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"Astronomers will have scanned enough star systems by 2040 that we'll have discovered alien-produced electromagnetic signals," said Seth Shostak of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, Calif. during a talk at the 2014 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) symposium at Stanford University.
SETI has until now sought radio signals from worlds like Earth. In the current search for advanced extraterrestrial life SETI experts say the odds favor detecting alien AI rather than biological life because the time between aliens developing radio technology and artificial intelligence would be brief. “If we build a machine with the intellectual capability of one human, then within 5 years, its successor is more intelligent than all humanity combined,” says Seth Shostak, SETI chief astronomer. “Once any society invents the technology that could put them in touch with the cosmos, they are at most only a few hundred years away from changing their own paradigm of sentience to artificial intelligence,” he says.
ET machines would be infinitely more intelligent and durable than the biological intelligence that created them. Intelligent machines would be immortal, and would not need to exist in the carbon-friendly “Goldilocks Zones” current SETI searches focus on. An AI could self-direct its own evolution, each "upgrade" would be created with the sum total of its predecessor’s knowledge preloaded.
ET artifacts coordinated by computers, suggests British physicist, Stephen Wolfram, would look far more like a natural artifact. It is easy to distinguish a technological artifact such as a car from a natural object such as a tree. The tree is far more complicated. But, says Wolfram,"this is simply because our technological artifacts are primitive. As they become more complex - with computer processors enabling them to make a moment-by-moment decisions - they will begin to look just as complex as trees and people and stars." We have slim chance, he suggests, of distinguishing an ET artifact from a natural celestial object.
SETI's chief astronomer, Seth Shostak, says that "artificially intelligent alien life would be likely to migrate to places where both matter and energy — the only things he says would be of interest to the machine-based life — would be in plentiful supply. That means the SETI hunt may need to focus its attentions near hot, young stars or even near the centers of galaxies."
Writing in Acta Astronautica, Shostak says that the odds favour detecting such alien AI rather than "biological" life. Seti researchers have long argued that nature may have solved the problem of life using different designs or chemicals, suggesting extraterrestrials would not only not look like us, but that they will not be carbon based life forms, but be bound to follow "at least some rules of biochemistry, live for a finite period of time, procreate, and above all be subject to the processes of evolution."
"If you look at the timescales for the development of technology, at some point you invent radio and then you go on the air and then we have a chance of finding you," he told BBC News."But within a few hundred years of inventing radio - at least if we're any example - you invent thinking machines; we're probably going to do that in this century. So you've invented your successors and only for a few hundred years are you... a 'biological' intelligence."
From a probability point of view, if AI-powered machines evolved, we would be more likely to spot signals from them than from the "biological" life that invented them.
"But having now looked for signals for 50 years, Seti is going through a process of realizing the way our technology is advancing is probably a good indicator of how other civilisations - if they're out there - would've progressed. Certainly what we're looking at out there is an evolutionary moving target."
Dr Shostak says that artificially intelligent alien life would be likely to migrate to places where both matter and energy - the only things he says would be of interest to the machines - would be in plentiful supply. That means the Seti hunt may need to focus its attentions near hot, young stars or even near the centers of galaxies.
"I think we could spend at least a few percent of our time... looking in the directions that are maybe not the most attractive in terms of biological intelligence but maybe where sentient machines are hanging out." Shostak thinks SETI ought to consider expanding its search to the energy- and matter-rich neighborhoods of hot stars, black holes and neutron stars.
Data centers like this generate a lot of heat, and keeping them cool is a major challenge for modern computing. Intelligent computers would likely seek out a low-temperature habitat. Bok globules (image at top of page) are another search target for sentient machines. These dense regions of dust and gas are notorious for producing multiple-star systems. At around negative 441 degrees Fahrenheit, they are about 160 degrees F colder than most of interstellar space.
This climate could be a major draw because thermodynamics implies that machinery will be more efficient in cool regions that can function as a large “heat sink”. A Bok globule’s super-cooled environment might represent the Goldilocks Zone for the AI powered machines, says Shostak. But because black holes and Bok globules are not hospitable to life as we know it, they are not on SETI's prime target list.
“Machines have different needs,” he says. “They have no obvious limits to the length of their existence, and consequently could easily dominate the intelligence of the cosmos. In particular, since they can evolve on timescales far, far shorter than biological evolution, it could very well be that the first machines on the scene thoroughly dominate the intelligence in the galaxy. It’s a “winner take all” scenario.”
According to the British physicist Stephen Wolfram, intelligent life is inevitable. But there is a hitch. Although intelligent life is inevitable, we will never find it -at least not by looking out in the Milky Way. As evidence Wolfram points out In order to compress more and more information into our communication signals - be they mobile phone conversations or computer- we remove all redundancy or pattern. If anything in a signal repeats, then clearly it can be excised. But this process of removing any pattern from a signal make it look more and more random - in fact, pretty much like the random radio "noise" that rains down on Earth coming from stars and interstellar gas clouds.
According to Wolfram, if someone beamed our own 21st-century communication signals at us from space we would be hard pressed determining whether they were artificial or natural. So what chance do we have of distinguishing an ET communication from the general background radio static of the cosmos?
ET artifacts coordinated by computers would look far more like a natural artifact. It is easy to distinguish a technological artifact such as a car from a natural object such as a tree. The tree is far more complicated. But, says Wolfram,"this is simply because our technological artifacts are primitive. As they become more complex - with computer processors enabling them to make a moment-by-moment decisions - they will begin to look just as complex as trees and people and stars." We have slim chance, he suggests, of distinguishing an ET artifact from a natural celestial object.
If Wolfram is right and ETs are out there but we will not be able to recognize them - either in their communications or their artifacts - then of course they could be here in the Solar System and we would not have noticed.
Wolfram thinks ETs will not want to travel to Earth - or anywhere else for that matter. In Wolfram's view, everything in the Universe is the product of a computer program. In fact, he imagines an abstract cyber-universe of all conceivable computer programs, all the way from the simplest up to the most complex. This "computational universe" contains everything from the Apple Macintosh operating system to a programme for creating a faster-than-light starship
Wolfram believes he has found nature's big secret - how it generates the complexity of the world, everything from a rhododendron to a tree to a barred spiral galaxy by applying simple rules over and over again as a simple computer programs.
Wolfram came to this remarkable conclusion in the early 1980s when he discovered that the simplest kind of computer program - known as a cellular automaton - can generate infinite complexity if its output is repeatedly fed back in as its input. Wolfram has found evidence that the kind of computer program that produces endless complexity can be implemented "not just systems of biological molecules but in all sorts of physical systems - chaotic gas clouds, systems of subatomic particles and so on. He concludes that all over the Universe life - though definitely not life as we know it - will spring up spontaneously. It is a fundamental feature of matter."
The existence of this computational universe is the crucial thing. But the reality is it would be it easier and more efficient for an ET civilization to stay at home and use a computer to search the computational universe for useful programs rather than try to get the same information by hunting for ETs to talk to among the 200 billion or so stars in the Milky Way. "It's a simple numbers game," says Wolfram.
Everything is generated by computer program,"and that includes you and me," says Wolfram. "Someone halfway across the Galaxy could have found the computer program for you and conversing with you at this very moment."
The Daily Galaxy via astrobio.net, BBC.com, M. Chown, The Universe Next Door and A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram
WAAAGH Sparky! 1400 (ish) - On the rebound!
Kommander Sparks DKoK 1000 (ish) - Now on the backburner
- Men, you're lucky men. Soon, you'll all be fighting for your planet. Many of you will be dying for your planet. A few of you will be put through a fine mesh screen for your planet. They will be the luckiest of all.
kronk wrote: Is that a swimming pool on the bottom floor?
Water tank I believe.
But... I like your idea better!
I know there's silos in the midwest that are connect via underground rails. I've heard they have their own wells and one has an underground river. Great spot for turbine generators. OFF GRID! *
*sorry, my inner-survivalist lurking.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/02/13 02:33:26
Waiting for my shill money from Spiral Arm Studios
Not only can you live off grid, but look damn sexy while doing it. Missile silos are the it survivalist home!
Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines
Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
"Astronomers will have scanned enough star systems by 2040 that we'll have discovered alien-produced electromagnetic signals," said Seth Shostak of the SETI...
He's lying. Even if by some fluke chance we do discover alien-produced electromagnetic signals he's still lying, because he has no valid basis to make this prediction. We have a sample size of one, and trying to extrapolate beyond that is difficult at best.
"When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."
-C.S. Lewis
I always thought it'd be cool to turn one of those into a house. My biggest fear is how many unknown forgotten Russian installations might be out there that still have them as strategic targets.
Mandorallen turned back toward the insolently sneering baron. 'My Lord,' The great knight said distantly, 'I find thy face apelike and thy form misshapen. Thy beard, moreover, is an offence against decency, resembling more closely the scabrous fur which doth decorate the hinder portion of a mongrel dog than a proper adornment for a human face. Is it possibly that thy mother, seized by some wild lechery, did dally at some time past with a randy goat?' - Mimbrate Knight Protector Mandorallen.
Excerpt from "Seeress of Kell", Book Five of The Malloreon series by David Eddings.
"You need not fear us, unless you are a dark heart, a vile one who preys on the innocent; I promise, you can’t hide forever in the empty darkness, for we will hunt you down like the animals you are, and pull you into the very bowels of hell." Iron - Within Temptation
I always thought it'd be cool to turn one of those into a house. My biggest fear is how many unknown forgotten Russian installations might be out there that still have them as strategic targets.
Fortunately all these installations will be able to do is press flashy buttons that cause the rusted doors on a silo somewhere to creak slightly and possibly cause a rusty old ICBM to misfire.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/02/13 10:16:37
insaniak wrote: Sometimes, Exterminatus is the only option.
And sometimes, it's just a case of too much scotch combined with too many buttons...
Not that we can ever send a signal back in a timely fashion, or even guarantee that their civilisation still exists by the time the signal reaches us, or go and visit.
Or even for that matter, figure out what the damn signal says, could be a threat, could be a welcome message, could be a tampon commercial. The main issue I have with any of the xeno-sciences is that they all make vague assumptions that any alien species is going to think in a manner very similar to us, you can work out a human language because all human intelligence is vaguely similar, but how the gak are you going to work out an unknown language which might not even share the same basic instinctual thought processes?
And that is why you hear people yelling FOR THE EMPEROR rather than FOR LOGICAL AND QUANTIFIABLE BASED DECISIONS FOR THE BETTERMENT OF THE MAJORITY!
Phototoxin wrote:Kids go in , they waste tonnes of money on marnus calgar and his landraider, the slaneshi-like GW revel at this lust and short term profit margin pleasure. Meanwhile father time and cunning lord tzeentch whisper 'our games are better AND cheaper' and then players leave for mantic and warmahordes.
daveNYC wrote:The Craftworld guys, who are such stick-in-the-muds that they manage to make the Ultramarines look like an Ibiza nightclub that spiked its Red Bull with LSD.
Strikes me as humanity too full of itself. If we find them by them, it's because we found a more primitive species than ourselves and we rock. If we don't find any signs, these people will say they don't exist-if aliens are out there that have space travel, they're likely more advanced than us and can mask their presence from dumb humans. Seriously, putting a timeframe on finding them is dumb and/or arrogant. They're there or they aren't. We'll find em when they want to be found.
Reality is a nice place to visit, but I'd hate to live there.
Manchu wrote:I'm a Catholic. We eat our God.
Due to work, I can usually only ship any sales or trades out on Saturday morning. Please trade/purchase with this in mind.
The odds of life NOT being out somewhere in the universe are now looking infinitesimally small, so we'll find signs of life sooner rather than later, and if we don't blow ourselves up first or get hit with a cosmic sniper round (aka Comet and/or Asteroid), we'll probably find intelligent life sooner or later.
Putting a date to it might not be the smartest thing though. His underlying point is likely that with the pace of current findings, we're likely to find [i[something[/i] by 2040, but he said it more strongly than that.
Why's there the assumption that aliens would be using radio waves to communicate or create Ais? Why would their machines need to generate heat? Those assumptions are based on how we developed. Take humanity back a couple of thousand years and start us up again and see if we wind up in the same place with the same technology as we have now. Any predictions that we make are based off of our own understanding. Who's to say we have all the facts, or that aliens would even approach things in the same way we do? But I suppose sticking a date up there at least gives us a target. We may be surrounded by other species, but we're just not looking for the right signs, which I suppose could be a little sad.
That said, when alien life is discovered the universe hopefully won't go all Old Man's War on our arse.
Wyrmalla wrote: That said, when alien life is discovered the universe hopefully won't go all Old Man's War on our arse.
I wouldn't mind it playing out like the To Serve Man episode of Twilight Zone
"So, do please come along when we're promoting something new and need photos for the facebook page or to send to our regional manager, do please engage in our gaming when we're pushing something specific hard and need to get the little kiddies drifting past to want to come in an see what all the fuss is about. But otherwise, stay the feth out, you smelly, antisocial bastards, because we're scared you are going to say something that goes against our mantra of absolute devotion to the corporate motherland and we actually perceive any of you who've been gaming more than a year to be a hostile entity as you've been exposed to the internet and 'dangerous ideas'. " - MeanGreenStompa
"Then someone mentions Infinity and everyone ignores it because no one really plays it." - nkelsch
ET machines would be infinitely more intelligent and durable than the biological intelligence that created them. Intelligent machines would be immortal, and would not need to exist in the carbon-friendly “Goldilocks Zones” current SETI searches focus on. An AI could self-direct its own evolution, each "upgrade" would be created with the sum total of its predecessor’s knowledge preloaded.
that Hole part sound like something right out of Issac Asimov robot series our the culture series.
Not only can you live off grid, but look damn sexy while doing it. Missile silos are the it survivalist home!
"The Provisional Government is going to fall, and when governments fall people like me are the first ones shot." -- Quark (Emissary)
Quark: It’s good to want things.
Odo: Even things you can’t have?
Quark: Especially things you can’t have.
-Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, “The Passenger”
1400 (ish) - On the rebound!
1000 (ish) - Now on the backburner
And if you're drinkin' well, you know that you're my friend and I say "I think I'll have myself a beer" 