NASA scientist says space alien search should be more 'aggressive'

By Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer

Is Earth being visited by space aliens? A lot of people think so, although few of them are scientists. Professional researchers are not easily persuaded by eyewitness testimony, blobby photos or claims that evidence for itinerant aliens has been stashed away by a paranoid government.

Put more succinctly, academia doesn’t put a whole lot of credence in the incessant claims that some of the thousands of UFOs sighted every year are actually alien craft. But at least one scientist has recently gone on record suggesting that the clipboard-carrying crowd should be a little less sure.

That scientist is Silvano Colombano, a computer expert and roboticist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in the heart of Silicon Valley. He was a presenter at a conference about new approaches in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) held earlier this year at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. Colombano says the skeptical attitudes of most researchers might be too cramped. They could be throwing the infant out with the bath water.

He cited this example: If you approach your favorite astronomy professor and see what she has to say about interstellar rocketry, chances are she’ll roll her eyes. The energy required to accelerate an Enterprise-size starship to near the speed of light is greater than can be wrung from all the remaining fossil fuel on Earth. Fast travel between the stars is incredibly difficult (or impossible), she’ll say. So forget the idea of little gray guys piloting saucers in our airspace. Their home planet, wherever it might be, is just too far away.

But there’s an assumption here, as Colombano pointed out. Namely, that the aliens are biological, and require a fast transit between star systems to forestall dying en route. This small problem, after all, was the motive for Star Trek’s (fictional) warp drive.

However, there’s a fix for that: Get rid of intelligence that dies. Anyone who’s not a total troglodyte knows that artificial intelligence is on the way. By the end of this century, it’s possible that the smartest thing on Earth will be a machine. Since most star systems are billions of years older than our own, you can be sure that any clever inhabitants out there have long ago relegated biological brains to the history books, and are homes to very smart, and possibly very compact, thinking hardware.

As Colombano says in a news paper, “Given the fairly common presence of elements that might be involved in the origin of life… it is a reasonable assumption that life ‘as we know it’ was at least a common starting point, but our form of life and intelligence may just be a tiny first step in a continuing evolution that may well produce forms of intelligence that are far superior to our and no longer based on carbon ‘machinery.'”

Well, an obvious advantage of non-carbon machinery is that it needn’t be cursed with a short lifetime (this despite the experience you may have had with your laptop). Truly sophisticated devices can be self-repairing. Consequently, they can go great distances simply because they’re in no hurry to get to their destination.

This has a profound consequence. Earth has been trundling around the sun for more than 4 billion years. Even at the modest speed of a NASA rocket, that’s more than enough time to get to our planet from anywhere in the Milky Way Galaxy. If the passengers don’t mind spending billions of years in a middle seat, they could to it. Compact machines wouldn’t take much space, and wouldn’t groan at the long transit time.

So, what should we conclude? Clearly, it’s possible that some alien intelligence has decided to come to our solar system and check Earth off its bucket list. Doing so doesn’t violate physics. This might have happened 100 million years ago or a billion years ago, and we wouldn’t know.

But the more appealing thought for many people is that we’re being visited now. Of course, a scientist would consider such a suggestion of interest only if it could be corroborated by observation. Bright ideas are nice, but evidence rules.

So Colombano suggests that massive computers be applied to finding such evidence among the many thousands of UFO sightings. Maybe there’s a gold nugget in all those reports. As Colombano points out, if there’s something to be discovered, we won’t find it unless we look.

This article was originally published on nbcnews.com.

My comment:

1) First of all, I thank Seth Shostak, Astronomer and someone engaged with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) by more rational ways than the febrile imagination of Mr.Colombano.

2) Mr. Colombano is not an astronomer –not even an amateur one. He is an expert in computation and robotics. His world is that of artificial intelligence. To expect that this surpasses the intelligence of the human being is to have in very little consideration the human being itself. The machine will never overcome the capacity and creative ingenuity of humans and never would feel sorrow, happiness, and above all, love. 

3) Mr. Colombano's argument can be accepted as long as an intelligent civilization does the same thing we are doing by sending probes to Mars and other space destinations, to explore and obtain valuable information. That is, the machines help us not to risk from the beginning to go to another side, before knowing well what are the natural conditions of a planet. But a thinking mind is required to organize the sending of probes or scouting devices, and that as part of a plan. We are not going to another planet, no matter how distant, for the sole purpose of sightseeing or to satisfy simple curiosity. And still, there would be someone who has an interest. Otherwise, interstellar travel of hundreds or thousands of years makes absolutely no sense. 

4) Already entering the subject UFO itself, which Mr. Colombano has apparently not the slightest idea, it is necessary to establish from the beginning, that it is useless -from the scientific point of view- to consider or work with "thousands of observations", because the question is not quantity, but quality.

The experience of serious researchers on the subject is that when the observations are properly investigated, it ends up giving them an explanation in 99% to 99.5% of the "UFO reports". So Mr. Colombano should consider this reality. Maybe then he would realize that he will not need "giant computers", and it is highly possible that he will not find any "gold nuggets".

 
Also, to look for something whose origin could be thousands or millions of years, does not affect our daily life at all. Another thing is to think of a nearby origin and relevant current events. But it has been a while since the "aliens" have stopped flying their devices, and only photos and videos of conventional objects are collected, which enthusiasts of the ET attribute in good faith an identity they do not have, or tricks made deliberately to continue maintaining a group of adherents to the myth.

Milton W. Hourcade

CONCIENCIA ESPACIAL Y EL ANHELO POR INTELIGENCIA EXTRATERRESTRE

Desde el lanzamiento del primer satélite estadounidense en órbita (el Explorer I en Enero 31 de 1958) la creciente actividad espacial ha enviado cápsulas Mercury, Gemini y Apollo, las seis misiones que alunizaron, las misiones robóticas a Marte y otros planetas, las decenas de pruebas lanzadas también a asteroides y cometas, las extraordinarias imágenes provistas por los16 telescopios espaciales lanzados por India, Japón un grupo de naciones europeas y los Estados Unidos de América, más la Busqueda de Inteligencia Extraterrestre, los vuelos de los Trasbordadores y cápsulas Soyuz a la Estación Espacial Internacional, los espectaculares lanzamientos de cohetes privados y –por último pero no de menor importancia— el descubrimiento de exoplanetas, han creado entusiasmo y un ambiente especial entre astrónomos propensos al descubrimiento de vida en algún otro lugar, y a especular sobre la posibilidad de hallar vida inteligente.

La NASA informa que “A la fecha, se han descubierto y considerados “confirmados” casi 4.000 planetas. No obstante hay casi otras 3.000 detecciones de “candidatos” a exoplanetas que requieren más observaciones a fin de decir con seguridad si el exoplaneta es o no real.” 

Y el informe añade:

“Desde que se descubrieron los primeros exoplanetas a comienzos de los 1990s, el número de exoplanetas se ha duplicado aproximadamente cada 27 meses.”

Para mí, un curioso fenómeno está ocurriendo entre –al menos--  algunos astrónomos profesionales: la expectativa de encontrar y hacer contacto con otra inteligencia, el anhelo por inteligencia extraterrestre. 

Parece que nosotros como especie estamos aburridos o cansados de estar solos y comenzamos a querer alguna otra para establecer un diálogo y posible fructífera relación.

Pero esta es –sorprendentemente--  una visión muy inocente o romántica de lo que puede significar para nosotros el descubrimiento de otra inteligencia.

Personalmente, estoy muy preocupado acerca de este entusiasmo por hacer contacto con otra posible inteligencia.

Recuerdo la sabia advertencia lanzada por uno de los más brillantes talentos del mundo, el físico teórico británico Stephen Hawking cuando dijo: “Un día, podemos recibir una señal de un planeta como este, pero deberíamos preocuparnos de responderla. El encuentro con una civilización avanzada puede ser como los nativos americanos encontrando a Colón. Eso no terminó muy bien.”

Estoy persuadido de que hay astrónomos profesionales deseosos de enviar una señal de respuesta, pero entonces probablemente, deberemos prepararnos para lo peor: una invasión y la extinción de la especie humana.

Milton W. Hourcade

Mayo 7 de 2019. 

SPACE CONSCIENCE AND THE LONGING FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE

Since the launch of the first American satellite in orbit (the Explorer I in January 31, 1958) the increasing space activity that sent capsules Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, the six missions that landed on the Moon, the robotic missions to Mars and other planets, the dozens of probes launched also to asteroids and comets, the extraordinary images brought by the 16 space telescopes launched by India, Japan, a group of European nations and the United States, plus the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, the flights of Shuttles  and Soyuz capsules to the International Space Station, the spectacular launchings of private rockets, and –last but not least—the discovery of exoplanets, have created an enthusiasm and a special environment among astronomers prone to the discovery of life somewhere else, and to speculate about the possibility of finding intelligent life.

NASA reports that “To date, nearly 4,000 exoplanets have been discovered and considered "confirmed." However, there are nearly 3,000 other "candidate" exoplanet detections that require further observations in order to say for sure whether or not the exoplanet is real.” 

And the report adds:

“Since the first exoplanets were discovered in the early 1990s, the number of known exoplanets has doubled approximately every 27 months.”

For me, a curious phenomenon is happening among –at least— some professional astronomers: the expectative to find and made contact with another intelligence, the longing for extraterrestrial intelligence.

It seems that we as species are bored or tired to be alone and started wanting someone else to establish a dialog and possible fruitful relationship.

But this is –surprisingly— a very innocent or romantic vision about what could mean to us the discovery of another intelligence. 

Personally, I am very concerned about this enthusiasm for making contact with a possible other intelligence.

I do remember the wise warning launched by one of the most brilliant talents of the world, the theoretical British physicist Stephen Hawking when he said: "One day, we might receive a signal from a planet like this, but we should be wary of answering back. Meeting an advanced civilization could be like Native Americans encountering Columbus. That didn’t turn out so well".

I am persuaded that there are professional astronomers eager to send back a signal, but then probably, we should be prepared for the worst: an invasion and the extinction of the human species.

Milton W. Hourcade

May 7, 2019. 

C.I.O.V.I. – A SINGULAR EXPERIENCE IN UFOLOGY

For many UFO investigators in many parts of the World that have been working on the subject for decades, the name of C.I.O.V.I. is familiar to them, and they know how serious and reliable the work of the Uruguayan institution was.

But for the people that came to the UFO arena in recent years, I think it is good to say something about how we began, what were the predominant ideas then, how the developing of the investigation and study of cases changed our minds and re-shaped our entire look about the UFO subject.

First of all, when we began our activities we were young people. Probably I was the younger, 19 years old. Others were in the early twenties –23 to 25 years old. That factor gave us from the start enthusiasm coupled with curiosity.

That led us to get immediately in contact with organizations and people throughout the World but mainly with Argentina, Brazil and the U.S.A. 

All that people and organizations, and us –of course—shared the same will to know what was really going on, but we accepted and at a certain length enjoyed the privilege to know things that the vast majority of the people ignored. We felt depositaries of a very special secret that for the general public at that moment in history, sounded ridiculous: that we were visited by extraterrestrials and that the “flying saucers” as they were called then, were their ships.

When I was editing the book “Aliens, Ships and Hoaxes” (Amazon, Dec.27 2018, 206 pages) which fundamentally is the first and only survey done among top investigators of Europe and the Americas, I realized that all of us started with the same ideas. It is fair to recognize that those ideas have a common origin: the United States of America, through organizations like the National Investigation Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) whose name was somehow tricky because someone could think that the adjective “national”  implied an official agency, added to the fact that had its headquarters in Washington D.C., he capital city.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

The other important American institution was the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO).

Both published regularly bulletins with a lot of information, photos, and graphics.

Both also pointed to an extraterrestrial origin of UFOs.

It was the permanent investigation applying the scientific method, the systematic and needed skepticism applied to analyze the tales of the witnesses and a firm adherence to the principle of Ockham's razor what helped us to explain the hundred percent of the cases we dealt with.

And it was precisely this permanent work of investigation, study, and analysis of so many cases that convinced us that we were not dealing with extraterrestrials, that it was a myth created by the USAF as an intelligent and crafty way to cover the experimental and operational air activities related to reconnaissance missions.

A myth amplified by the media that penetrated deeply in the minds of the public in general. A myth to which we contributed innocently until we by ourselves realized that the truth was totally different.

A similar process happened with colleagues of other parts of the World.

That is why the current investigation and study of the subject has become to few individuals the research in Anthropology, Psychology or History. 

If we pay attention to the physical reality of something strange we can think about a natural phenomenon so far not known or recognized by science, or man-made devices using a superior kind of physics.

One thing I would like to rescue about C.I.O.V.I.: together with our enthusiasm and curiosity, there animated our effort the firm intention to serve the country.

Milton W. Hourcade

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