If there are extraterrestrial civilizations out there, they don’t seem very interested in us. They don’t visit, they don’t phone, they don’t even send radio signals. Not a peep. It is easy to start feeling neglected once you become aware of this cosmic cold shoulder.
It is not as if we haven’t been looking out for them. This year marks 50 years since the founding of SETI — the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. In his new book celebrating this anniversary, Paul Davies explains that SETI isn’t some confederation of UFO-spotters, but a group of serious scientists who scour the skies for any sign that somebody is trying to get in touch. They have deployed every modern technology in search of unusual radio signals, laser pulses or electronic beacons. But so far they have come up empty-handed. There is nothing to hear but an eerie silence.
The obvious explanation is that nobody out there has anything to say. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by this. What we know of our own history shows that the emergence of advanced intelligence is a hit-or-miss affair. Even given a planet with the right environmental profile, there are many hurdles. The chemistry of life needs to congeal out of the primordial soup, and then natural selection needs to drive evolution all the way to organisms that can get a reasonable score on an IQ test.
Davies is a physicist, and is more worried about the first step than the second. He thinks that the emergence of life on earth may have been a one-off fluke, that the rest of the universe may never have cleared this first hurdle, and that the emergence of intelligence is only to be expected once life is up and running. However, a more biological perspective suggests Davies may have things the wrong way round. After all, the first stages of life popped up on Earth pretty quickly, give or take a few hundred million years. But intelligence has arrived only in the last few hundred thousand. The chemistry of life is the easy part, but a high IQ much harder.
Of course, there is intelligence and intelligence. Recent research shows that many birds, especially from the crow family, can outdo monkeys on any test of ingenuity. A good case can also be made for octopuses. Given that birds, mammals and mollusks evolved independently, this suggests that some level of intellect is a natural outcome of evolutionary pressures. Still, this is not the kind of intellect that is going to send signals to the stars. Impressive as the crows may be, they aren’t going to work out electromagnetic field theory. Advanced science needs the kind of acumen that allows humans to build complex cultures and probe into things. And this does look like a freak in evolutionary terms.
So, from a biological point of view, it looks as if the prospects for intelligent interstellar conversation are limited. There are probably plenty of dumb animals scattered across the universe, but nobody worth talking to. This might strike you as depressing. However, as Davies points out, it would be more depressing if it turns out that we are not cosmic freaks. For then the silence starts to look sinister. If the emergence of advanced civilizations is common, then the obvious explanation is that a typical extraterrestrial empire doesn’t last long. Perhaps plenty have announced their presence, only to implode within a few years. We all like to think humanity will survive into the indefinite future. But there is a danger that any species with our technological power will quickly find a way of destroying itself, whether by war, pestilence
or pollution.
Theories about alien life forms can easily collapse into speculation, and Davies is not immune to the temptation. Some of the topics he explores verge on the fanciful. Might the aliens send probes to seed our planet with viruses? Does the future of intelligence lie with machines, and if so what will they care about? Still, Davies never lets his enthusiasm run away with him. His attitude is that of a rational physicist, and he is careful to mark the difference between established theory and exploratory guesswork. In an area more given to fabulation than fact, this level-headedness is positively refreshing. If you ever start worrying about why no one is talking to us, this is the book to calm you down.
David Papineau is professor of philosophy of science at King’s College London.
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