E.T. Talk: How Will We Communicate with Intelligent Life on Other Worlds?

e Astronomers’ Universe For other titles published in this series, go to www.springer.com/series/6960 e Fernando J. Ballesteros E.T. Talk How Will We Communicate with Intelligent Life on Other Worlds? Fernando J. Ballesteros Astronomical Observatory University of Valencia Paterna, Valencia Spain e-mail: [email protected] ISBN 978-1-4419-6088-7 e-ISBN 978-1-4419-6089-4 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-6089-4 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London Library of Congress Control Number: 2010931752 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) To Herminia, for being the star that illuminates my life. e Acknowledgements Even when a book is signed by a single author, it is never a single person task. Every book is in fact the outcome of several collective tasks in which a lot of people collaborate. Without their participa- tion, the book would never come about. Therefore I want to express here my gratitude to all those who made this work possible. First of all, I express my gratitude to Alzira’s city hall, Bro- mera publications, and the University of Valencia for making possible the existence of the European Prize of Popular Science Estudi General. I consider this essential, since I deem popular science an obligatory duty for scientists. In a society such as ours, modeled by scientific products, it is indispensable to acquire some background in science, in order to face with rigor and skepticism, fully aware, the challenges (someone of them frightening) of the contemporary world. For this, the task of popularizing science is crucial. There- fore, the existence of such a premium, recompensing popular science, is a great joy for me. I also want to give my gratitude to the editorial team at Springer, who have always been on the other side of the computer to help me in everything during the writing of the book. I thank Maury Solomon for her patience and understanding. I wish to express my gratitude to my colleagues (and friends) Alberto Fernández, Amelia Ortiz, Bartolo Luque, Javier Díez, Vicent Martínez, Juli Peretó, Daniel Altschuler, and Eusebio Llácer. Your corrections and suggestions, and our fruitful conversations, were a unique help, and these are in part responsible for the book in its final form. I especially thank Eusebio for all his work and help doing the translation of this book into English, Daniel for the prolog of the book, and Juli for his help in the biological chapters of the book. I also want to thank Pablo de la Cruz, Sofia Fuentes, and Guadalupe Almodovar for putting up with my questions and giving me new ideas when I was lacking inspiration. I appreciate the refreshing presence of Filomeno Sánchez, Mª José Rodríguez, vii viii Acknowledgements Federico Medina, and Marina Gómez over so many weekends, an indirect but very useful help. I would like to especially thank my father and my mother, who always trusted in me and always supported me, even when I said that I wanted to study a subject as strange as physics. Finally, I want to thank with my whole heart Herminia, my half moon, for her love, comprehension, and patience during the writing process, since she has been the one that has suffered me most. She has been the main engine of my inspiration, and a large part of whatever merit this book has belongs to her. Foreword For a long time I have been giving scientific lectures in different countries and on diverse topics, generally related to astronomy and to my work at the Arecibo Observatory. No matter which particu- lar topic I am talking about, the same question always comes up: Have we had any contact at Arecibo with “them”? My negative answer does not satisfy anyone. In fact, the answer either confirms their suspicions that there is a conspiracy afoot by higher authori- ties not to release information or their intentions to deceive the general public. The reasons for the deception have to do with the idea that, as in the movie Contact, the received messages contain important and useful information that will bring great advantage to whoever gets it. Many of us want to believe that extraterrestrial creatures can talk to us, that perhaps they are even living among us, as UFO fans believe. It would be fascinating if it were true, a more than extraor- dinary discovery, the answer to an eternal question. There is pos- sibly a deep psychological motive in this desire to know if we are alone in this huge universe, and the need to believe in something beyond our limited world, in space and time. There is no doubt, then, that this topic brings with it many scientific and philosophical discussions, as well as speculations that, on many occasions, fall into pure pseudoscience because of the lack of a reference framework. In E.T. Talk, Ballesteros provides us with this framework, introducing his arguments with clarity, erudition, and humor. Showing a mastery of ideas and relevant facts, the author briefly tells us the incredible story of our planet, to build the basis on which we consider with whom, with what, and how we could establish any kind of communication, or if that communication would ever even be possible. Among other considerations, the text presents to us the pos- sibility that life could have originated first in Mars and then later ix x Foreword “contaminated” Earth, or as Ballesteros states: “Perhaps, after all, the Martians are us.” Perhaps, and to me this would answer many questions. Daniel Roberto Altschuler Stern Professor of Physics, Universidad de Puerto Rico and Senior Research Associate, Arecibo Observatory.1 1Former Manager of Arecibo Observatory (1991–2003). Preface On July 27, 2010, a public announcement was made in the scientific community concerning the expected ending of a long search: the unequivocal detection of a radio signal coming from an extraterrestrial civilization. The timing with the vacation period, along with the prudence from the team in charge of the discovery, meant that the news went unnoticed by the general public and the mass media. However, the story, published in the academic journal Radio Astronomy Jour- nal Letters, brought about a true revolution among professional astronomers. The article was published under the unassuming title “Radio anomalies of unknown origin in G8 stars” [Osterha- gen et al. R. astr. J. Let. 371, 766–770 (2010)]. The team, led by Professor Maximilian Osterhagen from the Radio Astronomie Institüt Leuercraff, after a 2-year star-scanning period in the galactic south, detected in the star Tau Ceti in the constellation of the Whale, an anomalous emission of radio waves consisting of a series of pulses separated by intervals of silence. The anomaly sprang from the fact that it was almost a cyclical signal. Even though it is usual to find cyclical patterns in nature, the strange periodicity of this emission quickly attracted Osterha- gen because the temporal interval between radio pulses varied in a strange way. This fact made the team think that perhaps somebody in the orbit of the source had been able, at some point, to intercept the periodic radio pulses (whose origin was not clear either) and thus hinder the reception of some of these pulses. The team then decided it would try to determine which period was the shortest between pulses, to assess if the rest of the periods were integer multiples of this shortest period. What they learned was that the periods between pulses were integer multiples of the third part of the shortest. This time of one third of the shortest period had to be, thus, the real period that determined the astronomical phenomenon. The surprise was that xi xii Preface not all integer multiples were equally possible. On the contrary, they found the following values in increasing order: 3, 5, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 29, 31, 41, 43... These values, taken in pairs, have the peculiarity of being twin primes, which is to say, pairs of prime numbers separated by two units. But it was absolutely impossible that a physical phenomenon could produce a numeric sequence like this. Therefore, it would have been necessary for the “phenomenon” that produced this to know math. So, we must conclude that Osterhagen’s team had found our galactic neighbors – an extraterrestrial civilization – at 12 light years away. There could be no alternative explanation. Such news should have certainly been the most important news of the millennium, in spite of the calm way in which it was investigated and announced. However, it wasn’t. That’s because the story above is mere fiction, and, sadly, nothing similar has ever actually happened. But perhaps it helped you to experience the possible effect that such an announcement might have on you. How did you react to the previous paragraph? Which emotions, sensations, or thoughts did you have when you read about the discovery of another civilization among the stars? In many cases, the answer is undoubtedly incredulity.

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