I'm reading "Listening for life" in issue 106 of "Australian Science Illustrated" and it prompted me to write this letter. I want to share a few thoughts on extraterrestrials that I haven't read or heard of anywhere.
Astronomer Jill Tartar says the world needs a cosmic perspective and we need to think in a way where we see ourselves as similar. I suggest the similarity isn't restricted to us earthlings but can be extended to all aliens. This admittedly strange way of thinking can be traced back to comments made by the English scientist Brian Cox (famous for his TV documentaries). Prof. Cox has said Earth is probably the only planet in the universe that gave rise to intelligent life. His reason for saying this is evolution. Personally, I believe biological evolution is in desperate need of major modification. But that's not the point here - the point is that intelligent life is here (I think) and that we've started exploring space. I further believe that, someday, we'll be able to use the Riemann hypothesis and Wick rotation to travel billions of light years in the blink of an eye. The Riemann/Wick things will also allow time travel (into both the past and future), using General Relativity's concept of curved time (which is made circular via Wick rotation and future warping of space-time).
Time travel plus instant space travel permits us to explore and colonize any place in space, anywhere in the past or present or future. Those colonists will surely be very different from us in some respects because they'll have to adapt to very different environments. Some of the changes will be due to natural adaptation, and some to selected bioengineering that we haven't even dreamt of yet. But the aliens' origin will be human and they'll always be more similar to us than different. The aliens could be anywhere and everywhere - even, thanks to both quantum and macroscopic entanglement with conditions on the home planet, between planets and moons. If they set up a colony thousands or millions of years in our past, they'd make today's civilization on Earth look like the activity of insects - or, as Prof. Michio Kaku has said, squirrels - and we couldn't blame them for not being terribly interested in contacting us at the moment. It'd be in our best interest for them to leave us alone for now since we'd be absolutely terrified of their power. We might not be able to even comprehend their being millions of years ahead of us - we might arrogantly dismiss them as ignorant because they couldn't accept what we think are facts.
To sum up - the movie "Interstellar" seems to be correct when it says people will someday be able to do things they can't do now.
Anticipating when tomorrow (in a different millennium) comes!
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Computer Science and Engineering
- Artificial Intelligence