A Major Requirement For Intelligent Life
The Search For Intelligent Life
Launched in 1999, SETI@home was the largest search for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. For 20 years, volunteers analyzed radio signals looking for patterns that could not be ascribed to noise and therefore potential output of intelligent life.
In parallel, astronomers have been looking for suns with planets to identify sites where life is likely to emerge.
The conditions for life, as we know it, are well known. We have explored and continue to explore the solar system where a few spots, such as Jupiter’s moon Europa, seem to have conditions suitable for life to emerge. There is a huge leap from a primordial soup of elements and some lightning to create a self-replicating cell with DNA, RNA, enzymes, and a cell wall. We have jumped that.
And then there is intelligent life. The ability to communicate, create social groups, travel, and make music are signs of intelligence. While the path from microbial life to intelligent life, such as chimpanzees and dolphins, has not been verified, scientists do talk about it as if it is natural, expected, unsurprising. We have also jumped that.
The Brilliant Lifeform
And then there is brilliance. The path of life, in theory, actually continues onto brilliance, where the human stands alone. Despite having a smaller brain than elephants and whales, the human tamed fire and built tools. Brilliance is revealed in ability to build temples and pyramids aligned with the celestial. And brilliance flowers in the ability to send rockets, telescopes, and radio waves into space.
Again, scientists talk about if the jump from intelligence to brilliance is small. ‘The Missing Link’ is made to be a single, small, natural step.
This is the life we are able to look for in space. Life that creates a radio mark that can be detected across interstellar distances. We seek advanced civilizations zooming around in their solar systems emitting lots of radio waves in their communications. Some may be even pointing their transmitters to us, our solar system.
Suicide Likely By The Brilliant
We have the technology to detect such radio transmissions. Can we assume advanced civilizations last (and their radio chatter) for millennia? If the transmissions occur for a short time, the tiny window in both time and space makes it closer to impossible to detect.
Let us study the one brilliant life we know well.
Humans figured out that other brilliant life would also listen to radio messages and decided to create a program called METI to deal with the creation and transmission of messages to aliens.
In 1974, the Arecibo Observatory was used to send the first known intentional radio message transmission into space.
Lone Signal was a crowdfunded METI project to send interstellar messages to a possible extraterrestrial civilization. Based at the Jamesburg Earth Station in Carmel, California, the project’s beacon, transmitted short, 144-character messages to the red dwarf star Gliese 526, located 17.6 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Boötes. Commencing continuous operations on June 17, 2013, the project ceased transmission shortly after it began, due to lack of funding.
Not only are we unable to sustain transmission of ‘intelligent signals’, we are unlikely to sustain our civilization itself. Today our brilliance is more visible in the form of weapons that rain down somewhere on the planet everyday. Also seen in climate change which we have caused. And also clear is our acceleration into the Sixth Great Extinction, thanks to our relentless war on Nature.
This makes the window for other brilliant life to discover us via their version of SETI very short: barely a few decades. Long before our signals reach them, we will most certainly be extinct.
A Brilliance Pulled Up
Intelligent life on Earth does use the heavens — magnetic fields and constellations — to navigate. Butterflies, birds, elephants, and whales migrate across vast distances without maps and compasses. They may wonder about the celestial but see no reason to move towards it.
However, if there are most odd celestial events, mysterious and inviting, then a pull is created. Imagine a flat sky with no changes night after night. It would certainly would be pretty like a beautiful lace, but would be unable to generate a pull. It is unlikely any life would reach upwards.
Now, put a moon that has changes phases daily. With its phases predictable. It becomes an invitation to create a calendar. Now add a slower, odd motion that has a cycle of 18.6 years. For some reason this attracted the attention of many civilizations in our history building large observatories (such as Stonehenge, Callanish, and Chimney Rock) for the rare lunar standstill.
Now add eclipses. Curiosity will pull the intelligence upwards into brilliant action.
Now add in planets that move most oddly, wandering amongst steady constellations. The storytellers will emerge and create dramas in the celestial theater.
Brilliance will be pulled, drawn to explore, to connect. For thousands of years we were drawn to the heavens and in the 20th century we finally achieved escape velocity. Amidst a lot of radio noise.
The Missing Requirement For Brilliance
A solitary planet around a sun may be hospitable for life, but not enough for brilliant life. There have to be several planets.
The planet that is likely to flower brilliance is one with a moon exactly in proportion to its sun. The ratio of the sun’s distance from earth (150,000,000km) to its size (diameter 1,392,700km) is almost exactly the same as that of the moon’s distance from earth (384,400km) to its size (diameter 3,475km). This allows for the rare full eclipses and many partial eclipses.
It becomes obvious to add an additional requirement that the orbit of the moon causes predictable eclipses (both partial and full) but in a pattern that is hard to discover.
Then, as on Earth, brilliance will be pulled skyward. And seek contact with another brilliant civilization.
