by Ben Miller
Let’s send the internet. And while we’re doing it, let’s redouble our efforts to understand the communication systems of our fellow creatures. Until we can talk to dolphins we have little hope of being able to talk to ET. Just do one thing for me: somewhere up the front, let’s stick James Joyce’s Ulysses. Not only does it have maximum entropy to make your eyes water, but it’s funny, and humor is something that has been sadly lacking in our messages so far.32
The supreme irony in all of this is: With the wacky hippy inclusiveness of the Golden Record, Carl Sagan had it about right. He and Ann Druyan sent the internet of their day; now we have to do the same with ours. After all, as with all worthwhile communication, the real message here isn’t what we know about physics, or where we are in our solar system. It’s the fact that we want to talk in the first place.
ARE WE ALONE?
We started this journey with a question. To answer it, first we needed to set a couple of things straight: The evidence for UFOs is weak, and the scientific credentials of SETI are strong. Next, we learned how the fundamental structure of the universe—the strengths of the interactions between its building blocks, for example—are fine-tuned to make carbon-based life a reality. All known life, we learned, is one; we are intimately related to every other organism on this planet, be it fungus, elk, or bacterium.
To get a steadier grip on the slippery issue of detectable alien signals, we summoned the Drake Equation. Crucially we learned that there were a number of factors that combine to produce the overall probability that other Earthlike worlds might be calling. First, we needed to know the rate of formation of Earthlike planets. To calculate that, we needed to know the rate of formation of Sun-like stars, the fraction of those stars that have Earthlike planets, and how many Earthlike planets they have.
Thanks to the Kepler Space Telescope, these are questions to which we have some fairly accurate answers. Incredibly, those answers are remarkably close to those that the original Order of the Dolphin guessed at. Sun-like stars are formed at the rate of around one a year, and between a fifth and half of such stars have one Earthlike planet.
Next, the Drake Equation asked the rate of formation of life-bearing planets. Again, as per the original SETI meeting, our best guess is a large number; virtually the same as the rate of formation of Earthlike planets. Our evidence for this is the early emergence of microbial life, and the fact that it appears to have taken a vital first step—namely, the evolution of a cell wall—at least twice, giving rise to both the bacteria and their seabed-fellows, the archaea.
The next step was to get a feel for the likelihood of complex life, by looking at the major transitions that made it possible. Among them all, only one appears to be a bottleneck: the evolution of the mitochondria, which happened only once in our planet’s 4.5-billion-year history, and without which the eukaryotic cell would never have gotten its start. Speaking personally, it’s this stepping stone across the river of chaos that keeps me awake at night. Everything before and everything after seems to follow naturally, but without the vast reserves of energy provided by an archaeon enslaving a bacterium, it’s hard to see how complexity might ever arise.
Returning to the Drake Equation, this “eukaryotic bottleneck” provides our first departure from the early calculations of Drake and co. How can we put a number on the fraction of Earthlike planets that develop complex life? Granted, our investigations suggest that complex life inevitably develops intelligence, but with only one example of such life to go on, how can we conjure a number? We may not be in the dark, but we are definitely in the gloom. One in a hundred? One in a million, maybe?
To comfort us, we have the thought that there was at least one more instance of an endosymbiosis, that is to say, when one type of cell enslaved another. That example, of course, was the co-option of the cyanobacterium by a eukaryote, creating the type of cell that we find in plants. Complex life may be rare, but like our own solar system, with its idiosyncratic Jupiter and absence of super-Earths, not that rare.
Finally, we learned that we, as humans, share civilization, agriculture, language, and culture with countless other beings here on Earth. If we are going to learn to talk to aliens, first we are going to have to learn to communicate with the other terrestrial and non-terrestrial intelligences on our own planet. Huge, ancient brains are out there, wanting to play, to commune, and to teach. Are we alone? No. But it’s down to us to make the first move.
FURTHER READING
All the books below are, in my humble opinion, not just great science writing, but great writing.
EXTREMOPHILES
The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin, Penguin Classics, 1989
Weird Life: The Search for Life That Is Very, Very Different from Our Own by David Toomey, W. W. Norton & Company, 2014
UFOS
Aliens: Why They Are Here by Bryan Appleyard, Scribner, 2005
The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan, Ballantine Books Inc., 1997
SETI
The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence by Paul Davies, Mariner, 2011
Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe by Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee, Copernicus (2000)
UNIVERSES
Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe by Martin Rees, Basic, 2001
The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos by Brian Greene, Vintage, 2011
LIFE
What Is Life? by Erwin Schrödinger, Cambridge University Press, 2012
Creation: How Science Is Reinventing Itself by Adam Rutherford, Current, 2014
HUMANS
Human Universe by Brian Cox and Andrew Cohen, William Collins, 2014
The Accidental Species: Misunderstandings of Human Evolution by Henry Gee, University of Chicago Press, 2013
ALIENS
What Does a Martian Look Like? The Science of Extraterrestrial Life by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, Ebury Press, 2004
Bird Brain by Nathan Emery, Princeton University Press, 2016
MESSAGES
The Information by James Gleick, Vintage, 2012
Cells to Civilizations: The Principles of Change That Shape Life by Enrico Coen, Princeton University Press, 2015
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Firstly, I would like to thank Dan Clifton, who planted the seed that eventually blossomed into this book. Dan wrote and directed my BBC Horizon documentary One Degree and is one of those multitalented, cross-disciplinary bods who you feel might just be an alien himself. I am hoping that the publication of this book means he will finally stop sending me web links about extraterrestrials. Just as Dan planted the seed, I am equally grateful to the green fingers of Elly James and Celia Hayley at hhb for training its wandering tendrils, and to my radiantly brilliant publisher Antonia Hodgson for encouraging it to unimaginable heights.
Praise be to three gifted researchers: Suzy McClintock, Lizzie Crouch, and Andrew Bailey tirelessly sought the most wonderful stories, the most eminent contributors, and explained bits of biology I am utterly ignorant about with the most otherworldly patience. Thanks also to the crack team at Little, Brown, including—but by no means limited to—Rhiannon Smith, Kirsteen Astor, Rachel Wilkie, Sean Garrehy, Zoe Gullen, and everyone on the sales team, especially Jennifer Wilson, Sara Talbot, Rachael Hum, and Ben Goddard. For the US edition, profound gratitude to the team at The Experiment. I also wish to express my continued gratitude to the legendary Heather Holden-Brown and legistic Jack Munnelly at hhb.
Writing this book has been a great adventure, and I have met some outrageously gifted scientists along the way. Particular mention must go to Mazlan Othman, who was truly inspiring in her enthusiasm for all things alien. Nick Lane was kind enough to give me a basic lesson in biology—a bit like asking Einstein to fix your bike. Nicky Clayton and Nathan Lane not only opened their laboratory, but unlocked their thoughts on the potential biology of intelligent aliens. Warm thanks too to
Laurance Doyle, who lucidly explained Shannon’s orders of entropy, to Carlos Frenck for turning me on to GRBs, to Jocelyn Bell Burnell for patiently retelling the extraordinary story of her discovery of quasars, and to Richard Crowther, who gave me the lowdown on Near Earth Objects and the best freebee of the entire book: a model of the Skylon C1. And special mention must go to John Elliott, who explained the challenges of decoding alien signals.
It goes without saying that the mistakes within these pages are mine, but there would have been a great deal more of them without the help of my embarrassingly over-qualified referees. Professor Paul Alexander, Head of Astrophysics at Cambridge University, was kind enough to correct some howlers in my cosmology, and Dr. Ben Slater of the Department of Palaeobiology at Cambridge University put me right on everything from the habitability of red dwarf stars to the deep history of Earth. Professor Peter McClintock of Lancaster University brushed up my thermodynamics, while Dr. Nick Lane of University College, London vetted my evolutionary biochemistry without feeling the need to point out that most of it was cribbed from his books in the first place.
The only thing more daunting than writing a book on a subject you know very little about is being married to someone who is writing a book on a subject they know very little about: Thank you so much, Jess, for your love and encouragement. Sonny, Harrison, and Lana: This book is for you. Heartfelt thanks, as always, to my ever-supportive family: my mum, Marion, and my sisters Bronwen and Leah, my brothers-in-law Richard, Phil, and Josh, and my in-laws Stephanie and Alan Parker. They, together with friends Alexander and Hannah Armstrong, Torjus and Amelia Baalack, Pierre and Kathy Condou, Steven Cree and Kahleen Crawford, Jono and Amanda Irby, Gary and Lauren Kemp, Bruce McKay and Jonathan and Shebah Yeo have listened patiently to more guff about aliens than anyone would think humanly possible.
Finally I would like to thank Rafael Agrizzi L De Medeiros, Daniella Jackson, Sophie Lewis, and Elouise Ody at my favorite coffee shop, where most of this book was written. I promise to write the next one somewhere else.
ALSO BY BEN MILLER
It’s Not Rocket Science
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ben Miller is, like you, a mutant ape living through an Ice Age on a ball of molten iron, circulating a supermassive black hole. He is a trained physicist, an actor, and a comedian. He is also the bestselling author of It’s Not Rocket Science, and host of the TV show of the same name. He has hosted numerous other TV and radio documentaries on subjects as varied as temperature and the history of particle physics. He is slowly coming to terms with the idea that he may never be an astronaut.
@ActualBenMiller
The Aliens Are Coming!: The Extraordinary Science Behind Our Search for Life in the Universe
Copyright © 2016 by Ben Miller
All picture credits © Ben Miller except Structures on ALH84001 Meteorite © NASA, reproduced with kind permission
First published in the United Kingdom by Sphere, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group
First published in North America by The Experiment, LLC, in 2016
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or online reviews, no portion of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Miller, Ben, 1966-
Title: The aliens are coming! : the extraordinary science behind our search
for life in the universe / Ben Miller.
Description: New York : The Experiment, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016028331 (print) | LCCN 2016028816 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Life on other planets. | Extraterrestrial beings. |
Interstellar communication.
Classification: LCC QB54 .M5388 2016 (print) | LCC QB54 (ebook) | DDC
576.8/39—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016028331
Ebook ISBN 978-1-61519-366-0
Cover and text design by Sarah Smith
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1 For this, as in all matters Voyager, I refer to the peerless Haynes Manual NASA Voyager 1 & 2 by Christopher Riley, Richard Corfield, and Philip Dolling.
2 Complex in the sense of being made up of connected parts. In complex life, cells are grouped into tissues, which are in turn grouped into organs.
3 A quick reminder of the electromagnetic spectrum, from long wavelength to short wavelength: radio, TV, microwave, infrared, visible, ultraviolet, x-ray, gamma ray.
4 On second thought, aliens may be exactly who David Lynch was writing for.
5 Craters tend to indicate that there is no plate tectonics, and therefore no molten core within a planet. One of the shocks of the recent New Horizons flyby was how few craters Pluto has on parts of its surface. It’s too small to have retained much heat from when it was formed, or to have enough radioactive material in its core to drive plate tectonics, and it isn’t heated by tidal forces like the moons of the four gas giants.
6 I know; Mercury is closer to the Sun than Venus, but colder. The reason is that it has no atmosphere and therefore no greenhouse effect.
7 The four Galilean moons are Jupiter’s largest–hence Galileo being able to see them in the first place. Thirteen moons were known at the time of the Voyager mission, which discovered three more. Today the tally is sixty-seven moons.
8 It turned out to be slightly smaller than Ganymede, the moon of Jupiter.
9 Saturn has sixty-two moons, of which seven are big enough to be spherical under their own gravity. They are, in order of increasing orbit, Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, and Iapetus. Titan, the giant, sits farthest out.
10 Uranus has twenty-seven moons, named after characters from Shakespeare, the largest being (usual drill) Puck, Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon.
11 Fixing is basically the action of taking any gas from the air and converting it to a solid or liquid form. Nitrogen-fixing bacteria, for example, take atmospheric nitrogen gas and convert it to nitrates, which are then hungrily consumed by plants. Soon we shall meet a manganese-fixing bacteria, for which I make no apology.
12 1,929,300 according to the National Park Service.
13 If you look at a map of the northern Pacific, you’ll see that the Hawaiian islands form one long diagonal chain. The island of Hawaii is the most recent addition, and has already moved off the hot spot. A new island, the Loihi Seamount, is forming underwater about 22 miles off Hawaii’s coast.
14 As you dive, the pressure increases by roughly 1 bar every 10m. Atmospheric pressure is 1 bar.
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15 Now known as San Cristobal.
16 From The Voyage of the Beagle.
17 The Ediacarans are the first known complex life forms, ruling the planet some 575 million years ago, and lacked eyes, mouths, and limbs. More on them later.
18 Just so you know, the word gene is sometimes used in a different sense, to mean “bit of DNA that codes for a given protein.”
19 Hamilton’s work has been rather brilliantly popularized by Richard Dawkins, who summed the whole thing up with one pithy phrase: “the selfish gene.”
20 Estimated at 8.7 million by the United Nations Environment Programme in 2011, give or take around 1.3 million.
21 As the name suggests, amino acids are made up of an amine (NH2) group attached to an acid.
22 The common nucleobases are made up of one or two rings of carbon atoms with a couple of nitrogen atoms inserted into the ring. The ones we find in DNA are guanine, adenine, thymine, and cytosine.
23 “Plumbago” is Humboldt for “graphite.”
24 Most famous for coming up with the letter symbols for the chemical elements.
25 Most granite contains iron oxide at 1.68 percent by weight, and manganese oxide at 0.05 percent by weight.
26 Full title: Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America During the Years 1799–1804.
27 It is thought that manganese-fixing bacteria were a crucial stopping-off point in the evolution of photosynthesis; indeed, all plants today use manganese as a building block of chlorophyll.
28 The gel is silicic acid, and the reaction can be written as clay + water → silicic acid, or if you are that way inclined, SiO2 + 2 H2O → H4SiO4.