SETI Success 

My own personal Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) began 75 years  ago when my grandfather pointed out pale red Mars in the early evening sky. As in so many other areas of life, things have now come full circle. Today, I am  happy to report, “Mission accomplished!” 

Our collective SETI is over: Eureka! We found it. However, we will not be  communicating with these extraterrestrial neighbors anytime soon. For better  or worse, they exist in a region of spacetime that is currently disjoint from  ours. Let me explain. 

In the early days of space exploration, we imagined we were on the bridge of  the Starship Enterprise, alongside Captains Kirk and Picard, cruising the  Universe, scrupulously obeying the Prime Directive. We took great pains not to  interfere with what could be indigenous ecosystems. To that end, we sterilized  every inch of our hardware before launch. 

We meant well, but we lacked the technology to create a perfectly sterile  environment. As a result, we have unwittingly launched trillions of microbial  cells beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. We have littered inner space with  microbes and we have deposited our ‘teeming’ hardware on many of the  planets and moons in our solar system. 

“So what!” you say. “As far as we know, no place in this solar system, other  than Earth, can sustain life.”  

Sorry, that’s wrong! You should have said, “As far as we know there is no place  in this solar system, other than Earth, where life has spontaneously  emerged…or is likely to do so any time soon.” That’s certainly true! 

It is even reasonable to speculate that there is no place in this solar system,  other than Earth, where life could have spontaneously emerged, i.e. where the  environmental conditions were compatible with biogenesis.

Riddle: How is Life like Energy? Answer: According to the Law of Conservation,  you can’t create it and neither can you destroy it.  

Wrong again? We create life all the time; we call it procreation; and we see life  destroyed all around us; we call that death. But procreation does not create  Life, it just proliferates it. And the death of a single organism, or even the  extinction of an entire species, does not destroy Life per se. It certainly does  destroy a life but only so that Life itself can adapt, prosper, and most  importantly, endure. Death is a mechanism by which Life ensures its survival. 

So we need to ask a different question: “Are there places in our solar system,  other than Earth, where living organisms, once present, could survive and  proliferate?” The answer to this question is certainly yes. 

“Certainly?” How could anyone know that for sure? It’s simpler than you might  think. Use Earth as a model. Living on Earth today, it is tempting to think that it  was always all bread and circuses. But 4 billion years ago, this was no Garden  of Eden! 

First, imagine a perpetual storm with hard cold rain sizzling on contact with  hot ground. Imagine daily earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, land masses  breaking apart and colliding like icebergs in open water. 

Then imagine RNA and DNA molecules synthesizing, and unicellular  organisms evolving! Imagine these prokaryotes teaming up to form colonies  and, ultimately, eukaryotes (nucleated cells). 

Then imagine these life forms spreading into every nook and cranny on the  planet, from the deepest ocean depths to the highest mountain peaks, from  the rims of simmering volcanoes and steaming ocean vents to the polar  regions.  

You can even imagine Snowball Earth covered in ice, from the equator to the  poles, for 300 million years. Terrestrial life can seemingly adapt to any  challenge the environment throws at it. Catch your breath, oxygen; or if you’re  a plant, carbon dioxide; or if neither is available, how about some methane?

If there is a way to destroy Life itself, utterly and entirely, we have no idea how  to do it. Organisms are resilient, species are adaptable; beyond that, once  alive, some organisms can survive in a state of suspended animation…for  days, years, perhaps even eons.  

The one thing we know about terrestrial life is that you can’t kill it. Shoot it into  space, bury it in glacial ice, scald it at the mouths of volcanoes and sea vents,  crush it in the depths of the ocean. Nothing makes any difference. It adapts, it  endures.  

Tardigrades (Water Bears) can survive without air, water, or  nourishment for extended periods in outer space. Organisms trapped in the  permafrost have been rejuvenated after lying dormant for centuries. There  does not appear to be any hard and fast limit to resurrection’s reach.  

All of which raises this question: If life is so resilient, why isn’t it constantly  emerging everywhere in the known universe, from the Moon and Mars to  Neptune and beyond? Again, let’s use Earth as our model. 

Life emerged on Earth ‘very shortly’ after the formation of the planet. And, as  far as we know, it has not happened again! On this most bio-friendly orb,  biogenesis appears to be one and done. If sustainable life on Earth ever does  have a second point of origin, it will be in some laboratory…or at some nuclear  facility. 

Hypothesis: The probability of Life emerging is the reciprocal of the probability  of Life vanishing.  

Whether Life, intelligent or otherwise, has emerged, or could emerge, elsewhere in the universe is now moot. It doesn’t matter; we have injected  space with enough living organisms to ensure that life will colonize numerous  planets and moons in our solar system. That life will adapt to conditions no  matter how inhospitable, and it will evolve taking on novel characteristics  specifically suited to each environment. Even if Earth were to vanish from the  sky tonight, life would evolve elsewhere based on the primordial RNA/DNA  molecule synthesized on Earth almost 4 billion years ago.

But what of other solar systems, other galaxies? Both Voyagers (I and II) are  now in deep space heading to the stars. They carry an organic load likely to  create new ecosystems, new biospheres, elsewhere in our galaxy and,  eventually elsewhere in the Universe. We have met ‘the aliens’…and they are  us! 

Ok, but how do we know that this extraterrestrial life will be intelligent. Afterall,  it’s only in recent years that we’ve been talking about animals as ‘intelligent’. Again, Earth. We now believe that intelligence pervades the biosphere, all  across the animal kingdom, and quite possibly emerging in plants and in  unicellular organisms as well.  

Sidebar: There is a distinction between intelligent and conscious.  Supercomputers, for example, may be intelligent but not conscious; and we  can imagine an organism where the reverse might be true. But this important  distinction will not concern us here. We will use the terms interchangeably for  now. 

According to William Miller, Jr., perhaps channeling Alfred North Whitehead  and/or Roger Penrose, life and consciousness are coterminous. If you are  alive, you are conscious; if you are conscious, you’re alive.  

‘Being alive’ includes being self-aware and capable of creative responses to fresh challenges. Consciousness is not a ‘feature’ of living organisms; it is part  of the definition of Life itself. 

According to this way of thinking, there is no such thing as a bad boy, a stupid  kid, or an unintelligent organism. 

We can be confident that we are not on the brink of the Zombie Apocalypse. (I  apologize if that offends the sensibility of our 10 year old readers.) When we  do finally make physical contact with these extraterrestrial life forms, be  assured they will be as smart as we are…if not smarter. 

So the Search for Extraterrestrial Life (SETI) is over. We found it! But success is bittersweet. We found it because we created it. Unlike the Beats and Hippies of the last century, we have ‘found ourselves’…at last, albeit in a mirror. 

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Image: René Magritte. [Title of the Work]. 1931. Oil on canvas, 727 mm × 542 mm.