A Step Farther Out
Page 27
The "how to" of such a receiver has been known for years. It wouldn't even be expensive, at least not by Federal standards—under five million dollars, probably under half that. So why has it never been done?
Because no one ever asked for the money. NASA's budget people are terrified that if they ask for a couple of megabucks for a receiver with which to listen for alien intelligence, Senator Proxmire will (a) refuse the request, (b) denounce NASA and perhaps hand them his "Golden Fleece Award," and (c) wreak terrible vengeance by chopping out several tens of millions from the NASA request.
Although this is hardly a courageous stand on NASA's part, it is, alas, rather realistic. This year, though, it is said that NASA will screw up its courage and ask for the million-channel receiver for listening to possible messages from Out There. Watch for Proxmire's reactions.
* * *
There was a lot of attention to the weather at this year's AAAS meeting. I don't suppose that comes as much of a surprise, given the terrible weather we've had lately. I wish I had good news, but in fact, the consensus of opinion among the weather and climate people is that things are likely to get worse, not better.
According to the long-range weather prediction people, what we've experienced the last couple of years is "normal"; what was abnormal, and we have no right to expect for the future, is the extraordinarily good weather of the past 20 to 30 years.
Now things are getting back to normal, and if that turns out not to be to our liking, well, the universe never promised us anything different. The normal climate generates highly variable weather. For reasons not clearly understood, during the 50's and 60's the weather wasn't very variable, and the climate was highly benign. For the future, if you don't like the weather, wait a few decades. It will probably change.
That turns out to have a number of consequences, of course. For the moment famine is at a minimum; there are comparatively few areas of the world in which starvation is a major contributor to the death rate. Given drastic changes in climate—and we now have good reason to expect such massive changes—there will be nothing for it: either we increase productivity, or famine stalks the land again. Not, of course, our land. We won't starve; but the universe has so arranged things that if there are to be major gains in agricultural productivity, they will almost certainly come about through intensive use of western technology transplanted to the "developing nations"—or they will not come about at all. Whether we will do the necessary development is another question.
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Figure 29
A UNIFIED FIELD MODEL
OF THE UNIVERSE
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Figure 30
QUARKS
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Last year I reported that physicists were challenging the General Theory of Relativity. I may not have put it precisely that way; what I said was that top physicists were fairly sure that within the century they would have a unified field theory. That, however, implies the overthrow of General Relativity, because GR treats gravity as a phenomenon fundamentally different from the "forces" of nature such as electro-magnetism. In General Relativity, gravity results from distortions in the fabric of space itself; it is not really a "force" at all.
Incidentally, Einstein himself searched for a unified field theory, something to relate gravity to the other forces, and although he invented GR, he didn't believe in it.
At any event, the trend is toward unification of the fundamental forces, as shown in Figure 30.
There are also continued attempts to describe the universe in simple terms—that is, what with all the elementary particles floating around, theory has become very complex, and physicists are trying to get rid of some of the particles by showing they are made up of something else, as shown in Figure 30. Like it or not, the name given the "something else" now seems to be "Quark," and the terms "Up, Down, Strange, and Charmed" also seem destined to stay; however, some physicists such as D. Allan Bromley of Yale are resisting "Truth and Beauty" as the names of the newest candidate quarks.
The impulse toward unification theories of the universe is a very old one, of course, beginning with the Greeks and their early "atomic" models. Aldous Huxley once remarked that it made no difference whether the universe "really" conformed to the simplest explanation, or scientists were just not capable of understanding anything else; and possibly there is an impulse to simplicity rooted in the human psyche. Occam's razor need not have anything to do with the real world. Yet—there are intriguing hints that the universe may after all be built more simply than it appears.
For instance, there is that intriguing number 1040 which appears so often. The age of the universe, calculated in units of the time required for light to cross an atomic nucleus; the diameter of the universe in units of nuclear diameters; the ratio of the strongest (strong nuclear) to the weakest (gravity) known force. There is also the mass of the universe as measured in masses of elementary particles; that turns out to be 1040 squared, no small number, but there is that pesky 1040 again.
And of course it may be pure coincidence. "What does it all mean, Mr. Natural?"
* * *
Let's see. What else? You must remember, an AAAS meeting is a 5-ring circus, and every day there is far more to do and see than you can possibly get to. This year it was a bit easier, because there were more of "us"; in addition to Larry Niven and myself and Mrs. Pournelle, there were from the SF community Mr. and Mrs. Frank Herbert, Joe and Gay Haldeman, David Gerrold, Charles Sheffield, Karl Pflock, Ben and Barbara Bova, and probably some others I don't remember; this made it a bit easier to trade notes on various sessions, although it also made for longer nights. Incidentally, we found a very good Afghanistani restaurant near the Sheraton Park, where we enjoyed good food while Frank and Bev Herbert regaled us with stories of their visit to the Khyber Pass.
There was also a science fiction writers panel; it was well attended, and seemed to be enjoyed by those who came. Panelists Bova, Gerrold, and Herbert spoke of matters science fiction, probably appropriate for the audience. For myself I would have preferred that they do SF rather than talk about it, but I was probably alone in that wish.
* * *
The single most fascinating session of the AAAS meeting was a panel entitled "Prospects for life in the universe: the ultimate limits to growth." Chaired by William Gale of the Bell Telephone Labs, it featured former astronaut Brian O'Leary, Freeman Dyson, Dr. Gale himself, Gregg Edwards of NSF, and Carl Sagan as discussant. Since neither Dyson nor Sagan can read the telephone book aloud without making it interesting, that was obviously the one panel not to miss, and none of us did. It began prosaically enough, with von Puttkamer of NASA projecting space industrialization over the next 25 years; it ended with the darndest thing I've ever seen. Understand—in a sense, these were amateurs at my business, and in fact a great deal of the panel was a bit like that, scientists playing science fiction writer with no more spectacular success than most SF writers; that is, until Freeman Dyson gave his paper.
Before Dyson we had O'Leary on asteroid mining and space colonization, themes we've dealt with in this chapter and elsewhere. Not surprisingly, O'Leary recommends use of the O'Neill "mass driver" (O'Leary is O'Neill's associate at Princeton) to move asteroids around. The mass driver is that gizmo so beloved by science fiction writers, a kind of electronic catapult to fling ships—or buckets of goo—into space. Drivers don't work from Earth, but they will from the Moon, and certainly from an asteroid.
The usual SF story uses the driver to launch ships; Mr. Heinlein used one to launch capsules in THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS, and a few stories have had the drivers launching raw materials from the lunar surface. The latter is the concept O'Neill's plan for space colonies employs. O'Leary's presentation proposed using the driver to move an asteroid: power the driver with solar cells, and use chunks of the asteroid as reaction mass. I've often spoken of the concept in my lectures, but whether I heard it first from O'Neill's people I don't know. Certainly it would work.
It takes, according to O'Leary's figures, about 4000 tons of equipment to haul in an asteroid. And—one asteroid brought to high Earth orbit could provide all the materials needed to build enough Solar Power Satellites to power the entire world by the year 2000. As O'Leary was speaking I made the note "Hell, it's my lecture"; which may not strictly be true, but it's close enough. We certainly could, by the year 2000, power the world from space, and we could do it without bankrupting ourselves—and I've said all this before in other columns, and although the temptation is severe I'll leave the topic alone here.
The next lecture was by Dr. Gale of Bell Labs, and once again it was a bit like listening to my own presentation—not that Dr. Gale didn't say some things I don't, but the theme was remarkably similar to my "Survival with Style," at least at first. He began by reviewing the limits to growth on Earth itself; they are, not surprisingly, pretty severe, although not as severe as the Zero-Growth people like to postulate.
The solar system, however, provides somewhat more room. It could furnish for each of a sextillion (that's 1016) people: 200 tons of hydrogen; 5 tons of iron; 5 tons of glass; 400 pounds of oxygen; 400 pounds of carbon; and 50,000 kilowatt-hours of energy. Perhaps that's life on the cheap, and we wouldn't want the full sextillion people living here, so adjust the available wealth according to the population you like.
Dr. Gale then reviewed starship systems, none going faster than light, and not surprisingly concluded that they are quite feasible if a bit expensive. Again, so far, not a lot new; but he also pointed out that given the limits of a solar system, the impulse to build starships must be reasonably high. We could go make use of other stars.
There's only one problem with that—someone else may want the materials. In fact, if you play exponential growth games, it will be only a few thousand years before humanity will have spread far throughout the Galaxy, and may well be tearing stars apart and moving big things around. (See "That Buck Rogers Stuff" for more details.) And if we are pretty near that stage, why haven't others done it? Those are effects we would probably see.
Thus, perhaps we are alone in this galaxy—and according to Dr. Gale, that may be as well, because in far fewer than a million years we will want it all for ourselves. Meanwhile it's a race—and he does not discount the possibility of a race to another galaxy so that we can lay claim before someone else does. And do note: if you project human progress and use that as a model, it is strange that the outsiders are not here yet. (Devotees of the UFO persuasion have their own ideas on that.)
In fact, Gale notes, there is no reason why within a few tens of thousands of years humanity will not be interfering with the evolution of the universe: preventing lovely and useful matter and energy from collapsing into Black Holes where we can't get at it; making stars grow in the direction we want and need; etc. There is, Gale concludes, no limit to growth except to meet someone else as powerful as we who needs the growth materials we must have. On that note he ended.
But—of course there is a limit. The universe itself is not eternal. It can't last forever.
It can't—but perhaps we can, says Freeman Dyson.
* * *
No one could ever accuse Freeman Dyson of thinking small. His "Dyson Spheres" or "Dyson Shells," large systems for trapping the energy of the sun so that not so much is wasted, were the inspiration for Larry Niven's RINGWORLD and Shaw's ORBITSVILLE and a number of other stories. Although I didn't get the concept from him, Dyson was the first non-SF type I know of who examined the space industrialization possibilities implied by the laser-launching system I've employed in many stories. He is a modern renaissance man who thinks both broadly and deeply.
He began simply enough, by quoting from Stephen Weinberg's THE FIRST THREE MINUTES. Like many modern cosmologists, Weinberg finds that the universe is doomed, and that disturbs him. He says, "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless."
Of course nearly all religions have taught that "the world" (which certainly implies "universe") will inevitably come to an end. The Last Trump will sound either from Heimdall's horn or Gabriel's. Then too, true atheist humanism has never had any answer to the feeling that it is all pointless; of course it is. (This is, incidentally, discussed brilliantly and at length in Henri de Lubac, SJ., THE DRAMA OF ATHEIST HUMANISM, Meridian 1963.) It is only a true modern who can proclaim that the universe has no purpose (in the sense that it is no more than a dance of the atoms) and at "the same time bewail its pointless impermanence.
Dyson, however, did not address the theology of the universe; he stayed strictly within its physics, looking at the probable futures. The first result of this is given in Figure 31.
Now note that last number: 1010 . To the best of my recollection—and that of all the others in attendance at the panel—no one has ever tried to project the future that far before; but then, one learns to expect great things from Freeman Dyson.
He was not finished, though. Granted that 101076 is a large number, still, it is finite; the universe does eventually come to an end. However—do we have to?
Now that sounds like a silly question. How can we survive the end of the universe?
First a question: is the basis of consciousness matter or structure? That is equivalent to asking whether sentient black clouds or sentient computers are possible: can we, in other words, make a one-for-one transformation of a conscious being, replacing part for part, and still have a conscious entity? And will it be the same entity?
Note that this is also equivalent to asking whether you could send a conscious being by wire—tear down the original and transmit a message that would cause an exact reconstruction at the other end.
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Figure 31
THE UNIVERSE ACCORDING
TO FREEMAN DYSON
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If this is possible, then the second question: are biological entities subject to scaling? One presumes that if the basis of consciousness is structure, not the physical matter, then indeed we are subject to scaling: that we could build a one-for-one transform of ourselves, into computers, or into biological processes, that could be so scaled that the subjective lifetime is infinite.
Dyson then proceeded to demonstrate this with what I call the "Integrals of Immortality." I haven't room to reproduce them here, and I suspect that even freshman calculus would turn off my readers, but indeed they exist, and given the assumptions Dyson has indeed "proved" the possibility of an infinite conscious lifetime—which is to say that for all time a properly constructed entity could accumulate new experiences and fresh information, running out of neither experiences nor time in which to enjoy them.
Couple that with the Goedel theorem of mathematics which states that there is no limit to growth: there will always be new questions which cannot be answered without new assumptions, which will themselves generate new questions which cannot be answered in that system: and you have something to think about.
Quite an exciting panel. As I said when it was over, I had gone to the panel expecting something interesting, but after all, these people were more or less amateurs at my business (far out speculation about the future); I certainly wasn't prepared for immortality and 101076 years!
Carl Sagan's discussion was on aliens: any moderate extrapolation of human capabilities shows that within a thousand years we are likely to be visiting other stars—either physically, or certainly with messages. Thus Fermi's question: Where Are The Others? They should have been here by now.
Sagan examined several possibilities.
First, perhaps we are very early. This Sagan rejects—our sun is not very old compared to the age of the galaxy, and almost certainly there have been others. (Assuming that there are ever going to be others. Continuing along that line takes us to theology, and is outside the scope of this chapter; for our purposes we assume that life can come about given the right physical conditions, and that having come about it evolves. This is not, so far as I know, at all inconsistent with reli
gion, or at least with the Catholic religion.)
Secondly, then, perhaps high-level civilizations simply cannot exist: when they reach a certain level of capability they destroy themselves. We can certainly come up with scenarios in which that happens to us, and it's something to think about.
Third, perhaps advances in biology bring about immortality, and that in turn changes motivations, specifically, that immortality removes the imperative for colonization and expansion. I find this unlikely; I would think that immortals would still have an imperative for exploration at the very least; I find Larry Niven's ancient Louis Wu quite believable.
Fourth, there is the "zoo" hypothesis: we are either on exhibition, or somehow subject to non-interference regulations. Obviously this is not a new idea for science fiction readers; what's interesting is that it could be presented to a bunch of scientists without getting a laugh.