Space
Astrophysicist Avi Loeb Spoke About The Consequences Of Contact With An Advanced Civilization
“If the Perseverance rover finds evidence of microbes on Mars, our self-esteem will not suffer, as it is clear that we are more intelligent than they are,” Harvard’s Avi Loeb wrote in an email to the Daily Galaxy, which asked him what he thought of the impact of the evidence for an advanced alien civilization.
“But if the rover hits the wreckage of a spacecraft far more advanced than we’ve ever built, our egos will be challenged.”
“The illusion of superiority and unjustified arrogance is deeply rooted in human nature. This led the Nazi regime during World War II to cause the deaths of more than 70 million people, or 3% of the world’s population, an order of magnitude higher than the death toll caused by the COVID-19 virus. The minor genetic differences that motivated Nazism would seem ludicrous in the presence of a much more advanced civilization,” Loeb noted in his email.
“It is often argued,” Loeb noted, “that the general public already believes that we are not alone in the universe, and therefore the social consequences of looking for technological signs of another civilization will be negligible. However, this argument is wrong.
“Humanity’s reaction to such a discovery will largely depend on the details of the results: is the equipment autonomous or robotic, is it controlled by biological or artificial intelligence, does it represent a life form that we have never seen, and, finally, what are its intentions?”.
“Humans are currently experiencing an AI revolution that suggests something similar could be happening elsewhere in the universe,” says Susan Schneider, director of the Center for the Mind of the Future, and William F. Dietrich, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy of Mind, Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute, Atlantic University Florida, who wrote about the intersection of SETI and AI.
“Once society has developed the technology that could bring them into contact with the cosmos, she notes, they will only be a few hundred years away from changing their own paradigm from biology to artificial intelligence.”
Contact types
In his email, Loeb explained: “Our historical migration out of Africa began about a hundred thousand years ago, but future migration from Earth could be triggered by a dialogue with a messenger from afar that is unlike anything we have seen before.
“Protocols for contacting extraterrestrial intelligence were largely inspired in the past by the ability to detect radio signals from planets around distant stars. Given that the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, is 4.4 light years away, it would take a decade or more for such signals to be transmitted back and forth. As a result, they have no implications for our immediate future.
“But a different type of contact can lead to quick consequences,” Loeb notes. “This refers to physical objects from another civilization that are already here and waiting to be noticed, like a package in our mailbox. Arriving equipment doesn’t have to be mindless, but may have artificial intelligence (AI) that looks for information about habitable planets around the sun.
“This type of meeting implies instant contact without significant delay in communication time. The ability to communicate immediately changes the response protocol with respect to the delayed radio signal.”
In early 2021, political news website The Hill reported that video footage of an unidentified flying object had been leaked online, raising questions that are still unanswered. The video, obtained by documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell, was recorded by the US Navy and shows a spherical object flying and zipping over water off the coast of San Diego for several minutes before sinking into the ocean.
“Why does science have to be boring?” Loeb asks, referring to the Navy video. “Here we are talking about a discovery that would change the history of mankind, so how dare we dismiss it.“
Recently, a group of experts from Harvard University, led by physics
professor Avi Loeb, announced the possible presence of alien space
debris in Earth’s orbit, reports the Daily Star.
Leading
space research expert Professor Loeb is confident that the discovery of
such “interstellar objects could help expand our knowledge of possible
alien civilizations and technologies. A team of scientists is conducting
research to confirm that some of the objects in our orbit may be
connected to other star systems.
During an interview with Live
Science, Professor Loeb explained that these objects could enter the
solar system from interstellar space, defying Jupiter’s gravitational
pull and occupying limited orbits around the sun.
Some of them may
have technological origins similar to the probes sent by mankind into
interstellar space, such as Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, Pioneer 10 and 11
and New Horizons.
However,
despite these interesting assumptions, Professor Loeb did not specify
what specific objects he was talking about. In his research report, he
notes that there could be “a significant number” of potentially
detectable objects in Earth’s orbit.
To confirm their assumptions,
the team of scientists uses computer simulations and the Vera Rubin
Observatory (Chile) with a high-resolution camera of 3.2 billion pixels.
This will allow for regular observations of the Southern sky and the
possibility of detecting several captured objects about the size of a
football field.
It is assumed that these interstellar objects passed through the
boundaries of the solar system and may carry unique information about
other civilizations and their technologies. If we could confirm the
origin of these objects, the mysteries that open before us, this would
be a real breakthrough in space exploration.
Professor Loeb
expresses hope that the new research will not only help expand our
knowledge of extraterrestrial technologies, but may also lead to the
discovery of new alien civilizations . Answers to such questions can be
of global significance and influence our understanding of the place of
mankind in the Universe.
And
while there are still many questions and assumptions, the study by
Professor Loeb and his team opens a new chapter in space exploration.
Each new discovery can be the key to deciphering the mysteries of the
cosmos and the possibility of encountering alien life forms.
Betelgeuse, a red giant on the brink of death, continues to show
unusual behavior. After the Great Blackout, which occurred in late 2019
and early 2020, the star became unusually bright. It is now the seventh
brightest star in the sky, while it normally ranks tenth. This has led
to speculation that Betelgeuse is preparing to explode in a
spectacularly large supernova.
However, scientists believe it’s too early to tell, and it’s likely
that this behavior is due to ongoing fluctuations after the Great
Blackout of 2019, and the star will return to normal within a decade.
Betelgeuse is one of the most interesting stars in the sky. It is
about 700 light-years from Earth and is a red giant in the last stage of
its life. It is also an unusual star for a red giant because it was
previously a monster blue-white O-type star, the most massive class of
stars.
Betelgeuse has changed its spectral type because it has almost
exhausted its hydrogen reserves. It now burns helium into carbon and
oxygen and has expanded to a gigantic size: about 764 times the size of
the Sun and about 16.5 to 19 times its mass.
Eventually it will run out of fuel to burn, become a supernova, eject
its outer material, and its core will collapse into a neutron star.
Before the Great Blackout, Betelgeuse also had periodic fluctuations
in brightness. The longest of these cycles is about 5.9 years and the
other is 400 days. But it seems that the Great Blackout caused changes
in these oscillations.
A new paper by astrophysicist Morgan McLeod of the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has shown that the 400-day
cycle appears to have been halved. This pulsational cycle is probably
caused by expansion and contraction within the star. According to
simulations carried out by MacLeod and his colleagues, the convective
flow inside Betelgeuse may have risen and become material that separates
from the star.
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