On the Origin of Extraterrestrial Industrial Civilizations

Journal of the British Interplanetary Society

In the book On the Origin of Extraterrestrial Industrial Civilizations, four cases of analysis of possible existence of earth like civilization in the cosmos are setup. That is, projected future Type III civilizations derived from earth analog-based civilizations are both rare in space and time. Projected future Type III civilizations derived from earth analog-based civilizations are becoming more frequent in space but not in time, Projected future Type III civilizations derived from earth analog-based civilizations are becoming more frequent in time but not in space, and finally, the projected future Type III civilizations derived from earth analog-based civilizations are becoming both more frequent in time and in space. The majority of the book was focused on the modeling of the last case, which is the most likely scenario in which a contact can become possible and the most complex case compares to the former three since it is based on global regulatory mechanism and the relative ease at abiogenesis. In the book, we proposed the nearest civilizations possible to earth given our current understanding of biology and evolution and assuming earth biological history served as the typical trajectory. In this paper, using the concept of self indication assumption, the lower bound can also be settled, surprisingly the lower bound is likely be only two orders of magnitudes below the upper bound, despite a much larger possible spread of prior probability on the chance of low likelihood of abiogenesis. We also used self indication assumption for our earliest window, and we find that despite a possible window size of 4 Gyr according to the Lineweaver scale, much more recent, shorter earliest window is favored. Abstract Finally, over the course of time, other authors have proposed various explanatory mechanisms for possible detection/non-detection of extraterrestrial civilizations, we try to clarify the entire landscape by presenting all possible cases all at once and fitting them into our conceptual framework.

Advances in Space Research, 1983

Some measures of biologic complexity, including maximal levels of brain development, are exponential functions of time through intervals of 106 to 1O9 yrs.

JBIS, 1986

The probable abundance of planets possessing suitable conditions for the evolution of technologically capable forms of life has been assessed by an analysis of the series of runs of the "Silicon Creation" computer model. An evolutionary simulation of 100,000 disc stars of varying mass, metallicity and age was performed. Not only did the computer search for potential civilisation sites, but also for civilisations that had come into existence on those planets over the past 10^10 years of galactic disc history. The frequency of such planets was determined to be N_sites/N_*disc = 2.92x10^-3. The frequency of planets actually developing a technological civilisation was N_civ/N_sites = 0.031, which gives N_civ/N_*disc= 9x10^-5. These figures are two orders of magnitude lower than the most optimistic manipulations of the Drake Equation, but not low enough to resolve the "Fermi Paradox."

Astronomers' Universe, 2016

Acta Astronautica, 2016

In a series of recent papers (Refs. [1] through [9]) this author gave the equations of his mathematical model of Evolution and SETI, simply called "Evo-SETI". Key features of Evo-SETI are: 1) The Statistical Drake Equation is the extension of the classical Drake equation into Statistics. Probability distributions of the number of ET civilizations in the Galaxy (lognormals) were given, and so is the probable distribution of the distance of ETs from us. 2) Darwinian Evolution is redefined as a Geometric Brownian Motion (GBM) in the number of living species on Earth over the last 3.5 billion years. Its mean value grew exponentially in time and Mass Extinctions of the past are accounted for as unpredictable low GBM values. 3) The exponential growth of the number of species during Evolution is the geometric locus of the peaks of a one-parameter family of lognormal distributions (b-lognormals, starting each at a different time b ¼birth) constrained between the time axis and the exponential mean value. This accounts for cladistics (i.e. Evolution Lineages). The above key features of Evo-SETI Theory were already discussed by this author in Refs. [1] through [9]. Now about this paper's "novelties". 4) The lifespan of a living being, let it be a cell, an animal, a human, a historic human society, or even an ET society, is mathematically described as a finite b-lognormal. This author then described mathematically the historical development of eight human historic civilizations, from Ancient Greece to the USA, by virtue of b-lognormals. 5) Finally, the b-lognormal's entropy is the measure of a civilization's advancement level. By measuring the entropy difference between Aztecs and Spaniards in 1519, this author was able to account mathematically for the 20-million-Aztecs defeat by a few thousand Spaniards, due to the latter's technological (i.e. entropic) superiority. The same might unfortunately happen to Humans when they will face an ET superior civilization for the first time. Now the question is: whenever a new exoplanet is discovered, where does that exoplanet stand in its evolution towards life as we have it on Earth nowadays, or beyond? This is the central question of SETI. This author hopes that his Evo-SETI Theory will help addressing this question when SETI astronomers will succeed in finding the first "life signatures" or even ET Civilizations.

The Frontiers Collection, 2010

Even before the first search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) experiment was conducted, people have been pondering what reply we might send if some day we discover an extraterrestrial civilization. Some have suggested that the United Nations would be the international body of choice for deciding such a question and that would seem one appropriate starting point. The challenge that the

arXiv (Cornell University), 2017

The emerging science of evolutionary developmental (“evo devo”) biology can aid us in thinking about our universe as both an evolutionary system, where most processes are unpredictable and creative, and a developmental system, where a special few processes are predictable and constrained to produce far-future-specific emergent order, just as we see in the common developmental processes in two stars of an identical population type, or in two genetically identical twins in biology. The transcension hypothesis proposes that a universal process of evolutionary development guides all sufficiently advanced civilizations into what may be called "inner space," a computationally optimal domain of increasingly dense, productive, miniaturized, and efficient scales of space, time, energy, and matter, and eventually, to a black-hole-like destination. Transcension as a developmental destiny might also contribute to the solution to the Fermi paradox, the question of why we haven't seen evidence of or received beacons from intelligent civilizations. A few potential evolutionary, developmental, and information theoretic reasons, mechanisms, and models for constrained transcension of advanced intelligence are briefly considered. In particular, we introduce arguments that black holes may be a developmental destiny and standard attractor for all higher intelligence, as they appear to some to be ideal computing, learning, forward time travel, energy harvesting, civilization merger, natural selection, and universe replication devices. In the transcension hypothesis, simpler civilizations that succeed in resisting transcension by staying in outer (normal) space would be developmental failures, which are statistically very rare late in the life cycle of any biological developing system. If transcension is a developmental process, we may expect brief broadcasts or subtle forms of galactic engineering to occur in small portions of a few galaxies, the handiwork of young and immature civilizations, but constrained transcension should be by far the norm for all mature civilizations. The transcension hypothesis has significant and testable implications for our current and future METI and SETI agendas. If all universal intelligence eventually transcends to black-hole-like environments, after which some form of merger and selection occurs, and if two-way messaging is severely limited by the great distances between neighboring and rapidly transcending civilizations, then communication with feedback may be very rare, an event restricted to nearest-neighbor stars for a very brief period prior to transcension. The only kind of communication that might be common enough to be easily detectable by us would be the sending of one-way METI or probes throughout the galaxy. But simple one-way messaging or probes may be not worth the cost to send, and advanced messaging or probes may provably reduce the evolutionary diversity in all civilizations receiving them, as they would condemn the receiver to transcending in a manner similar to that of the sender. If each civilization in our universe is quite limited in what they can learn given their finite computational resources, and if many civilizations evolve in parallel and in isolation in our universe for this reason, then a powerful ethical injunction against one-way messaging or probes might emerge in the morality and sustainability systems of all sufficiently advanced civilizations, an argument known as the Zoo hypothesis in Fermi paradox literature. In any such environment, the evolutionary value of sending any interstellar message or probe may simply not be worth the cost, if transcension and post-transcension merger are elements of an inevitable, accelerative, and testable developmental process, one that eventually will be discovered and quantitatively described by future physics. Fortunately, transcension processes may be measurable today even without good physical theory, and radio and optical SETI may each provide empirical tests. If transcension is a universal developmental constraint, then without exception all early and low-power electromagnetic leakage signals (radar, radio, television), and later, optical evidence of the exoplanets and their atmospheres should reliably cease as each civilization enters their own technological singularities (emergence of postbiological intelligence and life forms) and recognizes they are on an optimal and accelerating path to a black-hole-like environment. Furthermore, optical SETI may soon allow us to map an expanding area of the galactic habitable zone we may call the galactic transcension zone, an inner ring that contains older transcended civilizations, and a missing planets problem as we discover that planets with life signatures occur at a much lower frequencies in this inner ring than in the remainder of the habitable zone.

100 Year Starship 2012 Symposium Conference Proceedings, 2012

Taking biology as a model, and paralleling the formulations of astrobiology, the large-scale structure of the origins, evolution, and distribution of spacefaring civilizations is delineated and brief expositions are given of models of expansion for spacefaring civilizations.