Alien Intrusion Page 8
• Avoiding approaching objects.
As a spaceship maneuvers, such as changing course or accelerating, it would exert g forces on its occupants. A g force of 1 is equivalent to the earth's gravity (similar to what you feel when you're going down a steep rollercoaster). At 3 g's, an air force fighter pilot could rupture the blood vessels in his eyes. At 5 g's, the pilot would pass out, and 9 g's would kill the pilot in a matter of seconds. Any further increase would start to tear the plane apart. Changing directions at light speed or above would exert millions of g's on the ship and its occupants.[33] Science fiction stories have come up with the idea of "inertial dampers" to stop the crew from flying out of their seats or from being splattered against the walls of the ship. It seems that every science fiction invention created to overcome an obstacle only creates another one.
• Other problems.
Another problem in space is cosmic rays. Prolonged exposure can be fatal, and no one knows whether traveling at light speed or faster would increase the dosage.
Creating artificial gravity is another brainteaser. To date, no one has conjectured how to overcome this problem. Astronauts on the Russian Mir space station adapted to weightlessness in space in a matter of weeks, but recovering back on Earth took them several months or even years. During their time in space, astronauts can suffer severe medical difficulties, such as loss of bone density. This is a serious health risk, and the loss cannot be easily or quickly recovered upon return to Earth. In addition, traveling near the speed of light causes even the relatively harmless low frequency radiation to become deadly to humans. This is because the wavelengths become shortened, and thus, high frequency due to the Doppler effect.[34]
But in science fiction it is possible to overcome anything. The third of Arthur C. Clarke's Three Laws states, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." [35] Conversely, magic may be indistinguishable from any advanced technology. As Ronald Story said (quoted in chapter 1), "....most people are finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish fantasy from reality."
Little green men and SETI
Mankind generally is convinced not only that extraterrestrial life exists elsewhere in the universe, but also that such alien life, including intelligent life, could be abundant. With this in mind, we have begun sending and receiving radio signals in the hope of communicating with an alien race. The first "signal" received from space was a regularly spaced blip that repeated every 1 1/3 seconds. Excitedly, many investigators thought this might be a message from some extraterrestrial entity or civilization. Later, astrophysicists realized that the radio waves were emitted by something they called a pulsar.
A pulsar is a very dense star, possibly one that has endured some form of gravitational collapse. It is called a pulsar because it pulses. That is, it rotates so rapidly that it sends out extremely regular pulses of radio waves. Astronomers were so impressed, they called it LGM-1 ("Little Green Men-1"). One of its discoverers, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, said:
One of the ideas that we entertained was that it might be little green men - a civilization outside in space somewhere trying to communicate with us.[36]
This gives some idea of what they were expecting. As our technology increased, it led to an understanding of the vastness of the universe, and further speculation that there must be millions, or even billions, of other civilizations. If the development of technology is our goal, then science fiction concepts "set the bar" as to what might be achieved. It is the "engine room" that has driven the imagination as to "what might be out there."
The idea that the universe must be teeming with life is already viewed as respectable science. One of the prime movers for this view is Dr. Frank Drake, who, in 1960, while working as a radio astronomer, commenced Project Ozma, which was the first organized search for extraterrestrial intelligent radio signals. He also developed a binary code system to help him decrypt alien communications.
Drake constructed the first interstellar message ever transmitted via radio waves by our planet for the benefit of any extraterrestrial civilizations. This message is known as the "Arecibo Message of November 1974." His messages have also been incorporated on the plaques on the Pioneer 10 and 11 missions (designed by Drake, Carl Sagan, and his wife, Linda Salzman Sagan), and on the "Voyager Record" aboard the Voyager spacecraft.[37]
In 1961, he developed a formula for calculating the number of supposed technological civilizations that might exist in our own Milky Way galaxy. This became known as the Drake equation. It has become the most accepted rationale (a seemingly quantifiable hypothesis) for the existence of extraterrestrial life. The equation is expressed as follows:
N=R*·fp·ne·fl fi·fc·L
N The number of civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy whose radio emissions are detectable.
R* The rate of formation of suitable stars.
That is, stars with an adequate "habitable zone."
fp The fraction of those stars with planets.
Although the percentage of sun-like stars with planets is currently unknown, evidence indicates that planetary systems may be common for stars like the sun.
ne The number of "Earths" per planetary system.
How many planets occupy a habitable zone where they would be able to maintain a temperature that would allow liquid water? A planet in the habitable zone could have the basic conditions for life as we know it.
fl The fraction of those planets where life develops.
Although a planet orbits in the habitable zone of a suitable star, other factors are necessary for life to arise. Thus, only a fraction of suitable planets will actually develop life.
fi The fraction of life sites where intelligence develops.
Life on Earth began over 3.5 billion years ago. Intelligence took a long time to develop. On other life-bearing planets it may happen faster, it may take longer, or it may not develop at all.
fc The fraction of planets where technology develops.
The fraction of planets with intelligent life that develop technological civilizations, i.e., technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space.
L The "lifetime" of communicating civilizations.
The length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.[38]
The world's largest and longest-running effort to search for extraterrestrial life has been carried out by the SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), where Drake once served as president and chairman of the board. The institute's work is predicated on Frank Drake's equation, yet its own website admits:
Among the factors considered are the number of sun-like stars in our galaxy, the fraction of habitable planets supporting communicating civilizations, etc. When these various factors are multiplied together one can compute N, the number of transmitting civilizations. Unfortunately, many of the factors are poorly known, so estimates of N range from one (we are alone in the Galaxy) to thousands or even millions [emphasis added].[39]
Despite the complex appearance of Drake's equation, this is a frank admission (pardon the pun) which highlights its entirely conjectural nature. The whole hypothesis only makes some sort of vague sense if one believes that evolution is occurring all over the universe. However, the equation itself is a work of fiction. Most factors in the equation are presently non-quantifiable, and to date not even one intelligible transmission has ever been received from space.
The forerunner of SETI was Drake's pioneering work of 1960. His work was continued in the 1970s by Benjamin Zuckerman and Patrick Palmer in a project known as Ozma II. Whereas the original Ozma had the use of a single radio telescope, version II had 384, and scanned over 700 stars compared to the original Ozma's two.[40] Then in 1984, SETI, as we know it today, was formed under the guidance and vision of Tom Pierson and Frank Drake. Up until 1994, SETI was partly funded by NASA, but the program was unpopular with the U.S. Congress, and they cut off funding several times. Until recently, SETI was privately funded by corporations su
ch as Hewlett Packard and individuals like Paul Allen, one of the co-founders of Microsoft. Even UFO enthusiast and famous movie director Steven Spielberg has contributed funds. Allen, a staunch evolutionist and one of SETI's keenest promulgators, has personally donated many millions of dollars, and he even has a telescope array named in his honor. His major interest is Project Phoenix, which is a targeted search as opposed to a general sweep of the sky. SETI says of Phoenix:
Since 1995, it has been scrutinizing the vicinities of nearby, Sun-like stars, hoping to pick up a signal that would tell us that we're not alone.... Project Phoenix is the name of the SETI Institute's research project to search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The name derives from the mythological Egyptian bird that rose from the ashes of its own demise - in the case of SETI, the ashes of congressional funding cuts.[41]
The silence is deafening
One of the reasons that SETI and Project Phoenix were not the "flavor of the month" for the public purse was their failure to detect anything. SETI's network of radio telescopes can scan 28 million radio frequencies per second, and is estimated to be 100 trillion times more effective than Project Ozma. In addition to SETI's efforts, there have been over 60 other projects spanning more than 40 years. Despite these massive efforts, and millions of dollars of funding, not once have they ever detected ET trying to "phone home." Another well-known project is SETI@home. This involves using home computer users in a massive computing project that analyzes data gathered by the Arecibo radio telescope.
Like advocates Drake, Sagan, and others, SETI does not subscribe to the ETH and openly says so:
Many Americans (and quite a few citizens of other countries) are convinced that extraterrestrials may be buzzing the countryside in their spacecraft, or occasionally alighting in the back yard to abduct a few humans for breeding experiments. This would be of enormous interest and importance of course, and (in our opinion) impossible to hide, particularly if it's happening internationally. The presence of aliens on our planet is not something you would want to hide: it would be the biggest science story of all time, and tens of thousands of university researchers would be working away on it. However, despite the popularity of aliens on both silver and phosphor screens and a half-century of UFO sightings, the lack of credible physical evidence has made it difficult for serious scientists to believe that UFOs have anything to do with extraterrestrial visitors.[42]
Frank Drake commented:
SETI was a four-letter word in NASA.... It was not uttered in speeches, or in documents.[43]
This is not what many really want to hear. It might be prudent for SETI to learn a few marketing tips from NASA - and indeed they have - the public's fascination for extraterrestrial life, and also its involvement via the SETI@home project, has proved to be SETI's savior. Incredibly, SETI recently received a boost in funding from an unexpected source - its former critic, NASA. Why did NASA so radically change its policy toward something formerly deemed a waste of money -especially since nothing changed as far as evidence was concerned? The answer seems obvious, even though NASA denies that anything in its approach to space exploration has changed. NASA's Origins program has captured public interest and loosened the public purse, and SETI's ET focus certainly does no harm to NASA's stocks. Lamar Smith, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, confirmed that SETI was more popular than it was given credit for, when he said:
Funding should match public interest ... and I don't believe it does.[44]
SETI still has many critics, though, and it appears that it cannot please everyone. UFOlogists are annoyed because SETI won't "join the club" and promote the ETH, and some skeptics, such as astrophysicist Frank J. Tipler of Tulane University, have some serious objections to the idea of even funding the search for extraterrestrials. He goes as far as charging SETI advocates with promoting unfalsifiable, and hence pseudoscientific, hypotheses.[45] He was quoted as saying:
SETI will become a science - and hence be worth doing - only when its proponents tell us exactly what will convince them that it is reasonable to assume we are alone.[46]
What he is really saying is that SETI (like NASA and others) is using science to explore fictional beliefs. Supporters of the ETH believe that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and that it will just be a matter of time before we make contact. The search for ETs has truly become "the science of fiction."
Endnotes
[1]David J. Laughlin, "Science Fiction: A Biblical Perspective,"
[2]"Mary Shelley"
[3]Ann Lamont, 21 Great Scientists Who Believed the Bible (Brisbane, Australia: Creation Science Foundation, 1997), p. 18–19.
[4]"Somnium (Kepler),"
[5]"Jules Verne"
[6]"The War of the Worlds"
[7]H.G. Wells, The Outline of History - Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind (London: Cassell & Company Ltd. [fourth revision], Vol. 2, 1925), p. 616, cited in Laughlin, "Science Fiction: A Biblical Perspective," TJ (now called Journal of Creation), 15 (2):81-88, 2001.
[8]"Religion in Asimov's Writings,"
[9]"Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series,"
[10]"Foundation" (by Lacey),
[11]"World Wide Words,"
[12]Ibid.
[13]Free Inquiry (Spring 1982), quoted in"Isaac Asimov in Science and the Bible,"
[14]Isaac Asimov, Counting the Eons (London: Grafton Books), p. 10, cited in "An Atheist Believes,"
[15]Asimov, Gold (New York: Harper Collins, 1995), p. 297-302, cited in "Religion in Asimov's Writings,"
[16]Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy (New York: Equinox, 1974), p. 103, cited in "Religion in Asimov's Writings,"
[17]"Religion in Asimov's Writings,"
[18]"The 2001 Principle,"
[19]"Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds!" (Amazon review),
[20]Arthur C. Clarke, (bio), Rendezvous with Rama (New York: Spectra/Bantam), December 1990, p. 37.
[21]"Discussions from the Wernher von Braun Memorial Lecture Series at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, 6 June 2001," reported in "Arthur C. Clarke Stands by His Belief in Life on Mars,"
[22] Ibid.
[23]John R. Cross, The Stranger on the Road to Emmaus (Sanford, FL: GoodSeed International, 1999), p. 16–17.
[24]"UFO-3: Ultra High Speeds Are Impossible,"
[25]Presume a below-ground pool about 25 feet, or 8 meters, long.
[26]"UFO-3: Ultra High Speeds Are Impossible,"
[27]"God and the extraterrestrials," < creation.com/god-and-the-extraterrestrials >, September 13, 2009.
[28]X. Spinrad, "Rubber Sciences," The Craft of Science Fiction (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 57 cited in Laughlin, "Science Fiction: A Biblical Perspective," TJ (now called Journal of Creation), 15 (2):81-88, 2001.
[29]"Alcubierre drive,"