NASA Proposes New Methodology for Communicating the Discovery of Alien Life (cosmosmagazine.com) 85
"NASA scientists have just published a commentary article in Nature calling for a framework for reporting extraterrestrial life to the world," reports Cosmos magazine (in an article shared by Slashdot reader Tesseractic):
"Our generation could realistically be the one to discover evidence of life beyond Earth," write NASA Chief Scientist James Green and colleagues. "With this privileged potential comes responsibility. As life-detection objectives become increasingly prominent in space sciences, it is essential to open a community dialogue about how to convey information in a subject matter that is diverse, complicated and has a high potential to be sensationalised..."
Green and colleagues argue that...we should reframe such a discovery, so it isn't presented as a single moment when aliens are announced to the world. Instead, it should be seen as a progressive endeavour, reflecting the process of science itself. "If, instead, we recast the search for life as a progressive endeavour, we convey the value of observations that are contextual or suggestive but not definitive and emphasise that false starts and dead ends are an expected part of a healthy scientific process," they write. This will involve scientists, technologists and the media talking to each other to agree firstly on objective standards of evidence for life, and secondly on the best way to communicate that evidence.
This, they say, should preferably be done now before a detection of life is made, rather than scramble to put it together in the aftermath.
"The team kickstarts the conversation by proposing a 'confidence of life detection' (CoLD) scale, which contains seven steps taking us from first exciting potential detection of life to definitive confirmation," Cosmos points out. (With the stages including the discoveries of unquestionable biosignatures, a habitable environment, and then corroborating evidence.) Cosmos argues that "This is an increasingly important conversation to have — because experts think that the odds aliens exist are high."
And they close their article by quoting NASA's team. "Whatever the outcome of the dialogue, what matters is that it occurs. In doing so, we can only become more effective at communicating the results of our work, and the wonder associated with it."
Green and colleagues argue that...we should reframe such a discovery, so it isn't presented as a single moment when aliens are announced to the world. Instead, it should be seen as a progressive endeavour, reflecting the process of science itself. "If, instead, we recast the search for life as a progressive endeavour, we convey the value of observations that are contextual or suggestive but not definitive and emphasise that false starts and dead ends are an expected part of a healthy scientific process," they write. This will involve scientists, technologists and the media talking to each other to agree firstly on objective standards of evidence for life, and secondly on the best way to communicate that evidence.
This, they say, should preferably be done now before a detection of life is made, rather than scramble to put it together in the aftermath.
"The team kickstarts the conversation by proposing a 'confidence of life detection' (CoLD) scale, which contains seven steps taking us from first exciting potential detection of life to definitive confirmation," Cosmos points out. (With the stages including the discoveries of unquestionable biosignatures, a habitable environment, and then corroborating evidence.) Cosmos argues that "This is an increasingly important conversation to have — because experts think that the odds aliens exist are high."
And they close their article by quoting NASA's team. "Whatever the outcome of the dialogue, what matters is that it occurs. In doing so, we can only become more effective at communicating the results of our work, and the wonder associated with it."
Easy (Score:4, Insightful)
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SETI - low hanging fruit idea - active broadcast (Score:3)
I would like to see SETI receive funding and infrastructure to begin actively sending radio transmission broadcasts to candidate star systems, in the hopes of receiving a response.
It seems a low-hanging fruit next step. To try to determine if there are other civilizations out there, that are at or above our level of technological advancement.
It seems it would not be very expensive. I few tens of millions of dollars per year, globally, to "rent" time of radio telescopes that can support being used for broadcasting.
Perhaps, like in the book "Contact" by Segan, the message would simply be continuous wave pulses of counts. Perhaps prime numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, ..., 11. Each pulse one second long, two-seconds between counts. Then recycled.
Ideally science would have a best-guess on radio frequency to use. And have enough participation so that the broadcast power of the signal had a chance to be strong enough to be detected in the target system. And have as many participating transmitters beam to a candidate system for perhaps a week, then move to the next candidate, etc.
Of course, once there had been enough elapsed time for the system to receive the signal and perhaps transmit something back, the 2nd Phase would be to begin surveillance of the systems transmitted to, for a response, after enough years had passed.
It's still a desire, that in my lifetime, that we would discover proof we are not alone in the cosmos.
Re: SETI - low hanging fruit idea - active broadca (Score:3)
Re:SETI - low hanging fruit idea - active broadcas (Score:5, Insightful)
What if they are like us? What generally happened on earth when a technologically advanced culture encountered a low technology culture?
When the guys on the ships meet the guys on the shore, be sure you are one of the guys on the ships.
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a: The kind of technology involved in traveling to other planets requires a level of cooperation that doesn't lend itself to barbarism. We can't offer any resources not more easily obtained outside our gravity well; even labor-- robotics as
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We don't know if they want to hurt us. Certainly humans often hurt weaker groups for a wide variety of reasons, some completely irrational (like religion), so its not a bad bet - and the stakes are very high
a, b) We don't know what we don't know about interstellar travel and of course don't know about advanced technology. The most technologically advanced species on this planet has been willing to a lot of harm to itself and other species. Maybe that is the norm - that the most hosti
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1) make black holes: But a TeV scale black hole's gravity is so weak that it would not be able to accumulate mass even if it didn't quantum decay away. It would fly out of the earth at a good fraction of light speed - as undetectable as dark matter. (and this assumes higher dimensions at the mm scale which would allow TeV energies to make a black hole
2). Creating catalytic strange matter: there was no theory saying this was poss
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Yes, manipulation, a virus or transmitted AI program would work, and it'd just take one curious scientist to run it. Or "helping" us figure out some viral cure, which then turns out to be infectious itself. Or advances in nanotech, leading to grey goo. They could also suggest physics experiments that, if successful, either blow up the planet, or yield weapons that destroy human life on Earth more efficiently and quickly than nukes. They can also just social engineer a scientist, or anybody with a big antenn
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> So the only real motivation is killing us simply for the enjoyment of killing us; that's far less likely for an advanced society
We have hunters on Earth, killing other mammals just for pleasure and enjoyment. Despite, and even enabled by, a high level of societal collaboration
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I've seen an argument (don't recall the details) that any intelligent aliens, upon detecting another intelligent alien race, MUST exterminate them. The risk of allowing them to exist, and exterminating you, is just too great. Kind of a prisoners dilemma writ large.
So there are other motivations.
NOTE: This also pertains to any first contact, by accident, far from either population center. Each group MUST, because of the above arguments, destroy the other group and bring back sole knowledge of the others.
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The furthest we have ever got, the Moon, was at the height of the Cold War. If the USSR had got there first the Space Race might have continued and we'd be on Mars by now.
The Cold War didn't escalate into a hot war because of mutually assured destruction (MAD). That doesn't exist with aliens. Due to the distances involved and the speed of light, and the difficulty of spotting objects coming towards Earth, by the time we realize that they have sent a big chunk of rock towards us it will probably be too late
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Most asteroids are naturally a fairly close approximation to "black" - typical albedos are a few percent, which is about as reflective as a lump of coal.
(Larger bodies, such as Ceres, the largest Jovian and Saturnian moons, Triton and parts (but not all!) of Charon and Pluto have succeeded in differentiating, with the darker - and denser - materials sinking
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Paranoia based on watching too many sci-fi movies is not a good basis for policy. It's just not a compelling argument that a) They'd want to hurt us, and b) They could hurt us, and c) They don't know we're here unless we go actively broadcasting primitive radio signals. a: The kind of technology involved in traveling to other planets requires a level of cooperation that doesn't lend itself to barbarism. We can't offer any resources not more easily obtained outside our gravity well; even labor-- robotics as useful as humans is trivial compared to interstellar travel. So the only real motivation is killing us simply for the enjoyment of killing us; that's far less likely for an advanced society. [...]
Oh yes, we *do* have one freakishly valuable resource. The same resource that ultimately doomed the Native Americans, especially in the North. No, not Aztec gold, or women, or slaves.
An entire planet's worth of nice land to settle and live on (assuming water-based biology), once you clear away those pesky natives.
And you have no clue what is the technology level needed for travelling to other planets. For all we know we could be just one clever scientific idea away from a breakthrough that would lead
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Actually, that "one clever idea" is also going to have to provide a more accurate description of the universe than our current ideas, which describe the universe (you know, that thing we live in) to an accuracy of about 15 significant digits, and which ideas rule out superluminal travel
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There was immense suffering, genocide and atrocities. Some pre-Columbian societies however practised human sacrifice, routinely tortured enemy fighters extended to as long as possible, and were not necessarily on a path of modern, relatively humane Western societies with healthcare, science, education etc. So, even if we assume that an alien civilization's behavior to us would be analogous to that of colonizers, and disregard the fact that a space faring civilization is likely more societally advanced than
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No need (Score:4, Insightful)
Humans are radio transmitting extensively inherently just by our everyday activities. Actively transmitting in all directions adds nothing to what has been leaking off us already.
Anything vaguely nearby will pick it up as the earliest signals propagate out over time. Anything distant will be a long time before our signals will ever reach them. It'll be many of our lifetimes.
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Humans are radio transmitting extensively inherently just by our everyday activities. Actively transmitting in all directions adds nothing to what has been leaking off us already.
Anything vaguely nearby will pick it up as the earliest signals propagate out over time. Anything distant will be a long time before our signals will ever reach them. It'll be many of our lifetimes.
Whelp, it’s not wholly symmetrical because they were on the surface, but above ground nuclear bombs broadcast the loudest of any artificial signals on earth in its history. So if we purposely send them a message, it’s safe to assume they heard all of those blasts years before getting it.
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Re: SETI - low hanging fruit idea - active broadca (Score:3)
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No active broadcasts. It signals our technological level by the technology used.
Why assume the aliens are hostile? - Well, if we are not alone, there's bound to be much more than 1-2 other civilizations out there. This means that other civilizations may have tried contacting each other and it takes just one bad experience to become paranoid and protective.
Take the situation in "Independence Day". Once you've survived an attempted invasion you'll never trust aliens again.
This means that the odds of reaching
Likely versus the masses. (Score:5, Insightful)
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I expect a lot of people just won't believe it. They will say it's some conspiracy.
For example religious people who think that the Earth is special, maybe a few thousand years old, are not going to be happy to be told that there is life elsewhere in the universe. If we found it on Mars that would imply that life is quite common, further eroding Earth's uniqueness.
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How could any serious, level-headed human consider creatures like Q-Anon believers as human?!
(And that is just the start!)
Present just the evidence, not the conclusion. (Score:2)
And then let people discuss it. The Viking lander's tests for life came back strong positives, erroneously so. Maybe the current tests are a good proxy for life, and maybe they aren't, again.
The first step (Score:4, Interesting)
The first step is announcing the need of a methodology to communicate the findings
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Don't quote me regulations. I co-chaired the committee that reviewed the recommendation to revise the color of the book that regulations are in. We kept it gray.
Does it really matter? (Score:2)
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Nope (Score:1)
Aliens visiting the Earth have, in all probability, much more advanced technology than we do. Should they visit this planet, those that establish the first contact and get priority access to this tech will have power that they can wield over others. They will protect this monopoly to the best of their ability [wikipedia.org].
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Aliens visiting the Earth have, in all probability, much more advanced technology than we do....
Possibly, but that's not what the scale is about. That's what is on TV and movies.
The levels are more about "alien life" being microbes on some space rocks, some sort of biological crust found on Mars or one of Jupiter's moons, and similar.
To the masses, "alien life" means a rocket lands on the planet and Vulkans walk out, or Close Encounters, or the Borg, or swarms of aliens coming to scour the planet of resources. That's jumping immediately way past the last element in an extreme way.
For NASA and the g
Humans: "Is anybody out there?" (Score:2)
Tentacle-Space-Alien-Fascists with a 1300+-sun ultra-high-tech feudal system: "Oh, looky there, we've found a protein and cell-material source making some noise. ... Ewww, look at those hideous pipeds. Holy smokes, are those gross. We have to kill them and paste them up before we deliver them to ProteinCorp. Bring some extra space-trawlers for inflight processing."
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Right. We're made of meat.
Report the observations, make the data available (Score:2)
Report what has been observed, identify possible phenomena that explain the observations (considering both possibilities--the presence or absence of life) and leave out the conclusions section that is normally present in a research piece. Ensure all raw data is open/free and available.
Huh? (Score:2)
Why donâ(TM)t they discover alien life instead? Worry about how to communicate it later, since it will all depend on what is discovered, how it is proven to be alien, etc. I mean finding an alien building on Mars will have a different effect than finding a microbe fossil that may or may not be from Earth. I mean basically think about it, would you expect their discovery of a definite alien spaceship headed to Earth to be announced the same way as a microfossil? Come on man.
They don't know a damn thing about their audience. (Score:2)
Gene Wilder said it best:
"Youâ(TM)ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know⦠morons."
Eukaryotes? Highly unlikely ... (Score:5, Insightful)
So here is my thinking on this based on my biology background, and reading up over the past several years about new research in various areas (genetic sequencing, taxonomy of lineages based on mtDNA, and so on ...)
Basically, microbial life, as in what used to be prokaryotes (currently bacteria and archea), should be ubiquitous in the universe anywhere there is liquid water and a source of energy (e.g. geological heat or light from a star). On Earth, it did not take long (in geological times) for single celled prokaryotes to arise, possibly on an RNA + lipid 'substrate', where RNA was the genetic code as well as the metabolism mechanism. Later DNA developed, and because it is more resilient and not as error-prone as RNA, it became a better store for genetic information. Proteins took over from RNA, yet various types of RNA persist in cell mechanism.
What really is rare is how eukaryotes (plants, fungi, animals) arose, which happened exactly once on Earth (or was crowded out by one lineage, which is the Eukaryote Last Universal Common Ancestor LUCA). An archean engulfed a bacterium, and the latter become an endosymbiont giving the combo far more energy than previously possible. That energy enabled multicellular life.
Another engulfment event happened in the ancestor of all plants, where another type of cyanobacteria which are photosynthetic was engulfed and continued as an endosymbiont in that lineage. Again, one single event in 4.5B years.
Another line of reasoning that is separate from the above is by Pascal Lee, a planetary scientist. Watch his Youtube videos (search for "pascal lee drake equation"). He solves the Drake Equation and gives it a value of 1. So one habitable planet with intelligent life per galaxy.
Also, there could theoretically be multicellular life somewhere with only plant like or fungi like complex life. No intelligence, no technology, nothing. Even if animal life arose, it is not guaranteed that they would be capable of doing what we do. For example, if the intelligent beings are completely aquatic, and lack hands, how are they supposed to develop tools, and then electricity? Flippers or tentacles won't do.
Another related point: if we discover microbial life in the solar system (say past life on Mars), and we are able to characterize it enough, we may solve a different question: is life on Earth and Mars (or where-ever) descendent from a common ancestor, or arose independently. The first is remarkable, but not as remarkable as if life independently arose on two different places close to each other.
Re:Eukaryotes? Highly unlikely ... (Score:4, Interesting)
> Another engulfment event happened in the ancestor of all plants, where another type of cyanobacteria which are photosynthetic was engulfed and continued as an endosymbiont in that lineage. Again, one single event in 4.5B years.
Well, the event could have happened many many times, but the small pool of goo in which it occurred then dried out and everything died. Once there was one successful lineage, it could have then out-competed and killed off any alternative genesis points.
> For example, if the intelligent beings are completely aquatic, and lack hands, how are they supposed to develop tools, and then electricity? Flippers or tentacles won't do.
Maybe they create technology we can't understand / imagine, possibly because the conditions on our planet simply don't allow it. What if their planet had a very strong magnetic field? Or multiple dense magnetic fields due to the strange makeup of their planetary core?
One thing that strikes me about earth is the creation of fossil fuels. We happened to have a period of millions of years where all of these trees died and got buried because there was no microbial life capable of consuming lignan. So there's this long period of climatic conditions that supported the growth of forests, the particular evolution of the plants themselves vs the bacteria/fungi, and then the particular geological conditions that then buried all the trees so they could become oil, at depths that humans could still extract all of this resource, and humans intelligent enough to turn the resource into combustion engines (as opposed to simply using it as burning pitch to defend castles).
Seems like a lot of 'coincidences' that allow us to get into space. Other planets may simply not have those coincidences, even if they do support otherwise intelligent life.
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Technology is built up from arbitrary tool use, pretty much requiring a manipulating appendage. The physics of a water environment seem generally less encouraging to tool gains, ie a creature deliberately manipulating a environment.
That said don't octopuses use tools? Or at least they could, advantage pending. And while I imagine a water-locked planet would again be a barrier to progress in primitive science (chemistry, material engineering, etc being done submerged) I only see this retarding things. Just g
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"the event could have happened many many times, but the small pool of goo in which it occurred then dried out and everything died" But I guess the result is the same: one successful event in 4.5B years. And I don't think it's a given that it would have killed off alternative genesis points, and more than different species of bacteria cut off other bacteria species today. But I admit it's an interesting question!
Wrt your point about fossil fuels, there are scifi stories that use that trope--planets where
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While you are right "in general":
Dolphins use tools, e.g. sponges to search small animals in the sand.
Octopuses build houses - well, some do. Some even live in city like gigantic structures.
If Octopuses would live longer, I would assume they could actually indeed get an SF like IQ status and build sophisticated stuff. But alas: no metal smelting under water :P
Some tribes of Apes are considered to live in the very early stone age, some Orangs and Gorillas.
While it only happened 2x in Earth life time (did it
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If we find life on other planets in our solar system it raises questions. We will have to see how similar it is to life on Earth, and if there is any hint of common ancestry or parallel evolution.
If it wasn't just Earth that had life, even if that life died out on say Mars because it became inhospitable, it would suggest that given the size of our own galaxy there should be much more of it. If it happened independently twice in this solar system then it seems unlikely that it didn't also happen in one of th
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Also, there could theoretically be multicellular life somewhere with only plant like or fungi like complex life. No intelligence, no technology, nothing.
There could theoretically be plant or fungi like life somewhere with intelligence, too.
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Plant or fungi with intelligence? Yes, it is conceivable.
But what is not possible is for this sedentary life to make tools, objects, discover electricity and electronics, the electromagnetic spectrum, and technology to observe the universe, and send signals.
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Some plants are not all that sedentary. None of them move with great alacrity, but given a lack of competition or sufficient natural defenses they could still conceivably accomplish such things. That it didn't happen here doesn't mean it couldn't happen elsewhere with something essentially plantlike yet still sufficiently different to be better suited to those tasks.
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Those stupid "mobile" organisms can just get up and move away if their seed happen to land in a less-than optimal place. It's the plants (and fungi) that have no option but to manipulate their environment to better suit themselves.
You can argue any which way you want from a sample of one.
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Money not well spent (Score:2)
Won't happen that way (Score:2)
They'll be there suddenly and use the usual "Bring me to your leader" spiel.
Assumption (Score:2)
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And psychology as the main cause of death.
Good fucking luck (Score:3)
First of all, this is 100% a political responsibility, rather than a scientific establishment responsibility, given that every single country on this planet explicitly tasks heads of state, and their direct subordinates, with diplomacy and foreign affairs. Which "alien life" would be.
Second of all, every single gunner and go-getter in the scientific establishment who can't help but whore him or herself in front of a journalist, for the sole purpose of burnishing their reputation as an expert and public intellectual, will 110% jump the gun and start mouthing off on CNMNSABCFOX, NYT, and Twitter, the moment the likelihood of the existence of alien life jumps above 2 sigma signifance. And probably quite a bit before than that.
Third of all, the media will have every incentive to amplify cranks and grifters regardless of any evidence of anything. For example, recall the "alien megastructure" bullshit over Tabby's star (spoiler...it was dust clouds..."swamp gas" if you will), the raging storm of stupid that is Luis Elizondo, David Fravor, and the tic tac ufo that was obviously an out-of-focus bird and/or lens flare, and of course, the existence of the "I'm not saying it's aliens, but it's aliens!" meme.
Fourth of all...I understand that many scientists and engineers chose their careers based on an early love of science fiction...but for fuck's sake...years and years of scientific and technical training is intended discipline the mind into being able to make distinctions between pleasing fantasy and unyielding reality. Opining about being on the cusp of a civilization altering scientific discovery just sounds too much like Sagan-esque woo to garner any respect for anything else these people have to say. It's like the EM Drive and Harold White. No you didn't discover reactionless propulsion and anyone who ever humors these people by working with them in a technical capacity is automatically on the shit list of cranks and grifters no honest people would ever hire.
Re: Good fucking luck (Score:2)
Re: Good fucking luck (Score:2)
No one except a few pointy headed intellectuals would give a fuck about fossilized microbes on Venus.
And the theologians wouldn't have much to say about ameobas or even anemonies under the ice of Europa.
They're talking about hearing something or seeing something more exciting.
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Venus: there was for a brief time a hypothesis that microbial life might exist in the clouds of Venus. Not sure how that would work (sulfuric acid is not conducive to organic chemicals, but maybe it's limited to certain levels in the atmosphere).
As for theologians: C.S. Lewis wrote scifi about intelligent life on Mars (his book Out of the Silent Planet) and Venus (Peralandra), and other Christians had no trouble with that. I think Christianity is much more resilient to the idea that there might be intelli
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Or simply strong signals of oxygen in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a star in the habitable zone.
Re: Good fucking luck (Score:2)
Which would barely register on any honest CoLD scale.
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Re: Good fucking luck (Score:2)
Yeah. Trust the guys who don't show their work, demand hundreds of billions a year no questions asked, and famously purchase overpriced toilet seats from connected contractors. Trust them that they need more money to study the problem.
"Why create this framework now?" (Score:1)
....they were asked, a referring to the comment, "Green and colleagues argue that...we should reframe such a discovery, so it isn't presented as a single moment when aliens are announced to the world."
Looking nervously around the room he replied, "....no reason...No more questions."
Logic (Score:2)
Flaw (Score:2)
The biggest flaw in this plan is we do not know the form or character or type of alien life to be discovered. A bacteria? A humanoid? An architectural site? A weird signal in space? Etc. Discovering a dna based microbe on Mars would not be a big deal. It would be news, but not crazy. Discovering an ancient alien base complete with a star-gate .. yeah.
How about an alarm that says: (Score:1)
"We're not saying it's aliens, but ... It's Fucking Aliens!"
I'd suggest using three numbers (Score:3)
Firstly, we're very unlikely to find a Star Trek-type society (although we might), but that's different from a microbe-based planet. Let's avoid false expectations. So we need to say what it is and how complex it is within that band. Then, there's question of the confidence level. The question there is whether to just use sigma. I wouldn't make it open-ended, capping at 5 sigma, for an exoplanet, is far better than we need right now.
If we put probability first, type second, complexity third, we get a simple system.
First number, I'd scale 0-5. 0 is there's definitely no life, 5 would be as near to certain as possible. If we use sigma then 5 would be saying 5-sigma, the same as the gold standard in particle physics. Where there's possibly more than one type of life present, this should be the type of life with the highest probability.
Second, a qualitative mapping to what it would be the equivalent of on Earth.
Third number, a qualitative value describing the complexity of life of the type we have that level of confidence in.
So a 5-5-5 life would (a) be definitely present, and at the high end of the unbelievable spectrum, and (b) good at keeping time.
Earth would be 5-3-3 (it's sentient life equivalent to that on Earth, by definition, and any spectral analysis of Earth's atmosphere would make it pretty certain)
Mars, as it stands, would be 1-0-0. (We have non-zero confidence that we've found things that could be single-celled life. but it's not exactly high confidence.)
Aliens? (Score:2)
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Maybe. But one thing that would probably rule out panspermia would be if the alien life used a different DNA/RNA code for amino acids--or if it didn't use DNA or RNA at all, or if it used a mostly different set of amino acids (although I understand that "our" amino acids are some of the most stable and easily synthesized). Or some other even more different basis of life.
Cart Before the Horse (Score:2)
Typical bureaucratic attempt to get funding, or to grow their fiefdom. Sorry no. Show us evidence of any life outside of earth and then we can talk.
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If they don't get some funding to look, we will never find.
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And that's a problem how? How is this more important than spending those funds on climate change, poverty, infrastructure, etc.???
Looks like we found something... (Score:1)
Funny, the first stage of NASA communicating that we have, in fact, discovered life on other planets is to communicate the need for a methodology to communicate that we have, in fact, discovered life on other planets. This is because, the primary motivation to spend the time and energy (and money) to develop a methodology like this would be to experience an event that created an "oh shit" moment. For example: "oh shit, aliens exist. How do we communicate this? We need a methodology!"
Need to include other sources of alien life... (Score:1)
Yet, we need to include other sources of alien life, like time travelers, and inter-dimensional travelers.
Hey! It could happen! Perhaps it already has!