Stephen Wolfram, a British physicist believes extraterrestrial intelligence life is possible. However, there’s a catch. Intelligent life is not something we can expect to find, but it is possible. Wolfram says that in order to compress more and more information into our communication signals – be they mobile phone conversations or computers – we remove all redundancy or pattern. It is possible to delete any repeating signals. But this process of removing any pattern from a signal makes the signal look more and more random – in fact, pretty much like the random radio “noise” that rains down on Earth coming from stars and interstellar gas clouds.
Wolfram says that if we were to be afamed 21st century communication signals from space, it would be difficult to tell if they were natural or artificial. What chance are we to distinguish an ET communication from background radio static in the cosmos?
In his magnum opus Science as a New Kind, Wolfram, suggests that extraterrestrial intelligence is inevitably difficult to define and recognize “It has usually been assumed that detecting extraterrestrial signals from a sophisticated mathematical computation would provide evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence,” he writes. “But the discoveries in A New Kind of Science show that such computation can actually be produced by very simple underlying rules—of kinds that can occur in simple physical systems with nothing like what we normally consider intelligence. The result is a new view of the character of intelligence, and a collection of ideas about the nature of purpose, and recognizing it in ultimate extrapolations of technology.”
Artificial Intelligence could Reveal the Uncomprehensible with Artificial Intelligence of The Future
What is going on in our Solar System that has gone unnoticed?
As Harvard’s Avi Loeb suggested about Oumuamua, Hawaiian for “Messenger from Afar,” the first known interstellar object detected passing through the Solar System on 19 October 2017, ET artifacts could look far more like a natural artifact. Loeb’s suggestion that Oumuamua might be an alien spacecraft, with its unusually oblong shape measuring 10x longer than it width, made headlines across the globe in 2018. Analysis of the object’s trajectory indicates that it originated from far beyond our solar system. It was in the constellation Lyra heading towards the constellation Pegasus.
Around the globe, astronomers attempted to find radio signals that could be used to determine its identity. Is it an ancient asteroid fragment, or a strange comet? Was it another thing? There’s always a possibility. Loeb suggestsThis is not more speculation than the existence dark energy or dark material.
It is very possible, and perhaps likely, that when we encounter another technological species its cognition will be so completely different from ours we will have little to no hope of communicating.”
It is simple to tell a technological artifact like a car from something natural, such as a tree. The tree is much more complex. But, says Wolfram, “this is simply because our technological artifacts are primitive. As they become more complex – with computer processors enabling them to make moment-by-moment decisions – they will begin to look just as complex as trees and people and stars.” We have a slim chance, he suggests, of distinguishing an ET artifact from a natural celestial object.
If Wolfram is right and ETs are out there but we will not be able to recognize them – either in their communications or their artifacts – then of course they could be here in the Solar System and we would not have noticed.
The Computational Universe
Wolfram thinks ETs will not want to travel to Earth – or anywhere else for that matter. In Wolfram’s view, everything in the Universe is the product of a computer program. Wolfram imagines a cyber-universe that contains all possible computer programs, from the simplest to the most complex. This “computational universe” contains everything from the Apple Macintosh operating system to a program for creating a faster-than-light starship.
Wolfram believes he has found nature’s big secret – how it generates the complexity of the world, everything from a rhododendron to a tree to a barred spiral galaxy by applying simple rules over and over again as simple computer programs. Wolfram came to this remarkable conclusion in the early 1980s when he discovered that the simplest kind of computer program – known as a cellular automaton – can generate infinite complexity if its output is repeatedly fed back in as its input.
Nature’s Big Secret
Wolfram has found evidence that the kind of computer program that produces endless complexity can be implemented “not just systems of biological molecules but in all sorts of physical systems – chaotic gas clouds, systems of subatomic particles and so on. He concludes that all over the Universe life – though definitely not life as we know it – will spring up spontaneously. It is a fundamental feature of matter.”
This computational universe is essential. It is more efficient and easier for an ET civilization, in fact, to stay at home and search the computational universe to find useful programs than to try to hunt for ETs among the approximately 200 billion stars in the Milky Way. “It’s a simple numbers game,” says Wolfram.
Everything is generated by computer program, “and that includes you and me,” says Wolfram. “Someone halfway across the Galaxy could have found the computer program for you and is conversing with you at this very moment.”
The Last Word –A Completely Different Evolutionary Path?
“AI techniques are well suited to anomaly detection and the classification of complex signals. AI offers a potentially effective method for the interrogation of massive datasets that contain a range of signals from natural, human-made, and possibly extraterrestrial sources,” Steven TingayJohn Curtin, John Curtin University Distinguished Professor and deputy executive Director of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research, spoke The Daily Galaxy “While the human eye and brain are hard to beat, we can’t deal with very much data and we struggle to maintain consistency. AI could possibly filter down massive datasets into much lower volume categories of signals that humans can deal with to identify new phenomena,” he explained.
To send an email The Daily GalaxyHarvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb wrote: “The recently announced Galileo Project will use telescopes to discover extraterrestrial equipment near Earth. This fishing expedition will likely discover AI-systems. Our civilization will be able to learn new things that are impossible to predict. We should first observe the equipment remotely using telescopes and cameras that detect light reflected and emitted. It would be our first goal to discover what information the extraterrestrial artificial intelligence system seeks and how it responds. Any engagement should be postponed to a later time, once we gather sufficient information about the system’s nature and intent. We will likely need help from our own AI-systems, just as we rely on our kids to explain complex content on the internet because they are more computer savvy than we are.”
“It is very possible, and perhaps likely, that when we encounter another technological species its cognition will be so completely different from ours we will have little to no hope of communicating,” wrote Penn State astrophysicist and Director of the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center, Jason WrightIn an email, The Daily Galaxy. “Consider that we share significant evolutionary descent with fellow communicative mammals like dolphins, but despite decades of study do not meaningfully communicate with them like we hope to with ET. What will it be like with creatures on a different evolutionary path?
“On the other hand,” Wright notes, “if they are doing something we can recognize as technology, like transmitting radio signals, that implies a certain degree of convergent evolution with humanity, and perhaps we will find something in the languages of mathematics, engineering, and physics to begin a real dialog.”
Avi ShporerResearch Scientist with the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research via Avi Loeb, Jason Wright, Steven Tingay, M. Chown, The Universe Next DoorStephen Wolfram Science as a New Kind
Image credit: ESO-Observatories, Chile
Your free daily fix of stories of space and science –a random journey from Planet Earth through the Cosmos– that has the capacity to provide clues to our existence and add a much needed cosmic perspective in our Anthropocene epoch.
Yes, Sign Me Up for “The Galaxy Report” Newsletter
Avi Shporer Research Scientist, MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. A Google ScholarAvi was once a NASA Sagan Fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). His motto, not surprisingly, is a quote from Carl Sagan: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
