🍄 Cosmic Contact

While Bezos and the “billionauts” race into Space and mine the moon, futurologists and astronomers are looking out for more intelligent ET’s.

Exploring every rabbit hole there is. For more wanderings, become an Alice in Futureland subscriber—it's free.

🍄 AudioDose Alice on Sonic Mushrooms: listen to Interstellar Travel
🎧 Alice podcasts

‘…to the Elysian plain ... where life is easiest for men. No snow is there, nor heavy storm, nor ever rain…’ -  Homer, Odyssey

In Homer's Odyssey, Elysium is described as a paradise. In the 2013 dystopian film Elysium, the name describes the luxury space station where the rich reside while the poor remain on ravaged Earth. And last week, in a “commercial partnership” with NASA, Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lunar lander became the first-ever private company to reach the moon. 

Hello, we’re Alice and we are always in a state of wander… 
Business is booming in the billionaires’ spacey playground. On February 22, 2024, Odysseus became the first American spacecraft to touch down on moon since 1972. After finally finding a parking spot, the robotic lander pulled up to the moon to drop off some Jeff Koons art – and NASA equipment designed to gather data about the lunar environment. It’s no bouncy moonwalk off Apollo 17 but still holds a lot of weight. “What a triumph,” NASA’s administrator Bill Nelson said in a message following the landing. “Odysseus has taken the moon. This feat is a giant leap forward for all of humanity.”

Moon on a budget.

“Today for the first time in the history of humanity, a commercial company, an American company launched and led the voyage up there,” continued Nelson. “And today is a day that shows the power and promise of NASA’s Commercial partnerships.” 

But still, a rocky road ahead. The rough region where Odysseus—a 13-foot-tall hexagonal cylinder—landed is the same site planned for NASA’s crewed Artemis III mission planned for two years’ time.

The New York Times reported that NASA paid Intuitive Machines $118 million under a program known as Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, to deliver six instruments to the moon. ‘Thomas Zurbuchen, a former top NASA science official who started the CLPS program in 2018, estimated that a robotic lunar lander designed, built and operated in the traditional NASA manner would cost $500 million to $1 billion, or at least five times as much the space agency paid Intuitive Machines,” said NYT. “NASA hopes that capitalism and competition — with companies proposing different approaches — will spur innovation and lead to new capabilities at lower costs.”

One day after landing, Reuters reported that shares of Intuitive Machines “tumbled 30% in extended trade, wiping out a Friday rally after the company said its spacecraft had tipped over shortly after touching down on the lunar surface a day earlier.”

And so begins the Utopian dream of ultimate life on Mars …

Lead, follow or get out of the Milky Way! 

Astrophysicist Erika Nesvold once asked an executive of a Californian company aiming to mine the moon how he planned to address risks that mining equipment might carry microbes from Earth and contaminate the moon. His response: “We’ll worry about that later.”

“Space settlement advocates often advertise space as a blank slate where we can build utopian societies free from the crowded territory and bloodied history of our terrestrial home,” writes Nesvold in Off-Earth [2023, MIT Press]. “But adopting a ‘worry about it later’ attitude toward human rights and ethics strikes me as a path to repeating the tragedies of that history through ignorance … It's worth remembering that in making new worlds, we don't necessarily leave our earthly problems behind.”

Getting out of The Outer Space Treaty

Humankind has had an Outer Space Treaty since 1967, created due to development of intercontinental ballistic missiles able to reach targets in space. It declares that “the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind.” And that “outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.”

“While today’s commercial spaceflight initiatives, such as Blue Origin, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, still mobilise that utopian universalism, they are building a business,” writes Philip Ball, author of Beautiful Experiments [2023, The University of Chicago Press], for Aeon. “Others hope to profit from mineral resources mined in space. ‘For all mankind’ won’t cut it any longer; it is time to mothball the inherited rhetoric of the first space age, and to look honestly at the reasons human spaceflight is being pursued and at the ethical issues raised by both the current practices and the potential future goals.”

In 2015, the US revised its position with the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, which states that US citizens who set out to extract resources from space “shall be entitled to any asteroid resource or space resource obtained, including to possess, own, transport, use, and sell [it] in accordance with applicable law.”

Space cowboys?

“The treaty was never drawn up with private space companies in mind, intent on turning space into another branch of the tourist industry or on exploiting its resources for personal gain,” continues Ball. “In the late 1960s, only governmental agencies were deemed capable of space exploration, and the treaty aimed to prevent nation-states from making extraterrestrial land grabs. But there are now several private businesses exploring technologies for mining water and minerals from asteroids, while NASA’s Artemis mission to return humans to the Moon, a first step towards a ‘long-term presence’, was developed in collaboration with commercial partners.”

Alongside astronomer Lucianne Walkowicz, Erika Nesvold co-founded the JustSpace Alliance, a non-profit that advocates for a more inclusive and ethical future in space. “Will future generations of humans in space struggle to live in a scarred, toxic landscape after years of unregulated mining, manufacturing, and waste disposal?” she asks.

“Although larger-scale planetary settlements remain highly hypothetical, rather little thought has been given to how they would be governed,” says Ball. “The common assumption seems to be that they will be utopian democracies, but there is no reason why that must be so. Historical settlements in remote frontier locations are not exactly noted for their egalitarianism and tolerance.”

Many Space scientists would rather shake off these self-appointed cavaliers of the cosmos.

“There is a strong argument that the planets and their moons should be treated as sacrosanct and off limits, with one or two higher levels of protection than the US national parks,” planetary scientist Carolyn Porco tells Aeon. Porco led the imaging science team on the Cassini (robotic) mission to Saturn from 2004 to 2017. “They are too scientifically important to be left open to commercial, political or colonialist purposes.” She’s involved with a future mission to Saturn’s moon Enceladus, thought by many to be the most likely ET environment in the solar system to host life. “Would I trust a commercial outfit to take the necessary steps to ensure planetary protection on a moon like Enceladus?” she asks. “Hell no!” Porco would like to see “a stringent set of international regulations to prevent commercial interests [in space] from creating a ‘tragedy of the commons’ as has happened with so many resources we have on Earth.”

If E.T. phones home…

… then we want in on it. While corporations seek to conquer Space, many scientists have their eyes on a different prize, searching for signals and communications from extraterrestrials. Take the Milky Way, where eavesdropping is currently underway. Akshay Suresh, a graduate student at Cornell University, leads a groundbreaking mission to uncover periodic signals coming from the core of the Milky Way. Aiming to detect deliberate technological activities by intelligent civilizations, the ‘Breakthrough Listen Investigation for Periodic Spectral Signals (BLIPSS)’ is a joint effort from Cornell University, the SETI Institute and Breakthrough Listen, the largest ever scientific research program focused on finding evidence of civilizations beyond Earth. The hope is that if an alien civilization wants to make contact with other civilizations throughout the Milky way, then the galaxy’s core—packed tight with stars and possibly habitable exoplanets—is the place they would do it.

The team began by testing their algorithm on known pulsars, successfully detecting the expected periodic emissions. Next, they honed in on a dataset of scans of the Galactic Center. Unlike pulsars, which emit signals across a broad range of radio frequencies, BLIPSS narrowed its search to repeating signals within a narrower frequency range. Dr. Steve Croft, the Breakthrough Listen Project Scientist for GBT and Adjunct Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute, highlighted the significance of this approach, as it combines narrow bandwidths with periodic patterns that could signify extraterrestrial activity.

Galaxy watch

Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Toronto are leading a global team of scientists in another search for extraterrestrial life, aided by AI. Using a new algorithm created by undergrad student Peter Ma, SETI astronomers are able to organize the data from their telescopes into categories to distinguish between real signals and interference. “We need to distinguish the exciting radio signals in space from the uninteresting radio signals from Earth,” said Ma, adding that the algorithm has resulted in the discovery of eight new radio signals that could potentially be transmissions from extraterrestrial intelligence. The signals came from five different stars located 30 to 90 light years from Earth, and overlooked in a previous analysis of the same data, which did not use machine learning.

The late theoretical physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson had his money on dust clouds. “I have a bet with some people in CA that when the first extraterrestrial life is found – it won’t be on another planet,” Dyson told ALICE in an interview in 2000. “We’ll see who wins. I’ll be happy as long as we find it somewhere. I think at the moment there’s a heavy concentration on planets, which may be the wrong place to look. I would not be surprised if life is floating around in some interstellar dust cloud or in places where it hasn’t been looked for at all.”

We find them, and then what?

In 2002, one of our interviewers asked astrobiologist David Grinspoon: How can we expect to talk to alien species using Hydrogen radio emissions if we can’t even talk to intelligent species on our own planet?

“We are going to have to make assumptions about what we’re going to have in common with them,” replied Grinspoon, a Senior Scientist at the Planetary Science Institute. “And we have to assume we have something in common with them if there’s going to be any basis of possibly being able to communicate. And a common assumption is this, what is it, 1427 megahertz or something, 1430 megahertz hydrogen line—which is this natural line of radio emission that hydrogen, which is the most common element in the universe, makes everywhere. So the idea is that if anybody gets to a point where they are doing astronomy or radio astronomy, they are going to build instruments that can look at that frequency and just because it’s a good way to learn about the universe. So since they’re going to have those instruments let’s send messages at that frequency or let’s look for messages at that frequency because they’ll figure that we figured the same thing out. Now, of course, that carries a lot of assumptions. We assume that they are going to have the same science as us. That carries an assumption about this sort of science being a universal truth. So that’s one of the things that I think is interesting about sending it, is that in a way it’s almost like an act of faith in science. We assume there are scientists so good that they’ll have figured out the same things and built the same kinds of instruments, that we could talk to them.”

Alien rights?

“What if we encounter in the very near future interstellar visitors to Earth?” asks Avi Loeb, Baird Professor of Science and Institute director at Harvard University for Medium. “Most likely, these will not be biological creatures because of the long duration of the journey and the severe damage inflicted on any biological tissue by energetic cosmic-rays in interstellar space.” Loeb is the bestselling author of
Interstellar [2023, HarperCollins], Extraterrestrial [2021] and founding director of Harvard’s Black Hole Initiative. “If instead we will be visited by functioning technological probes, these will likely be equipped with artificial intelligence (AI). Interstellar probes must be autonomous since they cannot wait to receive guidance from their senders who are located thousands of light years away.” He adds: “And so, the question arises as to whether ethics should be applied to sentient AI systems that are not made of flesh and blood but of silicon chips. My answer is a resounding yes.”

Aliens as role models

Loeb also thinks its safe to assume they’ll be brighter than us. “Understanding aliens who survived longer than we did could teach us skills that will promote the longevity of the human species,” writes Loeb on Medium. “This is crucial in the face of environmental risks, like the brightening of the Sun—which will likely turn the Earth into a Mars-like desert within a billion years.” He says however that that main challenge of course lies in our ability to understand it. “If we ever receive a package or a signal from aliens, could we decode its intended meaning? This could be challenging since our communication skills were tailored in response to our terrestrial backyard and not the global metropolitan of the Milky Way galaxy or the cosmos at large. Our ability to comprehend aliens depends on how environmental features shape cognition through sensory information and how language traces different levels of cognition.”

He says a glimmer of hope comes from AI. “If we train AI systems on alien communication messages, might they be able to decode the enigmatic content? Our AI decoders will resemble the prisoners in Plato’s allegory of the cave, who interpret the shadows they see on the cave walls in an attempt to figure out what lies behind their back. Our AI systems will start this challenge as the prisoners of our imagination.”

What else we are wandering…

🪐 Space law 
AJ Link, a professor at Howard University School of Law, teaching space law wants emerging Black leaders to be at the forefront of a new legal frontier. “Even though space law has been around for 60 years, it is still not a widely taught area of study in U.S. law schools,” writes Link, who is the inaugural director of The Center for Air and Space Law Task Force on Inclusion, Diversity and Equity in Aerospace. He highlights the benefits of introducing a space law program at the HBCU (Historically black colleges and universities.) “There are only two law schools that currently offer a LLM, or Master of Laws, degree that specialized in space law: the University of Mississippi School of Law and the University of Nebraska College of Law. With the lack of options and access to space law as a field of study for J.D students, and legal professionals seeking an LLM, it’s no wonder that the space law community is lacking anything close to adequate representation of Black folks in the profession.”

He adds: ‘When I received my LLM in space law from the University of Mississippi, I became one of the handful of Black people in the world with that degree. Since then, I have met other Black space law professionals. However, not all of them have space law degrees or academic backgrounds. A lot of Black space law professionals have found their way into the field following interesting paths. Very few of us specifically studied and trained space law professionals. That is unacceptable. Black people need to be part of the growing space sector, not just in STEM-related areas. There is a growing recognition that Black people must be included in the space community. Groups like Black in Astro are making sure that Black space professionals and Black students studying space have a community.”

🚀 BlackInAstro
The goal of #BlackInAstro community is to celebrate and amplify Black scientists and engineers within the space community, providing support, networking and guidance. In 2023, The White House collaborated with BlackInAstro to host Black Space Week last summer to highlight Black history and Black achievements in space.

In 2022 Jessica Watkins become the first Black woman to serve on a long-duration mission on the International Space Station, and The NASA Artemis mission also proclaims its intention to “land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon.” (via The Dig)

🚀 Billionauts and losses
Last year, a Virgin Galactic flight flew fossil remains including that of a two million-year-old human into Space. To much international outrage. “Remains of ancient human species are a very limited resource,” Professor Mark Collard, Canada research chair in human evolutionary studies told the Observer. “There are very few of them, and the only justification for putting them at risk has to be scientific. That cannot, in any way, be said for this incident.” The collarbone of a 2 million-year-old Australopithecus sediba and the thumb bone of a 250,000-year-old Homo naledi, were carried on the flight—which reached a height of 88km above Earth’s surface on 8 September—by passenger Tim Nash, a South African billionaire. 

“They flew these precious specimens into space, where they could have been destroyed fairly easily,” said Collard. “It was extraordinarily irresponsible … However, the really worrying thing is that the authorities allowed this to happen. They didn’t talk to other people in the field and find out how they would have reacted, and that is the most worrying part of this affair.” 

🔭 Bubble universes
“Quantum gravity gives us a new paradigm—that in the beginning was Nirvana,” Physicist Michio Kaku told ALICE in 2002. “Hyperspace. Emptiness. But hyperspace was unstable. Because of quantum fluctuations, bubbles began to form within nothingness. These bubbles began to expand very rapidly, giving us the Big Bang. So, in other words, our Universe is probably a quantum fluctuation in nothing. It’s a bubble, just like boiling water, with Universes being born all the time. Which means that there perhaps are other Universes out there, other bubble universes. We live in one bubble, there could be other bubble Universes out there where perhaps life is possible. Who knows for sure? But the quantum theory says that if the Universe itself is quantized, then it must exist in parallel states. There is a multiverse. We no longer believe in a Universe—a one-world theory—we believe in a mega-verse, a multiverse, a many-worlds theory. Where there could be other Universes out there.” 

Craving more?

📘 Alice in Futureland books
🎧 Alice in Futureland podcasts

Thanks for tuning in.
For more wanderings, become an Alice in Futureland subscriber—it's free.

Invite your friends to this mad tea party and let's see how many things we can learn before breakfast.

©2024 Alice in Futureland