“The human imagination is a preview of coming attractions,” Albert Einstein was fond of saying. Viruses are essentially roving segments of genetic material that have learned how to “put on space suits and leave the cell,” observed Greg Bear in his epic work of science fiction, Darwin’s Radio, that mirrors Einstein’s adage, suggesting that viruses in our genome function as carriers of evolutionary messages—a genetic radio, so to speak. In this sense, we may simply be spaceships for virus.
Today’s “Insomnia File” episode offers two stories of cosmic insight. The first is about ”An Accident More Complex than the Universe” from former astrophysicist and hard science-fiction author Alastair Reynolds, who’s epiphany is found in his novel , Blue Remembered Earth — first of a trilogy which follows humanity’s development over many centuries and Paul Davies, The Demon in the Machine.
Two of our planet’s leading astrophysicists say it’s time to get serious about aliens: Adam Frank of the University of Rochester and Andrew Siemion, director of the U of California Berkeley SETI Research Center, who wrote in an email that “I suspect there are other intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way – we just need to look!” But, asks Frank, will they, or have they, survived their Anthropocene bottleneck?
“These are utterly different worlds compared to our own Earth,” said Harvard University astronomer Li Zeng about the chances that water worlds are a common feature of the Milky Way, which was heightened by research using computer simulations showing that sub-Neptune-sized planets, that is, planets featuring radii about two to four times that of Earth, are likely to be water worlds, and not gas dwarfs surrounded by thick atmospheres as conventionally believed.
Earth’s current technological civilization is a model for alien-planet evolution, observed SETI Institute astronomer, Seth Shostak “But having now looked for signals for 50 years, we are going through a process of realizing the way our technology is advancing is probably a good indicator of how other civilizations – if they’re out there – would’ve progressed. Certainly what we’re looking at out there is an evolutionary moving target, If AI-powered machines evolved, we would be more likely to spot signals from them than from the “biological” life that invented them,” he added.
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