to most of the energy available in the solar system.

Stross also too easily dismisses how machine intelligences, uploaded entities and AGI will impact on how space could be colonized. He speculates about biological humans being sent from solar system to solar system, and complains of the psychological and social hardships that could be inflicted on an individual or crew. He even speculates about the presence of extraterrestrial pathogens that undoubtedly awaits our daring explorers. This is a highly unlikely scenario. Biological humans will have no role to play in space. Instead, this work will be done by robots and quite possibly cyborgs (which is how the term 'cyborg' came to exist in the first place).

Stross does mention the possibility of probes being sent out, but again, fails to account for the economic benefits of self-replicating probes. He notes the extreme distances involved in space travel -- another way of saying that it takes too long. Given the alternative mind-space and clock-space that a machine mind could inhabit, time is not a very helpful variable when discussing the limitations of space travel.

Spacecraft propulsion was another topic that Stross addressed. My feeling is that he should have spent more time analyzing some of the more radical possibilities for star-to-star space travel. I'm fairly convinced this is not an inhibitor to space colonization.

Finally, Stross's analysis invokes far too much sociology and rationalization. Cost and time scales aside, he did not take into account the drive for scientific advancement and exploration. The search for life on other planets is a rather important one -- it's a mystery we seem rather hell-bent on solving. Moreover, it's difficult to predict what private individuals or groups may do on their own. I can totally imagine an eccentric and motivated crew that organizes a mission into space.

As for my own arguments against space colonization, like I said, that's the topic I'll be addressing at TV07. Stay tuned for more over the coming weeks.

Why the discovery of a nearby Earth-like planet is bad news

Wow, the blogosphere has been absolutely gushing these past few days over the news that an Earth-like planet may have been discovered in the 'hood. This planet may boast a moderate climate that could conceivably support life and is only 20 light years away.

Not surprisingly, this news has caused a number of pundits to fantasize about jumping into their rocketships and bidding adiós to our polluted, war-torn and diseased planet.

But not so fast, amigos. While many have misguidedly jumped on the bandwagon to the stars, a number of bloggers have gotten it right.

In his article, "'Don't Pack Your Bags Just Yet", Jamais Cascio notes that, "By the time we have the technology that would make a 20 light year trip even remotely plausible (the fastest space craft yet made would still take thousands of years to get there), we probably won't be all that interested in living in a watery gravity hole anyway. Nope -- give us some nice, massive gas giants to convert to computronium!"

Michael Anissimov points out that we have a human hospitable planet right here that we’ve barely even begun to use. He also argues that "even if we did need to leave the Earth, there is a tremendous amount of raw materials for space colonies right next door in the form of carbonaceous asteroids, which make up about 75% of known asteroids." Moreover, warns Anissimov, "we should think carefully before sending off colonists to far-away places without ensuring that they’re capable of protecting the fundamental freedoms of their citizens." Specifically, he worries that a blight may come back to haunt us (which also reminds me of the Honored Matres of the Dune series).

And as Tyler Cowen noted, "Are earth-like planets so common? That probably means lots more civilization-supporting planets than I had expected. But where are the alien visitors? As suggested by the Fermi paradox, we must revise our priors along several margins, one of which is the expected duration of an intelligent civilization."

Indeed, Cowen is on the right track. A primary argument used to reconcile the Fermi Paradox is the Rare Earth Hypothesis. This line of reasoning suggests that we haven't been visited by ETI's because life is far too rare in the cosmos.

But if we have discovered an Earth-like planet as little as 20 light years away, it's not unreasonable to suggest that our Galaxy must be absolutely teeming with life. This would seem to be a heavy blow to the REH.

So why is this bad news? It's bad news because our biophilic universe should be saturated with advanced intelligence by now...but it's not. The Fermi Paradox is very much in effect as a profound and disturbing unsolved mystery in astrosociobiology, philosophy and futurism.

Are all civilizations doomed before getting to the Singularity? Or is there something else at work here?

Michael Huang on the Fermi Paradox

Michael Huang of the Space Review has posted a good overview of the Fermi Paradox. In his article, titled The Other Side of the Fermi Paradox, Huang notes that "By examining the possible futures of extraterrestrial civilizations, we are simultaneously examining the possible futures of our own civilization." Put in another way, says Huang, "if an alien civilization somewhere had their own version of the Fermi paradox, they would be speculating on our future in the same way that we speculate on theirs."

Bingo.

One of the reconciliations to the paradox cited by Huang is the Park hypothesis, which states that advanced civs have not colonized the galaxy because they don’t want to. Strangely, Huang claims that "staying on Earth is a mediocre future for humankind."

I've observed that the psychological and aesthetic desire to explore space often leads to a space exploration bias. This quite obviously has a bearing on any analysis of the Fermi Paradox. Space enthusiasts tend to be incredulous to the suggestion that interstellar colonization is not in our future. But as Huang himself admits, the possibility exists for "the creation of virtual reality worlds so impressive that real world challenges, such as space colonization, pale in comparison."

Indeed, if advanced civs stay at home you can bet that there's a damn good reason for it, and I'm certain it won't be a mediocre one.

Why there should be an X Prize for an artificial biosphere

Conventional futurist wisdom suggests that if our atmosphere should completely go to pot -- which it certainly appears to be doing -- humans could still eek out an existence living in self-sustaining biospheres. This would hardly represent a desirable outcome, but hey, it would certainly beat extinction. Moreover, a successful biosphere would prove to be an important step in the direction of space colonization, terraforming and remedial ecology.

But there is one major problem with this suggestion: we have yet to create a closed ecosystem that can support human life for the long term. This revelation seems strange at first, but it's true. We can send men to the moon, but we can't sustain an artificial ecosystem. The fact that we haven't been able to do so needs to be taken much more seriously. The Earth's natural biosphere is still the only functioning one we have; all our eggs are currently residing in one basket.

It's time to revive the biosphere projects of the early 1990s. Given the private sector's recent enthusiasm to develop space tourism technologies, perhaps another X Prize is in order.

BIOS-3 and Biosphere 2

Our inability to create a closed ecosystem is not for a lack of trying. To date there have been two major biosphere projects, both of them failures.

The Soviets conducted a number of experiments in BIOS-3 from 1972 to 1984. Technically speaking it was not a completely isolated biosphere as it pulled energy from a nearby power source and dried meat was imported into the facility. BIOS-3 facilities were used to conduct 10 manned closure experiments with the longest experiment lasting for 180 days. Among its successes, the Soviets were able to produce oxygen from chlorella algae and recycle up to 85% of their water.

More recently there was the Biosphere 2 project in Oracle, Arizona. At a cost of US$200 million, Biosphere 2 was an attempt to create a closed artificial ecological system to test if and how people could live and work in an independent biosphere. It was a three-acre Earth in miniature complete with a desert, rainforest and ocean. Organizers conducted two sealed missions: the first for 2 years from 1991 to 1993 and the second for six months in 1994.

The failure of Biosphere 2

Setting up and managing the parameters that drive a functioning ecosystem proved to be exceptionally difficult. Soon after the launch of the first mission, oxygen levels started to decline at a rate of 0.3% per month. Eventually the internal atmosphere resembled that of a community at an elevation of over 4,000 feet (1,200 m). Oxygen levels eventually settled at a dangerously low level of 14% (rather than the nominal 21% found on Earth) and team members started to become ill.

Organizers had no choice but to start pumping in pure oxygen and bring in other supplies from the outside. Biosphere 2 ceased to be a closed system (as much as it could be given the circumstances) and was branded a failure.

As it turns out, oxygen was hardly the only problem. Biosphere 2 also suffered from wildly fluctuating CO2 levels. Most of the vertebrate species and all of the pollinating insects died, while cockroaches and ants started to take over the place. The ocean eventually became too acidic and the ambient temperature became impossible to control (biospheres don't come with thermostats).

Compounding the environmental problems were health and psychological issues that affected the team. After two years of relative isolation, the 4 men and 4 women left Biosphere 2 depressed and malnourished. Interpersonal relationships had regressed over the course of the two years, creating what the biospherians called a 'dysfunctional family.'

After the first experiment, the Biosphere 2 organizers conducted a shorter six month stint that ended in 1994. After the completion of this more focused experiment the owners decided to change directions and asked Columbia University for advice. Today it is largely a place where students can conduct experiments and tourists can loiter.

Lessons learned, lessons not learned

Consequently, the Biosphere 2 project has been considered a big joke. If it's a joke, however, I'm not amused. Biosphere 2 was an important and eye-opening project. It revealed to us not only the difficultly of managing a closed ecosystem and the fragility of human psychology, but how challenging it will be for us to manage Biosphere 1 -- the Earth's biosphere -- should things really start to get out of whack.

In this sense, Biosphere 2 should not be considered a failure, but rather a wake-up call to scientists, environmentalists, politicians and the general public. It should have resulted in the immediate creation of similar projects and related research.

Unfortunately, the impetus these days from the private sector is towards the development of space tourism technologies like space planes and space hotels. Perhaps some entrepreneur should start an X Prize for the first viable and long term biosphere. It is the space tourism industry, after all, that would most certainly benefit from the creation of a working biosphere; humans will not go very far in space without a self-sustaining ecosystem around them.

Moreover, given the rate of global warming and the ongoing depletion of the ozone layer, our atmosphere may start to turn on us. In the more distant future there will be such risks as global ecophagy. In our desperation, we may have no choice to but to dwell in temporary biospheres until we learn to fix our broken planet.

New audiocast posted

My latest audiocast has been posted here. You can subscribe to this feed.

In this episode I discuss Bjork's colonization simulation and Fermi's Paradox, the recent change to the Doomsday Clock, my rebuttal to Nigel Cameron, and how Fight Club portrays the modern male.

Bjork's colonization simulation does not explain Fermi's Paradox

A number of science sites are proclaiming that the Fermi Paradox may have been solved by Rasmus Bjork, a physicist at the Niels Bohr institute in Copenhagen. Unfortunately, his claim does not withstand scrutiny; the Fermi conundrum is still far from being answered.

Bjork is making a point that many others have made before, that ETI's have not had enough time to colonize the Milky Way. What makes his claim different, however, is that he used a computer to simulate the migrational spread of intergalactic probes.

In his simulation, Bjork had a single civilization launch 8 intergalactic probes to search for intelligent life. Once on their way, each probe would send out eight more mini-probes to search for the nearest stars and look for habitable planets. He was careful to set the parameters such that the probes would only investigate the galactic habitable zone of the Galaxy. Bjork also set it up such that the probes could travel at 30,000km/second, or a tenth of the speed of light.

Based on these settings, Bjork discovered that it would take these probes 10Gyr to explore a measly 4% the Galaxy -- roughly half the age of the Universe. This data would indicate that there most certainly has not been enough time for ETI's to thoroughly explore the Milky Way.

His analysis, however, fails to take into account the likely nature of intergalactic exploration and colonization. In Bjork's simulation, he tracks the progress of a mere 72 probes. Given this ludicrously limited strategy, it would take these 8 primary probes and 64 sub-probes 100,000 years to explore a region of space containing 40,000 stars. Such an effort would almost certainly be considered futile by any civilization, and it's doubtful any ETI would embark on such a project.

Instead, what Bjork should have considered is the potential for ETI's to proliferate Von Neumann replicating probes. Advanced civilizations with access to molecular assembling nanotechnology would be capable of launching self-replicating probes. Initially, the spread of Von Neumann probes would be slow, but like any exponential process, progress would eventually explode. It's been estimated that these types of probes could reach all four corners of the Galaxy anywhere from 5 to 50 million years. That's a far cry from Bjork's projected 250Gyr.

So, no, the Fermi Paradox has not been solved. Far from. And it's high time that cosmologists and astrobiologists stopped using technology from Star Trek to inform their research.