Is the search for extraterrestrial life a legitimate science or should it be off limits
By: Nachman Ben Yehuda
From: Galileo, March 21/April 1997 Note: Prof. Nachman Ben-Yehuda - from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His field of activity is the sociology of deviance and social constructions of reality, and he has published articles and books in these fields. The article is partly based on his book: and Moral Boundaries". The Chicago, 1985, pp. 146-167. Nachman Ben-Yehuda, "Deviance", University of Chicago Press
For many years, reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) appeared, mainly in the United States, as well as stories about people who came into contact, sometimes against their will, with the beings that controlled these UFOs. Lately we are witnessing more and more reports of this type in Israel as well, and they receive extensive coverage in all media. This kind of exposure raises questions about the nature of this strange phenomenon. The modern hypothesis to explain the phenomenon links these UFOs to the existence of intelligent beings outside the earth, called "extraterrestrials" or "aliens". The supporters of this hypothesis claim that these UFOs are nothing more than space vehicles of extraterrestrials visiting the Earth. This is a fantastic hypothesis, and if it turns out to be true it will make us re-evaluate our religious, philosophical and scientific views. The purpose of this article is to review the question of UFOs against the background of a more general question regarding the existence of intelligent beings in the universe, and the ways in which the question has been examined so far. The limitations of the article will require brevity and summaries, therefore it will not be able to be historically exhaustive.
One of the most fascinating and speculative questions is whether there is intelligent life in the universe apart from us (assuming that we are characterized by intelligence)…. This question is indeed ancient, and already philosophers such as Democritus from the 5th century BCE and Kant from the 18th century dealt with it. If you will, the search for an answer to this question is a source of real intellectual tension, perhaps one of the greatest possible. From the variety of possible answers to the question, two approaches emerged. One has become a real field of scientific pursuit, and it is called the "Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence", and in short: SETI, and the other has become a "deviant science" - UFOlogy (Ufology). It is clear that possible solutions to the question require several assumptions in several fields such as chemistry, physics, ecology, biology, and are all related to the question of the origin of life in general. Our experimental knowledge, as well as the assumptions we make about the manner and conditions under which life develops, will in many ways dictate the answer to the question. For example, is the development of life on Earth a unique result, or is there nothing unique about such a development, and whenever the right conditions are created, life will be created.
The source of life
The question about the origin of life has, of course, religious answers. However, there were also some scientific attempts to give answers to this question. For example, Oparin proposed back in the 20s of the century that life on Earth was formed in the ancient oceans (see: "How Life Formed", Galileo 11 p. 14). This concept compared the water of these oceans to a soup which contained various chemicals. The hypothesis is that under suitable conditions of temperature, pressure and electrical stimulation (perhaps by lightning), molecules can be formed, and in a slow and long process they develop into simple microorganisms. Thus the process of evolution may begin. Oprin thus provided a comprehensive scientific basis for understanding the conditions under which carbon-based life would develop. Another hypothesis is that of Watson and Crick (Watson), the decipherers of the structure of DNA, which claims the existence of ancient DNA-like molecules that evolved into different and diverse life forms.
The main problem with the various explanations is that they leave a large number of unsolved questions. For example, the probability of the formation of life and its development into intelligent life like ours (taking into account all the ecological conditions) is not high. And yet here we are. In this state of experimental uncertainty, there is a tendency among researchers to try more speculative explanations. Perhaps the greatest of the "speculators" is Erich von Daniken, who claimed that in the process of evolution there was involvement of what he calls "ancient astronauts", and that they were the ones who caused us to be here. Von Däniken, perhaps more than anyone else, contributed to the enormous popularization of the idea of intelligent life outside the Earth (minus a few books and science fiction books of course)…. Von Daniken's idea is interesting, but its main flaw is that most scientists strongly doubt the "proofs" he brings.
Indeed, upon careful examination most of them turn out to be quite problematic, to say the least. However, and regardless of the proofs, von Daniken's idea is in itself fascinating, and even swept away others who proposed changes and refinements of his concept. Two of the more interesting speculative approaches are those of Temple and Blumrich. Temple claimed that the Dogon tribe in Mali had astronomical knowledge that was in their possession long before Western science acquired this knowledge. It is about the knowledge that the star Sirius has a companion star B. A star which, in the absence of suitable instruments, cannot be observed. Temple takes advantage of this interest to argue that amphibious intelligent beings from the planet Sirius were involved in the development of the human race on Earth, and the knowledge came from them. Blumrich, in a rather fantastic book, claimed that the prophet Ezekiel's visions were, in fact, a detailed account of a spaceship landing. One way or another, the hypothesis about the "ancient astronauts" has been ridiculed and delegitimized, and is not accepted by science.
However, in recent years, three highly respected scientists have put forward the hypothesis that life on Earth originates from extraterrestrial life. The well-known astronomer Fred Hoyle and his colleague Wickramasinghe proposed in 1978 that space is full of prebiotic organic molecules carried on comets. According to them, at a very early stage of Earth's history, several such comets landed on it and seeded our world with molecules that created life. By the way, in the work they did a few years later, the two attributed the origin of several waves of diseases that spread across the planet to extraterrestrial factors. The second hypothesis is that of Francis Crick, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine in 1962 (with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins) for discovering the molecular structure of DNA. In 1981, Crick published a book called "Life Itself", in which he claims that intelligent beings from outside the Earth sent spores to the Earth using space vehicles.
These tools reached the earth and seeded it. Fred Hoyle and Francis Crick enjoy a great deal of scientific prestige, and it is not possible to delegitimize their approaches so easily, as, for example, it was possible to do to von Daniken. However, it is worth noting that all these theories of von Daniken, Crick and Weil, do not really solve the riddle of the formation of life, but take it one step back. For example, the question arises as to how prebiotic molecules were created on comets? And yet the question remains about the way in which life was created; And yet another question, why would any extraterrestrials want to seed the earth with life? Theories of the type of von Daniken, Francis Crick and the like assume that there is intelligent life, technologically very advanced, outside the earth. If indeed this is the case, where are they? Furthermore, if these extraterrestrials have visited Earth in the distant past, or are sending space vehicles here, then it is possible that they still continue to visit us. If, on the other hand, we adhere to a theory of the type proposed by Oprin, then it is possible to look for places in the universe where conditions have been created that, according to the theory, are suitable for the formation of life. According to this approach, whenever such conditions are created, the probability of the formation of life, and perhaps even intelligent life, increases. These forms of thinking have produced two main approaches to the observation of the subject of intelligent extraterrestrials.
Searches
One approach has developed within mainstream science, and that is the SETI approach mentioned earlier. This approach had two branches. One branch was based on broadcasting messages "We are here." If you are there - make a sound" to the space. Such transmission can be carried out by broadcasting radio waves; For example, on November 10, 1974, a 3-minute radio message was broadcast into space from the large radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. It is also possible to broadcast the message by attaching transmitters to space vehicles. For example, the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft as well as the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft contained boards (Pioneer) or records (Voyager) with information about us and the call "Hello" to possible intelligent extraterrestrials. It is worth noting that on November 4, 1976, Sir Martin Riley (Ryle), winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics and one of the most important astronomers in England at the time, published an open letter in the "New York Times", in which he asked astronomers involved in radio astronomy to be careful of spreading the news that we are here , because of the dangerous possibility that this knowledge may cause a hostile invasion of intelligent extraterrestrials on Earth. The main basis for this concern is the history of the human race, which indicates that almost every time a technologically advanced culture has met a technologically less advanced culture the encounter has ended in such a way that the less advanced culture has come out damaged - by exploitation, colonization, conquest, destruction and also extermination (for example, The Europeans' encounters with the locals in Africa; Cortez's encounter with the Aztecs and more). In many ways this warning is meaningless, as several messages have already been sent, and the envelope of radio transmissions from Earth is expanding.
