National Institute for Discovery Science Essay Competition: SETI in the Eyes of Non-Professionalist

SETI in the Eyes of Non-Professionalist

George Tarnowski, M.Sc.Chem.

43 Rushmere House
Fontley Way
London SW15 4LZ, England
E-mail: tarnowg @ aol.com

The article tries to concentrate on a critique of SETI program, hitherto existing, based mainly on ‘listening’ to electromagnetic cosmic ‘noise’. Indication is being made on the strength of post-Copernican principle of our ‘commonness’ that we cannot be capable of making any contact with cosmic civilisations. It results, most of all, from a very rapid rate of changes our own civilisation, and all the others — which are at the similar to our stage of development — undergo. I try to demonstrate that only civilisations stable in their development for a period of at least several thousand years can make contact with each other, and, furthermore, this can only be possible once they enter the path of widely understood genetic engineering. In consequence, while carrying out an analysis of terms, which have to be observed in communication between highly developed cosmic civilisations, I arrive at a conclusion that searching for traces of their activities should, in the first instance, be concentrated on DNA/RNA research in the scope of information beyond genetics in DNA chains, which, undoubtedly, can be encoded in this unique ‘language’. Finally, attention is being drawn to the fact that lack of open criticism of scientific attempts seriously delimits the growth of our knowledge about the world and life itself.

For over thirty years now, scientists have been systematically listening to the cosmic ‘radio’ noise reaching the Earth to possibly discover in it any regularity which would provide evidence of its artificial origin, but with no success. In order to be able to say anything about the negative results, let us first look at a petition signed by 72 leading scientists (including 7 Nobel Prize winners), which presents the most scientific point of view possible with regard to SETI. ⁽¹⁾

The human species is now able to communicate with other civilisations in space, if such exist. Using current radio-astronomical technology, it is possible for us to receive signals from civilisations no more advanced than we are over a distance of at least many thousands of light-years. the cost of a systematic international research effort, using existing radio telescopes, is as low as a few million dollars per year for one or two decades. The program would be more than a million times more thorough than all previous searches, by all nations, put together. the results — whether positive or negative — would have profound implications for our view of our universe and ourselves.

We believe such a co-ordinated search program is well justified on its scientific merits. It will also have important subsidiary benefits for radioastronomy in general. It is a scientific activity that seems likely to gather substantial public support. In addition, because of the growing problem of radio frequency interference by civilian and military transmitters, the search program will become more difficult the longer we wait. This is the time to begin.

It has been suggested that the apparent absence of a major reworking of the galaxy by very advanced beings, or the apparent absence of extraterrestrial colonists in the solar system, demonstrates that there are no extraterrestrial intelligent beings anywhere. At the very least, the argument depends on a major extrapolation from the circumstances on earth, here and now. The radio search, on the other hand, assumes nothing about other civilisations that has not transpired in ours.

The undersigned are scientists from a variety of disciplines and nations who have considered the problem of extraterrestrial intelligence – some of us more than 20 years. We represent a wide variety of opinion on the abundance of extraterrestrials, on the ease of establishing contact, and on the validity of arguments of the sort summarised in the first sentence of the previous paragraph. But we are unanimous in our conviction that the only significant test of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence is an experimental one. No a priori arguments on this subject can be compelling or should be used as a substitute for an observational program. We urge the organisation of a co-ordinated, worldwide, and systematic search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Any comment connected with the above petition should begin by a breakdown of the explicit and the implicit assumptions on which science has based its research program for finding intelligence in the Universe. The most significant of these is the conviction that it would be possible to communicate with other civilisations using radio-astronomical technology. The second assumption is that communicating with such civilizations would be limited to those which are at the stage of technological development similar to ours. And finally, the third assumption, resulting from the previous two, taking this notion literally, is a search for anthropomorphic civilizations. Just like the whole petition, having been signed by the most heavy-weight professionals, such assumptions are a unique example of inconsistent thinking and ortho-evolutionism (i.e., an amplification of the present state of knowledge and technological development into the distant future) transmitted to a cosmic dimension. It should not prove too difficult to justify such criticism.

From the biological point of view, the proffered assumptions amount to an identification of the biogenesis of the earthly type as being ‘average’ in the cosmic scale. This is consistent with the spirit of the Copernican revolution but is at variance with biological theories derived from Darwin, inasmuch as these theories postulate that accidental genetic mutations and environmental selection of phenotypes which arise in this way, are factors which ‘build’ (every) biosphere. According to this belief, even the earth’s biosphere would be different from the actually existing one if there were any possibility of repeating the biogenesis process, even without taking any entirely different planetary conditions into consideration. Why is it then that scientists, who are convinced about the unique nature of biospheres, are searching for signs of anthropomorphic activity in the Universe? I think that there are two possible answers to these questions.

The first one derives from the suspicion that scientists, like most people, do not basically believe the theories which raise accident to the rank of a cosmic law. It does not in any way fit into the Homo sapiens’ natural, innate world view and there are strong reasons for putting one’s trust precisely in it and not in the scientific theories in this sphere (since we exist as a biological species thanks to the innate view of reality). Therefore, if accident is not the chief ‘creator’ of biospheres, then one has to assume the existence of a hitherto unrecognised determinism which controls their development. Then, and only then, would one accept the hypothesis of the average nature of the earth’s biogenesis together with intelligence which appear at a certain stage or under certain conditions of the evolution of the biospheres.

The second answer must also include an element of determinism, albeit formulated in a slightly different way. We know from excavation data that countless multitudes of animal species have emerged on and vanished from the Earth and not one of them has ‘created’ reason, even when it survived and developed for tens of millions of years. Therefore, as no comparative materials about its emergence exist, this singular episode in the earth’s biosphere does not belong in the realm of scientific research at all (after all, science is based on comparisons!) Furthermore, this great host of mindless animal species testifies to the fact that possessing intelligence is entirely superfluous to the existence of life and no one knows why, when, how or in what forms it can come into being. Alongside Darwin’s theories and the countless numbers of possible genetic mutations (astronomically exceeding the number of atoms in the Universe), these facts completely exclude the possibility of a repetition of this incident anywhere else in the Cosmos. However, if the most outstanding representatives of science seek to find intelligence beyond our planet, this means that they presuppose the existence of a peculiar determinism which controls its coming into being or they wish to obtain observational confirmation of our accidental exceptionality. Unfortunately, the second of these alternatives must be excluded – but more about this in a moment. All that remains then is the recognition that their actions are based on other assumptions than the ones which they advocate in their scientific theories and it is exactly this inconsistency that I have tried to clarify.

But, let us assume that many civilisations do, in fact, go through a short, possibly counted in decades, period in their development, when they are in search of the intelligence in the Universe by observation and listening to various electromagnetic radiation bands. Right away the following question comes to mind, namely, whom are they likely to hear, if they all do nothing but monitor the sky? The answer, that they might be able to receive signals, which were transmitted by civilisations much advanced in their knowledge of the world, has been excluded from this petition, so the only hope, which remains, is that during this extremely short evolutionary period at least some of those radio-new-born civilisations will make an effort (involving energy cost and political will) to send a signal about their existence into the Cosmos ⁽²⁾. Let us also suppose that such a signal will some day be received (in many thousands of years – to quote the petition) by a civilisation which is at the same stage of development as they are. What should it do then?

The answer is also found in the first sentence of the scientists’ petition. It has to try to communicate with the beings who transmitted the signal. How is this to be done? It is not difficult to guess that a return signal should be pointed in the same direction as the one from which came the joyful tidings. And after many more thousands of years this signal will reach ... quite so! To whom will it actually return? To the civilisation which, by now, is quite different from the one which once had sent a message into the Cosmos! And will it then wait for thousands of years with automatic listening devices to receive a reply from a civilisation which is ‘younger’ than itself by the same number of years? Such a presumption is quite nonsensical if we juxtapose it with the rate of technological development on our planet. It seems that even an exchange of experiences between two consecutive generations has no practical significance and this simple fact should also play an important part in the search for extraterrestrial civilisations. I also think that the silence in the cosmic ether well illustrates the analysis outlined above, which, surely, is being carried out in the same or similar fashion by scientists of other, developing civilisations. Why has this not been done by our scientists who aspire to represent Earthly civilisation?

Surely, that is why science on Earth has been shaped by historical and cultural conditions specific to ourselves and particularly by the Second World War and the subsequent arms race. It has been dominated by physics, a fact which is accidental and anti-logical at the same time, and both these ‘characteristics’ make it more difficult to carry out a proper analysis of the whole problem. I also think that the lack of such an analysis may be a sign of the contemptuous and disdainful attitude of scientists toward any opinions people outside their field may hold on this subject. But unquestionably this subject is of interest to a large part of society (which has been attested by public surveys where a definite majority of respondents claims that they believe that life and intelligence are common in the Universe); therefore, in my opinion, an analysis of the concrete problem should be a subject for debate which goes beyond the narrow circle of research physicists. It is for this reason that I shall try to ‘take the place of’ the men of science and somewhat expand this article, but also to keep returning to the unique scientists’ petition.

One should analyze the possibility of discovering cosmic civilizations using three consecutive approximations, namely the existence of living matter, the origin of intelligence and technological development. The first of these amounts to showing that life is a cosmic and not an earthly phenomenon and one which is a necessary precondition for taking up the search for intelligent brothers. Any knowledge of how reason comes into being in living matter would be a sufficient condition, but unfortunately we do not have it at our disposal and are not likely to have it in the foreseeable future. So, all that remains is a careful consideration of the third ‘approximation’ according to the following presumption: if intelligence is a common phenomenon, then one should be able to find it by looking for signs of its activities, but not in the way suggested in the petition. Quite the opposite. The most advanced civilisations should be searched by us for any signs of their activities! But let us begin with the most essential issue, i.e., the existence of life outside our planet.

First, we have to clearly define the bedrock of post-Copernican science: there are no isolated and unique objects, incidents or phenomena in the Cosmos. Its unimaginable vastness guarantees a multitude of all things we can observe (this has been impressively confirmed by the totality of our knowledge of the world) and it also concerns organic compounds, which have been discovered literally everywhere, including meteorites, comets, cosmic dust and open cosmic space. If we add to this the amazing coincidences of constants of Nature favourable to life in the whole Universe (with reference to the Anthropic Principle) and the time that it has existed on Earth (in every single, even the most unlikely, niche and ecological ‘dead end’), which are comparable only to the period of existence of such astronomical objects as the stars and the planets, then there is no need for any further proof that living matter is a universal cosmic phenomenon (I would recommend Hoyle’s books to those who are extreme skeptics on the subject). And precisely the same conclusion can be applied to the existence of intelligence in the Universe as well. This is the reason for the statement ‘...if such exists’ in the petition which amounts to allowing for the possibility of our accidental exceptionality and is the greatest possible affront to fundamental scientific assumptions. One could even go as far as to say that circumstantial evidence points to the fact that it is precisely our existence which confirms that intelligence is a cosmic phenomenon. So wrote Professor Ditfurth, a fervent supporter of natural evolution many years ago: ‘... just as eyes prove the existence of electromagnetic radiation and wings are the proof that air exists, so our mind is the proof of the existence of reason in the Universe’. Let us pay our tribute to the biologist who is the only truly consistent follower of Darwin.

Before we discuss technological development — briefly summarize what science knows about the human mind. Unfortunately, as has been previously mentioned, this amounts to largely negative knowledge due to the impossibility of establishing what conditions would have been necessary for it to come into being. It should also be said that neither the size of the brain nor the complexity of its structure guarantee the presence of intelligence. For instance, dolphins surpass our species in such ‘parameters’, but even though they are extraordinarily quick-witted, they certainly do not possess a higher intelligence. For, in spite of the fact that we do not know where it comes from, reason can be quite precisely defined as the capacity to think, together with the ability to gather any knowledge in various ‘channels’ of information transfer. From amongst this free choice technological knowledge deserves a special mention, as thanks to it Homo sapiens has managed, in a very short time, to bring the whole Earth under his control and is attempting to make contact with other sapiens in the Cosmos. As a matter of fact we have pointed out that such contacts are not possible at a similar to ours stage of technological development, but this only applies to the methods used in this quest within the SETI programme. In the petition, the conditions which should be observed in transmitting information between cosmic civilisations have been passed over in silence, and it is only after a careful consideration of such conditions that searching methods which are adequate for SETI could be suggested. And this assertion leads us to the third ‘approximation’ in analysing the chances of discovering intelligence in the Universe.

Again we must begin from the realm of our ignorance, for the ‘entry’ of higher intelligence on the road to technological development cannot be submitted to comparative studies. We are left to assume that sooner or later (a concept quite meaningless in the cosmic scale) every civilisation will take this road because our biological predicament makes it necessary to continually search for material and energy resources. We also feel fully entitled to believe that these predicaments are also ‘responsible’ for the multicultural nature of civilisation because, before it reaches the stage of technological development, the conduct of a species is controlled by biological laws (life in relatively small, isolated populations, where mental diversity of its members creates cultural variety, which is a form of adaptation to the biological existence, to a specific environment and to one’s own community). Certainly, technological development does not eliminate these laws, but it allows them to be recognized – a fact which must ultimately lead to the Holy Grail of the reason: Mind over matter! The roads leading to this goal may be intricate and different for each civilization, but their convergence in genetic engineering is inevitable. For the control and regulation of the biosphere is the greatest challenge to the reason and no one is going to give up trying to take it up, particularly he who used to believe that the creation of the biosphere has been ‘controlled’ by irrational chance (anyway, regulation of the biosphere will be indispensable for reversing the devastating effects of the initial stages of technical development). One should also add that technological development obliterates or levels cultural differences, and within the framework of a given civilization, it creates an environment common to all which is to a marked extent artificial and which comparatively evenly satisfies the basic biological needs and makes possible a mutual, global communications network. Finally, taking our ‘commonness’ as a base, it is possible to show the rate of technological development (after intelligence began to throng in the biosphere) as a function of local time (Chart 1). Let us briefly discuss the nature of this dependence.

The first part of the chart represents the period of basic adaptation to life by an intelligent biological species. At this stage technological development progresses very slowly and amounts to the creation of the simple, lets call them natural, tools with a small ‘content’ of creative inventiveness. During this same period linguistic and communication divisions occur among the species, because without higher level of technology its survival is only possible in small bands. As a result, their knowledge of the world has a local and random character and the lack of information exchange makes it impossible to ‘collect’ or verify it.

The second period whose beginnings should be seen in the acquisition of skills used for producing (and not procuring or gathering) food, leads to radical changes in the living conditions affecting the whole species. There is a sudden rise in its numbers and this brings the era of living in small groups to an end with the result that, for populations which have advanced significantly beyond the possibility of maintaining personal contacts, the problem of communication now comes to the fore. The Homo sapiens species overcame this problem by a transition from attachment to people to attachment to symbols, thus creating cultural variety dividing our species. But at this juncture, something else is of fundamental importance. Namely, that the dissemination of the ability to symbolize opened the road to scientific development without which the technological era could not have come into being. On this basis one can assume that such a course of events is indispensable for every civilisation to make the transition to a technical era. The second part of the chart characterises this era or, more exactly, the fast rate of civilizing changes which it brings along with it. As has already been mentioned, the end of this period is at the same time the beginning of the disappearance of cultural divisions and the rise of a comparatively uniform civilisation, which is one of the conditions for making contacts with other (relatively uniform) cosmic civilisations.

The third period of technological development (on whose threshold we happen to stand at the moment) is the continuous process of disappearance of cultural divisions because the developing field of genetic engineering will speed up considerably the emergence of a biological environment common to all. Moreover, through mutual communication, there will be a return from attachment to symbols to attachment to people, thanks to the already apparent achievement in the field of Information Technology and transport. These processes will stabilise civilisation for thousands of years to come, and its main ‘occupation’ will become the taking over of ‘power’ over the biosphere and the degree of complexity of this task will provide work for hundreds of generations of scientists and nano-technologists. But this period will inevitably end with a question mark, as the manipulation of the genetic pool of the biosphere constitutes only the first phase of genetic engineering development. The second one, about which we can say absolutely nothing, will consist of the ‘construction’ of entirely new genes using knowledge acquired during the first phase. What civilisation will begin to turn into at this stage, lies beyond anyone’s guess. Instead, let us state the conclusions which result from our short characteristic of the ‘curve’ of technological development.

First we must project our thoughts into the future. Say, the year 2531. To a large extent, civilisation on earth has become stabilised and uniform, but not yet to a degree where it ceases to recollect the course of its own development. One day, during that year, the automatic cosmic observatories receive radio signals (something like the Arecibo message) suggesting their artificial origin. After having decoded these signals, the instruments can easily ‘recognise’ at what stage of technological development the civilisation which sent them finds itself. If it turns out to be the second period depicted on the chart, then these automatic instruments can only come to one conclusion, namely, that it is necessary to send information to the main computer and that in a few hundred or a few thousand years we might possibly make contact with that rising civilization (if by that time anyone is still interested). And such a decision will be made by the robots because they will ‘know’ (from being programmed in this way) that even the simplest answer in the form of : ‘Hello, there, intelligent brothers’ could lead to endless calamities, by adding new beliefs and divisions to those already existing in the other civilization. But lets go back to the present. Do we have any proof that this, and nothing but this, decision can be made by the cosmic civilization which is more advanced in development than we are?

Certainly! One example which more than suffices to draw this conclusion is the disaster connected with the banal fact of the passing of the Hale-Bopp comet near the Earth. One must admit that it is difficult to imagine to what monstrous dimensions similar calamities could grow if the most simple ‘Hello!’ from the Cosmos should reach the Earth. Furthermore still an additional observational proof is the complete radio silence in the cosmic ether. For, regardless how much more advanced other civilizations might be, they have – at least in museums or some other archives – equipment which makes it possible for them to ‘come down’ to a level which they passed through thousands of years ago. Therefore there is not the slightest doubt that, taking their technological skills into consideration, they could provide any civilisation listening in, with a confirmation of their existence. The fact that they are not doing this (and that our civilisation will also not be doing this when it enters the third stage of its development) shows that the analysis which we have tried to carry out is warranted. Does this mean then that any communication between cosmic civilisations is out of the question? This dilemma finally leads us to take into account the conditions which must be observed in inter-civilisation communication and all that remains for us is to consider, at our stage of knowledge, is a possibility of communication between civilisations that are in the third stage of their technological and general civilisation development.

At this point we suddenly find it much easier to speculate. The third stage of technological progress will be the same for all civilisations because nano-technologies, i.e. the manipulation of atoms and genes, will become the end of technical advancement (the next, still unimaginable stage for us is ‘manipulation’ – certainly in a local sphere – of Nature’s constants). Knowledge about this road of development, common to all, is accessible to every civilization which has already discovered the total uniqueness of genetic code functionality. It would then be a simple thing to deduce the limitations to which inter-civilization communication is subject in using such knowledge combined with one’s own history: It would have to be entirely acultural (and in this, unconstrained from scientific theories), always up-to-date, i.e., ‘resistant’ to the passing of time and useful in the highest degree due to the unusually high energy expenditure indispensable in communicating over distances counted in thousands of light years. What is there then that is able to fulfil simultaneously these three basic requirements?

In order not to wear the reader down with a detailed deliberation of this problem, I should like to reveal right away that, probably only one, albeit an extremely shocking solution, exists. DNA/RNA fulfils all the above, as well as any other conceivable conditions of inter-civilisation communication. It is the universal, acultural ‘language’ with infinite power, whose information ‘carrying capacity’ can be extended in any direction and range; its duration in time is counted in billions of years and, as far as its practical use is concerned, suffice it to say that it is capable of ‘creating’ scientists, while so far, they can only form theories about it. So, I am quite convinced that civilizations, whose activities already mainly concentrate on genetic engineering, will not only ‘discover’ information reaching beyond genetics in DNA chains, but will themselves encode anything they think appropriate on the level of their knowledge. I also think that even our research capabilities would make it possible to ’check’ the DNA in a SETI programme, however, it is impossible to overcome the supremacy of physicists in this field. This is even more so because biologists dazzled by Darwin’s theories are not exactly fighting over carrying out this type of research, for which quite a few different approaches could be indicated. Here, however, we shall limit ourselves to one which has already been suggested in scientific literature, albeit shyly, as if half-jokingly. This is the so-called junk DNA, which makes up approximately 90% of the entire genome, but does not have any biological function. It is know that these segments of functional DNA which, for same reason, ceased to be biologically active, are quickly removed from the genome, the origin and durability of junk DNA become extremely ‘suspect’. Furthermore, initial computer studies have shown that it has a stronger language-like pattern than the functional DNA, so it is quite probable that this junk constitutes a treasure house of knowledge. Whoever manages to ‘open’ this Sesame, might completely revolutionise the scientific world view together with all the consequences, both practical and social. Finally, in conclusion of our discussion about SETI, let us make one more excursion, this time into the distant past.

According to a consensus of scientific opinion, the solar system does not belong to the first generation of such systems in our Galaxy. It was preceded by a certain number of generations of stars of which, statistically, a certain number possessed planets, life and intelligence. Thus, according to the difference in the estimated age of the Galaxy, the Sun and the duration of life on Earth, the first technological civilizations arose several billion years before we came into being. Supposing that only some of them had survived all kinds of cataclysmic events and crises during the course of their development and have existed till the present day in some unknown ‘form’. What can intelligence, which already knows nearly everything there is to know, find to do? There can only be two answers to this question. It can relinquish this knowledge (i.e., by cutting itself off from the Cosmos by using something like Dyson’s theoretic sphere), or it can head towards the limits of its own capabilities, that is to subordinate the whole world to itself. Lets then suppose that only one or two of these antediluvian civilizations chose the second of these roads to development. Taking account of the billions of years of their existence, this would mean that, to a large extent, the galaxies are already ‘controlled’ by these civilisations, and we should be able to perceive signs of this in the form of clear departures from long confirmed observations and well grounded scientific theories. But is it possible to show such phenomena? Yes, it is, and we shall show two of them – one in the smallest, the other – the largest scale.

DNA, the thread of life, consists of four ‘letters’ which are chemical compounds called nucleotides. These compounds exist in two isomeric forms with identical properties apart from light refraction, the so-called optical isomerism. Quite simply, the only difference between them is the same as the difference between a pair of gloves – they are a mirror image of one another and in the same way as gloves in a shop, they appear in chemical syntheses in various quantities which cannot be separated by any physical or chemical methods. However, in living matter nucleotides occur only in one isomeric form, and so, the necessity to explain this anomaly irresistibly comes to mind. Biologists obsessed by Darwin’s theories declare that it might be possible that at the beginning of their development two forms of living matter appeared, and one of them turned out to be more efficient in ‘adapting’ itself to the world. Their obsession does not allow them to take note of the fact that the world represents nothing more than a set of defined physical and chemical parameters to which both of the primeval ‘isomeric’ forms of life would react in an identical manner. In short, the world, as we know it, is not up to isolating one of them; let us then return to the possibility of separating the nucleotides themselves, as such a likelihood remains to be considered.

Decades of chemical research have proved that the separation of a mixture of optical isomers is only possible using a catalyst which three-dimensional structure makes it possible to attach a nucleotide which fits it like a key in a lock (protein enzymes are such catalysts, but they cannot come into being without the participation of mono-isometric DNA – like the dilemma of the chicken and the egg). What all this means is that this catalyst must in some way again be isolated from its isomeric mixture because the spatial symmetry is always preserved in nature and we could perpetuate this problem ad infinitum. What then could possibly have caused living matter to be based only on one kind of isomers?

That which we are ourselves striving for very hard: Mind over matter. This is the only logical conclusion and even now, we notice somewhere on the horizon of our knowledge that it will be possible to produce mono-isomers by nano-technological methods, that is by ‘putting them together’ atom by atom or by a local ‘fracturing’ of the symmetrical properties of nature. And this certainly does not represent the technological and expansionist limits of intelligence but we are still short of a few premises for further divagation. So, let us examine the second example of phenomena which could be the next one to testify to astro-engineering works carried out by billion-year old minds, a fact which would further support the vision of cosmic expansion of the most developed civilisations.

Mathematical and computer simulations invariably ‘deny’ any possibility of planets forming as a result of the gaseous proto-cloud collapsing under its own gravitational pressure until the moment of birth of a new star. It is only when powerful external striking ‘stimuli’ are introduced into the programmes, fragmentation of this cloud occurs and, as a consequence (sometimes) – planetogenesis. In the real world such stimuli may originate in explosions of supernovae in narrow confines of distance from the condensing ancestral cloud. Supernova explosions are not very frequent but have been well researched theoretically (within the framework of the general theory of the evolution of stars) so, by combining the simulations with those heories we feel justified in suspecting that this is the real way in which planetary systems in the Cosmos are ‘created’. However, a fortuitous coincidence of a well ‘harmonised’, in both time and distance, condensation of a new star with a supernova explosion occurring at the same time is so improbable, that we would be justified in doubting even the existence of the Solar system. The fact that there are those who are amazed at it proves that such a coincidence has in some way been ‘concentrated’, either naturally or intentionally. Natural factors favoring planetogenesis must have existed in the early, rather ‘stormy’, billions of years that the galaxies have been in existence, thus initiating many planetary systems, but can one point to any phenomena which would give us the right to speculate about the second possibility?

Supernova SN1987A, observed in 1987, is the only one which has been identified in photographs taken during the period when it was still a ‘normal’ star. At that time it belonged to a group of stars called blue giants and as such was not ‘suspected’ of having undergone a gigantic explosion which has excited astronomers until the present day. For, according to the well-established theory of the evolution of stars, only red giants have the ‘right’ to change into supernovae. So, this irresponsible super-explosion made it necessary to revise the entire star theory (which is probably keeping the cosmologists busy), but until such time as a new one is created, we can assume that the detected fact does not overturn the scientific theory of the evolution of stars in the least, but that it confirms the existence of astro-engineering ‘works’. Further evidence to support this comes from the place where that star was located and which had been driven to extremes by those cosmogonists. It was found in a small, very old galaxy called the Great Magellanic Cloud, where the star- and planeto-genesis processes probably belong to the past. It may be that important reasons exist for ‘keeping’ these processes on a certain level, which should not be a difficult task for billion-year old civilizations (in order to achieve this, the ability of localised manipulation of constants of Nature should ‘suffice’). One could try to look for such reasons in the necessity of ‘bringing to life’ galaxies using elements indispensable for living matter, and/or in the creation of new, favorable places for its development and, finally, in further reasons, unknown to us.

This is all very well, the reader will interject at this time, but are there any other observations which decisively reach beyond scientific theories, but which are capable of making the ideas presented here more probable? Of course, there are. Primarily, one must include pulsars of the b -Cepheid type, which change their glow periodically by changing their shape, in this category. This type of star acrobatics does not at all accord with our scientific theories and this is why it is possible to interpret it as a purposeful arrangement ‘indicating’ that a local civilisation had achieved the highest level of technological achievement. Personally I am convinced that only these types of ‘password’ signals can come into consideration for making further contacts between civilisations which have crossed a certain threshold of knowledge about life and the world. For the time being the technical and practical aspects of such contacts are for us as remote as the technology making it possible to transfer information from Egypt to Rome (and back again) in time counted in milliseconds was for Pharaoh’s subjects⁽³⁾. And with this thought one could finish considering the issue of SETI, were it not for the temptation to summarize the social and political repercussions of pseudo-scientific petition, quoted at the beginning of this article.

All that has been said above has already disqualified that petition in its entirety (from the point of view of methodology and elementary logic) and even though one could continue to criticise further bits of it, we shall refrain from doing so because there is another aspect connected with this document which is more significant. It was written and signed by the most outstanding representatives of the natural sciences (including among them Nobel prize winners) and to show that no analysis of the problem had been carried out – a very simple thing to do – turned out to be child’s play. The experts supporting this petition ‘overwhelmed’ everyone to such a degree that it resulted in a general acceptance of the entire unrealistic vision of contacts with cosmic civilisations. The crowning glory of this absurdity was point 8 of the UN "Declaration of Principles". It forbids anyone (including the scientists!) to send any replies to possible signals from the Cosmos: "until appropriate international consultations have taken place". Surely, the fears lurking behind this can best illustrate what I have attempted to show in this article – namely the impossibility of making contact with cosmic civilisations at our stage of development. At the same time one can also say that the flower of earthly science has fixed in the public imagination a certain fictional notion which is bound to obstruct any other view or investigation of the real world. The more so, that such a fiction is being consolidated due to lack of publications differing from the prevailing scientific dogmas. And this is why I decided to send this critical article to NIDS Essay Competition.⁽⁴⁾