Twilight of the Gods: The Mayan Calendar and the Return of the Extraterrestrials (26 page)

Two hundred and fifty years ago philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote in his Critique of Pure Reason: "I should not hesitate to stake my all on the truth of the proposition... that, at least, some one of the planets, which we see, is inhabited."'

Apart from the odd UFO sighting and alleged contacts with UFO crews-which, as of yet, have not been scientifically verified-there has been no contact during our modern age with "inhabitants" from other planets. So do they even exist? As early as 1950, world-famous nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi asked: "If a multitude of extraterrestrial civilizations exist out there, where are they?"' Good question: Where are they? The question soon became famous the world over; it is now known as the "Fermi paradox."

In the English-speaking world there is no shortage of highly scientific publications that are either pro or con on the subject of extraterrestrials. With ice-cold objectivity they deal with questions that leave people in other parts of the world shaking their heads. You can only join in if you speak good English. It's no great surprise to me that there is no funding for ET research in the non-English-speaking parts of Europe. Maybe the English speakers are better informed, or maybe they're just more open to such things.

he Fermi Paradox

Scientist William Hosek gave his opinion on the Fermi paradox in the specialist journal JBIS (Journal of the British Interplanetary Society). And what was his scientifically based conclusion? "Consequently humans have not, and will not, be visited by them and humans will not visit other civilizations."3 What makes him so sure?

Hosek looks at the Fermi paradox from a purely economic point of view. He assumes-and he's almost certainly right-that on every inhabited planet the available raw materials will all get used up eventually. People, however, are not created to be long-range planners. That is to say, they don't really think beyond the span of their own livesthat is, in terms of centuries. Regardless of whether we're talking about the public or private sector, whether states or multinational companies, investments are never made with future centuries in mind, because people expect to see some kind of return (for their stakeholders, or in time for the next election, and so on). If man ever sent a starship out to seek raw materials, those left behind would never know if the ship's crew were going to be successful or come back empty-handed. Can you imagine any institution investing maybe billions of dollars in a project with no guarantee of any return? People don't live for very long, and they want to see results. Not only that: Building a gigantic generation starship (a spaceship designed for journeys longer than the lifespan of its crew) would not only cost huge amounts of money, but would itself also require great quantities of precious raw materials-just those materials, in fact, that the home planet is running short on. Logically, such raw materials cannot be risked on an incredibly expensive space adventure that won't bear fruit until hundreds of years later-if at all.

Hosek applies this "earthly" logic to extrasolar civilizations too. And the results of his analysis are quite sobering: First, before we receive any help from an alien civilization, we would need to know the "strangers" and at least be in regular radio contact with them. Second, the alien civilization would need to be more advanced than ours. Third, any civilization would need to be in a position to receive our messages, translate them, and finally understand them. Fourth, they would have to be able to provide the raw materials that we are looking for. Fifth, they would have to be willing to share their technology and raw materials with us. Sixth, we would have to capable of making use of their tools and instructions. And finally, the ETs out there would inevitably also be aware that their own raw materials are going to run out, too, sometime. Therefore it hardly seems likely that any alien civilization is going to present its valuable raw materials to any other civilization.

All of this sounds fairly plausible-from an economic point of view. Dr. William R. Hosek, the author of this scientific article, states quite specifically that his observations are purely economic assumptions. So we can forget future space travel because we humans want to see shortterm results and simply do not have the resources to build a gigantic starship. (I'll come back to this later.)

ETI

What about radio contact? Aren't we always reading stuff about some SETI project? SETI stands for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.) Aren't millions of dollars being spent every year on huge radio telescopes so that we can receive and send signals? Didn't we already send signals into space in 1960 as part of `Project Ozma'? Is it possible that some alien answer came long ago and is being kept secret so as to avoid mass panic among the peoples of the world?

Well, the answers to all these questions are a lot more complex than they might seem at first glance. We don't know the precise wavelengths at which interstellar communication operates. The Ozma project in 1960 was carried out by a group of leading scientists in Green Bank, West Virginia. Back then, they opted for a wavelength of 21 centimeters (8.3 inches), which corresponds to the neutral element hydrogen. Seeing as hydrogen is present throughout the entire universe, they believed that extraterrestrial civilizations would use this wavelength to communicate on. Today, we're a bit smarter than that. The 21-centimeter wavelength is extremely susceptible to interference. Out there in space-which we once presumed was completely empty-it hisses, bubbles, bangs, beeps and crackles the whole time. There's a whole soup of noises that need to be filtered out before you could hear anything. Even before that happens, you would have to fathom out whether the signal even originates from an "intelligent" source or whether it's just one of those many sources of interference. Despite all these efforts, to this day not one single radio signal has arrived from an intelligent species. The question has to be: Should we send out signals? Should we be the ones to stand up and shout into space: Hello! It's us! Is it even possible? And how much energy would we have to use to even have a chance of being heard by someone out there?

Professor George Swenson of the University of Illinois has devoted himself to this problem. Swensonis a former astronomer and an engineer. His specialties were electrical oscillations and antenna construction. Writing in the scientific journal Scientific American, Swenson analyzed the immense difficulties associated with radio astronomy.' Should we direct our signals at some specific target out there in space? Home in on a particular planet? To be able to do that, we would have to know the location of a planet that is home to an intelligent species. The extraterrestrials living there would have to be ready to receive signals, have receiver antennas installed, and use a technology that was at least similar to ours. Added to this, planets do not only rotate around their own axis, but also along an elliptical orbit around their sun. How would it be possible to aim for an exact point in space from here on Earth? This is a point, let's not forget, that is several light years away from Earth and, to be honest, we can't really know if it even exists!

So we've ruled out choosing an exact point and we decide to send out a broad signal. After all, a normal radio antenna here on Earth doesn't send its signal direct to the recipient, but rather sends out its signal in all directions. It is available to all recipients at the same time. In radio astronomy this is known as "omnidirectional" (in other words, present throughout the broadcasting sector). But there's no way we could send out a signal to the entire Milky Way; the energy that would be necessary would not be available anywhere-except perhaps from a nearby neutron star. That means, then, that we would have to concentrate on a selected sector of the Milky Way. There are just two stars within five light years of our solar system; within 10 light years this number jumps to 12. Increase the circle to 15 light years and we have 39 stars, and within 50 light years as many as a hundred. Within a hundred light years the number of stars multiplies a thousandfold. Nowadays, we know that many of these stars have their own planets. What we don't know is whether any of these planets have Earth-like conditions or whether they can support any intelligent life. How powerful would our terrestrial transmitter have to be to send out an omnidirectional signal over a distance of 100 light years?

Professor Swenson took the trouble to work this out. In his words, the transmitter would have to have "more than 7,000 times the total electricity-generating capacity of the U.S."5 Even using nuclear energy, that's simply not possible. What remains is the approach we have always used: to shine our little light into the darkness and hope that someone out there sees it-or that one of our receiving stations (which are technically highly developed and extremely sensitive) will some day be lucky enough to pick up some stray signal from an extraterrestrial source.

'here Are Answers

Does that put an end to every discussion on interstellar travel or radio contact with ETs? It certainly doesn't, praise the creator! The opinions of one group-however objective and rational they may be-will always conflict with those of another group that is equally as objective and rational. And we shouldn't forget that, according to Professor Robert Haviland of Daytona Beach, Florida: "The space program is being pushed ahead for now by amateurs who have already described every aspect of interstellar travel and space research. Even the theory of relativity... was developed by an amateur, a secretary in a Swiss patent office, without any backing from the state or any university."'